Social reality is tragically misshapen, intractable, and untidy. Social theory is not. It imposes order and clarity by forcing the ‘facts’ of social existence into preconceived ideological boxes – all in the name of objective science. Superficially, it appears that what separates one social theory from another is the way in which the same ‘objective’ facts are arranged and combined. But it is the underlying ideology that determines what a social fact is to begin with and then proceeds to arrange the ones it finds to be theoretically relevant and compatible in a certain order. Different theories, being different constructions of ‘reality’, have different objectives. Some seek to eternalize and thereby justify whatever is, while others seek to depass it to what ought to be. One thing all social theories have in common, however, is that they all, in time, become obsolete as historical events unfold along lines no theory could have possibly anticipated.

In a sense, all social theories specialize in predicting the past and having done so, in accordance with their own ‘scientific’ canons and thus to their own satisfaction, they then turn their theoretical axes 180 degrees into the future, falsifying themselves in the act. Then comes the problem of reconstruction, after the patchwork attempts of the theoretical diehards repeatedly fail. And so the process goes on and on, though by no means smoothly.