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There has been a great amount of criticism of structural-functional theory, particularly with respect to its supposed inability to deal with social change. Should structural-functional theory be unable to account for the sources of social change, then it is indeed guilty of an implicit ideological commitment to the status quo. If it can be shown that this theory is capable of dealing with social change, then we can accept Merton's statement: … it is the evaluations which permit the pouring of ideological content into the bottles of functionalism. The bottles themselves are neutral to their contents, and may serve equally well as containers for ideological poison or for ideological nectar. The position taken here is that Merton's statement is correct, provided that an important accommodation is made. This accommodation consists in the explicit incorporation of the dialectical process into structural-functional theory. The dialectical process implies a conflict model of society; it is in the tradition of Marx, who argued that without conflict there can be no progress. It adopts the proposition that conflict is empirically both a normal and an essential element in the social structure. In the simplest terms, the dialectic tells us something about the sources of a particular kind of social change. We are not content, as is Dahrendorf, with advocating a conflict model of society as an alternative to functionalism. The goal is nothing less than to reconcile the two approaches. Dahrendorf has himself recognized that the conflict model cannot provide all the answers since society is "Janusheaded." It is extremely difficult to talk about the prediction of empirical outcomes when one is required to look first at an integration model and then turn to the conflict model. It is necessary to construct one model which will qualify the integration model of society so as to give weight (the exact amount is an empirical question) to the disruptive elements in society. A considerable portion of this paper will be devoted to disengaging the dialectic from its ideological moorings and making it trim for sociological analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]