Reply to Young.

This paper responds to a comment by T. R. Young, who sought to intervene in the exchange between the author and Marc Wardell on the role of conceptual frameworks or paradigms in the development of theory in sociology and the social sciences. Young suggested that some of the less well known assumptions of Karl Marx could serve as uniting points between the two correspondents. The dualism of the historicist conceptualization of the transition from capitalism to socialism which appears in Young's comments underestimates the empirical complexity of the political and economic problems of the period of transition. This paper disagrees with Young's final assertion that too much Marxist theory has stood in the way of radical revolution and socialist transformation.