"Regarding, "what is needed," do we really have the foresight to determine the extent and depth of the economic science necessary to overthrow capitalism? Scientists complain about pressures to do more "applied" and less "pure" science.... etc" ---------------- You are completely right, Julio. It was that kid of reaoning of course that led me to putting Hegel on the Web as a way forward! I think I sometimes get a bit "overwhelmed" by the tasks ahead. But you are completely right! How dare I presume to underestimate the great theoretical resources out there, the strength of which has been many times demonstrated on this discussion group even. **************** "In terms of content, mathematical models are not better, per se, than "discoursive" economics. Mathematical symbols and operations are "mere abbreviations for words" (Phillip Jourdain). But, precisely, abbreviations are shorter than words. The reason we may want to use mathematical models is to make our theories more compact and economical, easier to handle." ----------------- I don't actually agree. Mathematical symbols denote concepts and mathematical formalism emerged out of the spoken/written word as words proved inadequate to express these concepts and in turn created the grounds for the development of entirely new concepts and modes of reasoning. ***************** "As long as we are aware of assumptions and of the fact that mathematical "grammar" embeds formal logic, we are safe. Risks are involved, but mathematical models may end up being necessary for the very reasons you allude." I agree! This process can be exceedingly poisonous. **************** "What's the character of such transformation [or forces of production, etc]? Is it making it harder or easier for workers to build socialism? Where easier, where harder?" ---------------- I guess it's quite easy to knowck out the Internet in a State of Emergency, but Before it's all facilitating the integration of the whole world proletariat into a single entity, enormously increasing its potentialities, self-consciousness etc. After, of course, we have fantastically developed planning, organising and communications infrastructure - having taken power internationally ... I agree with Julio's comment here. ******************* Julio quoting Marx: "On the basis of communal production, the determination of time remains, of course, essential. The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. ... Thus, economy of time, along with the planned distribution of labour time among the various branches of productions, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production. It becomes law, there, to an even higher degree... ." (1993, Penguin, pp.172-173.) -------------------- Yes!!! Now, during the day today I was reflecting on the question of time, specifically the rate of circulation of capital, which is reaching astronomical proportions in the futures markets, etc., and in the shortening of the time between production and consumption, between innovation and marketing, the rate of depreciation of capital. It seems to me that this increasing speed of circulation of value must have the effect of moving the economic system towards instability and chaos. Marx points out (I'm not going go and find where...) that these time periods conribute to the rate of accumulation of capital. Faced with the rising organic composition of capital, the falling rate of profit can be combatted by increasing the speed of turnover of cpaital in all of the above ways. But this also has its negative impact on both the accumulation of capital and the stability of social relations. *********************** "quality." etc., workers democracy IS socialism. I liked the bit in "Revolution Betrayed" where Trotsky talks about how the market provides a very primitive kind of democracy, which Stalin snuffed out along with all other vestiges of both producer and consumer to control production. Socially speaking a regession below capitalism, from which only could arise ... ************************ "I think of Marx's (and Hegel's?) theory of alienation when I think of "emergent properties." For instance, in the case of "commodity fetishism," independent private producers who own and control their private production, when interacting through markets, find themselves immersed in a hardened reality beyond their control and turned against them." ------------------------ True, but I would say, in the language of Complexity Theory: The Commodity Relation is both an *attractor* which indicates the emergence of capitalist relations out of other non-capitalist economic systems which have broken down, AND the primary *classifier* (??) or "axiomatic" relation, the abstract notion of capitalism out of which the properties of capitalist society EMERGE - accumulation, profit, business cycle, the specific forms of the class struggle and conflict between forces and mode of production, these new properties are new *attractors* (?) which herald sudden transformations, and the replacement of this relation suddenly by others, or the collapse into chaos. From the point of view of old arguments about the validity of Hegel's Logic, these Complexity theorists have proved (empirically NOT theoretically, logically!, not mathematically, but by the empirical observation of the outcome of computation!) that from the spontatneous development of one relation (object, system) entirely NEW properties emerge. Not like Russian dolls, revealing properties that were already encoded inside, in the genes so to speak, but ENTIRELY NEW PROPERTIES! Formal logic absolutely excludes this, and so far as I know this is still the case after 10 years of complexity theory. They have simply empirically observed this as a fact, by using computers to carry out a type of "logical" experiment which was never previously technically possible. The issue is that 50 years before the publication of the Origin of Species, Hegel described concepts to grasp this emergence whcih cannot be grasped by formal logic. The movement from Pure Being to the abstract Notion to the Idea, describes the development of emergence, and totally opposite view to the idea of (for example) organic matter developing according to a program written into its genetic material in advance. The computer modelling technique would allow us to concretise our concepts of emergence in the same way experiment is used as a method of concretising theory in natural science or anywhere. For the past two hundred years dialectics has developed specifically under conditions where processes were NOT isolated, where the movement was NOT cut up into bits to be studied in static isolation. Newton's mechanics - behold the power and achievements of that method, beware the limitations of the mechanical view of the world. I see the potential, and at the same time I have some nervousness. *********************** I've run out of time. It's late. I will respond to the rest of your message tomorrow ...