Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
At 11:27 25/05/00 -0400, you wrote: > For those who are curious, I have a recently published >paper on these issues. >"Aspects of dialectics and non-linear dynamics," _Cambridge >Journal of Economics_, May 2000, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 311-324. > It is also available on my website without the figures at >http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb. >Barkley Rosser Congratulations on getting published in this journal. This is an important area of left political economy. I will copy the abstract and then comment on extracts. > Abstract > > Three principles of dialectical analysis are examined in terms of > nonlinear dynamics models. The three principles are the transformation > of quantity into quality, the interpenetration of opposites, and the > negation of the negation. The first two of these especially are > interpreted within the frameworks of catastrophe, chaos, and emergent > dynamics complexity theoretic models, with the concept of bifurcation > playing a central role. Problems with this viewpoint are also discussed. >I. Introduction > Among the deepest problems in political economy is that of the > qualitative transformation of economic systems from one mode to > another. A long tradition, based on Marx, argues that this can be > explained by a materialist interpretation of the dialectical method of > analysis as developed by Hegel. Although Marx can be argued to have been > the first clear and rigorous mathematical economist (Mirowski, 1986), > this aspect of his analysis generally eschewed mathematics. Indeed some > (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971) argue that the dialectical method is in deep > conflict with arithmomorphism, or a precisely quantitative mathematical > approach, that its very essence involves the unavoidable invocation of a > penumbral fuzziness that defies and defeats using most forms of > mathematics in political economy. Do you know the book by Moshe Machover which was the first to analyse Marx's economic theories with probalistic maths? The Laws of Chaos, A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy by Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshe Machover VVerso Editions London. ISBN 086091 768 1 Machover is a very reasonable marxist, and has an e-mail address. The only qualification is that the publishers chose the title for him rather than himself and he is not interested in chaos theory. The exercise stands on its ground as a probabilistic working of a marxian political economy. > However, this paper will argue that nonlinear dynamics offers a way > in which a mathematical analogue to certain aspects of the dialectical > approach can be modelled, in particular, that of the difficult problem of > qualitative transformation alluded to above. > In particular, we shall discuss certain elements of catastrophe > theory, chaos theory, and complex emergent dynamics theory models that > allow for a mathematical modelling of quantitative change leading to > qualitative change, one of the widely claimed foundational concepts of > the dialectical approach, and a key to its analysis of systemic political > economic transformation. > In most linear models, continuous changes in inputs do not lead to > discontinuous changes in outputs, which will be our mathematical > interpretation of the famous quantitative change leading to qualitative > change formulation. > Part II of this paper briefly reviews basic dialectical > concepts. Part III discusses how catastrophe theory can imply > dialectical results. Part IV considers chaos theory from a dialectical > perspective. Part V examines some emergent complexity concepts along > similar lines, culminating in a broader synthesis. Part VI will present > conclusions. >II. Basic Dialectical Concepts > In a famous formulation, Engels (1940, p. 26) identifies the laws of > dialectics as being reducible to three basic concepts: 1) the > transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa, 2) the > interpenetration of opposites, and 3) the negation of the negation, > although Engels's approach differs from that of many others on many grounds <> > For both Marx and Engels (1848), the first of these was the central > key to the change from one mode of production to another, their > historical materialist approach seeing history unfolding in qualitatively > distinct stages such as ancient slavery, feudalism, and > capitalism. Engels (1954, p. 67) would later identify this with Hegel's > (1842, p. 217) example of the boiling or freezing of water at specific > temperatures, qualitative (discontinuous) leaps arising from quantitative > (continuous) changes. In modern physics this is a phase transition and > can be analyzed using spin glass or other complexity type models (Kac, > 1968). In modern evolutionary theory this idea has shown up in the > concept of punctuated equilibria (Eldredge and Gould, 1972), which Mokyr > (1990) and Rosser (1991,
Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Chris, Thank you for the very thoughtful (and sympathetic, :-)) response. There is much here, but I'll try to respond to more controversial or unclear points. I am acquainted with the Farjoun and Machover book and cited it in my 1991 book (volume I, second edn. due out from Kluwer on June 9, latest word). I note that they use the word "chaos" in a more general way to mean what most would label "stochastic." My knowledge of German is insufficient to comment seriously on your remarks regarding English versus German. However, this has a certain plausibility and would explain a lot of confusion that has transpired. The issue of the excluded middle is one that was a major hassle in terms of getting this paper published in the CJE. It went through several different revisions and rewrites and a great deal of fighting went on with some referees over it. One of the upshots was that some ideas I thought interesting were removed eventually. Some of these had to do with the excluded middle issue where I had an extended discussion about intuitionistic mathematics and constructivism. But one referee, a philosopher I think, just had purple cows over this stuff and demanded its removal, which eventually happened. It was a fight to even keep any mention of the excluded middle issue in the paper at all. With respect to Engels on continuous bio evolution versus discontinuous human evolution, see pp. 18-19 of the Dialectics of Nature. A key line: p. 18 "Animals also have a history, that of their derivation and gradual evolution to their present position." He then goes on to discuss the contrast with humans who consciously come to control their history and create large changes out of small actions, among other things. Ilya Prigogine was born in Russia, but has lived in Belgium for a long time. The pronunciation of his name has changed over time as a result. Today it is "Prigozheen." He was not at the Denmark conference, but several of his top henchmen were, led by the redoubtable Ioannis Antoniou. They are doing some very interesting things. I had some long discussions with Hermann Haken, the founder of the Stuttgart synergetics school, probably the most impressive intellect at the conference. The question of the relation of the Austrians, and Hayek in particular to all of this, is a controversial one, both among Austrians and more generally. Sciabarra and Lavoie and now Karen Vaughn all argue that Hayek in particular was an early devotee of complexity theory in a sophisticated manner. Others are more skeptical, such as Peter Boettke. I note that an editor of a well-known journal I recently published a paper on complexity in wanted me to remove references to Hayek, but I was able to convince him otherwise. This was not an issue for the Cambridge journal. I note that Hayek was in contact personally with Haken, who rather liked him, and also had contacts with the Prigogine group in Brussels, with whom his relations were more, um, "complex." Sciabarra, of course, argues that Hayek was a dialectician, although his views on this matter are notably controversial. Thanks again for the friendly remarks. I was not surprised that there was difficulty in getting this paper published. I was rejected by 13 publishers for my 1991 book, that is now coming out in three volumes for the second edition, :-). Barkley Rosser http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb -Original Message- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sunday, May 28, 2000 7:14 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19691] Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics >At 11:27 25/05/00 -0400, you wrote: >> For those who are curious, I have a recently published >>paper on these issues. >>"Aspects of dialectics and non-linear dynamics," _Cambridge >>Journal of Economics_, May 2000, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 311-324. >> It is also available on my website without the figures at >>http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb. >>Barkley Rosser > >Congratulations on getting published in this journal. > >This is an important area of left political economy. I will copy the >abstract and then comment on extracts. > > >> Abstract >> >> Three principles of dialectical analysis are examined in terms of >> nonlinear dynamics models. The three principles are the transformation >> of quantity into quality, the interpenetration of opposites, and the >> negation of the negation. The first two of these especially are >> interpreted within the frameworks of catastrophe, chaos, and emergent >> dynamics complexity theoretic models, with the concept of bifurcation >> playing a central role. Problems with this viewpoint are also discussed. > > > >>I. Introduction >> Among the d
Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Wow, Chris! Huge effort! I'm gonna have to read this thing again (and read Barkley's piece, too, when I've the time and ashtray for the job) - but LOVED the stuff about language (I guess I'd have realised it if I ever thought about it, but I wasn't about to do that). Anyway, one quibble: >Interestingly it says the ideas are most compatible with those of Hayek and >the other "Austrian" economists. Even more interestingly it suggests the >best way for a country to survive in these inherently turbulent economic >conditions, is to be highly flexible (a clear right-wing agenda) I reckon you're needlessly buying into the currently fashionable notion of flexibility here, mate. Government and bureaucracy (and the latter is of course not specific to the public sector, however much Mises might contort reality and the species being he shared) are necessary for the Austrians because they had respect for the stubborness and profundity of externalities. A weak and under-funded government does not have the wherewithal to do something about whatever's currently outside the category of economic goods, and therefore cannot do what the Austrians say it's for. Lots of stuff that matters is in this category, and markets can't do a thing about 'em. Ergo, a flexible society is one with significant capacity for coordinated agency outside the realm of commodity exchange. This is especially true if the hole you're in is precisely because of the domination of exchange (say, a capital market crash, ultimately -but conceivably quickly - followed by sufficient a downturn in production and distribution of necessary stuff to put said society at risk from famine, disease, and [gasp] malcontents), I'd've thought. To rely exclusively on one mechanism of social reproduction is to stand by impotently when that (demonstrably bottleneck-prone) mechanism hits a bottleneck, doncha think? Especially when that mechanism has no overall direction or intent, and cares not an Australian dollar for the short-run or the human. >but to invest in the skills and health of the work force (less right-wing). Unless they're about socialising costs in the quest for more reliable and sustainable extraction of surplus value overall (which is more the sort of thing we might stress as government's main raison d'etre). The ambiguity of that is playing out at the moment in Australia, where the government just doesn't seem to know how much to cripple our public health and education systems. Yours avoiding marking essays, Rob.
Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Chris, I got you wrong. From this post, I learned much, and I am not joking. All these years I tried to conceptualise the world in terms of forests, a handy analogue for space/time continua. You showed a better way. Here in England for example we have Epping Forest. This is a small woody area in North London full of things like Queen Elizabeth I's hunting lodge, pubs selling Thai food amid Ye Olde settings, with Great Oak swings in the garden which demented kids who hate to be torn from their playstations try to demolish, etc. In Germany OTOH they have the Black Forest. It is bigger, enough even for people to feel OK wearing lederhosen in. In Russia, it is all the opposite way round, as you'd expect being a cognescento of Russian philosophy: there they have these simply ginormous forests all over the place, interspersed with small beleaguered settlements of melancholic drunken Russians pretending this is part of Europe and lying amid the meadows while trying to speculate about the nature of the cosmos beyond the treetops. In the Black Forest, Wandervogel wander and think about knightly tasks. After a very long while they get lost and the problem then is to work out where the fuck they are. This is why Germans have so many parts of speech related to 'here' type questions. In Epping it's all 'now' type questions. Here in Epping, people decide to try Nature on Sunday afternoons. Mostly they hope to avoid each other, and to avoid deranged geese in the meres, crashed world war two warplanes complete with handlebar-moustached corpses of English heroic fighter pilots with skulls locked in a grinning rictus which seems to shout 'Tally-Ho!' at one, etc, before staggering back to the hypo and condom-littered carpark where they must decide time-questions like is there enough time for a swift half, enough time to catch the tube before closing time, etc. and then they rush to consult the timetables and work out that only a frenzied jog will get them to Epping tube station before the last train which has any hope of conveying them to the West End, civilisation etc. Meanwhile, in Russia the melancholics continue to stand motionless at bus stops where buses never stop, pointing three fingers at their necks (Barkley knows why). These woody metaphors were how I circumnavigated around philosophy. Barkley + his very clever Russian wife found a way of sublating the problems of space, time, trees, undergowth, cut shins, absence of bus stops etc, into a book about Marxism and non-linear dynamics. I am absolutely sure that Barkley like me has been involved in non-linear attempts to get out of intractable forest. This is why I relate to him and him to me. I'm about to post a big piece on oil. It may not be such of a yawn any more to anyone who just had to fill up their tank at a gas station. This is my direct route to the non-linear dynamics of capitalist crash. I drive a Fiesta, a brand new one admittedly, but even so I have no regrets. I get 60 non-linear miles to the gallon out of it. Soon I'll be foraging for firewood in Epping Forest though. I'll be thinking about you. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList PS I meant what I said. This was a good post. - Original Message - From: "Chris Burford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 12:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19691] Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics > At 11:27 25/05/00 -0400, you wrote: > > For those who are curious, I have a recently published > >paper on these issues. > >"Aspects of dialectics and non-linear dynamics," _Cambridge > >Journal of Economics_, May 2000, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 311-324. > > It is also available on my website without the figures at > >http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb. > >Barkley Rosser > > Congratulations on getting published in this journal. > > This is an important area of left political economy. I will copy the > abstract and then comment on extracts. > >
Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Mark, Chapter 2 of my 1991 book ends with a catastrophe theoretic discussion of the oil industry. It is retained in the forthcoming second edition. It is not surprising that this industry is given to sudden large changes in price. BTW, my original foray on that one was in "The Emergence of the Megacorpstate and the Acceleration of Global Inflation," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Spring 1981, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 429-439. Actually this was another case of having trouble getting a paper published. By then it was passe, but it was originally written in 1973. In fact, my undergrad senior honors thesis at Wisconsin in 1969 was "A History of Oil Price Changes in the Middle East" in which I forecast that OPEC would get its act together and that prices would rise sharply. Oh well. It is true that, for all our political differences, Mark and I have certain mutual sympathies :-). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: M A Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sunday, May 28, 2000 8:58 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19694] Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics >Chris, I got you wrong. From this post, I learned much, and I am not joking. >All these years I tried to conceptualise the world in terms of forests, a >handy analogue for space/time continua. You showed a better way. > > >Here in England for example we have Epping Forest. This is a >small woody area in North London full of things like Queen >Elizabeth I's hunting lodge, pubs selling Thai food amid >Ye Olde settings, with Great Oak swings in the garden which >demented kids who hate to be torn from their playstations >try to demolish, etc. > >In Germany OTOH they have the Black Forest. It is bigger, >enough even for people to feel OK wearing lederhosen in. > >In Russia, it is all the opposite way round, as you'd >expect being a cognescento of Russian philosophy: there they have >these simply ginormous forests all over the place, interspersed with >small beleaguered settlements of melancholic drunken Russians >pretending this is part of Europe and lying amid the meadows >while trying to speculate about the nature of the cosmos beyond the >treetops. > > In the Black Forest, Wandervogel wander and think about knightly >tasks. After a very long while they get lost and the problem then is to work >out where the fuck they are. This is why Germans have so many parts of >speech related to 'here' type questions. > >In Epping it's all 'now' type questions. > >Here in Epping, people decide to try Nature on Sunday afternoons. Mostly >they hope to avoid each other, and to avoid deranged geese in the meres, >crashed world war two warplanes complete with handlebar-moustached >corpses of English heroic fighter pilots with skulls locked in a grinning >rictus which seems to shout 'Tally-Ho!' at one, etc, before staggering >back to the hypo and condom-littered carpark where they must decide >time-questions like is there enough time for a swift half, enough time >to catch the tube before closing time, etc. and then they rush to consult >the timetables and work out that only a frenzied jog will get them to Epping >tube station before the last train which has any hope of conveying >them to the West End, civilisation etc. > >Meanwhile, in Russia the melancholics continue to stand motionless >at bus stops where buses never stop, pointing three fingers at >their necks (Barkley knows why). These woody metaphors were how I >circumnavigated around philosophy. Barkley + his very clever Russian wife >found a way of sublating the problems of space, time, trees, undergowth, cut >shins, absence of bus stops etc, into a book about Marxism and non-linear >dynamics. I am absolutely sure that Barkley like me has been involved in >non-linear attempts to get out of intractable forest. This is why I relate >to him and him to me. > >I'm about to post a big piece on oil. It may not be such of a yawn any more >to anyone who just had to fill up their tank at a gas station. This is my >direct route to the non-linear dynamics of capitalist crash. I drive a >Fiesta, a brand new one admittedly, but even so I have no regrets. I get 60 >non-linear miles to the gallon out of it. Soon I'll be foraging for firewood >in Epping Forest though. I'll be thinking about you. > > >Mark Jones >http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList >PS I meant what I said. This was a good post. > > > >- Original Message - >From: "Chris Burford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 12:11 PM >Subject: [PEN-L:19691] Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics > > >> At 11:27 25/05/00 -0400, you wr
Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Barkley, maybe you could spell out what you mean here? > My earlier arguments had more to do with continuous > changes in market structure leading to discontinuous > changes in market outcomes, actually an old chestnut of > the IO literature that goes all the way back to Joe S. Bain, > "Relation of Profit Rate to Industry Concentration, American > Manufacturing, 1936-40," Quarterly Journal of Economics, > 1951, vol. 65, pp. 293-324, at least. Krugman's arguments > are all in a purely competitive context, I think. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Barkley wrote: >BTW, my original foray on that one was in "The Emergence of the >Megacorpstate and the Acceleration of Global Inflation," Journal of Post >Keynesian Economics, Spring 1981, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 429-439. Actually >this was another case of having trouble getting a paper published. By then >it was passe, but it was originally written in 1973. In fact, my undergrad >senior honors thesis at Wisconsin >in 1969 was "A History of Oil Price Changes in the Middle East" in which I >forecast that OPEC would get its act together and that prices would rise >sharply. Oh well. is this akin to the recent articles (cited by Krugman, among others) that argue that with assets such as oil, there are multiple equilibria which organizations such as OPEC can take advantage. Somewhere in my still-unpacked boxes, an article by my friend Lovell "Tu" Jarvis which (if I remember correctly) says something very similar about the Argentine cattle market. (BTW, someone playing his role shows up in the movie "Missing." He was the Ford Foundation economist who tells the Jack Lemmon character that his son (based on Charles Horman) was taken by the Chilean military. The movie and reality got mixed up a bit here. But what the heck.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Michael, Essentially the idea is that there is some critical level of concentration at any time in any industry at which the nature of the industry qualitatively changes (dialectics, and all that) from "essentially competitive" to "essentially non-competitive." Bain saw a discontinuity in the profit concentration relation. This argument has been extended more recently by others (besides me). A more recent good source is Ralph M. Bradburd and A. Mead Over, "Organizational Costs, 'Sticky Equilibria,' and Critical Levels of Concentration," Review of Economics and Statistics, 1982, vol. 6, pp. 50-58. Obviously this can vary with demand and other conditions. Inventory levels and overall demand certainly are important when dealing with the oil industry in particular. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Monday, May 29, 2000 7:37 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19739] Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics >Barkley, maybe you could spell out what you mean here? > > >> My earlier arguments had more to do with continuous >> changes in market structure leading to discontinuous >> changes in market outcomes, actually an old chestnut of >> the IO literature that goes all the way back to Joe S. Bain, >> "Relation of Profit Rate to Industry Concentration, American >> Manufacturing, 1936-40," Quarterly Journal of Economics, >> 1951, vol. 65, pp. 293-324, at least. Krugman's arguments >> are all in a purely competitive context, I think. > >-- >Michael Perelman >Economics Department >California State University >Chico, CA 95929 > >Tel. 530-898-5321 >E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and nonlinear Dynamics
RE > Essentially the idea is that there is some critical level > of concentration at any time in any industry at which the > nature of the industry qualitatively changes (dialectics, > and all that) . . . My own contribution, NOT based on the mainstream literature, to this is: "Capitalists' Institutional Agenda, Class Conflict Spillover, and the Last Instance" Review of Radical Political Economics 26(4), 23-54, 1994 The math I used was fairly simple (and, so, perhaps uninteresting to some) but it dealt with inter-capitalist competition, class struggle between K and L, and state policies in one single package. Nothing else similar exists. Not bad for what was, in essence, a single chapter in my dissertation. >From the abstract: "This model also permits, for the first time in a formal model, discussion of the link between the base and the superstructure, of the role of the "last instance" in historical development, and of the claim that there exists a "monopoly capital" stage of capitalism." Eric Nilsson Economics California State University, San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA 91711 [EMAIL PROTECTED] winmail.dat
Re: Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Jim, My earlier arguments had more to do with continuous changes in market structure leading to discontinuous changes in market outcomes, actually an old chestnut of the IO literature that goes all the way back to Joe S. Bain, "Relation of Profit Rate to Industry Concentration, American Manufacturing, 1936-40," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1951, vol. 65, pp. 293-324, at least. Krugman's arguments are all in a purely competitive context, I think. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Monday, May 29, 2000 4:35 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19733] Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics >Barkley wrote: >>BTW, my original foray on that one was in "The Emergence of the >>Megacorpstate and the Acceleration of Global Inflation," Journal of Post >>Keynesian Economics, Spring 1981, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 429-439. Actually >>this was another case of having trouble getting a paper published. By then >>it was passe, but it was originally written in 1973. In fact, my undergrad >>senior honors thesis at Wisconsin >>in 1969 was "A History of Oil Price Changes in the Middle East" in which I >>forecast that OPEC would get its act together and that prices would rise >>sharply. Oh well. > >is this akin to the recent articles (cited by Krugman, among others) that >argue that with assets such as oil, there are multiple equilibria which >organizations such as OPEC can take advantage. > >Somewhere in my still-unpacked boxes, an article by my friend Lovell "Tu" >Jarvis which (if I remember correctly) says something very similar about >the Argentine cattle market. (BTW, someone playing his role shows up in the >movie "Missing." He was the Ford Foundation economist who tells the Jack >Lemmon character that his son (based on Charles Horman) was taken by the >Chilean military. The movie and reality got mixed up a bit here. But what >the heck.) > >Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine > >
Re: Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and nonlinear Dynamics
Eric, Haven't read your paper, but sounds interesting. The older standard literature on this, e.g. Bain, etc., does not use fancy math (that's me, the fancy math guy, :-)). In some sense it fits with a very simple, almost Principles textbook level kind of perception that there is a qualitative difference between a "mostly competitive" and a "mostly monopolistic" industry. That there is some critical level of concentration in any industry at any time that marks the divide is not too surprising. One possible indicator of the divide might be whether prices are "administered" (and hence mostly constant) or not. Bain was the father of a whole line of traditional industrial organization analysis that is now viewed as very passe by modern standard IO types who are more into game theory and such like. Personally I have a lot of respect for the older Bain approach. I certainly think it is a hell of a lot more relevant for an antitrust type than most of the game theory stuff, not that all of it is uninteresting. But this may reflect my having taken grad IO at Wisconsin from Leonard Weiss who was a great fan of Bain's. They're both dead now, just like the dinosaurs... Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Eric Nilsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Pen-l <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 1:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19755] Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and nonlinear Dynamics >RE >> Essentially the idea is that there is some critical level >> of concentration at any time in any industry at which the >> nature of the industry qualitatively changes (dialectics, >> and all that) . . . > > >My own contribution, NOT based on the mainstream literature, to this is: > >"Capitalists' Institutional Agenda, Class Conflict Spillover, and the Last >Instance" >Review of Radical Political Economics 26(4), 23-54, 1994 > >The math I used was fairly simple (and, so, perhaps uninteresting to some) >but it dealt with inter-capitalist competition, class struggle between K and >L, and state policies in one single package. Nothing else similar exists. >Not bad for what was, in essence, a single chapter in my dissertation. > >>From the abstract: "This model also permits, for the first time in a formal >model, discussion of the link between the base and the superstructure, of >the role of the "last instance" in historical development, and of the claim >that there exists a "monopoly capital" stage of capitalism." > >Eric Nilsson >Economics >California State University, San Bernardino >San Bernardino, CA 91711 >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and nonlinear Dynamics
> That there is some critical level of concentration in any industry at > any time that marks the divide is not too surprising. One possible > indicator of the divide might be whether prices are "administered" (and > hence mostly constant) or not. there's got to be some sort of critical point between a highly-concentrated industry where the oligopolistic interdependencies that encourage appeals to game theory play a role and a "workably competitive" industry where they don't. > Bain was the father of a whole line of traditional industrial > organization analysis that is now viewed as very passe by modern standard > IO types who are more into game theory and such like. Personally I have > a lot of respect for the older Bain approach. I remember people at UC-Berkeley saying that one book by Bain was very boring, except when he started discussing the brewery industry, when it suddenly got very interesting. They said this flip had to do with Bain's alcoholism. He retired from UC-B right when I arrived, perhaps in fear of my dogmatic tee-totalism. ;-) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and nonlinear Dynamics
Jim, Well, I have to admit; those old-fashioned IO guys could turn some potentially very interesting stuff into the most boring sludge you can imagine sometimes. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 6:58 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19766] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Dialectics and nonlinear Dynamics > >> That there is some critical level of concentration in any industry at >> any time that marks the divide is not too surprising. One possible >> indicator of the divide might be whether prices are "administered" (and >> hence mostly constant) or not. > >there's got to be some sort of critical point between a highly-concentrated >industry where the oligopolistic interdependencies that encourage appeals >to game theory play a role and a "workably competitive" industry where they >don't. > >> Bain was the father of a whole line of traditional industrial >> organization analysis that is now viewed as very passe by modern standard >> IO types who are more into game theory and such like. Personally I have >> a lot of respect for the older Bain approach. > >I remember people at UC-Berkeley saying that one book by Bain was very >boring, except when he started discussing the brewery industry, when it >suddenly got very interesting. They said this flip had to do with Bain's >alcoholism. He retired from UC-B right when I arrived, perhaps in fear of >my dogmatic tee-totalism. ;-) > >Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine > >
