On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Jurriaan Bendien <[email protected]> wrote:
> It seems to me intuitively odd to describe an economic reproduction process > mathematically as a “mapping” relationship or a morphism. Presumably it is > some kind of “iterative” relationship. A "mapping" is just a symbolic concept to denote a relationship or transformation. Obviously, you-today and you-tomorrow are related. Well, maybe not obviously, but if we believe that Jurriaan-today-here is *in some sense* the same as Jurriaan-tomorrow-there, then -- if we let y = Jurriann, f = the transformation of Jurriaan in time and space from today-here to tomorrow-there, then the process by which Jurriann goes from today-here to tomorrow-there must have a fixed point f(y) = y or else the two Jurriann's are unrelated. > I assume that you try to model, that there exists a system of which elements > are variable across time, although the structure of the system is preserved > across time? If I say, let n=1 be the global population normalized. Then the population of China can be 1/6 today and 1/10 some decades from now. It's not that the global population has not changed. It just continues to be *the* global population and population in each country is expressed as a fraction of that total. That's the point of having a concept in mathematics like set or variable or such. Its internal structure may change (e.g. one may select a different element, assign different values, etc.), but it's defined qualitatively at the outset and that quality remains. > It looks prima facie like that you are an Althusserian Marxist, in the sense > of denying there are “goals” in capitalism, such as moneymaking, because > that would commit the sin of “teleology” and “historicism”. Thus, there is > only a continuing totality of structured structures, in which human beings > are the abstract appendages. Continuity and change are then explained in > terms of the realignment of various structures. I've been called worse things that Althusserian Marxist. But no, I don't think so. IMO, people have goals, indeed, under capitalism or any other social form. That's what makes our activity properly human. The structures I refer to are formed by individuals taking actions, which are -- insofar as human -- goal driven. The structures are social, because they involve more than one individual, and the functioning of the structure as a whole may not match the goals of the individuals involved. The movers and shakers are the individuals, and as a result of their moving and shaking the structures get re-arranged. The qualifying clause is that individuals do not have infinite powers, but only the finite powers embodied in those structures. Those structures constrain their actions and thus reveal that their goals are too timid, too ambitious, or -- occasionally and usually by chance -- just right. > The question then is, what exactly is the use of this astronomically > super-abstract picture? What is the explanans and the explanandum? If > Marxism is the answer, what is the question? The purpose of my note was to show that: To ask that the aggregation of individual preferences into social preferences be shown logically without making simplifying assumptions is to miss the whole point of theorizing such aggregation. When I began to think about this demand, I decided that I wanted to make the point much more generally. Some people (in the Marxist tradition, with whom I correspond) seem to have no problem accepting Marx's volume 2 schemes of reproduction. Yet, these schemes are a particular instance of my f: y \rightarrow y framework. Some people, like Molliere's bourgeois gentilhomme have been speaking prose unwittingly since they began to speak. I wasn't trying to show that Marxism is right. Although, for all we know, it may well be. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
