Walt Byars wrote:
One of the pretty common arguments against (planned) socialism that I see is argument by analogy with biological evolution. In the most popular version of the argument, firms under capitalism face selection pressures which result in a more "fit" economy. The obvious rejoinder to this is that a "fit" firm is one that earns the most profits, and socialists reject the idea that profitability is the same as being socially beneficial. Michael Perelman deals with this argument in a different fashion in "The Natural Instability of Markets," but I wonder how much his argument depends on the correctness of the Punctuated Equilibrium theory of evolution, which I understand is highly controversial among evolutionary biologists.
Evolutionary Economists have also rejected this argument about the fitness of firms. The Darwinian framework is based on the concepts of variation, replication and selection. There is a well developed literature which shows why the firm cannot be the unit of selection. Penrose, Edith T. (1952) 'Biological analogies in the theory of the firm', American Economic Review 42(4): 804–19. Nelson, Richard R. and Winter, Sidney G. (1982) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Works by Geoffrey Hodgson: http://www.geoffrey-hodgson.info/p25.htm
Another argument I see simply posits that "decentralized systems" are more "Evolutionarily efficient."
Information and Economics: A Critique of Hayek W. Paul Cockshott and Allin F. Cottrell See section 7. Information flows under market and plan http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/hayek.htm http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/hayek_critique.pdf
An example is this post from a forum I frequent "I would love to hear you explain how a centralized committee is more efficient than a decentralized network. What was more evolutionarily successful in the earth's biological history-- bees or brontosaurs? What's more efficient, peer-to-peer or downloading from a single source? What kills more people, a lethal virus or a gunman? Sufficiently efficient networks (speed of information, etc) are nearly always more efficient than centralized bodies. You may reject efficiency, but that's just another way of saying you don't believe in maximizing the greater good." Obviously there are lots of errors and ambiguities in this quote, but I think it gives the picture of this sort of argument (interestingly enough, this is incompatible with the first argument I mentioned because under capitalism large heirarchically planned companies are "selected" for). Are there any counterexamples of more centralized animal species being biologically successful or anyhting of the like?
I doubt you will find any such thing. In the animal behavior literature it is noted that many non-human species have a memory capacity, but it seems that only humans are able to transfer that memory between generations. This human capacity is the foundation for culture.
Are their any arguments by socialists as to the inappropriateness of such biological analogies?
One useful paper is: Elias L. Khalil, Survival of the Most Foolish of Fools: The Limits of Evolutionary Selection Theory http://www.springerlink.com/content/q88mm4x17w663766/ The biologist Richard Lewontin makes the point in his "The Triple Helix" that evolution is only one biological process. Another process is development. Cell growth, for example, is better understood as a process of development not evolution. Gould also emphasized that natural selection is only one of many biological processes. In fact, in Gould's view, it is the over emphasis on evolution and selection that leads to Panglossism. Most of Marx's work is about development, not evolution (understood in the modern Darwinian way); it's about the _internal_ changes of the system. In the Darwinian model there is no development, there is only redistributions of populations (the so-called Population thinking).
I have yet to hear the sort of argument I quoted be clearly and coherently stated, but it appears as if "evolutionary efficiency" is conflated with economic wellbeing at some point. Therefore, I would also be interested in any academic examples of this critique of socialism being made (hopefully they are clearer than the stuff I hear parrotted on forums).
Most Hayekians claim that Hayek had little use for the idea of economic efficiency; that his arguments do not rely on such a concept. Andy Dennis shows that this is not altogether correct, and that without that concept Hayek doesn't have much to say. Andy Dennis. http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/andy.denis/research/research.html Chapter 5: Friedrich Hayek: a Panglossian evolutionary theorist http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/andy.denis/research/thesis/05.htm
