On Jan 10, 2008 8:32 AM, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > did Marx ever say anything like "Societal deviations in terms of the > distribution of wealth for example, must be minimized"? (supposedly he > said this in CAPITAL, according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, THE BLACK > SWAN, p. 242.) It seems totally out of character.
I looked up this phrase on Google and it gives only one result http://allomorphe.com/worldview.htm --------------------snip In particular, the emergence of Statistics led Adolph Quetelet and others to formulate "a generalized notion of the normal as an imperative"(Davis 11). Through his construct of l'homme moyen physique and l'homme moyen morale, a physical and moral average man, Quetelet creates a range of deviance from this average which positions all people either to the left or right of center and punishes those who find themselves occupying the extreme left or right of the statistical bell curve. Contributing to an additive effect, Marx also cites Quetelet regarding this concept of an average / normal man in the context of labor theory of value, that within an enforcement of normalcy, societal deviations "in terms of the distribution of wealth for example, must be minimized"(13). -raghu.
