Re: [OPE] The state under capitalism

I think that is too extreme an objection.
Suppose two phenomena, let us say commodity circulation and monetary taxation are assumed to have a feedback relation, but each of these also has some other drivers. I am pretty sure that you could in principle come up with some testable predictions from the model, seeing whether the observed phenomena were best explained by different signs and scales of feedback response. Of course one of the problems is getting a reasonable data-set to test things with.
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From: ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu [ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu] On Behalf Of Dave Zachariah [davez@kth.se]
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2010 11:32 AM
To: Outline on Political Economy mailing list
Subject: Re: [OPE] The state under capitalism

On 19 August 2010 23:44, Paul Cockshott <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk<mailto:wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>> wrote:
Surely howard is saying that a relationship is non-dialectical if there is no feedback.

You are right, I was trying to be very general about classes of relationships. But this actually gets closer to the problem. Simply stating that two elements are in a feedback relationship can be a way to avoid any testable content, safe-guarding so that the predictions come out right either way. (Indeed this was something mentioned by Marx in a letter to Engels.). So merely classifying any relationship as 'dialectical' will be of little theoretical value unless one also can propose a set of dynamical laws and boundary conditions.

//Dave Z

The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401
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Received on Fri Aug 20 11:24:26 2010