Re: [OPE] CAPITAL AS POWER: free PDF download

Ok, formally this is ok, but it is not a terribly parsimonious way of expressing it since you now have a plethora of debt relations, one for each possible number of dollars that are owed.
If I were charged with recording these relations for a bank, I would not chose to do it this way.
On one level this is a mundane technical matter, but on an other level the relation of debt does not exist independently of the actual records kept of the debt. A part of the social relations of modern society actually inhere in the relational databases maintained by the banks.
On the other hand a relationship of employer-employee or mother-daughter is more than this. It is not just an information structure, it is an ongoing process, so whilst of social relations can be represented as formal relations as in the relational algebra, one must distinguish between those whose existence depends on the coexistence of a materialised information representation of the relation, and those which do not require this informational representation.

________________________________________
From: ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu [ope-bounces@lists.csuchico.edu] On Behalf Of Dave Zachariah [davez@kth.se]
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 9:56 PM
To: Outline on Political Economy mailing list
Subject: Re: [OPE] CAPITAL AS POWER: free PDF download

On 2010-12-21 22:53, Paul Cockshott wrote:
> You dont get very far with the relationship of debt if you ignore how much is owed.
>
It wasn't ignored:

    R_m = { (x,y): agent x is indebted m units to agent y }

where m is the amount.

//Dave Z
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Received on Wed Dec 22 04:32:42 2010