>
> Paul C:
> Social systems are not for anything, they simply exist. I am
> a Darwinian materialist, as I understand Marx to have been.
> There is no telos.
Yes, indeed, Paul is (not Marx though) And as a darwinian materialist
Paul C. can only conceive "existence" as "what it is" and not also as "what is
not yet". As a Darwinian darvinist Paul C. cannot conceive that it
is the clashing of different things people are FOR that create social
ways of beings and make history. Yes indeed, Paul C. is a scientist.
> Massimo:
> >But of course, what Andrew was pointing out was beyond the concreteness
> >of examples like this. To set v = 0 and ASSUME people live on
> >air, is to reinforce the case that shows that the internal dynamics
> >of a social system based on profit (endless drive to accumulation)
> >is independent of wage and has to do with labour at the
> > point of production.
>
> Paul C:
> This, however, is a strange social system since it abstracts from the
> most fundamental requirement of humans - to eat. It is not a social system
> at all, containing as it must, no people. Who is it that can live on air?
Nobody, this is excactly why it was simply assumed. Does Paul C. have
some problems about assumptions? Isn't this what people do all the time as
soon as they deploy a mathematical/statistical model? I seem to
remember Paul C. is quite learned on the subject.
> Among the Yoruba of western Nigeria, the chameleon is credited with this,
> his consumption of flies being so stealthy as to be invisible, but the
> society you propose could only be a society of angelic spirits not of
> material beings. I regard speculation about spiritual social systems
> to be rather idealist.
.. . . but Paul I made an example, the example of people having to
care about their reproduction outside the market economy and then
been forced by the state to sell part of their crop to pay taxes.
Isn't v here = 0? And aren't we here talking about concrete poeple
and not angelic spirit?
Massimo
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DESIRE IS PRODUCTION OF REALITY
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Massimo De Angelis
Department of Economics
University of East London
Longbridge Road
Dagenham Essex RM8 2AS
U.K.
work 0181 5907722 x2254
home 0181 9616067
fax 0181 8493549
e-mail massimo@uel.ac.uk
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