Home Forum Political Economy The dark matter of CasP? What can’t we observe about capitalist power? Reply To: The dark matter of CasP? What can’t we observe about capitalist power?

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The ‘dark-matter’ syndrome is inherent to scientific modelling. All scientific models are wrong to some extent – either because the modellers exclude important elements and misrepresent or omit relevant relations, or because they over-simplify. The built-in errors are not always apparent — for example, initially, Ptolemaic cosmology seemed superior to the heliocentric one. And often the errors are being hidden by inventing new terms, such as Phlogiston in chemistry, the production-function ‘residual’ in economics, and (perhaps) the ‘dark matter’ of cosmology.

I think that, as a new approach with few researches and a very limited number of studies, CasP must be full of dark matter, residuals and Phlogiston-like substances. And I suspect that its unknowns extend far beyond the black and grey economies and unreported activities. In the grander scheme of things, CasP theory is still in its early sketching stages, and even its most brilliant studies merely scratch the empirical surface.

But there is an upside. Unlike neoclassical theory, which gave up science in defence of capitalism, and contrary to Marxism, which has been impaired by dogma and/or surrendered to postism, CasP is still young and uncommitted and therefore able to plow through many of these difficulties — at least for the time being!