‘Growth through Sabotage’ , Goodwin’s Lotka -Volterra model of Marxism

[ishi crew]

1.     I am new to this forum.

I did a very fast read or skim of the fairly short online book on BNarchives called  ‘Growth through Sabotoge’ last night (which seemed to be from this month–while  I had seen some BNArchives papers before the dialect was fairly removed from what i am familiar with and i really didnt read many–also they seemed to get involved in debates such as over the ‘falling rate of  profit ‘ which i had seen and really couldnt follow in URPE and papers by A Kliman.     My view is ‘growth through sabotoge’ seems to  resolve this.

I will say ‘sabotoge’ is a term i learned from anarchist and earth first ‘direct action’ literature. I knew people who identified with these groups but I never really did–but I read some of the literature.
But, regarding capitalism as sabotoge actually seems logical once you take it in a general sense.

I am interested in discussing this book.

(While i dont consider myself a Bohmian (the physicist) his ‘information field’ mentioned in the book  i think is a good idea–and as noted is sort of related to captial as power—and there has been some development  of his ideas even in last 5 years. Even people at MIT did some experiments along those lines–though they couldnt be reproduced or confirmed but some are still trying–also its a modification or reinterpretation of Bohm.
It can be noted that Bohm basically said he never mentioned his famous theory again for years after he published it–not even to his many grad students–it got such a hostile reception. Bohm also had political problems.    His theory was the recent subject of a very popular book called ‘what is real’ by adam becker.)

The ‘sabotoge’  book references many things I have also read or skimmed before (including many papers by Blair Fix, and many others such as  Veblen, Bohm, Capra, Coates, Bowles, and Marglin (‘what do bosses do’ —  one possible answer reminds me of the one asked by the old song ‘war, what is it good for?    absolutely nothing’.)

(Of course the ‘theory of hierarchical power’ or ‘growth through sabotoge’ suggests wars and bosses do some things. not nothing. )

The terminology used in Capital as Power reminds me of people like Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu (‘symbolic capital’) –though they are not viewed as economists , but conceptually seem related.

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as an aside my background originally was in mathematical or theoretical biology  –but these areas are a bit like ‘orthodox vs heterodox economics’ or a textbook of newtonian or non-relativistic classical mechanics versus ones on quantum, statistical, or relativistic mechanics or field theory, not to mention nonequilbrium physics. this is one reason i dropped out of formal study.
i was heterodox and while i had a few opportunities for alternatives most were orthodox     most people said go orthodox for awhile, get degrees and jobs and then do what you want.i didnt have the stamina.

Possibly the majority of what is called mathematical biology is like  non-relativistic newtonian mecanics and alot of the papers you see in mainstream economic journals –sometimes very detailed, even difficult calculations to solve  ‘real problems’ –studies of cancer growth, or how fish ‘stay still’ in a fast moving stream and decide when to try to hunt; or like ‘economics of consumer choice in a store’ versus discussions like ‘capital as power’.

Theoretical biology (which basically has 2 seperate main journals–math biology also has 2)   — is seen as  ‘fringe’ or ‘heterodox’ and can range from qualitative  things to very advanced mathematics–quantum theory, statistical mechanics, category theory, forms of mathematical logic.
(A few theoretical biologists have answered queries or criticisms of why their research doesn’t predict anything empirical or that experimental scientists can work on basically say they dont care–or that their papers are their experiments–see what reaction they get.).

All of these approaches have migrated into economics.

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2.   Goodwin Model—i actually read about this in some ‘complexity science ‘ journal and it was simpler version than the wikipedia article, for example.   They call it a class struggle or marxism model.

I consider it a basic and almost essential model—especialy the form i saw–which actuallly left out most economics except bosses and workers.

The other thing i like about it is it uses LV equations—my view is almost everything in physics and much of math can be  wrriten as a form of the LVE. (S Smale (fields medalist in math) showed this in a  math biology journal in 1970s.     Its been followed up  a bit–write neural nets, turing machines, some of cosmology and quantum theory  as LVEs. The general forms are when written out are very complicated–which is why they are avoided.
Its like economics –its easier to model a barter or trade  between orange and apple growers than an economy with a supply chain involving industrial agriculture, computer manufacturing , shipping , migration of workforces, entertainment and education industries and more.

The simple Godwin model mostly in my view captures the ‘dynamics’ of power/capital  but leaves out the origin.
(if you try to include that the model gets even more nonlinear–there are some models in mathematical biology which are analagous —
(actually these arere old  models done by a Canadian theoretical biologist studying coral reef ecology —
they end up looking like general relativity–    matter curves space and curved space creates matter–
except its ‘corals create reefs and reefs create coral’.    then you get bigger reefs and maybe islands and even things living on those.

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There is a common view in complexity sciences that it is a big break from ‘linear newtonian mechanics’.     My view is nonlinear sciences are just a modification of linear ones—you add some terms.  So i just see these as a generalizations–just as infinite sets and  transfinite  sets are generalizations of counting with 10 fingers.

The more I look at newtonian mechanics or arithmatic, and classical economics  you see similarities with the more recent varianrs. (its sort of like going to a foreign culture or ecosystem—–it looks very different at first but then you notice similarities).
It is true that many ‘classical’ people deny there is any similarity between their view of the world and the views of those they say make little sense or are irrelevant.   I’ve also seen this with people into economics–many of whom deny there are  any alternative views even  if you show them some. they just ignore them.

I noted on antoher thread some mentioned they were reading a book by Celine  ( a notorious who sided with Vichy govt in ww2–but a great writer).
My favorite Celine quote from his book North is
‘men only see what they look at, and they only look at what they already have in mind’ .   To me that summarizes alot of physics and economics.      .

Topic

[Blair Fix]

Hi Ishi,

Lots to think about here. I will comment on just one of the things you mention — the similarity between ghe language used in Capital as Power and that of Foucault.

I personally cannot understand Foucault, but get the sense that when he speaks of ‘power’, he means some all-encompassing cultural ‘field’ that affects everything we do and think. Perhaps I am exaggerating, but after Foucault, post modernists took this line of thinking to the extreme … basically saying there is nothing outside of power.

I am quite skeptical of the post modern understanding of power because I think it is similar to Freudian nonsense — incredibly dense language, grand claims, and yet ultimately based on either complete vacuity or simple truisms.

Other CasPers may disagree.

[ishi crew]

I basically agree with you . I only know of Foucault and the ‘pomos’ because in college I sometimes hung out with with people who studied semiotics.
I basically only took science classes but I had to fulfill a humanities requirement so i took some and also people threw away their books so i got some .
Foucault, Julia Kristeva , Roland Barthes ‘  s/z seemed to make some sense. Because these were translations i figured it was possible something got lost in translation.

Derrida seemed to be doing a parody of science –eg ‘neoclassical economics as standup comedy ‘.  ‘Bah HUMBUG’ .  qed.

I decided Lacan was probably a fraud or charlatan. He had an ‘equation’ i tried to figure out.

one problem is there are some similar equations i dont really understand.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.09666

(note lastt 3 numbers–one author was wife of a member of the bourbaki group—
one of whom also wrtoe a math treatment of C L Strausss’ structural anthropology theory) .

https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.2843     more of the same

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aside.

I knew someone who said he was Derrida’s ‘ ‘best student’ when Derrida was at UC Irvine.  This person also described himself as ‘working class’ and viewed me as a  ‘rich bum or slacker’  because i was living at my parents house where he was visiting his friend who my parents also let stay there.   This dude actually had rich parents in california and his ‘working class ‘ job was as a waiter with a minimum wage of 7$/hour  at a posh restaurant where he made 100$ in tips /hour.     Made 450$/4 hours ‘work’.   (pour beers).

I mentioned some scientists had critiques of Derrida –he said ‘you can’t criticize Derrida’ and i said i was just repeating what others had said — and he assualted me in my parents house–where i had permission to stay while they were gone.

( I could have pressed the issue but my ‘friend’ and him just ran me out–my friend had been living there off and on for years–endeared himself to my parents.
Stole everything too –my mom’s wedding ring,  some old coins–family heirlooms, my computer, etc. . If I complained i was told ‘this is because you are envious’–because your friend is a responsible person, is employed except when he isnt, has 2 kids by 2 different mothers by age 20, has 2 restraining orders against him (ie if he goes to visit his kids their moms will call the police on him)  , and he gave you a ‘dream job’ (want to breathe some lead paint?).

I later ran all of them out.    (My ‘friend’ OD’d shortly after  in someone else’s home. He did teach me how  to play chess and   how to identify birds –he had  a birdbook and could draw them.   He also did a little bit of maintenance work at that house which was falling down–it was a borderline public hazard. It was sold and turned into 4 condominiums each of which sells for 40 times what the original house cost.  My bedroom and bathroom which might have been 4000$ —1/5th of the house— now costs 800,ooo$.
last time i went to that house to look, police showed up and asked what i was doing there–i was on my bike–i said i’m leaving.   )

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One class i had was on ‘metahistory’ —-based on a book by H White—a sort of analyses of historical ‘tropes’ in the spirit of Toynbee, and O Spengler’s ‘decline of the west’—very pessimistic book from early 1900s with alot of mathematical analogies .

IE  the idea was that historical periods should be viewed as expressions of whatever mathematics was available at the time.

Similar to saying hisotry was determined by lack of fire, fire, then iron, then steel, then computers..

After around 1850,  and the writing of Reimann, Clifford, Cantor , Boltzmann, Einstein, Poincare, Schrodinger etc    standard narratives of history went into chaos and uncertainty seemed to be Spengler’s point.)

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Same thing happened with literature and poetry— you start with shakespeare and end up with  Ulysses and Finnegan’s wake, free verse and spoken word.
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music was same–mozart , bach, etc.led  to stravinsky and john cage, dixieland jazz goes to art ensemble of chicago, coltrane, dolphy  and ornette coleman. rock goes from chuck berry and elvis through stones/beatles to ramones/iggy/VU/sp’s and then hc, noise and grunge and now electronica.

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civilization and its discontents by freud i think was ok (maybe his last book) that can be rewritten as a 1 page lotka volterra equation.

to get the rest of Freud (eg the psychoanalyses  , etc ) you might need 3 pages.
these will  be ‘strongly nonlinear LVEs’ (eg the predators and preys have varying degrees of education, personal histories or traumas, may even have minds or cosciousness , obey different gods etc.)

to get more pages you can turn it into Lie algebras and look for symmetries or group invariants–a la Noether’s theorem.  this might look like poetry or postmodernism or just scribbles.

if you want a few more pages you can turn it into statistical mechancis .   (i’m rambling but in a way thats my life).

[Author]

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