Inequality, Evolution, & Complexity

Mark Thoma excerpts from Chris Dillow's post about 'Inequality, Evolution, & Complexity'.

The key question is:

Why has mainstream neoclassical economics traditionally had little to say about the causes and effects of inequality?

The real answer is that you don't bite the hand that feeds you. As Lenin says:

The task of a bourgeois professor is not to lay bare the entire mechanism, or to expose all the machinations of the bank monopolists, but rather to present them in a favourable light.

Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism (p.52)

Anyway, the bourgeois professors think the problem is:

…that the blindness is inherent in the very structure of the discipline. If you think of representative agents maximizing utility in a competitive environment, inequality has nowhere to come from unless you impose it ad hoc…

Nice one, Capitalism! You have created a superstructure so effective that the wrong answers cannot be found as the question does not arise.

But no fast, the bourgeois professors think that by reverting to the original political use of the theory of evolution, they can come up with an answer:

…If we think of the economy as a complex (pdf) adaptive system…then inequality becomes a central feature. This is partly because such evolutionary processes inherently generate winners and losers, and partly because they ditch representative agents and so introduce lumpy granularity.

Emphasis Mine

So we are back where we were 150 years ago, the theory of evolution is being used to justify inequality.

But then, this leaves the Capitalists in a quandry: which system do they choose to build the superstructure on? Are they going with Creationism or with Evolution? Or are they going to reconcile the two?

I think reconciliation is out of the question because of the ongoing civil war within the Capitalist class for which the battle between Creationism and Evolution is a proxy.

Communists will have to side with Evolution because it is scientificly based, and leads to more progressive outcomes than does Creationism.

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Men Who Kick Down Doors: Tyrants at Home and Abroad

Ann Jones posts about Men Who Kick Down Doors: Tyrants at Home and Abroad.

Jones connects the dots between domestic violence and war-mongering:

It was John Stuart Mill, writing in the nineteenth century, who connected the dots between “domestic” and international violence. But he didn’t use our absurdly gender-neutral, pale gray term “domestic violence.” He called it “wife torture” or “atrocity,” and he recognized that torture and atrocity are much the same, no matter where they take place -- whether today in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Wardak Province, Afghanistan, or a bedroom or basement in Ohio. Arguing in 1869 against the subjection of women, Mill wrote that the Englishman’s habit of household tyranny and “wife torture” established the pattern and practice for his foreign policy. The tyrant at home becomes the tyrant at war. Home is the training ground for the big games played overseas.

The violence engender by the system is all-pervasise. You cannot eliminate the violence within the domestic sphere without eliminating the violence inherent in the system. The only way to eliminate inherent violence is to replace the system.

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John Pilger: The new propaganda is 'liberal'

John Pilger: The new propaganda is 'liberal'.

Of the world of blogging, tweeting, and social media, Pilger writes:

Edward Said described this wired state in Culture and Imperialism as taking imperialism where navies could never reach. It is the ultimate means of social control because it is voluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom.

Today's “message” of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behavior, this is extremism.

The conservatives are correct when they say that the mainstream media is liberal. But they misunderstand what the word 'liberal' means. They are led to believe that it means progressive and radical, whereas the meaning imparted by the capitalists is freedom for them to exploit others while hiding this exploitation.

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Us vs, us

Seth Gogin asks who wins in a game of Us vs. us.

For Communism to suceed, we need to raise our consciousness from the individualism that Capitalism that moulded us into, to a higher level:

When we steal or disrupt or game the system of a community we care about, we hurt everyone we say we're connected to, and thus hurt ourselves.

Communism requires a permanent revolutionary mindset:

Online communities are quick to form, but they're just as quick to fade, to become less open and to become less trusting because sometimes we have a cultural orientation toward taking, not giving. We forget to feed the network first, to take care of those we care about.

We have to throw away the profit motive for evaluating which choices to make:

Here's a possible standard: is it open, fair and good for others? If it's not, the community asks that you take your selfish antics somewhere else.

Godin concludes with:

Call me naive, but I think it's possible (and likely) that the digital tribes we're forming are going to actually change things for the better. But not until we embrace the fact that we are us.

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Mechanisms of racial disparities

Dan Little describes some Mechanisms of racial disparities.

Little's conclusion is:

In short, there seem to be a great number of mechanisms of racial differentiation that are at work in American society that don't generally presuppose explicit racial antagonism, but that work to channel black individuals into worse outcomes than their white counterparts. These are structural factors that the population faces, not personal factors; and they have pronounced effects when it comes to generating racial disparities in a number of crucial social dimensions.

These mechanisms include:

• The provision of essential social services, like education, health care, and public transport, by local government.
• The access to health care is also tied to employment.

• Actual racial prejudice in hiring practices

Since local governments are heavily depenendent on the local tax base in US society, the quality of public services varies greatly depending on the locale. Racial differentiation leads to economic differentiation which leads to differentiation in the provision of these public services.

The lack of public transport means people are trapped within their locale. Thus, they have limited chances of employment, and therefore access to health care.

Poor public services means poor education which, in turns, leads to reduced job oppportunities.

Even if they manage to overcome all of this, they still face discrimination during the hiring process.

So, racism has a structural basis in tying public services to local government and health care to jobs. But, there is still racial prejudice to stop anyone escaping those traps.

As Malcolm X said, "You cannot have Capitalism without Racism!"

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Communication is a path, not an event

Seth Godin says that Communication is a path, not an event.

Communication for revolutionaries occurs at many levels:

• Propaganda
• Slogans
• Agitation
• Mass rallies

Propaganda is what Godin would say is a waste of time if it is used wrongly. It is unidirectional communication, but the purpose should be:

Don't sell us anything but the burning desire to follow up. The point of his talk wasn't to get a new customer (impossible), nor was it to get through the talk and get it over with (silly and selfish). No, the point of the talk should have been to open the door to have a better, individual conversation soon.

This individual communication is what is known as agitation. It is the dialogue between the cadre and the public on at the personal level. It is at this level that recruitment into the party takes place.

The slogans are short, precise communications that allow the party to quickly get feedback about the public is prepared to mobilise around. The effect of these slogans is measured directly at the mass rallies.

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Remembering Rachel Corrie, 10 Years Later

Juan Cole Remembering Rachel Corrie, 10 Years Later.

Supporters of Greater Israel succeeded in having the performance of a play based on her life cancelled in New York, but it has gone on to play elsewhere, and she and her legacy have not been erased, as the extreme nationalists would have liked. In some ways the controversy over the play led to the founding of the influential blog Mondoweiss, which has done much to create spaces in which hard line Jewish nationalism can be critiqued.

Emphasis in original

To remember is to resist.

Meminisse resistere.

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