2016/03/11

Dan Little: Non-generative social facts

Dan Little writes about Non-generative social facts.

So this complicated example of a fairly routine social process seems to be one that throws attention on the causal and intentional properties of the meso-level social structures rather than on the states of agency of the individuals who constitute those structures. And this in turn suggests that it is not the case that all social events are "generated" by the states of mind and action of the individuals who constitute them, even though each of the subordinate events in the sequences possesses microfoundations at the level of the individual actors.

Emphasis Mine

My understanding of what Little is saying is that there is an interplay between objective and subjective conditions within a class system. This is a common Marxist concept.

The subjective conditions are what the agent percieves the world as allowing to them to do. This is equivalent to the states of mind…of the individuals. Here the agent has a limited set of actions that they can perform.

The objective conditions are the sum of all social events [that] are "generated" by the various agents up to the present time. The objective conditions have a historical component and the currently occurring component. Agents can only directly affect the currently occurring component.

I see microfoundations as consisting of:

  • the history of the agent—what has the agent seen and done in the past
  • where the agent is situated in society. This is a dialetic between:
    • where the agent sees themselves being situated in society, and
    • where others see the agent being situated in society
  • an internal model of how society works according to the agent

Agents with similar micro-foundations constitute a class. The wider the definition of the class, the looser the similarity between micro-foundations.

Unfortunately, the looser the definition of a class, the less likely that class is able to act in unison. Action requires compelling need on part of the agents.

This is probably one of the problems with working class agitation: the working class is extremely diverse with multiple dimensions of gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity, political orientation, geographical locality, language, age, etc. These dimensions make it easy for the Capitalists to keep the working class divided against itself.

Thus, we have a need of a political party to develop a theoretical understanding of what it means to be working class, and develop a unified action in support of the needs and aspirations of the working class.

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