File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-14.105, message 42


From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: M-I: game theory
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 15:02:13 -0500 ()


     Well, more of my defense of Roemer in anticipation of 
Louis Proyect's assault upon him, not that I fully agree 
with Roemer at all, and some of what LNP has said, I agree 
with.  Nevertheless, a few notes.
     1)  Although a lot of Roemer's presentations presume 
methodological individualism, they don't have to.  Let the 
"individuals" be groups or classes.  Then, let the "games" 
begin.  The analysis works out.  Are not the capitalists 
and the workers each trying to get as much for themselves 
as possible?
     2)  I see no reason not to view the conflicts in a 
non-cooperative game as being awfully similar to a 
"contradiction."  Why isn't a contradiction?
     3)  It is certainly true that Roemer does not present 
a Hegelian dialectical view.  But, non-cooperative game 
theory has a dynamic version in its "repeated game" form in 
which a sort of abstracted historical process can be played 
out.  There are people out there running simulation models 
of this sort of thing.
     4)  Of course a very basic aspect of this is the 
question of the use of mathematics.  Many argue that 
dialectical analysis is inherently unmathematical and thus 
would rule out game theory.  Now, on the one hand, Marx 
himself did not hesitate to use mathematics.  Indeed, Phil 
Mirowski has argued that he was the first true mathematical 
economist.  On the other hand, it is possible to interpret 
dialectical analysis in a mathematical manner, the quantity 
becomes quality being equivalent to a phase transition in 
nonlinear dynamics.  I have even written a paper on this, 
but will not name it or where it was presented or where 
it is currently under review or who was in the audience for 
fear of being dinged for self-aggrandizement and awful 
academic elitism, blah blah blah.  But in that paper I 
recognize that if one insists that dialectics cannot be 
mathematical, then the whole analogy is out the window.  
But why can it not be mathematical?  Too complicated for 
Third World peasants to understand?  So is much of Marx.
Barkley Rosser

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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