Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 08:00:46 EST
From: tgs-AT-cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Subject: Steve's post on Chaos (from Tom)


Steve,

I think that your application of chaos theory to economics is well-intentioned
but flawed.  Certainly chaos theory has its place in the study of molecular
structures. But when you apply it to social realities, you end up transforming
whole classes into molecules--or rather, static, fixed particles which
interact pretty much like "things" in Aristotle's and Kant's thought--that is
to say, there are things within themselves, and their relations with other
things are "accidents" which affect them temporarily, until they snap back
to their essential state.  This has very little to do with dialectics, in
which the things are dissolved into the total system of relationships, and
the contradictions that result.

I don't any possibility, from your theory, of comprehending the greatest 
contradiction of the capitalist system--the falling rate of profit. Yet
this fundamental contradiction, as anyone can see, is working its 
deleterious magic upon our society daily.  It's as if your transforming
"classes" into the abstraction of "nation" and "people" which Marx 
critiqued in the Grundrisse.


     ------------------