chaos, economics, and arms races

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Thu Nov 26 12:21:38 PST 1998


Chris Burford wrote:


> At 05:21 PM 11/25/98 -0800, Paul Rosenberg wrote:
>
> some interesting comments. (I will reserve my position on what is conveyed
> by his signature line about reason and democracy, because I do not think
> they exist in abstract, but that would be another thread title.)

No, of course they don't exist in the abstract. I'm a philosophical pragmatist. It all happens where the rubber mets the road.


> >> Why not file it under, that's-probably-true?
> >
> >Because of a simple observation: there are very few (hundreds at most)
> >examples of arms races. Far too little data to support such abstract
> >models.
>
> Good point but I would reply, our models of reality do not have to be
> limited to those on which we can gather large amounts of quantifiable
> empirical data. That would be empiricism.

No, they don't have to be limited that way. The current state of physics in the search for a theory of everything is a very good extreme counter-example. In general, models can have all kinds of usefulness for clarifying our thinking even when there's no cahnce at all of direct contact with empirical evidence. But they can also deceive us into misdirecting our attention from difficult political problems that aren't particularly intellectually interesting. Mind candy for the intellectual set.


> But more widely, an arms race is a subset of conflict. Conflict can be
> studied in many forms and we all have to learn about it from infancy anyway.

Yes, but comparing war and arms races to toddlers fighting over candy is more than misleading, it's mystification. Stressing "fear" and "greed" and the like as variables simply dresses up this mystificuation in psuedo-scientific garb. There's more to be learned from a dull empirical study, even a relatively cursory one such as Grieder's new book, *Fortress America.*

Intra-elite struggles play quite important roles in such matters, as do needs for subsidizng industrial development, all kinds of things that have lots and lots to do with class analysis and damn little to do with parametizing inner states of consciousness.

This is not to say nonlinear/chaotic models are useless. I think they're highly useful for attacking the pretense of rationality in pro-arms race narratives. But they shouldn't be pushed too far. Nor should we put all our eggs in this particular basket. Although since it's not Easter another metaphor would be more in keeping. Perhaps not put all our stuffing in one turkey?

This may seem far afield, but just as one example of how things can be stood on their head, I was involved in some local organizing against RAND, a premier arms race think-tank, and we came across one monograph which used human rights law to argue for counterforce missles. Taking the argument that directly targeting human populations was a war crime, it advocated targeting weapons systems only. This, of course, was a PRO-arms race justifiction for endless escalation--first counterforce missiles, then counter-counterforce missiles, etc. So, whatever intellectual line you want to pursue, it's damn well important to keep it grounded in sensible principles.

Everything else we seem to be pretty much agreed upon (at least it so appears).

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list