On Wed, 2 Feb 2000 16:58:02 -0500 (EST) bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Rakesh Bhandari) writes:
> Jim, I mention two problems here: why selective pressure is itself
> selective and why evolvability seems to have itself evolved.
>
> You write:
>
> >I think that the analogy to mutation lies primarily with the
> >the fact that Darwinism draws a distinction between the origins
> >of new variations (i.e. mutations) and their subsequent history
> >when they are subjected to natural selection. In the case of
> >the theory of history, I think that Carling is attempting to draw
> >a similar distinction between the origins of new variations in
> >the relations of production as a result of class struggles
> >and their subsequent history in which they too will undergo
> >selection within a context of competition with rival regimes
> >of production.
>
> Jim, this raises the quesiton of why there is such strong selective
> pressure on rlns of prod but not, say, myths, legends, religious
> beliefs
> and art styles associated with different cultures. If selective
> pressure is
> itself selective, then why is this so?
Carling does not address these issues in the two S & S articles that I referred to. On the other hand I think that Cohen in *KMTH* does in some passages analyze base-superstructure relationships in selectionist terms. For Cohen superstructural elements (i.e. the state, the law, religions, ideology) function so as to stabilize the economic base with a differential selection that favors those superstructural elements most suitable for stabilizing the base over those that are lest suited.
Outside the realm of Analytical Marxism writers like Dawkins with his memetics have argued that selection processes work to explain the evolution of myths, legends and religious beliefs. Dawkins has even proposed that religion can be understood as a memetic virus.
>
>
> >I don't think that Carling's theory really requires that
> >new variations be unintentional, what it really requires
> >is recognition of a distinction between the origins of
> >variations and their subsequent selection.
>
> One interesting question is why the generation of variation in the
> Schumpeterian sense of new goods, new methods, new markets is so
> sped up
> under determinate, i.e., capitalist, relations of production.
That raises as you point out below the issue of what Dawkins calls the evolution of evolvability. And Carling does address the issue in terms of using his version of historical materialism to explain why capitalism emerged in the West rather than the East - a question that has long bedeviled scholars, Marxists and non-Marxists alike (i.e. Max Weber). Carling draws a distinction between Western feudalism and the Asiatic mode of production (shades of Wittfogel) and he sees the former as having been particularly suited for the generation of new variations in the relations of production by virtue of its decentralized nature. China in contrast is seen as having been saddled with a centralized bureacratic control which stifled the appearances of new variations, so the pace of social evolution was necessarily slower than in the West.
>
> This is of course a different point but the determinants of
> variation
> seems to me a crucial question--nothing to be put at the margins of
> the
> theory; of course I am taking about a different kind of variation
> than
> Carling whose main variational type for the purposes of social
> evolution
> seems to be relations of production (how he understands this concept
> I do
> not know).
>
> Yet we do have the question of the explosion under capitalism of
> Schumpeterian variation or innovation or new combinations, the stuff
> of
> selection--just as (to use an analogy I have been developing though
> used by
> Ray Kurzweil in another way) sexual reproduction sped up biological
> evolution by enabling new combinations; capitalism has sped up
> economic
> evolution by allowing credit backed entrepreneurs to recombine
> freely the
> 'factors' of production in new enterprises (of course, pace Marx,
> this
> possibility of combination and recombination required that wage
> labor had
> been 'freed' from the conditions of production).
>
> The rate of social evolution is not itself constant--a point social
> evolutionist Scott Sanderson makes: There is here an evolvability of
> evolution, as Dawkins would put it.
>
> At any rate, it seems safe to say that the darwinian theory on which
> Carling here depends probably could not have been conceived in the
> relatively static conditions of feudal society.
Remember Darwin attributed his discovery of the principle of natural selection to his reading of Malthus. And of course political economy did not become a distinct discipline until after the rise of capitalism.
>Not only did rapid
> social
> evolution under capitalism make possible the discovery of change in
> nature--a point even Maynard Smith concedes--a sped up rate of
> social
> evolution allows us conceive that there is such a thing as a rate of
> social
> evolution, a concept that we can then use in the analysis of past
> societies as we seek the determinants for the cross-historical and
> -cultural variations of said rate. From a broad historical view,
> this
> evolution in evolvability seems to be the crucial question; this is
> why I
> am so enamored of Maynard Smith and Szathmary's study of this
> problem in
> organic evolution.
>
> In a way this of course is the task Brenner set for himself in his
> analysis
> of specific determinants of modern growth, though his institutional
> theory
> thereof seems to me as (labor)value-free as Daniel Little's superb
> reconstruction of historial materialism in institutional terms in
> The
> Scientific Marx.
>
> yrs, rakesh
>
>
>
>
________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.