Thanks a lot for the nice review, :-).
I do apologize for the price of my books and will simply note that I am not responsible for setting them. I long ago urged Kluwer to lower the price, arguing that the elasticity would be high and that they would increase their revenues and profits. But, they did not listen, even after the first edition went through three printings even at the outrageous price.
As regards Farjoun and Machover (whom I discuss in my book) I note that they have a "nonstandard" definition of chaos. Essentially for them chaos is simply an exaggerated version of randomness. True mathematical chaos is a form of determinism that resembles randomness, but not precisely, the source of much econometric suffering and gesticulating and wasting of computer time. The Farjoun and Machover discussion is interesting, but should be viewed as "metaphorical chaos." Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Monday, February 12, 2001 7:04 PM Subject: Re: Lenin in Essen
>Ian says:
>
>> True. Anarcho-capitalists are utopian. The state (with its police,
>> army, regulatory apparatus, etc.) is _absolutely necessary_ for the
>> expanded reproduction of capitalism _at any stage_. That said, there
>> is an important difference of degrees, not of kinds. "Mercantilism"
>> -- "laissez faire" -- "monopoly" -- "neoliberalism." As Lenin says,
>> we shouldn't forget "the conditional and relative value of all
>> definitions in general, which can never embrace all the
>> concatenations of a phenomenon in its complete development" (Lenin,
>> "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," _Marxism: Essential
>> Writings_, ed. David McLellan, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988, p. 154).
>> Each term merely captures the dominant tendency, salient feature,
>> and/or "cutting edge" of new development. Unless you keep this fact
>> in mind, all theoretical terms become useless.
>>
>> Yoshie
>>*************
>>
>>Well I think that, except for neoliberalism -which seems to be a term
borrowed
>>from International Relations discourse [Robert Keohane], those terms
aren't
>>really that useful any more.
>
>As you can see, I ordered the terms above ("Mercantilism" -- "laissez
>faire" -- "monopoly" -- "neoliberalism") chronologically, which means
>that neoliberalism best captures the current conjuncture.
>Neoliberalism = the post-Socialist & post-Social Democratic era =
>roughly from the mid-70s to the present.
>
>>Farjoun and Machover did a book called "The Laws of Chaos: A
>>Problematical Approach to Political Economy" for Verso in 1983, but I
haven't
>>tracked a copy down yet and J.B. Rosser Jr's books are toooo damn
expensive.
>
>Write about the Farjoun and Machover book when you get around to it.
>I haven't read J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.'s books, but based upon his
>PEN-l & other posts, I don't set much store by chaos theory. :)
>However, I'm not about to discourage anyone from reading Barkley
>Rosser, and here's the URL for his home page where lots of his papers
>are available, free of charge: <http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb/>.
>
>>Mercantilism was very imperialistic and, in actuality, a sophisticated
form of
>>thuggery.
>
>Sure enough, but in the era of mercantilism, the world had yet to be
>fully conquered for capitalism, as it is now.
>
>>I'd love to see a model of the "American Revolution" that made good use of
>>Tilly's approach to early states as organized crime and protection
>>rackets. One
>>could then go on to launch bigger attacks on "corporate welfare" and the
>>rebulicrats as protection rackets. In fact, reading Tilly alongside Thomas
>>Ferguson's "The Golden Rule" and then writing up an essay for user
friendly
>>purposes would pack a mighty wallup; anarchists would have a field day :-)
>
>It would be a sensational potboiler, a la Mike Davis' _City of
>Quartz_ & _Ecology of Fear_, and I'd welcome such an effort, if
>anyone wished to undertake it. The main emphasis of Marxist rhetoric
>should be, however, upon how _even at its very best & cleanest_
>capitalism is just M-C-M' & how violence & reaction, domestic or
>imperialist, are _necessary corollaries_ of M-C-M'.
>
>Yoshie
>