[lbo-talk] ruling class

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Mon Mar 27 12:35:43 PST 2006


On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:47:38 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
> I was actually thinking about the ruling classes of
> Europe whose conduct lead to their own destruction.
> This kind of phenomenon is noted in jared Diamond;'s
> Collapse and versions of it are familiar from game
> theory with n-person prisoner's dilemmas, where
> rational action by each leads to worse outcomes for
> all. The nuclear arms race looked to be heading that
> way before the collpase of the USSR, the the threat to
> rgew environment has that structure too.

As I am sure you well know, much of the Bearded One's analysis of capitalism can be restated using the language of game theory. For example the law of falling rates of profit can be seen as describing an n-person prisoners' dilemma game where capitalists find that given the realities of economic competition, each one must seek to keep increasing the organic composition of capital, even though the aggregate effect of this, according to Marx, is to drive down the rate of profit that accrues to the capitalists. Underconsumption theories of capitalist crises likewise can be seen as positing n-person prisoner's dilemma games as well. Thus, under capitalism, each capitalist seeks to hold down the wages of his workers as much as possible since labor is a major cost of production. But since wages also constitute incomes as well as costs, the aggregate effect of this is to hold down effective demand, thereby aggravating capitalist economies' tendencies towards underconsumption.


> Moreover it
> is nor always easy to know one's class interest even
> apart from paradoxes of rationality. One thinks of
> the US govt response to the stock market crash of '29,
> Hitler's gratuitious declaration of war on the US, and
> the US ruling class; neoimperialist project under
> Bush.
>
> --- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
> > Doug Henwood wrote:
> > > andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > >
> > >> I'm not sure that the existence of the ruling
> > class
> > >> requires agreement on common interests (much less
> > >> being right about them), as opposed to, e.g.,
> > common
> > >> culture, solidarity, broadly shared values,
> > simialr
> > >> positions wrt to productivea ssets, and the
> > like.,
> > >> After all, the pre-WWI ruling class had no clue
> > and
> > >> fairly little agreement aboyr what was in their
> > common
> > >> interests, but surely constituted a class.
> > >
> > >
> > > The pre-WW I ruling class agitated to created the
> > Federal Reserve. It
> > > was maybe their formative experience.
> > >
> > > Doug
> > > ___________________________________
> > >
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> > >
> >
> > But Justin has a good point here: whether or not
> > they consciously
> > share interests, the ruling class is the ruling
> > class, due to their
> > position in the social structure. The only interest
> > the ruling class
> > must share is accumulating capital. If we're trying
> > to understand
> > capitalism as a social system, the psychology
> > doesn't have to get more
> > complicated than that. --Now, if we're interested
> > in the psychology
> > of members of the ruling class (say, as a person
> > might be fascinated
> > with cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder or
> > dissociative identity
> > disorder), that's a quite distinct and different
> > research topic.
> >
> > Miles
> >
> > Miles
> > ___________________________________
> >
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
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