Karl Marx and Claude Shannon (original) (raw)
The Notion of Entropy in an Economic Analysis: the Classical Examples and New Perspectives
Journal of Heterodox Economics, 2016
This article deals with the notion of entropy in its applicability to economics. Briefly, it regards some classical cases of such a use as the labour concept of Podolinsky and the bioeconomics of Georgescu-Roegen. This article also attempts to apply the concept of entropy to the analysis of market structures in the example of the perfect competition model. Thus, the article asserts that if we compare different entropy concepts with the main characteristics of a market with perfect competition, we must conclude that the latter is a structure with the maximum level of entropy. But maximum entropy means the system’s death. So, as a system, a perfectly competitive market cannot exist. Despite economists recognise the unreality of such a market from an empirical point of view, the application of the entropy concept helps us to repeat this approval also as a methodological one. The use of the entropy concept as a methodological instrument helps to question some other economic models, too.
2016
This article deals with the notion of entropy in its applicability to economics. Briefly, it regards some classical cases of such a use as the labour concept of Podolinsky and the bioeconomics of Georgescu-Roegen. This article also attempts to apply the concept of entropy to the analysis of market structures in the example of the perfect competition model. Thus, the article asserts that if we compare different entropy concepts with the main characteristics of a market with perfect competition, we must conclude that the latter is a structure with the maximum level of entropy. But maximum entropy means the system’s death. So, as a system or a structure, a perfectly competitive market cannot exist. When analysing such a model, economists recognise its impossibility in real life from an empirical point of view. However, the application of the entropy concept helps us to repeat this approval also as a methodological one. The use of the entropy concept as a methodological instrument helps...
Entropy
While entropy was introduced in the second half of the 19th century in the international vocabulary as a scientific term, in the 20th century it became common in colloquial use. Popular imagination has loaded “entropy” with almost every negative quality in the universe, in life and in society, with a dominant meaning of disorder and disorganization. Exploring the history of the term and many different approaches to it, we show that entropy has a universal stochastic definition, which is not disorder. Hence, we contend that entropy should be used as a mathematical (stochastic) concept as rigorously as possible, free of metaphoric meanings. The accompanying principle of maximum entropy, which lies behind the Second Law, gives explanatory and inferential power to the concept, and promotes entropy as the mother of creativity and evolution. As the social sciences are often contaminated by subjectivity and ideological influences, we try to explore whether maximum entropy, applied to the d...
"A few exciting words": information and entropy revisited
A review is presented of the relation between information and entropy, focusing on two main issues: the similarity of the formal definitions of physical entropy, according to statistical mechanics, and of information, according to information theory; and the possible subjectivity of entropy considered as missing information. The paper updates the 1983 analysis of Shaw and Davis. The difference in the interpretations of information given respectively by Shannon and by Wiener, significant for the information sciences, receives particular consideration. Analysis of a range of material, from literary theory to thermodynamics, is used to draw out the issues. Emphasis is placed on recourse to the original sources, and on direct quotation, to attempt to overcome some of the misunderstandings and oversimplifications that have occurred with these topics. While it is strongly related to entropy, information is neither identical with it, nor its opposite. Information is related to order and pattern, but also to disorder and randomness. The relations between information and the "interesting complexity," which embodies both patterns and randomness, are worthy of attention.
Towards Understanding Marx’s Theory of Equilibrium and Prices of Production
Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2019/20
"first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature" (Karl Marx: Capital: A critique of political economy Volume One. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London 2004, p. 638). This is the sense in which "labor" must be understood in this paper. Some regard labor as the metabolism between human and nature, but this interpretation is incorrect. Indeed, labor is itself part of the metabolism between human beings and nature. However, the uniqueness of labor is not merely that it is a material metabolism, but that it is a process that "mediates, regulates, and controls" that metabolism. Therefore, the view that interprets Marx's understanding of "labor" as limited to "material labor" is also incorrect. 3 Karl Marx: Notes on Wagner's Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie. In: MECW. Vol. 24, p. 534. 4 Marx also writes: "I do not proceed from 'concepts', hence neither from the 'concept of value', and am therefore in no way concerned to 'divide' it. What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labor presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the 'commodity'." (Ibid., p. 544). 5 See e.g. Kliman: Reclaiming Marx's "Capital" (fn. 1) and Paul M. Sweezy: The Theory of Capitalist Development. New York 1942. 6 See David Harvey: A Companion to Marx's Capital. London 2010. Although Harvey emphasizes the importance of understanding the commodity as a unity of dual aspect, he carelessly defines "something called value [...] as socially necessary labor-time" (ibid, p. 23).
Karl Marx's Theory of Capitalism Exposition, Critique, and Appraisal
This book gives a clear synthesis of Marx’s theory of Capitalism and its relation with economic theory as it evolved over the course of the last 300 years. It places Marx’s though in perspective, comparing it with the main aspects of the economic theories that preceded it, including not only the Classical Adam Smith and David Ricardo but also economists like Cantillon, Turgot, and Ramsay that Marx chose to ignore with respect to the crucial issue of entrepreneurship because it was incompatible with his Theory of Surplus Value. But the book also contrasts Marx’s theory with Walras’, the Neoclassical economist whose influence on contemporary mainstream economic theory was most lasting. The analytical aspects of Marx’s theory are rigorously expressed by means of the technique of Input-Output Analysis, which is explained from the most elementary level in order to make the book self-contained. Each of the multiple topics of Marx’s complex and refined theory is explained in detail, including his theory of money, the heterogeneity in kinds of labor and in productive techniques, the turnover of capital, Simple and Extended Reproduction, his theory of the economic cycle, his theory of ground rent, his theory of productive and unproductive labor, and his view of the main tendencies of capitalist society. The book is structured in accordance with the development process of Marx’s thought. Hence, it begins with the life project he generated in his youth and drove him from the study of history and philosophy to that of Political Economy, on the one hand, and political praxis, on the other. Hence, Parts I, II, and IV of the book respectively address A) the philosophical-methodological foundations of his scientific endeavor (his Historical Materialism); B) his scientific theory of capitalist society as expressed in Capital; and C) his political thought and praxis, which had enormous effects over the course of the 20th century. Part III of the book addresses our critique of Marx’s theory of Capitalism. Beyond our criticisms, however, the book shows that Marx made important contributions to the comprehension of the functioning of Capitalism in the more conventional part of his theory, which we denominate ‘exoteric’ in order to contrast it with his ‘esoteric’ Theory of Surplus Value which was the foundation of his view of the exploitation of wage labor in Capitalism.
Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory
Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory, 2020
2 Communication and Capitalism operating under the control of neoliberal managers who have seen students as fee-paying customers yielding profits, knowledge as an instrument of capital, and academics as machines producing outputs, impacts, and grants. Under these conditions, Marx's approach was over decades presented as a failed theory and socialism as a failed model of society corresponding to Marxist theory. The rise of new social movements, individualism, neoliberal pressures on the humanities and social sciences, the long legacy of Stalinism, a flexible regime of accumulation, globalisation, and informatisation all influenced the emergence of postmodern and post-structuralist theory. David Harvey argues that postmodernism is the ideology of a capitalism that has a flexible regime of accumulation. 2 In contrast to Marxist theory's focus on solidarity, class, modes of production, the economy, matter, labour, macro-analysis, totality, production and the dialectic, postmodern theory stresses difference, identity, networks, culture, language, microanalysis, contextualisation/specificity, consumption, and articulation. Knowledge and communication have since the middle of the 20th century played an increasingly important role in the economy and society, which any theory of society must take into account. In his last interview, Stuart Hall said that the problem of the various versions of postmodern theoryhas been, however, that 'in its attempt to move away from economic reductionism, it forgot that there was an economy at all'. 3 As a consequence, postmodern theory has had an anti-Marxist bias. In 2008, a new world economic crisis started. It suddenly became evident that capitalism is not the end of history. The consequence was a renewed interest in Marx's theory and in socialist politics. More and more people became convinced that Marx's theory has something important to tell us about contemporary society. Marx was not just a theorist of capitalism, but also a critical theorist of communication and technology. 4 Marx's thought is therefore an excellent starting point for a contemporary critical theory of communication and communication technology. A Marxist theory of communication aims at showing how capitalist communications work and what antagonisms such communication systems have, and it seeks to inform praxis that points beyond capitalist communications towards socialist communication. This book makes a contribution to such theoretical foundations.
Marx's economics as a theory of economic systems
De Economist, 1976
MARX'S ECONOMICS A THEORY OF ECONOMIC SYSTEMS* BY HANS-JORGEN WAGENER** 1 INTRODUCTION Modern economic theory like modern science in general is characterized by specialization. It was a very early finding in economics that specialization increases productivity but at the same time leads to a certain estrangement from the totality of events [cf. Smith 50, pp. 302, 303]. There are voices who say that modern economics suffers to a certain extent from the consequences of its specialization: it excells in sophisticated models and beautiful results which, unfortunately, are rather of little relevance to our present day economic problems, it cannot be overlooked, on the other hand, that those critical economists, mostly referred to as Marxists, who are so proud of the relevance of their questions have produced very few significant results which contribute to the solution of the problems [see Ward 51]. At times, however, more universal approaches attract the general interest of the profession as it is presently the case with general systems theory in the social sciences. Although sociology and business economics have already integrated the systems concept to a considerable degree [cf., for instance, Buckley 9 and Churchman 10], nothing of the like happens in general economics whose object of research is, after all, the economic system. This has not always been so. The take off from social reality, the conceptual specialization of economics and the separation from the rest of the social sciences is a Ricardian legacy. Marx tried to fight the trend-with little success, as we know today. Only the fact that there are problems which cannot be tackled in isolation has focused new attention on the systems idea. I shall attempt to show on the following pages that the economic theory of Marx must be seen as dynamic systems approach which distinguishes itself favourably from the systemic abstinence of the more * This article is based on an inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Groningen on March 16, 1976. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful criticism of earlier versions by F. J. de Jong, S. K. Kuipers and J. Steindl. Many points of dispute remained.