Friday, December 28, 2018

A new book on Loop Quantum Gravity

Amazon link

Some excitement about this book over at Backreaction. This from 'naivetheorist' in the comments.
".. a new book "Quantum Space" (available at Amazon UK now and at Amazon in a few weeks) is a really superb book on LQG. It is a 'pop science' book only in the sense of being equation-free. it traces the history of the development of LGQ (and string theory as well) and provides relevant biographical details on Rovelli and Smolin. it is by far the most impressive book on 'foundational physics' (as it is 'modestly' referred to by those who work on quantum gravity). I hope you will review this book with the usual incisiveness that you use in discussing arXiv manuscripts."
You can read my own thoughts here.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Three virtual posts

Amazon link

I was going to review Richard Morgan's latest tech-thriller "Thin Air" which I enjoyed a lot. But Steven Poole of The Guardian expressed my thoughts so much more clearly. Really, it's easier just to point you to his review.

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Like everyone else I had plenty of thoughts about the alleged Gatwick Airport drone incursion. The problem seems to be in two parts: first to identify the team launching/retrieving the drone; second to deal with the drone itself. The first part seems harder.

My idea was to run a real time video-acquisition platform (a satellite, police drones or arrays of ground-based CCTV) covering the operational radius of the hostile drone around the airport - I believe this is 2-3 miles. This would generate a great deal of video which would need to be searched very rapidly for hostile drone-team activity. Precisely what Project Maven was designed to address. Google may have gone pacifist but no reason for Qinetiq not to do the project.

But I read so many interesting ideas that it seemed pointless and redundant to add any more.

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I was going to write about this paper with the unpromising title: "Mapping morality with a compass: Testing the theory of ‘morality-as cooperation’ with a new questionnaire" by Oliver Scott Curry, Matthew Jones Chesters and Caspar J. Van Lissa.

What they've done is rethink Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory on the basis of evolutionary plausibility. Instead of Haidt's five dimensions, they have seven and in their field trials it all seems to make sense. Here are their seven moral dimensions. Click on image to make readable.


This is what they say in their abstract.
"Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC) is the theory that morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC uses game theory to identify distinct types of cooperation, and predicts that each will be considered morally relevant, and each will give rise to a distinct moral domain.

Here we test MAC’s predictions by developing a new self-report measure of morality, the Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (MAC-Q), and comparing its psychometric properties to those of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). Over four studies, the results support the MAC-Q’s seven-factor model of morality, but not the MFQ’s five-factor model.

Thus MAC emerges as the best available compass with which to explore the moral landscape."
I have been quite enthused here by Moral Foundations Theory, while being aware that it, like the five-factor model of personality theory, floats unanchored, crying out for a deeper evolutionary embedding. So this latest work is potentially quite exciting.

Unfortunately, the paper itself is dry and technical and does not excite. I hope the research community builds on it to progress Jonathan Haidt's work - particularly on the psychological/moral differences between liberals, conservatives and libertarians. Then I will feel motivated to comment.

Treed

Picture by Alex

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

APOE variants and Alzheimer's disease risk factors

From Wikipedia:
"Although 40–65% of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients have at least one copy of the ε4 allele, ApoE4 is not a determinant of the disease – at least a third of patients with AD are ApoE4 negative and some ApoE4 homozygotes never develop the disease.

Yet those with two ε4 alleles have up to 20 times the risk of developing AD. There is also evidence that the ApoE2 allele may serve a protective role in AD. Thus, the genotype most at risk for Alzheimer's disease and at an earlier age is ApoE 4,4.

Using genotype ApoE 3,3 as a benchmark (with the persons who have this genotype regarded as having a risk level of 1.0), individuals with genotype ApoE 4,4 have an odds ratio of 14.9 of developing Alzheimer's disease.

Individuals with the ApoE 3,4 genotype face an odds ratio of 3.2, and people with a copy of the 2 allele and the 4 allele (ApoE 2,4), have an odds ratio of 2.6.

Persons with one copy each of the 2 allele and the 3 allele (ApoE 2,3) have an odds ratio of 0.6. Persons with two copies of the 2 allele (ApoE2,2) also have an odds ratio of 0.6."

Two significant loci for APOE: SNP variants

Homozygous coding - as normally presented.

I'm 3,3 and Clare's 3,4.

Here's the incidence.
"Age is the most important risk factor for AD, with the prevalence rising substantially between the ages of 65 and 85 years.

The incidence of the disease doubles every five years after 65 years of age, with diagnosis of 1275 new cases per year per 100,000 persons older than 65 years, so that AD affects 30%–50% of all people by the age of 85 years.

Data on centenarians show that AD is not necessarily the outcome of aging, but the odds of receiving a diagnosis of AD after 85 years exceed one in three."

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Capitalism incompatible with total automation/slavery


In the previous post, "Five questions on the last days of capitalism", I discussed the evolution and final fate of capitalism - which will be very different from the violent revolutionary end imagined by the Leninist left.

In this post I want to zero in on the exact mechanics of the final days of capitalism. Little of what follows is original, but it's seldom brought to prominence.

1. Start point: a model capitalist economy with competition

Our economy consists of a number of identical competitive companies serving an anonymous market. Each company spends per working period:
  • £10 on constant capital c (= depreciation, raw materials, premises etc), 
  • £4 on wages v (= 4 labourers at £1 each)
with a rate of surplus value s/v of 100%. This means that £4 of surplus value s is produced in the working period. So c = 10, v = 4, s = 4.

Revenue = c + v + s = 10 + 4 + 4= £18     -  4 labourers remember. Assume 18 objects are produced at £1 each.

Profit p = revenues - costs = £18 - (£10 + £4) = £4.

Rate of profit = profit/cost = p/(v) = 4/(10 + 4) = 2/7 = 29%.

2. The power of innovation

One of the companies buys some better machinery which bumps c up from 10 to 11 but which allows two workers to be eliminated. Their numbers look better:

c = 11, v = 2, s = 2 (same s/v) so c + v + s = £15.

Suppose that 18 objects are still produced in the working period. Initially the innovator can sell at the going market rate of £1 each - a total revenue of £18.

Revenue = £18. But his costs (c + v) = 11+2 = £13 are lower.

Profit = £18 - £13 = £5 .. and rate of profit = p/(c + v) = 5/13 = 38%.

This is far better than his business rivals (stuck at 29%).

3. Other companies follow the innovation

But all too soon other companies follow suit. Prices fall due to competition until each company finds that for itself:

New revenue = c + v + s =  £11 + £2 + £2 = £15

New profit = (c + v + s) - (c + v) = £15 - £13 = £2.

New rate of profit = p/(c + v) = 2/13 = 15%.

But the previous market equilibrium profit was 29%! Now each employer is worse off.

But the 18 objects now cost only £15, or 83p each. Consumers benefit from the wonders of competition and innovation driving productivity.

4. Robots now eliminate all labour

The robots are coming! A progressive innovator buys more automation which bumps c from 11 to 12 and which eliminates workers altogether.

c = 12, v = s = 0.

As before, 18 objects are produced in the working period and the going rate is still 83p each. Our innovator takes advantage of existing market pricing.

Revenue = £15 as before, but costs = £12 only (no wages).

Profit = £15 - £12 = £3 and the rate of profit = 3/12 = 25%.

An improvement over his competitors (who only see 15%) but again, they soon follow suit.

5. Everybody adopts total automation: no more wage bills

Competition drives prices down to costs (there is no surplus value s).

Revenue = 12 and cost = 12.

Profit = 0 and each object costs 12/18 = 66p. Except no-one is making any.

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Discussion

Slaves or robots: it makes no difference

I assert the above model holds whether the total automation is clever machinery, some humanoid AGI or a human slave.

Nonsense, you reply. A slave is just a worker where the employer is paying for food and shelter directly, rather than via wages.

Not so fast! The slave has to be bought as well as maintained - just like any other piece of capital equipment. What then is the cost of a slave in a competitive market?
The cost of a slave = expected-output-value - maintenance-costs (all discounted).
In one cycle above, assuming the slave is bought at price c and is as productive and exploited as a wage-worker (s/v = 1) then:

output-value produced by slave = (v + s) and maintenance-cost = v, so using the definition:
slave-cost = c = (v + s) - v = s                   - (values/costs here for one work cycle).
People (not slave-owners though) forget to include the initial cost of the slave, which already factors in the 'value' the slave will create.

Suppose cR represents the cost of the raw materials the slave works with and other non-slave constant capital costs. In a work cycle or period:
revenue = cR + value-added-by-the-slave = cR + (v + s)

costs = cR + slave-cost + slave-subsistence = cR + s + v.

Profit = revenue - cost = [cR + (v + s)] - [cR + s + v] = 0.

There have been capitalist economies with slave sectors of the economy

You say, there have been slave-owning sectors of capitalist economies, the antebellum south, and I remind you that this is well-trodden territory on the left.

Read more at this post: "Total automation under capitalism?" - the topic area is the theory of equalisation of the rate of profit between sectors with differing levels of automation and the concept of prices of production.

It's perfectly possible for sectors of a capitalist economy to transition to total automation (point 4 above). The automated sectors extract value produced by workers in other sectors through profit equalisation. But it's not possible for the whole economy to 'lose its workers'.

8. What kind of an economy can you have with total automation?

What does work, you ask. Absent complete overproduction capability ('abundance') of everything, there will be a need for exchange between different production units: commodity exchange at value via simple (or petty) commodity production. Like in the Roman empire, or during feudalism. In this mode of production, exchange is driven by the need for use-values. The dynamic is not profit maximisation.

One can only hope that innovation and dynamism in such an utterly-transformed society of the future is not stifled. Perhaps the AIs will have some objectives of their own? Not everything that is wonderful and creative in human affairs is driven by capital valorisation.

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You will have observed that the cost equation for a slave already incorporates elements of rent. Yet the treatment here is not definitive. As Poulantzas reminds us (Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, chapter 1), 'capital is not a thing'. In arithmetical examples social relationships are reified.

So I'm thinking that the 'expected value of future output' term in the value of a slave is similar to the way we value a share. Marx called this fictitious capital. Compare with the labour involved in delivering the slave as a market-commodity (reproduction, transport and transaction costs) which is how we normally value constant capital. Not sure how to bring these two paradigms together. On this rather opaque thought I must leave it.

Update: Reading Poulantzas (Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, Productive and Unproductive Labour: 2) I am reminded that slaves are not produced in factories.

Slave traders are engaged in non-productive labour and the commodity price form of the slave, like that of the bond or share, is not derived from some quantity of abstract social labour incorporated in it.

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My further posts on Marxist theory.

Friday, December 14, 2018

Five questions on the last days of capitalism



1. Isn't it absurd, in this day and age, to talk about the last days of capitalism?

The prospect certainly isn't imminent. For a century and a half the hard left has talked about the transition to post-capitalism. Yet despite world wars, economic convulsions in the 1930s and 2000s, and major social conflicts in the 1970-80s, capitalism today as an international system is richer and stronger than ever.

2. Why no communist revolutions in the West?

For a century, a dwindling band of revolutionary Marxists have anticipated a violent overthrow of capitalism by the massed proletariat led by a Leninist revolutionary party. That prospect was never realistic.The working class en masse never aligned around a credible anti-capitalist programme. That's because the alternative to capitalist production in an epoch of scarcity can only be a planned economy. And that doesn't work.

3. What will the end of capitalism really look like?

Marx wrote that "no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself".

Capitalism continues to grow, indeed it has to. Without profits, investment stalls and the economy implodes.

Michael Roberts has argued persuasively that the long stagnation of the last decade or so was caused precisely by the heroic efforts of governments back in 2008/9 to minimise the effects of the crisis. Consequently there was no clear-out of inefficient firms, no devaluation of capital and few opportunities for industrial reorganisation. Zombie firms and debt overhang have stifled profitability and as a result the recovery has been anaemic. Still feels like it.

The underlying trends of capitalism persist through peaks and troughs though. The tendency to revolutionise production through automation, the replacement of workers by machines. So far - at least during an expansionary phase - the economy produces more roles for people displaced than it eliminates.

Cognitive and robotic automation changes that.

The 'safe' jobs right now seem to be those where manual skills are at a premium (care homes) and those where intelligence and interpersonal skills are required (senior executives, politicians, designers). But eventually over the next century or two those will also succumb to cheap automation.

What happens then? People get displaced from the labour force and don't get rehired.

This imposes additional welfare costs on the economy. Meanwhile the active workforce tends to zero. Fewer workers in a highly-automated economy means surplus value (which translates to profit) decreases. And don't forget all those transfer payments to the unproductive unemployed.

With fewer workers and an increasing proportion of the population on welfare, demand for consumer goods (produced by Department 2) declines and as a consequence the market for increased automation products goes into reverse (which hits Department 1). This is not a linear process - nothing in a capitalist economy is linear - but it is tendential. It feels much like the current stagnant economy but with mass unemployment and few job prospects going forwards.

4 What will replace capitalism in the end?

The process I just described results in the economy - in fits and starts - breaking down. There are no good investments. There will always be demand - the unemployed gotta eat, and the capitalists who own the means of production still need their luxuries - but the economic dynamism has gone. Without profit there is no incentive to address that demand and the factories stay shut.

Capitalism has finally completed its work.

I doubt the mass of people will tolerate this state of affairs and the capitalists will not see a way forward as there is none. At this point we have to imagine a world where the environment has become heavily optimised to provide everything a person wants (the result of all those decades of relentless consumer-oriented automation - smarter and smarter AI systems and more efficient robotic systems) yet it can't be put to good use via capitalist processes.

The resulting political transition might be something like the collapse of the Soviet Union rather than a Leninist insurrection. But after that, who knows? We're into science-fiction.

5. What do we do in the meantime?

What has the left done during the last century? Capitalism wasn't abolished, not even close. The workers' movement fought to secure its own existence and social reproduction in material and cultural terms. It didn't do a great job on the latter front, seemingly bewitched by the smug fairy-tales of neoliberal social-liberalism.

But that won't last forever - it's gotten silly now.

I'm in favour of continuing all the processes of increased automation. They're a net good. Within capitalism they will be used of course to buttress and reinforce the reproduction of capitalist relations of production (AI and robots are great for repression).

But in the end it will be self-defeating because capitalism is incompatible with the elimination of the workforce. That truth preempts even the Draka solution .. even if that's the form automation eventually takes. Slaves are equipment, not proletarians.*

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* Part two of this post: "Capitalism incompatible with total automation/slavery".

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Reading Poulantzas and McDonnell

Classes in Contemporary Capitalism

Amazon link

From the preface:
"The book starts with a general theoretical essay that for the first time seriously explores the distinction between the “agents” and “positions” of capitalist relations of production, and seeks to avoid the typical errors of either functionalism or historicism. It also provides a polemical reconsideration of the problem of the “nation state” as a political unit today, and its relationship to the internationalization of capital.

Finally, and most originally, Poulantzas develops a long and powerful analysis of the much-abused concept of the “petty-bourgeoisie.” In this, he scrupulously distinguishes between the “traditional” categories of petty-bourgeoisie—shopkeepers, artisans, small peasants—and the “new” categories of clerical workers, supervisors, and salaried personnel in modern industry and commerce. At the same time he demonstrates the reasons why a unitary conceptualization of their class position is possible. The difficult question of the definition of “productive” and “unproductive” labor within Marx’s own account of the capitalist mode of production is subjected to a novel and radical reinterpretation. The political oscillations peculiar to each form of petty-bourgeoisie and especially their characteristic reactions to the industrial proletariat, are cogently assessed.

Poulantzas ends his work with a reminder that the actions and options of the petty-bourgeoisie are critical to any successful struggle by the working class, which must secure the alliance of important sections of the petty-bourgeoisie if the fateful experience of Chile is not to recur elsewhere tomorrow."
These are really critical issues when trying to understand the kind of class dynamics underlying the recent events in France, the left and right populist movements everywhere and specifically the SJW phenomenon. It's also relevant to any incoming Labour government here in the UK.

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State, Power, Socialism


Amazon link

This is Poulantzas's great exposition of the anatomy and dynamics of the various forms of the capitalist state, and the implications for the transition to socialism. I already read "The State and the Transition to Socialism" (Chapter 14 "The Poulantzas Reader" - PDF) where Nicos Poulantzas debates with the (at that time) Trotskyist Henri Weber (of the LCR) as to whether the Leninist model of a proletarian revolution/state based on federated soviets is really viable in modern Western Europe.

Poulantzas further questions whether the power of the bourgeois state can really only be overthrown by dual-power soviet structures as in the Bolshevik revolution (that was Trotskyist orthodoxy at the time of the interview, 1977). A kind of head-on assault.

My sympathies align with Poulantzas here, insofar as he at least thought about the nature of the state unlike the FI which had not moved beyond "The State and Revolution".

Weber is right against Poulantzas that the state is too strong and - in extremis - too focused to be subverted/reused from within. But they are both wrong to think that modern capitalism is vulnerable to the revolutionary imposition of a post-capitalist mode of production led by the massed ranks of the industrial proletariat.

That isn't the failure mode.

Update 23rd February 2019:

I've just read Ellen Meiksins Wood's book, "The Retreat From Class", where she devotes a chapter to Poulantzas. She takes him to task for assigning white-collar workers to the 'new petty-bourgeoisie'  (rather than the working class) and also for assuming this category is equivalent to the Marxist (technical) distinction between productive and unproductive workers (productive of surplus value, that is).

Poulantzas was undoubtedly wrong about this, and Wood has him nailed.

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Economics for the Many

Amazon link

I'm expecting this book to be a bunch of left-Keynesians arguing that an incoming Labour government should put more demand into the economy through deficit spending and increased transfer payments in order to stimulate investment and productivity.

I'm completely with Michael Roberts here: good luck with that.

Still, no sense in prejudging. Let's listen to what Mr McDonnell's favourite economists have to say.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

My mother in DNA.LAND

My mother, Beryl Seel, died on the 3rd of December 2015 aged 92. In August the previous year I had persuaded her to spit into the 23andMe sample collection tube and get sequenced.

"Now we can bring you back," I murmured, but she didn't seem keen.

I understand 23andMe pussyfooting around, not wishing to fall foul of the US regulators yet again. This means DNA.LAND if you want to play with polygenic scores. I uploaded her genome subset (the 23andMe downloaded text file) and here are some of the results.

As usual, click on an image to make it large enough to read.

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This is the top-level screen showing some of the traits they can begin to predict

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Educational attainment


My mother was predicted to have 14.7 years of schooling (two years at university). In fact she had 9, leaving school in 1937 as a 14 year old.

My prediction from DNA.LAND is also 14.7 years but in fact I had 19 years equivalent full-time education. Clare was predicted to have 14.4 years yet she is a graduate with an additional teacher-training qualification.

Heritability of EA is low and the small numbers of relevant SNPs available to DNA.LAND makes even the genetic component estimate a very noisy measure. See the discussion below.

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Intelligence and IQ


This is marked as 'very preliminary' which - as they are quoting only 16 SNPs - seems about right.

Heritability of IQ is of the order of 80% but given this few genetic markers the signal will be swamped by the effects of all the other relevant SNPs which are unknown and whose contributions are therefore unmeasured.

About all you can say in favour of the exercise is that correlations between IQ-enhancing alleles based on an underlying soft sweep probably gives this slightly more predictive power than one might naively expect.

Note also we don't get a central IQ estimate with error bars. The normal distribution curve above is referenced to the DNA.LAND sign-up population, with unknown IQ parameters.

Anyway, FWIW, my mother seems to be one IQ point above the DNA.LAND average based on a super-noisy regression line.

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Neuroticism



Neuroticism (emotionalism, anxiety) is one of the 'five factor' personality traits and is the opposite to emotional stability, calmness on this dimension. There are strong gender differences in this factor, women scoring as more emotional.

I have memories of a fair degree of maternal emotionalism, but perhaps that was par for the course.

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Height



My DNA.LAND polygenic score was 182 cm, which is exactly right. My mother's (above) equates to 5' 7". That is taller than I remember, perhaps by an inch. I recall that growing up in the 1930s was not a picnic. My father was just under six foot.

My parents on their engagement: is she taller than average?

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Discussion

How seriously should we take all this? Not very, at this point (except for height, where PGS scores are accurate predictors of genomic potential - although DNA.LAND aren't using the latest estimators).

Example regression line for scatter plot with correlation 0.38

The correlations between the small numbers of SNPs currently being used by DNA.LAND and the physical/cognitive variables they're trying to predict are very low. Educational attainment was discussed on their website as follows:
"Overall, educational attainment is estimated to have a heritability of around 20%. This means that in a population of individuals with varying years of education, 20% of that variation can be explained by variants in the individuals' genomes."
So the polygenic score will give the phenotype value on the regression line, but the true value could be a long way up or down depending on life events. My mother, a working class girl, left school at 14 for example. Nobody does that today.

Thousands of SNPs are implicated in complex polygenic traits like those listed above, yet relatively few are currently known (except for height) .. and DNA.LAND uses only those publicly available (a tiny subset). So their regression lines will be pretty inaccurate.

Finally, note that my mother is positioned with respect to DNA.LAND's user population which is self-selected. We don't know how the norms for this group compare to the general population.

It will get better, even if we're a way from the option of bringing her back.

Thursday, December 06, 2018

Scale discrepancies

In the summer of 1977 I decided to leave teaching. I had spent a couple of years at Ormonde High School (now Maghull High School), an ex-secondary modern in Maghull, Liverpool teaching maths to the 11-16 year olds. I think it would be fair to say that my students were at the lower end of the ability range. I was burnt out and exhausted.

At that time computers were entering practical use in industry and there was an increasing need for programmers. The Government set up the so-called TOPS courses (Training Opportunities Scheme), which subsidised people changing career. I passed the tests and started a 20 week course to learn COBOL programming with KBS Computer Services in Dale Street, Liverpool. The class was told the course would be really intensive, seven day working , evenings thrown in, partners expected to be abandoned for the duration.

I was in competition with a guy named Paul. He was intuitive, writing code festooned with GOTO statements. I was more organised, knew that GOTO was considered harmful and taught myself structured programming. We were both taken on by KBS at the end of the course.




One module was IBM S/360 assembly programming. I recall working on a program with maybe a hundred or so instructions - load this register, add packed, and so on. I thought: 'It's taking me an hour or more to get this code right, yet when it executes it will take 100 microseconds'.

I found that scale discrepancy rather disquieting. It's true of every program but in assembler it's somehow more visceral.

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We ran our programs on punch cards through the IBM 360 owned by the Merseyside Docks and Harbour Company. The machine was on the top floor of the Liver Building at Liverpool Pier Head, and we'd go in the evening when the machine was not in regular use.

Access was easy. It wouldn't work today. I once took Clare (who I was 'going out with' at the time) to see the unimpressive sight of those big blue cabinets and the dinner plate sized removable disk drives (20 Megabytes). She does not recall an epiphany.

Modelling total automation under capitalism (a progress report)

What actually happens to a capitalist economy as automation increases, employees are laid off and the budget for workers' wages tends to zero? It's possible to explore this in a spreadsheet using Marx's equations for expanded capitalist reproduction (which I wrote about here).

You divide the economy into Department 1, which makes machines (capital goods) and Department 2 which makes consumables (wage goods and luxuries). Then you iterate through cycles in which you try to make both Departments more capital-intensive while aggressively laying off workers.

There are some constraints: Department 1 sells Department 2 its machines; Department 2 supplies the consumption needs of workers and capitalists in Department 1. The following quantities need to stay non-negative:
  1. Constant capital (machines, factories, raw materials) - c
  2. Variable capital (wages) - v
  3. Capitalist personal remuneration (dividends) - a
  4. Overall sector profits - s  (or p, when adjusted to equalize the rate of profit between Departments).
Additionally the rate of surplus value s/v can't go through the roof. You can't have one worker alone in an enormous factory who works ten minutes to produce the value of their own wage, and then eight hours plus to provide the surplus value which pays for dividends and the next round of automation investment (s/v = ~50). They really wouldn't buy-in to that.

Click on the figures to make the spreadsheets large enough to read. You are not meant to understand what's going on - just to get an impression. More detailed stuff later.

Department 1: s/v tends to infinity while production is anaemic

The problem is this: as automation increases and the number of workers declines in Department 1, those few left have to (unrealistically) produce far more value than their wages to keep the edifice afloat.

Meanwhile the collapse in the number of workers overall leads to a chronic decrease in demand for Department 2's consumer goods. No new machines are being bought: instead there's accelerated depreciation - which destroys surplus value, hitting profits there.

Department 2: this sector begins to collapse

To reiterate: with decreasing demand for wage-goods, Department 2 finds itself losing the value invested in its machines, not buying more. Depreciation hits surplus value making Department 2 increasingly unprofitable.

So far I've been unable to find a combination of parameters which allows capitalism to eliminate all its workers. I'll keep trying ... .

More: Five questions on the last days of capitalism.

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You ask, why use the framework of Marxist economics? Because orthodox (ie bourgeois) economics has no interest or explanation as to where profit comes from:
"Rent, wages, interest, and profit are the four factor incomes that land, labor, capital, and enterprise provide respectively."
Roughly the idea that if you put some money into 'enterprise' then by some magic it can become larger (profit). Magic is not a good analytic framework for edge cases of capitalist reproduction.

Wednesday, December 05, 2018

"Forensic Psychology" (ed) G. M. Davies & A. R.Beech - a review

Amazon link

We do have a scientific paradigm for psychology. We know that genes and environment construct brains, that brains produce behaviour. Individual differences in genomes and environmental divergences result in non-identical brains. Those differences have a measurable effect on neuroanatomy .. and thence on behaviour. We are different and we behave differently.

From behavioural genetics we know that the heritability of psychological traits is generally more than 50%. Nurturing differences are often really the consequence of genetic correlations. Disturbed parents tend to have disturbed children. Heritability in action. Non-shared environmental effects (eg not family) typically have random and transient effects on psychological traits such as personality and intelligence. Real abuse and damage always excepted.

Psychology sort of knows this and sort of doesn't. There are researchers who know what a GWAS is, who know their way round a brain scan. And then there's the long legacy of pure nurturism:  behaviourism, psychoanalysis, attachment theory, sociomoral reasoning, social information-processing theory and so on.

These one-sided plausible-sounding abstractions of commonplace observations have sadly produced neither real insight, reproducible results nor consistently-effective interventions. In many cases large scale experiments using twin studies and GWAS have shown their conclusions are simply false. Perhaps though this will change, now we're beginning to really understand the etiology of normal and abnormal psychology. Robert Plomin's "Blueprint" is a readable review covering all these points.

All this has additional force in the case of forensic psychology. But who would wish to be in the position of the textbook editor in 2018, forced to straddle competing and incompatible paradigms while maintaining the illusion that forensic psychology is a mature discipline on firm foundations, whose professionals can be relied upon in the investigation process, in court and during the follow-on treatment of prisoners.

Part 1: The Causes of Crime

Forensic psychology has two main aspects: the legal aspect deals with evidence, witnesses and the courts while the criminological aspect deals with crime and criminals. Our textbook starts by reviewing theories addressing the causes of crime: why do criminals offend and what is the effect on their victims? There are, of course, many kinds of theory and they tell very different kinds of story. Here is an illustrative quote (p. 58, section 2.2.1 - LCPs are life-course persistent offenders, constituting around 5% of the population).
“The main factors that encourage offending by the LCPs are cognitive deficits, an under-controlled temperament, hyperactivity, poor parenting, disrupted families, teenage parents, poverty and low socioeconomic status (SES).

Genetic and biological factors, such as a low heart rate, are also important (see Chapter 4).”
Of course all of the so-called main factors on the first list are strongly heritable, and therefore have substantial genetic causation.  Amazing to read this in a 2018 textbook.

Chapter 3 discusses psychopathy, a condition which is recognised as having a strong genetic component linked to systematic neuroanatomical features such as abnormal (underfunctioning?) amygdala activity. Do psychopaths fail to recognise fear reactions in others? Is this the reason for their sustained instrumental violence? Is this what amygdala hypoactivity is doing? It has been suggested on evolutionary grounds that psychopathy is an evolutionary stable strategy at low incidence in anonymised societies, but this doesn't get a mention.

Chapter 4 surveys the contribution of neuroscience to the risk factors of offending. It covers the results of brain scans of offenders, twin studies looking at heritability and environmental inventories of adverse childhood experiences, attachment quality and brain injury. Many of the studies are now quite old (early 2000s) and there is a tendency to itemise results in technical jargon with inadequate interpretation. There is the usual confusion where poor family environment is treated as pure nurture dysfunction, uncorrelated with the genetic underpinning of criminality (recall disturbed parents have disturbed children).

This mistake leads to factors such as maternal binge drinking, smoking and chaotic upbringing being considered as separate, purely environmental, causal variables. Intervention would be so much more effective if this were true. It is certainly true, however, that traumatic brain injury (TBI) can proximately contribute to conduct disorder. Again though, the studies cited are old (1998, 2000). Interventions are briefly discussed (good advice, improved nutrition, fish oil) but these are old, with small or unspecified sample sizes and it's not clear whether the results replicated on larger studies and whether a ceiling effect kicked in. Section 4.5 is therefore almost useless.

The conclusions to this chapter are a list of wishful thinking bullet points grasping at every straw to persuade the reader that crime-prone genotypes and consequent neuroanatomy can be fixed. Previous chapters have already established that long-term persistent offending can't.

Chapter 5 reviews the effects of interpersonal crime on victims, including violent and sexual assaults. Much is said that is phenomenologically true, but the studies cited are shallow, inconsistent with each other and offer few non-obvious recommendations. One interesting and relevant recent result (not mentioned in the book) is the substantial heritability of PTSD which probably accounts for its disparate impact.

Part 2: Investigating Crime

Chapter 6 looks at eyewitness evidence which normally falls lamentably short of CCTV standards. The taxonomy of failure modes is useful (stereotyping, weapon focus, recovered memories etc); the superficial and unconvincing ‘models’ presented here, plucked out of the air it seems: not so much.

Chapter 7 introduces the “cognitive interview” (CI) for witnesses. This structured toolkit and checklist is far more successful in eliciting actionable information than normal police questioning. The chapter frames the CI mainly in terms of cognitive psychology, and indeed there are elements of that. However, the main reason for the structure technique's success appears to be that it counteracts the rather natural social presence of the police officer as a dominant authority figure armed with prior assumptions, which tends to coerce and distort witness responses.

An interesting lacuna in this book, reflecting its instrumental purpose, is the absence of any systematic psychological characterisation of operational police officers themselves, those who are most likely to be interviewing witnesses and suspects. Studies have shown that lower-ranking officers tend to be concrete in their thinking (rather than abstract), conscientious and tough-minded. This ‘take-charge’ constellation of traits is probably a reason why officers spontaneously prefer a directive and sometimes confrontational style in gathering evidence and questioning suspects. The chapter notes that the rather passive style of the ‘cognitive interview’ is difficult for officers to internalise, and that frequent retraining is necessary.

Similarly chapter 8’s coverage of the interviewing of suspects shows that the macho, confrontational interview style common in the United States tends to feel more natural than the non-aggressive information-elicitation style preferred in the UK and many other countries. The latter is far more effective in avoiding false confessions, however. Whether it is less effective in convicting perpetrators is not discussed.

Chapter 9 deals with the detection of deception. Common sense tells us that liars are likely to be more stressed, to have greater problems keeping their stories straight and in presenting themselves as honest. Yet in interview settings, accuracy in detecting liars varies between 45% and 60%. This includes police officers. Not significantly better than tossing a coin. Perhaps we should look at what liars and truth-tellers actually say. A number of techniques for text or voice analysis are discussed. They appear to have mixed, but not compelling results.

The polygraph (lie detector), used carefully, is considerably more accurate. Most innocent suspects pass the test (~90%) while many guilt suspects fail it (~ 60-80%). Coached countermeasures (eg tongue biting) can be effective, however. Lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth. This can be exploited in active interviewing styles which force the suspect to do more work (‘give your account in reverse chronological order’) . There has also been some progress in detecting increased prefrontal cortical activity associated with lying using fMRI. It's too early to determine whether practical applications  of scanning will emerge, however. It's surprising that, though the polygraph is presented as by far the most effective method of separating liars from truth-tellers, it doesn't get a mention in the chapter conclusions and recommendations. Why would that be?

Chapter 10 deals with crime linkage (identifying crimes committed by the same person) and offender profiling (inferring offender characteristics from crime scene behaviour). Both of these are somewhat familiar from TV dramas. Crime linkage is pattern synthesis and matching, exploiting behavioural consistency and distinctiveness on the part of the criminal. It has proven more effective with interpersonal crime than theft. It's work in progress. Offender profiling seems, on the account given, to be a real mess however. There are few empirical studies of effectiveness and those are not compelling There is little consensus on the traits to be predicted and a general lack of standardisation. The police investigation teams seem to like the service, but one feels for almost religious reasons, a form of uncertainty reduction.

Chapter 11 addresses intimate partner violence (IPV) and stalking. The field is dominated by feminist theories assuming the norm is male violence against females caused by 'the patriarchy’ (the authors are correctly skeptical and cite strong counter evidence) and much conflating of the correlation between poor parenting and IPV with causation (genetics airbrushed out). The chapter never gets beyond typology and doesn't mention the obvious evolutionary psychological dimensions behind both phenomena.

Chapter 12 is a long essay about terrorism which effectively concludes that the term is an ideological tagging of the normal human propensity to band together around a cause against perceived enemies. Forensic psychology does not seem to have contributed either to a deeper understanding than this or to compelling means of prevention. Perhaps resolution is not a matter for psychology.

Part 3: The Trial Process

Chapter 13 describes trial processes including judge and jury behaviours. An interesting review which highlights many process issues but there is little in the way of analysis or compelling recommendations.

Chapter 14 reviews the disturbing issues of vulnerable witnesses, often abused in cross-examination or subject to intimidation. Techniques for mitigation include prerecorded evidence and videolink testimony.

Chapter 15 discusses the identification of perpetrators focussing on lineups and CCTV. Interestingly, in English lineups a study found that 40% of the witnesses identified the suspect, 40% did not make an identification and 20% misidentified. For CCTV evidence the role of police super-recognisers is highlighted but there is no discussion of automated facial recognition systems. This is within the scope of forensic psychology.

Chapter 16 is a useful tutorial on the roles of the expert witness.

Part 4: Dealing with Offenders

In chapter 17 we encounter the controversial topic: ‘crime and punishment - what works?’ Given the imprecision in terms, widely variant framings, and the strength of emotions this essay was never going to be definitive. It's a useful survey, but superficial and does not engage with results from behavioural genetics. Truly it's not even clear whether psychology as is can contribute a meaningful input into these topics.

Chapter 18 starts with offender risk assessment (clinical individualistic assessment vs actuarial statistical - the latter works better). I would have thought there was scope for machine learning techniques here but the topic is not mentioned. In fairness, there is no discussion of underlying statistical techniques at all. In terms of instruments, Hare's psychopathology checklist (PCL-R) gets a brief mention. Rehabilitation programmes are reviewed: the commonsense view that these are ineffective except at the margin is confirmed.

Some offenders are truly dangerous and chapter 19 discusses their 'treatment’. A listing of the typology of offenders (violent, murderous, sexual) is followed by an assessment of treatment programme types (anger management, cognitive, 'good lives’). These programmes have in common a lack of effectiveness. Particularly for psychopaths. The chapter summary tries hard to remain upbeat. Contributions from behavioural genetics are nowhere to be found.

Chapter 20 looks at female offenders. The prior orthodoxy that factors leading to criminal behaviour are gender-blind has been overthrown. Today forensic psychologists are 'gender informed’. Women are dramatically underrepresented in the criminal population (about 5%) and as you might expect are far less violent than males. As usual the analysis is completely nurturist. It is not clear how successful intervention strategies have been.

Chapters 21 and 22 address offenders with intellectual disabilities (IQ less than ~70, autism) and the mentally disordered (eg suffering from a mental illness such as schizophrenia). As usual, these are characterized via a typology and then types of intervention and their success rates are assessed. As one might expect, these are mixed at best.

After so much depressing evidence of the recalcitrance of criminal behaviour and the uniformly poor effectiveness of intervention programmes, the book ends with chapter 23 on the 'Good Lives Model'. This is a 'hopey-changey’ celebration of the possibilities of rehabilitation despite all the evidence. As a framework, the GLM is immune to refutation although specific programmes within its paradigm do not seem compelling. Reading the chapter (pages of abstract liberal wish-fulfillment fantasies) is an experience akin to eating cotton wool.

Conclusions

Psychology suffers from a number of well-attested problems. Hypotheses and models are frequently no more than shallow, commonplace intuitions dressed up in over-abstract, process-oriented language. Laboratory experiments, based typically on small groups of psychology students, are heavily range-restricted by IQ and personality type. Published results have been non-reproducible and in some cases generated by p-hacking.

Forensic psychology addresses a target criminal population whose psychological parameters (low IQ, prevalence of ASD and various psychopathologies) could scarcely be more distant from the typical experimental population of college undergraduates. It's understandable that a textbook has to reflect the discipline as it is, but there are just too many models, assertions and assessments here which are plain wrong. May the next revision not be long in coming.

Friday, November 30, 2018

The Communist Party of Britain



I'm quite nostalgic about my early twenties in the International Marxist Group, the British Section of the Fourth International. The cause was exciting and compelling, the organisation provided a normative framework for day-to-day life, there were great parties and discos, you had a support network wherever you went .. and as there were sections in most countries revolutionary tourism was a super-benefit (stay with the local comrades in the south of France - as I did, twice).

Wouldn't it be nice to replicate that sense of belonging? Clare has the Catholic Church, another internationalist, mass-participation organisation, but it's not for me. The Fourth International too is a lost cause. In the UK it's now just another SJW group with somewhat better economics.

But the Communist Party?

I had to check, I thought it had disbanded.

Not so. The Communist Party of Britain is alive and publishes the Morning Star. More than that, it's plugged into the Corbyn project.

It's quite well-connected. When it organised the Communist University at Ruskin House in November 2006 speakers included Labour MP John McDonnell, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and CND chair Kate Hudson. Corbyn reads and writes for the Morning Star.

Admittedly its membership is small and declining. In 2017 its adherents numbered 734 (a figure even the IMG attained once). In elections its votes have been derisory.

---

Still, who needs popularity if you're right. There's a branch about twenty miles away. Perhaps I should check what it stands for?

From the Party website FAQs (my emphasis throughout):
"What about the crimes committed by Stalin?

The crimes committed during the Stalin period cannot be ignored. But the first attempts to build a socialist society took place in a semi-feudal society facing the hostile forces of imperialism. A bureaucratic-command system of economic and political rule became entrenched.  The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the trade unions became integrated into the apparatus of the state, eroding working class and popular democracy.

In the late 1930s in particular, severe violations of socialist democracy and law occurred as large numbers of innocent people were imprisoned and executed. Lessons have to be learnt from both the achievements and the failures of this period."
"Eroding"? I believe this is called a (tepid) stalinist apologia. Mistakes were made and lessons must be learned. What and what?
"Doesn't communism go against human nature?

The idea that human nature and communism don't mix is based on the concept that humans are innately individualistic and selfish. In truth, human behaviour is related to the society in which they develop. Capitalism actively encourages these behavioural traits to develop and become normal in society. Under socialism the conditions for these traits to be advantageous are removed and instead are replaced by those that promote mutual cooperation and respect for other members of society."
Good luck with that.
"What is the CPBs' position on the EU?

We're a party of internationalists so we're committed to supporting the workers' and peoples' of Europe in their struggles. Ultimately we consider the cultural, historic and other differences between workers in different countries to be less significant than with the differences between Britain's workers and members of the British capitalist class. However the EU is an institution that is fundamentally opposed to working class interests. The EU exists to promote the interest of monopoly capital and big business, particularly German and French.  ...

We want to see a Europe of democratic states that value public services, guarantees the rights of workers and puts the interests of ordinary people above those of big business. This is impossible while we remain within the EU given its anti-democratic structures. We need to campaign for a ‘left exit’ from the EU, based on socialist policies that respect the rights of other European countries."
Why isn't this Labour's policy? 

[I know why].

---

The Party's programme is called Britain's Road to Socialism.
"Britain's Road to Socialism is the programme of the Communist Party of Britain, and is adhered to by the Young Communist League and the editors of the Morning Star newspaper.

It proposes that socialism can be achieved in Britain by the working class leading the other classes in a popular democratic anti-monopoly alliance against monopoly capital, and implementing a left-wing programme of socialist construction."
Ninety eight years of existence as a Communist Party and these folk have learned nothing. The muscular old-time CPGB reimagined as a senior citizen tribute band.

I rather fear I shall have to look elsewhere for my concierge organisation of choice.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Forensic psychology: struggling to become a science

Amazon link

I received a free copy of this to review through the Amazon Vine programme. It's a lengthy textbook and I won't be finished anytime soon. But reading the introduction and initial chapters is enough to discern a profession transitioning through intellectual crisis.

Here are my notes so far.

---

"We do have a scientific paradigm for psychology. We know that genes and environment construct brains, brains produce behaviour. Individual differences in genome plus environmental divergences result in non-identical brains, differences which have a measurable effect on neuroanatomy .. and thence on behaviour.

From behavioural genetics we know that the heritability of psychological traits is generally more than 50%. Nurturing differences are often really the consequence of genetic correlations: disturbed parents tend to have disturbed children. Heritability in action. Non-shared environmental effects (eg not family) typically have random and transient effects on psychological traits such as personality and intelligence. Real abuse and damage always excepted.

Psychology sort of knows this and sort of doesn't. There are researchers who know what a GWAS is, who know their way round a brain scan. And then there is the long legacy of pure nurturism:  behaviourism, psychoanalysis, attachment theory, sociomoral reasoning, social information-processing theory and so on.

These one-sided plausible-sounding abstractions of commonplace observations have sadly produced neither real insight, reproducible results nor consistently-effective interventions. In many cases large scale experiments using twin studies and GWAS have shown that their conclusions are simply false. Perhaps though this will change, now we're beginning to really understand the etiology of normal and abnormal psychology. Robert Plomin's "Blueprint" is a readable review covering all these points.

All this has additional force in the case of forensic psychology. But who would wish to be in the position of the textbook editor in 2018, forced to straddle competing and incompatible paradigms while maintaining that forensic psychology is a mature discipline on firm foundations, whose professionals can be relied upon in the investigation process, in court and during the follow-on treatment of prisoners.

Forensic psychology has two main aspects: the legal aspect deals with evidence, witnesses and the courts while the criminological aspect deals with crime and criminals. Our textbook starts by reviewing theories addressing the causes of crime: why do criminals offend and what is the effect on their victims? As mentioned above there are many kinds of theory, and they tell very different kinds of story.

Here is an illustrative quote (p. 58, section 2.2.1 - LCPs are life-course persistent offenders).
“The main factors that encourage offending by the LCPs are cognitive deficits, an under-controlled temperament, hyperactivity, poor parenting, disrupted families, teenage parents, poverty and low socioeconomic status (SES).

Genetic and biological factors, such as a low heart rate, are also important (see Chapter 4).”

Of course all of the so-called main factors on the first list are strongly heritable, and therefore have substantial genetic causation which would be captured by a polygenic score (not mentioned in the copious index).

Amazing to read this in a 2018 textbook."

Full review here.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Government as a stationary bandit

Amazon link

I would call this cynical, except it's economics:
“Consider a roving bandit who roams from village to village, looting village residents. The roving bandit will take as much as he can before moving on to his next target. The bandit gets no advantage from leaving anything behind for the people who are plundered. The roving bandit must continually be on the move to find new targets, and resources are wasted on both sides as the bandit uses force to try to plunder the villagers and the villagers use force to try to repel the bandit.

An alternative strategy would be for the bandit to occupy a location permanently, becoming a stationary bandit, periodically taking resources from those in the village.

The incentives are different for the stationary bandit, who would then want to cultivate the productivity of those he plunders, so there is more to plunder in the future.

Because the income of the stationary bandit comes from the productivity of those under him, the stationary bandit also has an incentive to protect them, both from opportunistic individuals in their own village and from outside predators. It is easy to imagine that a productive village would attract the attention of other predators who might be inclined to attack and plunder the village. So, the stationary bandit has an incentive to protect those who provide the stationary bandit’s income.

It is easier to gain compliance from people when they agree to comply than when they are forced, so the stationary bandit has an incentive to get those under him to view his activities as legitimate: to present himself as a benevolent leader rather than a bandit.

If he can convince citizens to recognize him as a king, and can convince them that it is to their advantage to pay him taxes in exchange for the protection he offers, it will be less costly for him to maintain a system in which citizens view the transfer of resources to him as legitimate taxation rather than plunder.

The stationary bandit has an incentive to establish institutions such that citizens view it as advantageous to transfer resources to the ruler in exchange for protection.

The ruler also has an incentive to produce public goods if they enhance the productivity of citizens, because greater productivity means there is more to tax. And, the ruler has an incentive to place constitutional limits on his power to tax, to maintain incentives for citizens to be productive. If the ruler is perceived as a threat to confiscate everything the citizens have, they will not have much of an incentive to accumulate wealth.

Establishing a council of citizens who must approve any tax increases could work to the mutual advantage of both the ruler and the citizens, making citizens more productive and ultimately tendering more tax revenue from their increased productivity.

If a stationary bandit envisions remaining in place for a long time, he will have an incentive to establish institutions that would be very similar to what citizens might agree to from behind a veil of ignorance. Thus, when thinking about optimal constitutional rules, there may not be that much difference between the types of rules people would voluntarily adopt and those which might be imposed by a conquering group.

This public choice approach to constitutional rules offers an interesting contrast to the public goods theory that economists often use to explain government production.

For example, public goods theory suggests that government produces national defense because it is a public good that would be underprovided in the market.

This public choice approach says that government produces national defense because it benefits those in government by protecting the productivity of those who pay taxes to government. Public goods theory depicts government as a benevolent provider of a good that the selfish private sector will underprovide to themselves.

Are people in government really more benevolent than people in the private sector? This public choice approach depicts the production of national defense as a mutually advantageous exchange in which everyone acts to further their own interests, so is more consistent with the assumptions economists typically assume about individual behavior.” (pp. 131-133).
This is not such a new idea. Razib Khan recounted how:
"During the Mongol conquest of Northern China Genghis Khan reputedly wanted to turn the land that had been the heart of the Middle Kingdom into pasture, first by exterminating the whole population.

Part of the motive was to punish the Chinese for resisting his armies, and part of it was to increase his wealth. One of his advisors, Yelu Chucai, a functionary from the Khitai people, dissuaded him from this path through appealing to his selfishness.

Chinese peasants taxed on their surplus would enrich Genghis Khan far more than enlarging his herds. Rather than focus on primary production, Genghis Khan could sit atop a more complex economic system and extract rents."
Public choice theory is a lot better than the soppier humanities, which assume everyone is endlessly caring and benevolent (and should therefore be punished if they are not). But in starting from the fiction that society is simply a uniform set of individual, selfish, rational agents making more-or-less informed utilitarian choices, it abstracts from the historical evolution of class relations, the conditions of social reproduction, and human nature itself.




That's not to say that under certain localised conditions of stabilised atomisation, it can't be quite accurate and predictive, as János Kornai documented.

Monday, November 26, 2018

The relative autonomy of the petty bourgeoisie

Nicos Poulantzas

Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning came to people's attention in early 2018 with their book, "The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars". Seeking to account for an SJW phenomenon increasingly dominant in the western world, they distinguished between three kinds of culture: Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood.

Campbell and Manning over-abstracted these cultural categories, representing them almost as menu choices, or contingent way-points on the arc of history. This was mostly corrected in Tanner Greer's commentary at "The Scholar's Stage" (which features on the sidebar in the web version of this blog).

Rather than having me summarise his impressive analysis, please review it for yourself: "Honor, Dignity, and Victimhood: A Tour Through Three Centuries of American Political Culture"

Greer's analysis was not perfect.
"The transition from honor to dignity reflected a deeper shift in the basic building blocks of society. Had Western Europeans not shifted away from clan based to citizen based communities, there would not have been any Culture of Dignity. The shift from dignity to victimhood reflects a similar change in the societal distribution of power. ...

The federal government assumes powers traditionally reserved to local and state governments. Local businesses have been pushed out of existence by international conglomerates. The businesses, associations, congregations, and clubs that once made up American society are gone. America has been atomized; her citizens live alone, connected but weakly one to another. Arrayed against each is a set of vast, impersonal bureaucracies that cannot be controlled, only appealed to.

A "Culture of Victimhood" is a perfectly natural response to this shift in the distribution of power. Remember that the central purpose of moral cultures is to help resolve or deter disputes. Dignity cultures provide a moral code to regulate disputes among equals from the same community. They also help individuals in a community--citizens--organize to protect their joint interests.

21st century America has lost this ability to organize and solve problems at the local level. The most effective way to resolve disputes is appeal to the powerful third parties: corporations, the federal government, or the great mass of people weakly connected by social media. The easiest way to earn the sympathy of these powers is to be the unambiguous victim in the dispute.

Victim culture is here to stay."
In fact this 'atomisation' has to be interpreted more dynamically, in class terms. After all, not everyone identifies as a 'victim'.

Peter Turchin has correctly linked neoliberal atomisation with the 'overproduction of elites', the mass production of (social science and humanities) graduates with inflated expectations and entitlements, but for whom no place exists within the real elite, the top 1% or 0.1%. They are angry and febrile and in the mass a cause of political instability. It's not a new phenomenon: some of us remember the late sixties and early seventies.

This (now vastly enlarged) intermediate layer between the traditional working class and the high bourgeoisie is termed by Marxists the petty bourgeoisie. This brought to mind the seminal work of theorist Nicos Poulantzas and I reviewed with interest his chapter 13, "The New Petty Bourgeoisie" in "The Poulantzas Reader" (PDF) .

Poulantzas was an interesting guy and I also reviewed his bio, nodding along, until I came to this:
"He killed himself in 1979 by jumping from the window of a friend's flat in Paris."
He was 43.

There was something about the mental stability of continental Marxists in the late twentieth century. His more famous contemporary, Louis Althusser,  killed his wife Hélène Rytmann the following year and was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years.

Why are the new petty bourgeoisie so restless again? Because a decade of economic stagnation with the increasing gap between their circumstances and those of the top 1% has left them feeling abandoned. They experience a dislocating lack of prospects and purpose.

The old-time (pre-1980s) working class had a historic cultural identity forged through tenement communities, monolithic employers, trade unionism and social-democratic activism. The modern petty bourgeoisie by contrast is a collection of isolates, expressing their angst through faddish identity-issues.

None of these campaigns ever address the real causes of their dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, their heartfelt herd-activism is always destabilising .. and from the bourgeoisie's point of view, always with a risk of triggering wider unrest. Consequently, the elites attempt to manipulate and co-opt them (eg the moralising campaign against plastic pollution which carefully fails to discuss the true sources of said pollution).

The classic Marxist texts (Lenin, Trotsky) recognised the febrile and changeable nature of the radicalised petty bourgeoisie. Their works discuss methods of creating an alliance with the proletariat in the struggle for socialism.

How times have changed now that the tail wags the dog: the era of Momentum and the death of the dream .. .