Karl Marx

elaborate his axiomatic program for econometrics, in no way but willful changes in our species' behavior,the use of a system of linear inequalities in a zero- changes which increase the efficient energy-throughsumgame (a linear equilibrium model) is intrinsically put per capita in economic phase-space. Man, peran absurd treatment of the subject matter of actual capita, commands a greater amount of whatever mighteconomies. Economies capable of surviving are neg- be the total energy-throughput of our universe, inentropic,and the transformations caused both by creasing, his power (dominion)over nature. This sigintroductionof improved technologies, or by failure nifies that mankind has increased the agreement betointroduce such improvements, occur as "non-linear" tween its willful practice and the lawful compositiontransformations congruent with Riemann's 1859 dis- of the universe as a whole.sertation on shock-wave propagation. The alterations in general behavior effected withThe injection of improved technologies into society such improvements subsume a required developmentis the work of the human mind. The creative powers of the cooperative division of labor, and so require anof the mind produce the fundamental advances in enlargement of the population. This enlargement rescienceupon which depend only less intensely creative quires an acceleration of the rate of improvement,innovations in productive and related technologies, while the increase in the number of minds embodyingThe power of a population, as technicians, operatives, creative potential makes such acceleration possible.administrators, et al., to assimilate such innovations, The creative aspect of mental life, upon which thisand to improve upon their application, is also fruit of necessary progress entirely depends, is demonstratedthe same species of cultivated creative powers of mind. to be negentropic in respect of those transformationsWhat we know with greatest relative certainty which embody a progress from one level of knowledgeconcerning the processes of the human mind, is not .to a higher level. The exercise of such powers ofbased on brain physiology or clinical psychology. The transformation to the effect of increasing mankind'sgreatest degree of certainty we can possess respecting potential relative population density, is that activity ofthe lawful composition of mental processes of people the mind which coincides uniquely with the power fordepends upon examining the history and pre-history human survival, and also with the most fundamentalof our species in terms of reference, which are at the feature of the lawful composition of our universe. Oursame time the broadest and also the most profound. In universe as a whole is proven to be negentropicallythat hunting-and-gathering mode which anthropolo- ordered as a whole, as Leibniz argued against Descartesgists and others speculate to have been our species' and Newton; and Riemann's program for mathematimostprimitive cultural condition, the area of the cal physics, as identified above, is at worst consistentearth's habitable surface required to sustain an average with this lawful, negentropic ordering.individual would be between ten and fifteen square To cause a machine to replicate the kind of activitieskilometers. This signifies that the total population of which correspond to such mental life, the characteristicthe earth by our species could never _have much of that machine's function (e.g., a computerprogramexceededten million individuals. By the eighteenth ming) must be of a negentropic form. By contrast,century, the population potential had reached a level Marx's doctrine of capitalist political economy isof between a half-billion and one billion individuals, everywhere linear to that degree, like the psychoticToday, our population is estimated to be in the order parodied by the Chomsky-Minsky variety of program,of four and a half billion individuals. With general and by von Neumann's program in econometrics.application of established technologies of infrastruc- We summarize Marx's situation relative to the case' ture, mining, manufacturing, construction, and the we have summarized thus far, and then proceed to thevarious branches of agriculture, including farming, concluding proposition of this criticism.forestry, fishing, and so forth, our'potential population Marx never Corrects what he acknowledges to haveduring the near future is several tens of billions of been an important omission, the effects of technologiindividualsenjoying living standards comparable to cal progress on the formulation of expressions forthe United States prior to 1971-1974. This transfor- expanded reproduction. Although he acknowledgesmation in our species' population potential, effected technological advances to be beneficial to capitalismthrough progress in science and technology generally, under certain circumstances, to afford it "a new leaseis the evidence which exposes the inner secrets of our on life," he accepts the conditions of stagnation rementallife to us with the greatest degree of relative ported for early nineteenth century Britain by Babbagecertainty, et al. as a demonstration of the necessary dispositionLook at this matter from the standpoint 0freference of capitalism, to abhor technological progress up toprovided to us by the cited injunction from the Book the point it is forced to do so in self-defense againstof Genesis. We must progress in technology if mankind competition, and so forth. That aspect of the Britishis to continue to exist at a higher level of culture than System's monetary processes, which he acknowledgesthat of the wild beasts. This progress can be effected with some appropriateness to be antagonistic to tech-42 Special Supplement / CAMPAIGNER i:k