Planning, Ecology, and Humanistic Materialism: Towards A Synthesis
I have three new papers on Academia.edu
Dialectical materialism is frequently regarded as a failed twentieth-century doctrine, discredited by its association with Soviet orthodoxy and rejected by positivist philosophy of science. This paper argues that such assessments misidentify the source of its failure. Dialectical materialism faltered not because it was excessively historical or social, but because it hardened into a metaphysical system rather than remaining a flexible mediating framework between scientific practice and social purpose. Drawing on the philosophy of Philipp Frank and related contributions by Otto Neurath, Stephen Jay Gould, Jerome Ulman, Oskar Lange, and Ronald Coase, this paper reconstructs dialectical materialism as a non-dogmatic-middle link‖ connecting empirical science to normative social aims. Understood in this operational sense, dialectical materialism emerges not as a super-scientific doctrine but as a humanistic philosophy of science capable of addressing contemporary challenges posed by platform capitalism and algorithmic governance.
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See “Reconstructing Dialectical Materialism as a Humanistic Philosophy of Science” https://www.academia.edu/146030958/Reconstructing_Dialectical_Materialism_as_a_Humanistic_Philosophy_of_Science
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Ronald Coase is today most commonly associated with the so-called ―Coase Theorem,‖ a formulation popularized by George Stigler and embedded in neoclassical law-and-economics textbooks. This association has obscured both the historical context of Coase‘s work and its original analytical ambitions. In particular, it has contributed to the neglect of the fact that the young Coase was deeply engaged with socialist debates, especially the socialist calculation controversy, and that his foundational contributions to economic theory initially posed serious challenges to the claim that markets are categorically superior to planning. This paper reconstructs Coase‘s early framework, situates it historically, and argues that — when combined with Marxian political economy — it provides a powerful lens for analyzing contemporary debates over digital and algorithmic economic planning. https://www.academia.edu/146045030/Ronald_Coase_Transaction_Costs_and_Socialist_Planning_Toward_a_Marxian_Synthesis
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This paper argues that the apparent incompatibility is overstated. While Foster’s metabolic rift cannot be explained — or resolved — within a Coasean framework, Coase’s institutional analysis can nevertheless illuminate the specific forms through which capitalist societies manage, displace, and administratively contain ecological crises. Properly bounded, Coase helps explain how environmental governance operates under capitalism, while Foster explains why it necessarily fails. https://www.academia.edu/146044842/Coase_Metabolic_Rift_and_the_Limits_of_Institutional_Coordination
