Re: [Marxism] The transition to capitalism: is it in our genes?

["Auguste Blanqui" <blanquist@xxxxxxxxx>]

But being socially/culturally dominant doesn't mean you have less
kids.  Lots of socially/culturally powerless people have lots of kids.
 That's why the original Wade-Clark is so incoherent.  You have so
many colliding (and oft-contradictory) threads running through the
piece: Social Darwinsim, Malthusianism, genetic transmission of
cultural traits (why would the people with the undesirable traits
necessarily die out before having kids?  Lots of poor kids died, but a
lot lived, too, at least long enough to have kids.)




>
> But notice that, in the "transition to capitalism" case, you don't
> actually need to have individuals literally dying and being replaced
> by others in the population. All that happens in the model is that
> those with the "more-favorable-to capitalism" gene set acquire more
> wealth, and thus become socially/culturally dominant in society. The
> process repeats with their progeny, of course. So four and five
> generations could be more than enough.
>
> > even if you accept "punctuated evolution" as a possible model.
>
> Punctuated evolution is not a "model", but a phenomenon. It's what
> happens in nature! A model simulates (and hopefully explains) the
> phenomenon. A model is not the same as the phenomenon itself.
>
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