 CONDITIONS WHERE THE RULED CLASS UNITES FOR THE REVOLUTION -applicability of a game theory on social dilemmas-Hiroshi Onishi
No 2018-006, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Abstract: Revolutions, typical cases of crucial social transformations, cannot be realized successfully without a large number of activists. Therefore, creating conditions favorable for acquiring enough participants should be an important topic of Marxist social science. In particular, this problem includes the "free-ride," because the benefits of revolutionaries' activities are gained not only by the activists but also by all other members. The paper analyzes problems such as this one, applying non-cooperative game theory to social dilemma problems. This leads to some interesting results. In this research, the problem of the workers' choice between unity or freeride is first defined using numerical examples of the gain structure. It is defined again in a more generalized form using other parameters. In so doing, we express both the cost of participating in the movement and the gains from the concession of the ruling class. Because this analysis focuses on the importance of the number of participants, the concession of the ruling class is framed as a function of the number of participants. The results of this analysis revealed that the economic foundation and superstructure accurately correspond in some game structures but not in others. In other words, the social dilemma presents either as a case of prisoners' dilemma or as a chicken game. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the influence of group size, and it was revealed that groups with a large number of members, such as a ruling class, find it particularly difficult to unite. This phenomenon is called the "large group dilemma." In these ways, this research shows that the aforementioned type of game theory can be used to analyze the difficulties and possibilities of social movements. Keywords: revolution; historical materialism; social dilemma; large group; chicken game (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:keo:dpaper:2018-006 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Contact information at EDIRC. |
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