Paul CockshottUniversity of Glasgow | UofG · School of Computing Science
Paul Cockshott
PhD
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361
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Introduction
Finished my joint book on Materialism with Greg and Katarina, now in copy edit stage.
Additional affiliations
March 1998 - present
October 1988 - July 1998
October 1988 - July 1998
Publications
Publications (361)
We examine the paradigm shift from that of the transformation model to that of stochastic profit models. Some of the anomalies undermining the transformation model are given graphically. In the last two sections we present volume II of Capital as an alternative starting point for thinking about the relation between value and price.
Italian translation of the English language text Towards A New Socialism, by Cockshott and Cottrell
We consider economic value as a property that renders heterogeneous goods and services
commensurable. Starting from the basic division of output between workers and non-workers,
we are able to derive value as a property of systems of economic reproduction. We
show its relation to value in classical political economy and in Sraffian economic
theory....
We attempt to clarify and generalize the meaning of economic value as conceptualized in classical political economy. Using a modern formalism , we show that value can be derived as a basic property of systems of economic reproduction. The applicability of the concept is discussed and its relation to inequality, productivity, employment, and unprodu...
The main criticism leveled at the socialist economies was that a planned economy was inherently less efficient than a market one, due to the sheer scale of the bureaucratic task involved with planning a major economy. But the collapse of the Soviet and later the Russian economy under Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin was an economic disaster...
We examine the economic position of gay couples and show that they are relatively
advantaged compared to heterosexual ones, with this advantage being most marked for
male same-sex couples. We argue that the issue of gay marriage has to be seen in the
context of a general demographic crisis affecting Western capitalist countries. We
look at the impa...
Louis Althusser is a controversial figure: murderer, one time communist philosopher, massive guru to generations of cultural studies authors. His key paper on ideology has, according to Google Scholar, been cited over 13,000 times.
The use of linear optimization for the construction of economic plans was first introduced
by Kantorovich with an algorithm similar to those later developed in the West by Danzig.
In recent years linear optimization packages have become readily available on desktop
computers, an example being the lp-solve system. In this paper I first show how the...
Since Kuhn introduced the notion of a paradigm shift, the classic example has been the shift from the epicyclic Ptolemaic astronomy to the Kepler/Newton astronomy. This paper goes into some detail of just how epicycle theory worked. It shows that the method was in fact closely related to what we now know as Fourier analysis, and as such could be us...
It has long been accepted that Marx was a follower of the labour theory of value.
This position has recently been challenged by Harvey. This paper shows that the essential
basis of Marx's value theory remained labour and that it did not differ substantially
from that of Ricardo. It also references data showing the empirical validity of the
theory a...
Cyber criminals appear to be plying their trade without much hindrance. Home computer users are particularly vulnerable to attack by an increasingly sophisticated and globally-dispersed hacker group. The smartphone era has exacerbated the situation, offering hackers even more attack surfaces to exploit. It might not be entirely coincidental that cy...
Image convolution is widely used for sharpening, blurring and edge detection. In this paper, we review two common algorithms for convolving a 2D image by a separable kernel (filter). After optimising the naive codes using loop unrolling and SIMD vectorisation, we choose the algorithm with better performance as the baseline for parallelisation. We t...
We develop a complexity measure for large-scale economic systems based on Shannon's concept of entropy. By adopting Leontief's perspective of the production process as a circular flow, we formulate the process as a Markov chain. Then we derive a measure of economic complexity as the average number of bits required to encode the flow of goods and se...
Deconvolution is a technique commonly used in image processing. This study shows that it is possible to apply deconvolution to infer past nutritional levels if we know the recorded adult heights over a long time period. This study is a demonstration of how we can use deconvolution to investigate historical living standards. We apply it to investiga...
The article argues that the reproduction prices introduced in the first chapter of Sraffa's book are not necessarily compatible with the profit equalising prices that form the substance of the book. It uses probabilistic arguments about how probable it is that reproduction prices will approximate to profit equalising prices. By use of random matrix...
La realidad actual del capitalismo mundial muestra de una forma cada vez más evidente —y a una escala ya plenamente global— la contradicción esencial de un sistema económico que al tiempo que impulsa el continuo desarrollo científico-técnico (con la robotización de la producción, la inteligencia artificial o la big data) despliega dinámicas sociale...
Overview of the key time consuming operations in neural network calculations and how these can be abstracted for virtual machines that can run them fast.
We have investigated the use of DualEELS in elementally sensitive tilt series tomography in the scanning transmission electron microscope. A procedure is implemented using deconvolution to remove the effects of multiple scattering, followed by normalisation by the zero loss peak intensity. This is performed to produce a signal that is linearly depe...
In this paper, we propose a lock-free architecture to accelerate logic gate circuit simulation using SIMD multicore machines. We evaluate its performance on different test circuits simulated on the Intel Xeon Phi and 2 other machines. Comparisons are presented of this software/hardware combination with reported performances of GPU and other multi-c...
The presentation describes an architecture for logic simulation that takes advantages of the features of multi-core SIMD architectures. It uses neither explicit locks nor queues, using instead oblivious simulation. Data structures are targeted to efficient SIMD and multi-core cache operation. We demonstrate high levels of parallelisation on Xeon Ph...
From the 1950s onwards the threat automation posed to human labour became a persistent theme in popular science fiction [26,1]. Authors explored what it meant to be human, by contrasting us with hypothetical robots. Such robots were generally seen as coming into existence centuries into the future. In the last decade the rate of progress in robotic...
An overview of three themes of analysis of the current crisis: working class poverty, falling profit and financial entropy.
Handivote is an electronic voting system utilising mobile phones and short text messages. Thus, far we have only conducted very limited trials within our own school. In this paper, we report on a medium scale trial carried out in the Kelvinside district of Glasgow. It was used by a local community group to assess support vs. opposition to a planned...
Electron tomography (ET) is an increasingly important technique for the study of the three-dimensional morphologies of nanostructures. ET involves the acquisition of a set of two-dimensional projection images, followed by the reconstruction into a volumetric image by solving an inverse problem. However, due to limitations in the acquisition process...
Electron tomography (ET) is now increasingly important for recovering the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of nanostructured materials in the physical and life sciences. ET typically involves the acquisition of a set of two-dimensional projection images at different tilts using (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ([S]TEM), followed by alig...
Electron tomography (ET) is now increasingly important for recovering the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of nanostructured materials in the physical and life sciences. ET typically involves the acquisition of a set of two-dimensional projection images at different tilts using (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ([S]TEM), followed by alig...
Electron tomography (ET) is now increasingly important for recovering the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of nanostructured materials in the physical and life sciences. ET typically involves the acquisition of a set of two-dimensional projection images at different tilts using (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ([S]TEM), followed by alig...
The filoviruses Ebolavirus (EBOV) and Marburgvirus cause fatal hemorrhagic fevers in humans and other mammals, known as Ebola virus disease (EVD), with mortality rates approaching 90% [1] which makes it listed as world health organization risk group 4 pathogen. Ebola virus caused the 2013–2015 epidemic in West Africa, which has resulted in at least...
div class="title">Linear chemically sensitive electron tomography using DualEELS and compressed sensing
- Volume 21 Issue S3 - Alaa AlAfeef, W. Paul Cockshott, Patrick Barges, Ian Zuazo, Joanna Bobynko, Alan J. Craven, Ian Maclaren
This is an argument against the assertion by Huato that the rate of profit in a country is inversely related with the social power of capital
Critical assesment of CIRCAL process algebra in the light of trying to reason about quantum computers using process algebra.
This is a technical report prepared for a marxian research group into the transformation of production that was run in 1978
A seminar in Berlin on ideas of leadership in the historical socialist movement with particular reference to the economic and democratic crisis in contemporary Europe.
Talk given at WARP workshop in Berlin 2013 on the financial crisis in the European Union
Seminar given to the Glasgow Parallelism Group on how to incorporate Map/Reduce organically within the C programming language.
This article looks at the ideas of the prominent Buddhist socialist and leader of
the Indian Dalits, Dr Ambedkar and compares his socialism with that of Dr Marx.
An interview with Tom O'Brian on the economic implications of robotics.
The eminent computer scientist Martin Davis is a vocal opponent of the idea of hyper-computing . One of the targets of Davis's criticism, the robotocist Selmer Bringsjord and Navven Sunda , have written a trenchant reply to Davis . This is a critique of their reply.
Talk on ILCG a thet May 1 2014
SICSA workshop on Domain Specific Languages
This is a response to the contributions by Carchedi and Dumenil. I address some of the main issues associated with the rate of profit and underconsumption.
A review of previous array Pascals leads on to a description the Glasgow Pascal compiler. The compiler is an ISO-Pascal superset with semantic extensions to translate data parallel statements to run on multiple SIMD cores. An appendix is given which includes demonstrations of the tool.
A review of previous array Pascals leads on to a description the Glasgow Pascal compiler. The compiler is an ISO-Pascal superset with semantic extensions to translate data parallel statements to run on multiple SIMD cores. An appendix is given which includes demonstrations of the tool. Pascal[17, 20] was one of the first imperative programming lang...
Electron tomography (ET) is a key technique for
examining the three-dimensional morphologies of
nanostructures. ET involves the reconstruction of a set of 2D
projection images into a volumetric image by solving an inverse
problem. However, due to limitations in the acquisition,
reconstruction usually degraded by missing wedge artifacts (e.g.,
strea...
Intel's XeonPhi is a highly parallel x86 architecture chip made by Intel. It has a number of novel features which make it a particularly challenging target for the compiler writer. This paper describes the techniques used to port the Glasgow Vector Pascal Compiler to this architecture and assess its performance by comparisons of the XeonPhi with 3...
The XeonPhi [5] is a highly parallel x86 architecture chip made by Intel. It has a number of novel features which make it a particularly challenging target for the compiler writer. This paper describes the techniques used to port the Glasgow Vector Pascal Compiler (VPC) to this architecture and assess its performance by comparisons of the XeonPhi w...
Electron tomography [1] plays an essential role in the study of 3 dimensional (3D) nanostructures. It involves reconstructing 3D objects from a series of 2D images by sequential tilting of the sample about a single axis. This technique, although originally designed for use in the life sciences, has also been applied to the study of polymer blends u...
This paper presents an accelerated version of a dense stereo-correspondence algorithm for two different parallelism enabled architectures, multi-core CPU and GPU. The algorithm is part of the vision system developed for a binocular robot-head in the context of the CloPeMa research project. This research project focuses on the conception of a new cl...
The article discusses Hagendorf's contribution to the debate on average versus marginal labour costs as a metric of economic efficiency. It criticises his assumption of rising marginal costs and compares his position to that of other authorities. It provides arguments as to why marginal labour costs tend to fall in industrial economies. It then goe...
Electron tomography (ET) is an increasingly important technique for examining the three-dimensional morphologies of nanostructures. ET involves the acquisition of a set of 2D projection images to be reconstructed into a volumetric image by solving an inverse problem. However, due to limitations in the acquisition process this inverse problem is con...
Electronic voting entered the political arena some years ago, with some countries advocating its use, some countries trialling and then abandoning it and yet others preferring to preserve the status quo of paper-and-pencil voting within a voting booth. In this paper we present the pros and cons of electronic voting and propose a set of characterist...
This paper is a description of the contributions to the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance Multi-core Challenge on many body planetary simulation made by a compiler group at the University of Glasgow. Our group is part of the Computer Vision and Graphics research group, and we have for some years been developing array compilers beca...
investigación económica, vol. LXXIII, núm. 287, enero-marzo de 2014, pp. ¿¿?? El aspecto empírico de la teoría del valor: respuesta a Nitzan y Bichler. Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell y Alejandro Valle Baeza. Resumen La teoría del valor trabajo, originada en los clásicos y reformulada por Marx, ha encontrado apoyo empírico en numerosos trabajos en l...
The report attempts of apply econophysics concepts to the Eurozone crisis. It
starts by examining the idea of conservation laws as applied to market
economies. It formulates a measure of financial entropy and gives numerical
simulations indicating that this tends to rise. We discuss an analogue for free
energy released during this process. The conc...
To provide insight into cloth perception and manipulation with an active binocular robotic vision system, we compiled a database of 80 stereo-pair colour images with corresponding horizontal and vertical disparity maps and mask annotations, for 3D garment point cloud rendering has been created and released. The stereo-image garment database is part...
Marx's theory of the falling rate of profit makes two main appearances in his work. The first is in Chapter 25 of Capital Volume 1, entitled “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.” It is further developed in Part III of Volume 3 of Capital, entitled “The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.” In this article I will outline the st...
In this paper, we present a heuristic-based strategy to flatten a crumpled cloth by eliminating visually detected wrinkles. In order to explore and validate visually guided clothing manipulation, we have developed a hand-eye interactive learning system that incorporates a clothing simulator to close the effector-garment-visual sensing interaction l...
The article reviews Heinrich's An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital. It questions three main features of Heinrich's work: its defence of teleology, its view that no empirical proof is needed of the labour theory of value and its particular monetary interpretation of the theory of value. This approach, it argues, is anti-scien...
The article reviews Althusser's Philosophy of the Encounter, examining in turn the problem of the Epistemological Break and the idea of matérialisme aléatoire. It looks at Althusser's critique of the concept of commodity fetishism and suggests a possible response. It goes on to situate the matérialisme aléatoire in the context of the history of ato...
The world watches as China moves towards greater democracy. The question in everyone's minds, including Chinese themselves, is “what model will China arrive at, at the journey's end?” There are many lessons to be learnt from other countries, some positive (Tanzania) and some negative (Laos). The United States has no doubts about the “goodness” of i...
Dobb was the most prominent Marxian political economist in Britain during the middle years of the 20th century. He was actively writing from the early 1920s to the 1970s. In this short book 1 , Brian Pollitt has brought together a number of publications from the last period of Dobbs life some of which have never appeared before in English. Taken to...
The location of foundations in a demolished building can be accomplished by undertaking a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey and then to use the GPR data to generate 3D isosurfaces of what was beneath the soil surface using image reconstruction. The SIMCA ('SIMulated Correlation Algorithm') algorithm is a technique based on a comparison between...
Integrating a stereo-photogrammetric robot head into a real-time system requires software solutions that rapidly resolve the stereo correspondence problem. The stereo-matcher presented in this paper uses therefore code parallelisation and was tested on three different processors with x87 and AVX. The results show that a 5mega pixels colour image ca...
The main challenge of ground penetrating radar (GPR) based land mine detection is to have an accurate image analysis method that is capable of reducing false alarms. However an accurate image relies on having sufficient spatial resolution in the received signal. But because the diameter of an AP mine can be as low as 2cm and many soils have very hi...
Background / Purpose:
There is currently a need for establishing a methodology allowing for reliable and quantitative volume analysis of the 3D reconstructions of nanostructures based on electron tomography (ET) for biological materials.
Main conclusion:
This research argues that by careful consideration of the physical process involved in the...
Ground Penetrating Radar(GPR) is one of a number of technologies that have been used to improve landmine detection efficiency. The clutter environment within the first few cm of the soil where landmines are buried, exhibits strong reflections with highly non-stationary statistics. An antipersonnel mine(AP) can have a diameter as low as 2cm whereas...
If socialist society is not constructed out of pre-existing socialist individuals, then how does it handle the historical limitations inherited from pre-socialist conditions? What is the best way to advance beyond the limitations of short-term and irresponsible anti-social self-interest? What is the nature of the individualsocial relationship?
Does socialism progress through stages? Is there a higher, or communist, stage? How can stages, as a manifestation of the objectivity of social evolution, be reconciled with the marshaling of will and consciousness necessary for building socialist society? What role does (or should) development of the productive forces play in a) socialist social e...
What are the distinctive features of a socialist organization of production, distribution, consumption? How are complex choices made, and highly variegated individual needs and interests reconciled? What should be the balance among: market, central plan, iterative coordination, negotiated coordination?
What is the ultimate grounding and historical justifi cation for projecting a socialist society? Broadly conceptualized, what do socialists want? What are the defi ning qualities of socialism, and how do those qualities constitute a decisive advance over capitalism and class-antagonistic societies in general?