This paper employs Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s extensive and detailed critique of the Wicksteedian production function [P = f(a,b,c,…)] that forms the basis for most neo-classical mathematical economic analysis. The paper aims to illustrate how this still widely accepted set of profoundly reductive presumptions regarding the structure of economic production processes helps to stifle debate regarding what should be the purposes served by economic production. It is argued that Georgescu-Roegen’s critique, which explicitly conceptualizes economic production processes as complex open systems, provides, thereby, insight into the mechanisms through which the purpose setting work of political communities and the production work of economic communities are inextricably related to each other. This is particularly important for the elaboration of complexity sensitive political theory because it is at the point of introducing complexity thinking into the discussion that these mechanisms are revealed. Specifically, Georgescu-Roegen argues that decisions regarding the purpose of a given process of economic production (i.e. political decisions - e.g. to feed as many people as possible today, or to produce food for the largest number of people possible over the longest foreseeable duration, etc.) have concrete consequences for the way in which the materials of that production process, including both its inputs and its outputs are organized, allocated and distributed. Since the Wicksteedian production function presumes the configuration of economic processes to be standard and independent of their purpose, discussions of the relationship between purpose and product, that are opened up through employing Georgescu-Roegen’s critique are stifled in its absence.
