We study the possible structures which can be carried by sets which have no countable subset, but which fail to be ‘surjectively Dedekind finite’, in two possible senses, that there is surjection to $\omega $, or alternatively, that there is a surjection to a proper superset.

For a set x, let ${\cal S}\left( x \right)$ be the set of all permutations of x. We prove in ZF (without the axiom of choice) several results concerning this notion, among which are the following:

(1) For all sets x such that ${\cal S}\left( x \right)$ is Dedekind infinite, $\left| {{{\cal S}_{{\rm{fin}}}}\left( x \right)} \right| < \left| {{\cal S}\left( x \right)} \right|$ and there are no finite-to-one functions from ${\cal S}\left( x \right)$ into ${{\cal S}_{{\rm{fin}}}}\left( x \right)$, where ${{\cal S}_{{\rm{fin}}}}\left( x \right)$ denotes the set of all permutations of x which move only finitely many elements.

(2) For all sets x such that ${\cal S}\left( x \right)$ is Dedekind infinite, $\left| {{\rm{seq}}\left( x \right)} \right| < \left| {{\cal S}\left( x \right)} \right|$ and there are no finite-to-one functions from ${\cal S}\left( x \right)$ into seq (x), where seq (x) denotes the set of all finite sequences of elements of x.

(3) For all infinite sets x such that there exists a permutation of x without fixed points, there are no finite-to-one functions from ${\cal S}\left( x \right)$ into x.

(4) For all sets x, $|{[x]^2}| < \left| {{\cal S}\left( x \right)} \right|$.