Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 13:53:49 -0600 (MDT)
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-keynes.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: BHA: Misleading Marx translations



(Please disregard the few lines I sent to the list
earlier by mistake.)


Yes, Charles, I would say that most of Marx's dialectics is
ontological, not epistemological.  Much of Marx's slow
dialectical developments are not only a matter of learning
or presentation, but they are only possible and necessary
because the world itself is structured and stratified along
these lines.  There is a famous Grundrisse quote that one
cannot directly go from labor to the banker, just as one
cannot directly go from nature to the steam engine, there
are links in between which one has to traverse first.  This
is not a matter of presentation but is very clearly
a stratification of reality similar to Bhaskar's.


Another confusing factor is Marx's use of the word
"represent" or "express."  Let's look at the following
sentence in Section 3 of Chapter One in Capital, the first
sentence in the Subsection called "The Changed Character of
the Value Form".  MECW 35, p. 76, Vintage edition p. 157,
German MEW 23, p. 79:

German:

Die Waren stellen ihre Werte jetzt 1. einfach dar, weil in
einer einzigen Ware und 2. einheitlich, weil in derselben
Ware.  Ihre Wertform ist einfach und gemeinschaftlich, daher
allgemein.


English:

The commodities now express their values (1) in a simple
form, because in a single commodity, and (2) in a unified
form, because each commodity expresses its value in the same
commodity.  Their form of value is simple and common to all,
hence general.

Comment:

Fowkes has ``The commodities now present their values *to
us*, (1) ...'' The ``to us'' is not in the Moore/Aveling
translation, and it is out of place.  The expression or
representation of value is a social necessity, and it has
nothing to do with the readers of this book.  In the core of
the economy, i.e., at a systemic level, there is a bond
between all labors in society because they all are the
interchangeable applications of the same homogeneous finite
mass of human labor power.  But this intrinsic connection
can only affect human activity when it enters the realm of
human interactions.  The interpersonal relations which
induce the economic agents to take the intrinsic constraints
of this limited pool of social labor power into
considerations are called, by Marx, the forms, expressions,
representations of value.  Since the agents do not react to
value itself but to these expressions of value, it is
important that these expressions are faithful expressions of
the intrinsic properties of value.  This is what Section 3
of Chapter One is about.  But this terminology is pervasive,
and again it might create the impression Marx's argument
is epistemological, while in reality it is ontological.




Hans E.




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