Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 21:24:40 +0100
Subject: Re: BHA: Misleading Marx translations


Hi Hans

This looks like a really important point. 

Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-keynes.econ.utah.edu> writes
>
>It is a bigger job than I thought to document the
>introduction of the epistemic fallacy into Marx's text by
>the translations.  There is an abundance of examples,
>but the difficulty lies in explaining this error in
>such a way that it can be understood.
>
>
>The first example is the second paragraph in Chapter 1 of
>Capital.  I will only discuss this one example here.  I will
>bring this paragraph first in German, then in my own
>translation, and then I will try to argue why the
>Moore-Aveling translation is wrong.
>
>German original:
>
>Die Ware ist zunaechst ein aeusserer Gegenstand, ein Ding,
>das durch seine Eigenschaften menschliche Beduerfnisse
>irgendeiner Art befriedigt.  Die Natur dieser Beduerfnisse,
>ob sie z.B. dem Magen oder der Phantasie entspringen,
>aendert nichts an der Sache.  Es handelt sich hier auch
>nicht darum, wie die Sache das menschliche Beduerfnis
>befriedigt, ob unmittelbar als Lebensmittel, d.h. als
>Gegenstand des Genusses, oder auf einem Umweg, als
>Produktionsmittel.
>
>
>My translation:
>
>The first thing that must be said about the commodity is
>that it is an exterior object, a thing, which by its
>properties satisfies human wants of one sort or another.
>The nature of such wants, whether they arise, for instance,
>from the stomach or from imagination, makes no difference.
>Nor does it matter here how the object satisfies these human
>wants, whether directly as means of consumption, or
>indirectly as means of production.
>
>
>My comments:
>
>In the Moore/Aveling translation, this last sentence begins
>with ``Neither are we here concerned to know how'' instead
>of ``Nor does it matter here.''  This reference to ``our
>concerns to know'' is out of place here.  Here is an attempt
>to explain why:
>
>Marx is about to show that commodities have certain social
>powers.  Although they are inanimate things they harness
>human activity.  Their usefulness for human life acts like a
>lense which focuses the diffuse activities of those human
>individuals who deal with them.  The fact that everybody
>treats them in the same manner leads to an inversion between
>subject and object: the commodities are no longer the
>objects of individual actions, but the actions of the
>individuals handling the commodities become the effects of
>the social power located in the commodity itself.  This
>process has been called ``real abstraction'' or
>``emergence,'' and the enumeration of the factors on which
>this emergent power depends and those one which it does not
>depend is called a ``real definition.''
>
>The fact that the commodity's ability to focus human
>activity is the same whether the commodity satisfies the
>needs of the stomach or the needs of human imagination,
>whether it satisfies them directly as means of consumption
>or indirectly as means of production, is relevant
>information about the type of societies in which commodity
>production can become generalized.  This is a statement
>about the real world, not a the announcement of what Marx
>concerns himself here in this passage.  In other words, Marx
>meant it as an ontological statement, whereas the
>translation converted it into an epistemological statement.
>This transposition of ontological into epistemological facts
>is called the ``epistemic fallacy.''  It is a form of
>irrealism, since it shifts all the activity into the head
>and does not see the activity in the world.  Fowkes's
>translation has it right this time, but similar errors
>appears many times in both translations.
>
>If I find the time, I will work on other examples, but maybe
>I should better spend my time on DPF again.
>
>Hans E.
>
>
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