From: Michael Schauerte (mikeschauerte@GMAIL.COM)
Date: Fri Apr 27 2007 - 20:49:31 EDT
I listed three versions of the passage from Marx that uses the term "detour" or "roundabout way." You can see that there is a variation between using the pronoun "we" or "commodity owners" as the subject, and that expressions like "equating to" or "equating with" are used. At any rate, this is one example of the "detour" Kuruma is referring too. I have used it in my translation too, although in some respects "roundabout way" (not "roundabout way of saying") might be better. For most of the passages quoted from Marx in my translation of Kuruma's book I have relied on Hans Ehrbar's excellent translation, but here I think I will have to make a number of alterations. I would be interested if anyone has an alternative translation of this passage from Capital that begins: "Indem z.B. der Rock als Wertig der Leinwand gleichgesetzt wird, wird die in ihm steckende Arbeit der in ihr steckenden Arbeit gleichgesetzt…" "By equating, for example, the coat as a thing of value to the linen, we equate the labor embedded in the coat with the labor embedded in the linen. Now it is true that the tailoring labor which makes the coat is concrete labor of a different sort from the weaving labor which makes the linen. But the act of equating tailoring with weaving reduces the former in fact to what is really equal in the two kinds of labor, to the characteristic they have in common of being human labor. This is a roundabout way of saying that weaving too, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently is abstract human labor." (Penguin, p. 142) "By making the coat the equivalent to the linen, we equate the labor embodied in the former to that of the latter. Now, it is true that the tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete labor of a different sort from the weaving which makes the linen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the tailoring to that which is really equal in the two kinds of labor, to their common character of human labor. In this roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labor." (International, pp. 60-1) "By setting the coat, for example, as a thing of value equal to the linen, the commodity owners also set the labor embedded in the coat equal to the labor embedded in the linen. It is true, tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete labor of a different sort than weaving, which makes the linen. But by equating the tailoring with weaving, the commodity owners reduce tailoring in fact to what is really equal in the two kinds of labor, namely, that they are both human labor. Through this detour over tailoring they say that weaving too, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and consequently, is abstract labor." (Ehrbar)
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