From: Howard Engelskirchen (howarde@TWCNY.RR.COM)
Date: Tue Jan 30 2007 - 01:47:30 EST
Here's puzzle of translation and understanding: Capital's unpublished chapter, The Results of the Immediate Process of Production, opens with a discussion of the commodity as the product of capital. Two and a half pages in Marx summarizes by making 3 points. In the Penguin translation "Drei Punkte" in italics followed by a full stop gets translated as "These three points are crucial," but never mind -- they are crucial. But the last sentence of the third point is a puzzle. Volume 34, p. 360 shows that the manuscript contains a colon and notes (infers?) that the insertion (inferred?) to follow was left unfinished. Here's the sentence in German: "Der Austausch von Kapital und Arbeitskraft wird formell: This gets translated in the Penguin edition as "The formal exchange of capital and labour-power becomes general." Volume 34 translates the sentence more literally as "The exchange between capital and labour power becomes formal: [. . . ] Now translation difficulties pose the problem, but in fact the question posed can be evaluated without recourse to the German. In what sense could Marx here have meant that the exchange between capital and labour power becomes formal? How is that in any sense a summing up of what has gone before, as clearly the three points are? Otherwise presented, assuming the assertion of the Ben Fowkes translation is a point that is correct, what justifies interpreting "wird formell," ie "becomes formal," as "becomes general"? Also, since Marx followed the biblical injunction here insisting that the first was meant to be last (the section on the commodity as a product of capital was meant to be presented after the section on the production of surplus value and the section on the production of the total relationship), the summing up might include a more far reaching comparison or reference to the first two sections. But from what perspective is the exchange of capital and labor power formal? One answer that occurs to me, and that would be consistent with the Fowkes translation, is that Marx is making the point here that since both bondage (slavery or serfdom) and the independent production of commodities by the direct producer are destroyed, we get necessarily the sale and purchase of labor power, ie the formal exchange of capital and labor -- that is as opposed to the exchange of content or substance between capital and labor that takes place in the process of production. Thus where the the worker has ceased to be a part of the conditions of production, labor power becomes a commodity (point 2) and where the independent production of commodities by the direct producer is destroyed (point 3), necessarily the formal exchange of capital and labor must take place. The end of bondage is necessary before labor power can become a commodity and the end of independent commodity production for the direct producer is necessary before the purchase and sale of labor power -- the formal exchange of capital and labor -- takes place. Thoughts on this or other interpretations? Howard
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 31 2007 - 00:00:05 EST