[PEN-L:26998] a query on "surface appearances"

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: a query on "surface appearances"

An e-friend asks:
> By the way, when you have some time, could you please give me
> some information about this so-called "surface relations" that I
> recently saw on PEN-L in a discussion, if I am not wrong, you
> were involved? Don't waste too much of your time though.
> Directing me to the appropriate sources is more than enough.

I was involved. After reading CAPITAL all the way through (all three volumes), along with such secondary sources as Bertell Ollman's ALIENATION, the way I understand "surface relations" -- or surface appearances -- is in terms of looking at capitalism from the inside, from the perspective of individual participants in the system (the perspective of neoclassical economics). This leads to a fetishized consciousness of the system, in which "capital," "land," "labor," etc., receive "factor incomes," and individual incomes are seen as corresponding to their contributions to the system, etc. But Marx argued that the system should be seen from a societal perspective, as a totality. One key point is that commodity fetishism is NOT a mere hallucination, a crude "false consciousness." The misuderstanding of the systemic nature of capitalism is based in its own structure. It's more like a mirage, where we "see" water on the highway that's a distorted reflection of an actual phenomenon. Put another way, a fetishized consciousness of capitalism arises from a _partial_ perspective. I hope this helps.

If anyone has any good sources on this, it would help further.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine