[PEN-L:27000] Re: a query on "surface appearances"

[Sam Pawlett <gusm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Devine, James" wrote:

>
>
> 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.
>

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

The appendix to Cohen's Marx's Theory of History has a lengthy
discussion of Marx's statement (ch 50, VIII) "But all science would be
superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly
coincided". Also Allen Wood's Marx book has a good discussion. The idea
I think is that the capitalist system appears (to some at least) as a
system of voluntary exchanges between individuals which masks the true
reality:  a system of exploitation by capital of labor. Marx gives many
more examples of how capitalism disguises the true essence of itself in
his theories of rent, alienation and fetishism and has a beautiful
rhetorical expression of these ideas in the last two paragraphs of
Capital I ch 6.  Moreover, the appearance of capitalism as a system of
voluntary exchange between individuals is created by understanding the
whole (society) in terms of the part (individual) i.e. the appearance of
capitalism as a just system of competing individuals is created by
capitalism itself. Hope that helps.

Sam Pawlett