Tom Walker wrote:
>
> Jim Devine wrote,
>
> >Tom translates Marx:
>
> I merely transcribed that which Ben Fowkes translated.
>
Herein lies a dissertation for some bibliographer of the 23rd century.
Ben Fowkes is listed as the translator of the CW 34 text, which is what
I queried. And the translations are too different to be merely the
result of printer's errors. Anyhow, thanks for the text, and the
sentence I queried is indeed ungrammatical. I kept squinting at it in
different ways trying to find some hidden syntax, but it just wasn't to
be found.
>
> [snip]
>
> What capitalist domination in social relations requires is that people come
> to regard ownership as a relationship between a person and a thing.
>
That seems a near perfect expression of it. I would add as a gloss
Marx's comment that relations, unlike the 'things' related, must be
thought rather than observed. (I forget where the comment is -- either
in _Capital_ or _Grundrisse_.) If one regards ownership as a
relationship between a person and a thing, one can _also_ then come to
regard that relationship as, itself, a _thing_, even an 'observable
thing.' And that (stretching it further) can lead/does lead to the
illusion that one need only know the "facts," that relations are
_merely_ mental, not material reality.
Carrol
