This question <114|114> overall <113|115> Ryan: <40|279>. graded A

Question 234: If the commodity, empirically, is not mysterious, but its scientific analysis says that it is mysterious, doesn't this mean that the scientific analysis is wrong?

[114] Ryan: Another etymological look at things.   In saying that the scientific analysis is wrong, one would make the same error that Marx attributes to most other political economists, namely, ignoring the underlying social relationships that are at the core of the economy. Just like the example from [2004fa:108] with the boy and the question whether or not he had ADHD. Empirical evidence cannot capture the same broad scope of issues that the scientific analysis is able to. The scientific is not wrong, it is more accurate by taking more into account than the empirical analysis.

I take some issue with the translation of the German term ‘Geheimnis’ as ‘Mysterious’. Although ‘mystery’ implies that this ‘Geheimnis’ is difficult to understand and must be investigated to be discovered, it only partly carries the full meaning of the German term. A ‘Geheimnis’ is literally, as it is translated by Moore-Aveling, Fowkes, and in the French, a secret. It is something that is explicitly ‘Geheim gehalten’ or ‘kept secret’. Although I can see why the emphasis would be placed on the mystery of it all, and thus the need for a deeper sort of analysis in order to fully comprehend it, I feel it loses the implication that there is a pernicious nature to the fetish like character of commodities. It wrongly displaces our perspective on how we relate with one another in the economy and must keep its ‘Geheimnis’ in order to maintain this control. Should the secret get out, commodities would lose their fetish-like character.

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