"Observable relationships"? was Re: Brett and ...

[Carrol Cox]

Eric Franz Leher wrote:
> 
>  You don't  think capitalism - another set of observable
> relationships - is a metaphysical absurdity.  An eco-system is simply a
> set of relationships between animals and the part of the world they live
> in. The relationships are observable. So what's metaphysical about it?
> 

I agree with the whole of your post, but this part is quite wrong.
Relationships are _not_ observable. Even the relationship of your hand
to the card it is holding is not observable. (You can see the hand and
the card, but you infer the relationship.) This is rather fundamental to
Marxism: ". . .just as in general ratios [translated "relations" by
Nicolaus] can only be _thought_ if they are to be fixed, as distinct
from the sujects which are in that ratio to each other" (MECW 28, p.81).
If relations were observable commodity fetishism would not exist -- and
appearance and reality would coincide.

Of course anti-marxists consider his analysis of the commodity to be
metaphysical.

Carrol