#... mechanical in nature... i get that those are easier to personify and have some things that feel more human...

[objectosexual]

I'm glad more of Tumblr is becoming more accepting of objectums + a lot of people are realizing that they're objectum themselves, but it really does feel like the current "in" thing right now so I hope this support for us continues even when people get tired of the eroticism of the machine

[aclayjar]

Inspiration and Truthfulness of the Bible As you read this you may question my position on the inspiration and truthfulness of the Bible. So let me state up front that I am a firm believer in the divine inspiration of the Bible. I also hold firmly to the truthfulness of the Bible. And that includes this first chapter of Genesis and the creation story it contains. The Culture of Genesis 1 The culture of the Ancient Near East (ANE), including the early Hebrews, was very different from ours today. So much of what we take for granted today was unknown then. Science, technology, communications, modern health care and sanitation, education, 40 hour work weeks. None of that existed. Life was hard and uncertain. Travel was slow and uncommon. Your world was generally limited to your immediate surroundings. Family was immensely important. How the world worked was mysterious. Why did the rain sometimes come, and sometimes not? What caused the seasons, plants to sprout, and apparently healthy people to get sick and die? There must be something to cause those things to happen. Something beyond themselves. And so they personified the forces of nature as gods. Gods who were oftentimes capricious and needed to be appeased or cajoled into making life easier rather than harder. As a 21st century Westerner it is nearly impossible to put myself into the mindset of an ANE’er. Our worlds are just too different. But if we are properly going to understand this first chapter of Genesis, it is essential that we at least attempt to do so. An ANE culture produced the Bible, for that culture. While it has great value to us today, it is all too easy for us to read it with a modern mindset. And when we do, we are prone to misunderstanding it. Out of Egypt Later in Genesis we find God calling a man, Abram, later known as Abraham. He brings Abraham to Canaan and promises that land to him, as well as an immense family. Eventually his grandson Jacob takes his family to Egypt where they live for some 430 years, eventually as slaves. After the 430 years is up, God calls Moses to lead Jacob’s family out of Egypt to Mt. Sinai and then back into Canaan. It seems clear that during the time Jacob’s family, Israel, lived in Egypt, that they were immersed in Egyptian culture, and served the Egyptian gods (Josh. 24:14). After centuries in Egypt the thought of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would have faded into a distant memory. They had become a part of Egyptian culture. Bringing Israel out of Egypt was only the beginning of what needed to take place. They also needed to have a cultural transplant. And that ultimately proved to be a much more difficult task. The covenant at Mt Sinai and the giving of the Law were a major part of that transformation. But Genesis also played an instrumental part in that transformation. It gave them a sense of history and belonging independent of Egypt. It told them where they had come from. Egyptian Creation Story Egypt, where Israel had been for 430 years, had their own origin accounts. And while we have no complete account of them, the pieces can be assembled together to give us a general view of their cosmogony. For the following account I am indebted to the book “In the Beginning . . . We Misunderstood” by Johnny Miller and John Soden. Before creation there was only the dark and watery sea; nothing else. Atum, the chief god, brought himself and light into existence.At Atum’s command the water separates, producing an atmospheric bubble. The lower waters recede and earth appears. Atum commands the creation of plants and animals. Re (another god) forms man in his image, with his breath.All the other gods are personified in the elements of the creation. Then, Atum rested. For more information on Egyptian cosmogony see https://bible.org/article/genesis-1-2-light-ancient-egyptian-creation-myths. Ancient Cosmogony The ancient world, including the ANE, had no access to modern scientific instruments or technologies. All they had were their physical senses. And they used them to make sense of the world around them. Imagine trying to figure out what the world was like without access to books, the web, or any kind of science. I suspect you would end up with something like what the ANE cultures did. For a look at ancient cosmogonies see The Three-Story Universe. What We Observe Assume you have no science and no way to understand the world apart from your senses. What would you believe? Obviously the earth is flat. If not, you would fall off of it. The earth would also have appeared to be stationary since there is no sense of motion. In contrast, the sun, moon, and stars appeared to be moving in relation to the earth; each moving at different rates. When you look up into the sky on a clear day, you see blue all around you, touching the earth in the distance. And sometimes water falls out of the sky. Clearly there is water up there. With something holding it back. A dome with windows to allow some water to fall from the sky would make sense. The sun, moon, and stars are also visible moving across the sky and inside the dome. Water comes up from the earth in places, so the earth must be floating on water as well. But why doesn’t it sink? There must be pillars running from some lower foundation up to the earth to keep the earth afloat. All of this makes sense to the ANE mind. And it would to us as well, if not for modern science. The change from that model was not easy for our ancestors. Accepting the earth was not flat and that the earth circled the sun were challenging concepts to accept. Accommodation If you have read through the preceding two sections you will have noticed some resemblance to the first chapter of Genesis, as well as to other places in the Scripture. The first chapter of Genesis is very similar to the Egyptian creation account. And you may have noticed references throughout the Scriptures to the ANE cosmogony. So much so that the church at one time resisted the belief in a round earth and a heliocentric solar system because it seemed to be contrary to what the Bible taught. It appears that God was not interested in correcting our (mis)understanding of the structure of the physical earth we live on. Instead he accommodated his message to the cosmogony of the day. The truth he was trying to get across to them was independent of the shape of the earth or its relation to the heavenly bodies. To correct their understanding of the earth’s physical nature would have unnecessarily complicated the message, with little gain. Two Types of Accommodation Accommodation shows up in the first chapter of Genesis in two ways. The Physical Description The most obvious is in the similarity between the Genesis and Egyptian accounts of creation. The physical description of the creation is not changed all that much. But what has changed dramatically is the theological message, what God has to say to us in the passage. The Dome The other place where you will see this accommodation concerns the structure of the creation. In particular concerning the creation of a dome, vault, or firmament that separates the waters above from the waters below on day 2 (Gen. 1:6-8). Followed by the placement of the sun, moon, and stars within that firmament in day 4 (Gen. 1:14-18). Later, during the flood, the windows of the firmament are opened (Gen. 7:11), and then later closed (Gen. 8:2). And periodically after that you see mention of this vault, especially in the book of Job (Prov. 8:27-29; Job 22:14, 37:18). How Should We Understand the Creation Story in Genesis 1? Many Evangelicals There is a great debate in evangelical circles as to how to understand this chapter. There are those who are adamant that the chapter is real history. That it accurately describes the creation of the universe in six days just a few thousand years ago. And, frequently, they hold to the belief that this position is essential to the Christian faith. Many Skeptics At the other extreme are those who reject any historicity or scientific basis for this chapter, as well as the following 10 chapters. They understand the findings of modern science as authoritative in this matter, understanding the universe to be billions of years old. While this camp includes skeptics, it also includes some devout believers. Ancient Hebrews But how did the ancient Hebrews understand the chapter? If I understand them correctly, it is likely they accepted it as a historical account and did not question it. But at the same time, they didn’t really care all that much about detailed accuracy like we do today. The story itself and what it taught was more important that the detailed accuracy of the story. And for Me And, if that is the case, it would seem appropriate for me to take it in the same way. What is God telling me in this account? I try not to get caught up in the debate over details that would not have interested the ancient readers. They would not have wondered about light coming before the sun. It wasn’t important to them. What is God teaching us in Genesis 1? If this chapter is not teaching a six-day creation event a few thousand years ago, then what is it teaching? I think the answer to that entails, at least in part, comparing the Genesis creation story with that of their neighbors, especially Egypt. As mentioned above, the two are very similar in many ways. But the theological implications are quite different. In the Egyptian account, Atum creates himself out of the preexisting sea. For Genesis, it is God who is preexisting and who creates the sea, as well as everything else. In the Egyptian account, there are a multitude of gods, representing all of the elements of creation. For Genesis, it is God alone. In the Egyptian account, the gods create man for their own benefit. For Genesis, God creates man in his image to rule over the creation. I do not believe this chapter is teaching us the mechanics of creation. Rather it is teaching us about the creator and his creation. It does not matter if it took six days or 6 billion years. The lessons are the same. Trying to reconcile the Genesis creation story accounts to modern science is, in the end, a losing proposition. Focus instead on what God intends us to learn from them. The first chapter of Genesis affirms that God alone is the creator of all that is. That the creation is good. And that humanity is the high point of the creation. God has made us special and has given us rule over the creation. This article first appeared on Christianity.com, June 10, 2019.

[dist-the-rose]

Chapter 25: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation Section 1: The Increased Demand for labour power that Accompanies Accumulation, the Composition of Capital Remaining the same In this chapter we consider the influence of the growth of capital on the lot of the labouring class. The most important factor in this inquiry is the composition of capital and the changes it undergoes in the course of the process of accumulation. The composition of capital is to be understood in a two-fold sense. On the side of value, it is determined by the proportion in which it is divided into constant capital or value of the means of production, and variable capital or value of labour power, the sum total of wages. On the side of material, as it functions in the process of production, all capital is divided into means of production and living labour power. This latter composition is determined by the relation between the mass of the means of production employed, on the one hand, and the mass of labour necessary for their employment on the other. I call the former the value-composition, the latter the technical composition of capital. Between the two there is a strict correlation. To express this, I call the value composition of capital, in so far as it is determined by its technical composition and mirrors the changes of the latter, the organic composition of capital. Wherever I refer to the composition of capital, without further qualification, its organic composition is always understood. The many individual capitals invested in a particular branch of production have, one with another, more or less different compositions. The average of their individual compositions gives us the composition of the total capital in this branch of production. Lastly, the average of these averages, in all branches of production, gives us the composition of the total social capital of a country, and with this alone are we, in the last resort, concerned in the following investigation. Growth of capital involves growth of its variable constituent or of the part invested in labour power. A part of the surplus value turned into additional capital must always be re-transformed into variable capital, or additional labour fund. If we suppose that, all other circumstances remaining the same, the composition of capital also remains constant (i.e., that a definite mass of means of production constantly needs the same mass of labour power to set it in motion), then the demand for labour and the subsistence-fund of the labourers clearly increase in the same proportion as the capital, and the more rapidly, the more rapidly the capital increases. Since the capital produces yearly a surplus value, of which one part is yearly added to the original capital; since this increment itself grows yearly along with the augmentation of the capital already functioning; since lastly, under special stimulus to enrichment, such as the opening of new markets, or of new spheres for the outlay of capital in consequence of newly developed social wants, &c., the scale of accumulation may be suddenly extended, merely by a change in the division of the surplus value or surplus-product into capital and revenue, the requirements of accumulating capital may exceed the increase of labour power or of the number of labourers; the demand for labourers may exceed the supply, and, therefore, wages may rise. This must, indeed, ultimately be the case if the conditions supposed above continue. For since in each year more 305 Chapter XXV labourers are employed than in its predecessor, sooner or later a point must be reached, at which the requirements of accumulation begin to surpass the customary supply of labour, and, therefore, a rise of wages takes place. A lamentation on this score was heard in England during the whole of the fifteenth, and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. The more or less favourable circumstances in which the wage working class supports and multiplies itself, in no way alter the fundamental character of capitalist production. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital relation itself, i.e., the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i.e., accumulation, reproduces the capital relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital’s self-expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.1 Classical economy grasped this fact so thoroughly that Adam Smith, Ricardo, &c., as mentioned earlier, inaccurately identified accumulation with the consumption, by the productive labourers, of all the capitalised part of the surplus-product, or with its transformation into additional wage labourers. As early as 1696 John Bellers says: “For if one had a hundred thousand acres of land and as many pounds in money, and as many cattle, without a labourer, what would the rich man be, but a labourer? And as the labourers make men rich, so the more labourers there will be, the more rich men ... the labour of the poor being the mines of the rich.”2 So also Bernard de Mandeville at the beginning of the eighteenth century: “It would be easier, where property is well secured, to live without money than without poor; for who would do the work? ... As they [the poor] ought to be kept from starving, so they should receive nothing worth saving. If here and there one of the lowest class by uncommon industry, and pinching his belly, lifts himself above the condition he was brought up in, nobody ought to hinder him; nay, it is undeniably the wisest course for every person in the society, and for every private family to be frugal; but it is the interest of all rich nations, that the greatest part of the poor-should almost never be idle, and yet continually spend what they get.... Those that get their living by their daily labour ... have nothing to stir them up to be serviceable but their wants which it is prudence to relieve, but folly to cure. The only thing then that can render the labouring man industrious, is a moderate quantity of money, for as too little will, according as his temper is, either dispirit or make him desperate, so too much will make him insolent and lazy.... From what has been said, it is manifest, that, in a free nation, where slaves are not allowed of, the surest wealth consists in a multitude of laborious poor; for besides, that they are the never-failing nursery of fleets and armies, without them there could be no enjoyment, and no product of any country could be valuable. “To make the society” [which of course consists of non-workers] “happy and people easier under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be ignorant as well as poor; knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires, and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied.”3 What Mandeville, an honest, clear-headed man, had not yet seen, is that the mechanism of the process of accumulation itself increases, along with the capital, the mass of “labouring poor,” i.e., the wage labourers, who turn their labour power into an increasing power of self-expansion of the growing capital, and even by doing so must eternise their dependent relation on their own 306 Chapter XXV product, as personified in the capitalists. In reference to this relation of dependence, Sir F. M. Eden in his “The State of the Poor, an History of the Labouring Classes in England,” says, “the natural produce of our soil is certainly not fully adequate to our subsistence; we can neither be clothed, lodged nor fed but in consequence of some previous labour. A portion at least of the society must be indefatigably employed .... There are others who, though they ‘neither toil nor spin,’ can yet command the produce of industry, but who owe their exemption from labour solely to civilisation and order .... They are peculiarly the creatures of civil institutions,4 which have recognised that individuals may acquire property by various other means besides the exertion of labour.... Persons of independent fortune ... owe their superior advantages by no means to any superior abilities of their own, but almost entirely ... to the industry of others. It is not the possession of land, or of money, but the command of labour which distinguishes the opulent from the labouring part of the community .... This [scheme approved by Eden] would give the people of property sufficient (but by no means too much) influence and authority over those who ... work for them; and it would place such labourers, not in an abject or servile condition, but in such a state of easy and liberal dependence as all who know human nature, and its history, will allow to be necessary for their own comfort.”5 Sir F. M. Eden, it may be remarked in passing, is the only disciple of Adam Smith during the eighteenth century that produced any work of importance.6 Under the conditions of accumulation supposed thus far, which conditions are those most favourable to the labourers, their relation of dependence upon capital takes on a form endurable or, as Eden says: “easy and liberal.” Instead of becoming more intensive with the growth of capital, this relation of dependence only becomes more extensive, i.e., the sphere of capital’s exploitation and rule merely extends with its own dimensions and the number of its subjects. A larger part of their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption-fund of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by small reserve funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. In the controversies on this subject the chief fact has generally been overlooked, viz., the differentia specifica [defining characteristic] of capitalistic production. labour power is sold today, not with a view of satisfying, by its service or by its product, the personal needs of the buyer. His aim is augmentation of his capital, production of commodities containing more labour than he pays for, containing therefore a portion of value that costs him nothing, and that is nevertheless realised when the commodities are sold. Production of surplus value is the absolute law of this mode of production. labour power is only saleable so far as it preserves the means of production in their capacity of capital, reproduces its own value as capital, and yields in unpaid labour a source of additional capital.7 The conditions of its sale, whether more or less favourable to the labourer, include therefore the necessity of its constant re-selling, and the constantly extended reproduction of all wealth in the shape of capital. Wages, as we have seen, by their very nature, always imply the performance of a certain quantity of unpaid labour on the part of the labourer. Altogether, irrespective of the case of a rise of wages with a falling price of labour, &c., such an increase only means at best a quantitative diminution of the unpaid labour that the worker has to supply. This diminution can never reach the point at which it would threaten the system itself. Apart from violent conflicts as to the rate of wages (and Adam Smith has already shown that in such a 307 Chapter XXV conflict, taken on the whole, the master is always master), a rise in the price of labour resulting from accumulation of capital implies the following alternative: Either the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise does not interfere with the progress of accumulation. In this there is nothing wonderful, for, says Adam Smith, “after these (profits) are diminished, stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than before.... A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits.” (l. c., ii, p. 189.) In this case it is evident that a diminution in the unpaid labour in no way interferes with the extension of the domain of capital. – Or, on the other hand, accumulation slackens in consequence of the rise in the price of labour, because the stimulus of gain is blunted. The rate of accumulation lessens; but with its lessening, the primary cause of that lessening vanishes, i.e., the disproportion between capital and exploitable labour power. The mechanism of the process of capitalist production removes the very obstacles that it temporarily creates. The price of labour falls again to a level corresponding with the needs of the self-expansion of capital, whether the level be below, the same as, or above the one which was normal before the rise of wages took place. We see thus: In the first case, it is not the diminished rate either of the absolute, or of the proportional, increase in labour power, or labouring population, which causes capital to be in excess, but conversely the excess of capital that makes exploitable labour power insufficient. In the second case, it is not the increased rate either of the absolute, or of the proportional, increase in labour power, or labouring population, that makes capital insufficient; but, conversely, the relative diminution of capital that causes the exploitable labour power, or rather its price, to be in excess. It is these absolute movements of the accumulation of capital which are reflected as relative movements of the mass of exploitable labour power, and therefore seem produced by the latter’s own independent movement. To put it mathematically: the rate of accumulation is the independent, not the dependent, variable; the rate of wages, the dependent, not the independent, variable. Thus, when the industrial cycle is in the phase of crisis, a general fall in the price of commodities is expressed as a rise in the value of money, and, in the phase of prosperity, a general rise in the price of commodities, as a fall in the value of money. The socalled currency school concludes from this that with high prices too much, with low prices too little8 money is in circulation. Their ignorance and complete misunderstanding of facts 9 are worthily paralleled by the economists, who interpret the above phenomena of accumulation by saying that there are now too few, now too many wage labourers. The law of capitalist production, that is at the bottom of the pretended “natural law of population,” reduces itself simply to this: The correlation between accumulation of capital and rate of wages is nothing else than the correlation between the unpaid labour transformed into capital, and the additional paid labour necessary for the setting in motion of this additional capital. It is therefore in no way a relation between two magnitudes, independent one of the other: on the one hand, the magnitude of the capital; on the other, the number of the labouring population; it is rather, at bottom, only the relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of the same labouring population. If the quantity of unpaid labour supplied by the working class, and accumulated by the capitalist class, increases so rapidly that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labour, then wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining equal, the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion. But as soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus labour that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalised, accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a check. The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into pretended law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of exploitation of labour, and every rise in the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever-enlarging scale, of the 308 Chapter XXV capitalistic relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of self-expansion of existing values, instead of, on the contrary, material wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.10