#lucubration

[mybuddyjimmy]

Lucubrate

Lucubrate [LOO-kyə-brayt] Part of speech: verb Origin: Latin, early 17th century 1. Write or study, especially by night. 2. Produce scholarly written material.  Examples of lucubrate in a sentence “Elliott was known to lucubrate past midnight during finals week.” “Maryann lucubrated an academic journal on Egyptian history.” #wordoftheday

[inators]

Sometimes, love is unkind. Sequel to 'Lucubration'. For @chio-chan2's birthday!

By: Lex Rating: M Words: 7,334 Chapters: 1/3 Pairings: Perryshmirtz Warnings: Intense gore and violence

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter IV. Second Period. — Machinery.

2. — Machinery’s contradiction. — Origin of capital and wages.

From the very fact that machinery diminishes the workman’s toil, it abridges and diminishes labor, the supply of which thus grows greater from day to day and the demand less. Little by little, it is true, the reduction in prices causing an increase in consumption, the proportion is restored and the laborer set at work again: but as industrial improvements steadily succeed each other and continually tend to substitute mechanical operations for the labor of man, it follows that there is a constant tendency to cut off a portion of the service and consequently to eliminate laborers from production. Now, it is with the economic order as with the spiritual order: outside of the church there is no salvation; outside of labor there is no subsistence. Society and nature, equally pitiless, are in accord in the execution of this new decree.

“When a new machine, or, in general, any process whatever that expedites matters,” says J. B. Say, “replaces any human labor already employed, some of the industrious arms, whose services are usefully supplanted, are left without work. A new machine, therefore, replaces the labor of a portion of the laborers, but does not diminish the amount of production, for, if it did, it would not be adopted; it displaces revenue. But the ultimate advantage is wholly on the side of machinery, for, if abundance of product and lessening of cost lower the venal value, the consumer — that is, everybody — will benefit thereby.”

Say’s optimism is infidelity to logic and to facts. The question here is not simply one of a small number of accidents which have happened during thirty centuries through the introduction of one, two, or three machines; it is a question of a regular, constant, and general phenomenon. After revenue has been displaced as Say says, by one machine, it is then displaced by another, and again by another, and always by another, as long as any labor remains to be done and any exchanges remain to be effected. That is the light in which the phenomenon must be presented and considered: but thus, it must be admitted, its aspect changes singularly. The displacement of revenue, the suppression of labor and wages, is a chronic, permanent, indelible plague, a sort of cholera which now appears wearing the features of Gutenberg, now assumes those of Arkwright; here is called Jacquard, there James Watt or Marquis de Jouffroy. After carrying on its ravages for a longer or shorter time under one form, the monster takes another, and the economists, who think that he has gone, cry out: “It was nothing!” Tranquil and satisfied, provided they insist with all the weight of their dialectics on the positive side of the question, they close their eyes to its subversive side, notwithstanding which, when they are spoken to of poverty, they again begin their sermons upon the improvidence and drunkenness of laborers.

In 1750, — M. Dunoyer makes the observation, and it may serve as a measure of all lucubrations of the same sort, — “in 1750 the population of the duchy of Lancaster was 300,000 souls. In 1801, thanks to the development of spinning machines, this population was 672,000 souls. In 1831 it was 1,336,000 souls. Instead of the 40,000 workmen whom the cotton industry formerly employed, it now employs, since the invention of machinery, 1,500,000.”

M. Dunoyer adds that at the time when the number of workmen employed in this industry increased in so remarkable a manner, the price of labor rose one hundred and fifty per cent. Population, then, having simply followed industrial progress, its increase has been a normal and irreproachable fact, — what do I say? — a happy fact, since it is cited to the honor and glory of the development of machinery. But suddenly M. Dunoyer executes an about-face: this multitude of spinning-machines soon being out of work, wages necessarily declined; the population which the machines had called forth found itself abandoned by the machines, at which M. Dunoyer declares: Abuse of marriage is the cause of poverty.

English commerce, in obedience to the demand of the immense body of its patrons, summons workmen from all directions, and encourages marriage; as long as labor is abundant, marriage is an excellent thing, the effects of which they are fond of quoting in the interest of machinery; but, the patronage fluctuating, as soon as work and wages are not to be had, they denounce the abuse of marriage, and accuse laborers of improvidence. Political economy — that is, proprietary despotism — can never be in the wrong: it must be the proletariat.

The example of printing has been cited many a time, always to sustain the optimistic view. The number of persons supported today by the manufacture of books is perhaps a thousand times larger than was that of the copyists and illuminators prior to Gutenberg’s time; therefore, they conclude with a satisfied air, printing has injured nobody. An infinite number of similar facts might be cited, all of them indisputable, but not one of which would advance the question a step. Once more, no one denies that machines have contributed to the general welfare; but I affirm, in regard to this incontestable fact, that the economists fall short of the truth when they advance the absolute statement that the simplification of processes has nowhere resulted in a diminution of the number of hands employed in any industry whatever. What the economists ought to say is that machinery, like the division of labor, in the present system of social economy is at once a source of wealth and a permanent and fatal cause of misery.

In 1836, in a Manchester mill, nine frames, each having three hundred and twenty-four spindles, were tended by four spinners. Afterwards the mules were doubled in length, which gave each of the nine six hundred and eighty spindles and enabled two men to tend them.

There we have the naked fact of the elimination of the workman by the machine. By a simple device three workmen out of four are evicted; what matters it that fifty years later, the population of the globe having doubled and the trade of England having quadrupled, new machines will be constructed and the English manufacturers will reemploy their workmen? Do the economists mean to point to the increase of population as one of the benefits of machinery? Let them renounce, then, the theory of Malthus, and stop declaiming against the excessive fecundity of marriage.

They did not stop there: soon a new mechanical improvement enabled a single worker to do the work that formerly occupied four.

A new three-fourths reduction of manual work: in all, a reduction of human labor by fifteen-sixteenths.

A Bolton manufacturer writes: “The elongation of the mules of our frames permits us to employ but twenty-six spinners where we employed thirty-five in 1837.”

Another decimation of laborers: one out of four is a victim.

These facts are taken from the “Revue Economique” of 1842; and there is nobody who cannot point to similar ones. I have witnessed the introduction of printing machines, and I can say that I have seen with my own eyes the evil which printers have suffered thereby. During the fifteen or twenty years that the machines have been in use a portion of the workmen have gone back to composition, others have abandoned their trade, and some have died of misery: thus laborers are continually crowded back in consequence of industrial innovations. Twenty years ago eighty canal-boats furnished the navigation service between Beaucaire and Lyons; a score of steam-packets has displaced them all. Certainly commerce is the gainer; but what has become of the boating-population? Has it been transferred from the boats to the packets? No: it has gone where all superseded industries go, — it has vanished.

For the rest, the following documents, which I take from the same source, will give a more positive idea of the influence of industrial improvements upon the condition of the workers.

The average weekly wages, at Manchester, is ten shillings. Out of four hundred and fifty workers there are not forty who earn twenty shillings.

The author of the article is careful to remark that an Englishman consumes five times as much as a Frenchman; this, then, is as if a French workingman had to live on two francs and a half a week.

“Edinburgh Review,” 1835: “To a combination of workmen (who did not want to see their wages reduced) we owe the mule of Sharpe and Roberts of Manchester; and this invention has severely punished the imprudent unionists.”

Punished should merit punishment. The invention of Sharpe and Roberts of Manchester was bound to result from the situation; the refusal of the workmen to submit to the reduction asked of them was only its determining occasion. Might not one infer, from the air of vengeance affected by the “Edinburgh Review,” that machines have a retroactive effect?

An English manufacturer: “The insubordination of our workmen has given us the idea of dispensing with them. We have made and stimulated every imaginable effort of the mind to replace the service of men by tools more docile, and we have achieved our object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of labor. Wherever we still employ a man, we do so only temporarily, pending the invention for us of some means of accomplishing his work without him.”

What a system is that which leads a business man to think with delight that society will soon be able to dispense with men! Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of labor! That is exactly as if the cabinet should undertake to deliver the treasury from the oppression of the taxpayers. Fool! though the workmen cost you something, they are your customers: what will you do with your products, when, driven away by you, they shall consume them no longer? Thus machinery, after crushing the workmen, is not slow in dealing employers a counter-blow; for, if production excludes consumption, it is soon obliged to stop itself.

During the fourth quarter of 1841 four great failures, happening in an English manufacturing city, threw seventeen hundred and twenty people on the street.

These failures were caused by over-production, — that is, by an inadequate market, or the distress of the people. What a pity that machinery cannot also deliver capital from the oppression of consumers! What a misfortune that machines do not buy the fabrics which they weave! The ideal society will be reached when commerce, agriculture, and manufactures can proceed without a man upon earth!

In a Yorkshire parish for nine months the operatives have been working but two days a week.

Machines!

At Geston two factories valued at sixty thousand pounds sterling have been sold for twenty-six thousand. They produced more than they could sell.

Machines!

In 1841 the number of children under thirteen years of age engaged in manufactures diminishes, because children over thirteen take their place.

Machines! The adult workman becomes an apprentice, a child, again: this result was foreseen from the phase of the division of labor, during which we saw the quality of the workman degenerate in the ratio in which industry was perfected.

In his conclusion the journalist makes this reflection: “Since 1836 there has been a retrograde movement in the cotton industry”; — that is, it no longer keeps up its relation with other industries: another result foreseen from the theory of the proportionality of values.

Today workmen’s coalitions and strikes seem to have stopped throughout England, and the economists rightly rejoice over this return to order, — let us say even to common sense. But because laborers henceforth — at least I cherish the hope — will not add the misery of their voluntary periods of idleness to the misery which machines force upon them, does it follow that the situation is changed? And if there is no change in the situation, will not the future always be a deplorable copy of the past?

The economists love to rest their minds on pictures of public felicity: it is by this sign principally that they are to be recognized, and that they estimate each other. Nevertheless there are not lacking among them, on the other hand, moody and sickly imaginations, ever ready to offset accounts of growing prosperity with proofs of persistent poverty.

M. Theodore Fix thus summed up the general situation in December, 1844:

The food supply of nations is no longer exposed to those terrible disturbances caused by scarcities and famines, so frequent up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The variety of agricultural growths and improvements has abolished this double scourge almost absolutely. The total wheat crop in France in 1791 was estimated at about 133,000,000 bushels, which gave, after deducting seed, 2.855 bushels to each inhabitant. In 1840 the same crop was estimated at 198,590,000 bushels, or 2.860 bushels to each individual, the area of cultivated surface being almost the same as before the Revolution.... The rate of increase of manufactured goods has been at least as high as that of food products; and we are justified in saying that the mass of textile fabrics has more than doubled and perhaps tripled within fifty years. The perfecting of technical processes has led to this result....

Since the beginning of the century the average duration of life has increased by two or three years, — an undeniable sign of greater comfort, or, if you will, a diminution of poverty.

Within twenty years the amount of indirect revenue, without any burdensome change in legislation, has risen from $40,000,000 francs to 720,000,000, — a symptom of economic, much more than of fiscal, progress.

On January 1, 1844, the deposit and consignment office owed the savings banks 351,500,000 francs, and Paris figured in this sum for 105,000,000. Nevertheless the development of the institution has taken place almost wholly within twelve years, and it should be noticed that the 351,500,000 francs now due to the savings banks do not constitute the entire mass of economies effected, since at a given time the capital accumulated is disposed of otherwise.... In 1843, out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants living in the capital, 90,000 workmen have deposited in the savings banks 2,547,000 francs, and 34,000 house-servants 1,268,000 francs.

All these facts are entirely true, and the inference to be drawn from them in favor of machines is of the exactest, — namely, that they have indeed given a powerful impetus to the general welfare. But the facts with which we shall supplement them are no less authentic, and the inference to be drawn from these against machines will be no less accurate, — to wit, that they are a continual cause of pauperism. I appeal to the figures of M. Fix himself.

Out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants residing in Paris, there are 230,000 of the former and 46,000 of the latter — a total of 276,000 — who do not deposit in the savings banks. No one would dare pretend that these are 276,000 spendthrifts and ne’er-do-weels who expose themselves to misery voluntarily. Now, as among the very ones who make the savings there are to be found poor and inferior persons for whom the savings bank is but a respite from debauchery and misery, we may conclude that, out of all the individuals living by their labor, nearly three-fourths either are imprudent, lazy, and depraved, since they do not deposit in the savings banks, or are too poor to lay up anything. There is no other alternative. But common sense, to say nothing of charity, permits no wholesale accusation of the laboring class: it is necessary, therefore, to throw the blame back upon our economic system. How is it that M. Fix did not see that his figures accused themselves?

They hope that, in time, all, or almost all, laborers will deposit in the savings banks. Without awaiting the testimony of the future, we may test the foundations of this hope immediately.

According to the testimony of M. Vee, mayor of the fifth arrondissement of Paris, “the number of needy families inscribed upon the registers of the charity bureaus is 30,000, — which is equivalent to 65,000 individuals.” The census taken at the beginning of 1846 gave 88,474. And poor families not inscribed, — how many are there of those? As many. Say, then, 180,000 people whose poverty is not doubtful, although not official. And all those who live in straitened circumstances, though keeping up the appearance of comfort, — how many are there of those? Twice as many, — a total of 360,000 persons, in Paris, who are somewhat embarrassed for means.

“They talk of wheat,” cries another economist, M. Louis Leclerc, “but are there not immense populations which go without bread? Without leaving our own country, are there not populations which live exclusively on maize, buckwheat, chestnuts?”

M. Leclerc denounces the fact: let us interpret it. If, as there is no doubt, the increase of population is felt principally in the large cities, — that is, at those points where the most wheat is consumed, — it is clear that the average per head may have increased without any improvement in the general condition. There is no such liar as an average.

“They talk,” continues the same writer, “of the increase of indirect consumption. Vain would be the attempt to acquit Parisian adulteration: it exists; it has its masters, its adepts, its literature, its didactic and classic treatises.... France possessed exquisite wines; what has been done with them? What has become of this splendid wealth? Where are the treasures created since Probus by the national genius? And yet, when one considers the excesses to which wine gives rise wherever it is dear, wherever it does not form a part of the regular life of the people; when in Paris, capital of the kingdom of good wines, one sees the people gorging themselves with I know not what, — stuff that is adulterated, sophisticated, sickening, and sometimes execrable, — and well-to-do persons drinking at home or accepting without a word, in famous restaurants, so-called wines, thick, violet-colored, and insipid, flat, and miserable enough to make the poorest Burgundian peasant shudder, — can one honestly doubt that alcoholic liquids are one of the most imperative needs of our nature?

I quote this passage at length, because it sums up in relation to a special case all that could be said upon the inconveniences of machinery. To the people it is with wine as with fabrics, and generally with all goods and merchandise created for the consumption of the poor. It is always the same deduction: to reduce by some process or other the cost of manufacture, in order, first, to maintain advantageously competition with more fortunate or richer rivals; second, to serve the vast numbers of plundered persons who cannot disregard price simply because the quality is good. Produced in the ordinary ways, wine is too expensive for the mass of consumers; it is in danger of remaining in the cellars of the retailers. The manufacturer of wines gets around the difficulty: unable to introduce machinery into the cultivation of the vine, he finds a means, with the aid of some accompaniments, of placing the precious liquid within the reach of all. Certain savages, in their periods of scarcity, eat earth; the civilized workman drinks water. Malthus was a great genius.

As far as the increase of the average duration of life is concerned, I recognize the fact, but at the same time I declare the observation incorrect. Let us explain that. Suppose a population of ten million souls: if, from whatever cause you will, the average life should increase five years for a million individuals, mortality continuing its ravages at the same rate as before among the nine other millions, it would be found, on distributing this increase among the whole, that on an average six months had been added to the life of each individual. It is with the average length of life, the so-called indicator of average comfort, as with average learning: the level of knowledge does not cease to rise, which by no means alters the fact that there are today in France quite as many barbarians as in the days of Francois I. The charlatans who had railroad speculation in view made a great noise about the importance of the locomotive in the circulation of ideas; and the economists, always on the lookout for civilized stupidities, have not failed to echo this nonsense. As if ideas, in order to spread, needed locomotives! What, then, prevents ideas from circulating from the Institute to the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, in the narrow and wretched streets of Old Paris and the Temple Quarter, everywhere, in short, where dwells this multitude even more destitute of ideas than of bread? How happens it that between a Parisian and a Parisian, in spite of the omnibus and the letter-carrier, the distance is three times greater today than in the fourteenth century?

The ruinous influence of machinery on social economy and the condition of the laborers is exercised in a thousand ways, all of which are bound together and reciprocally labelled: cessation of labor, reduction of wages, over-production, obstruction of the market, alteration and adulteration of products, failures, displacement of laborers, degeneration of the race, and, finally, diseases and death.

M. Théodore Fix has remarked himself that in the last fifty years the average stature of man, in France, has diminished by a considerable fraction of an inch. This observation is worth his previous one: upon whom does this diminution take effect?

In a report read to the Academy of Moral Sciences on the results of the law of March 22, 1841, M. Leon Faucher expressed himself thus:

Young workmen are pale, weak, short in stature, and slow to think as well as to move. At fourteen or fifteen years they seem no more developed than children of nine or ten years in the normal state. As for their intellectual and moral development, there are some to be found who, at the age of thirteen, have no notion of God, who have never heard of their duties, and whose first school of morality was a prison.

That is what M. Léon Faucher has seen, to the great displeasure of M. Charles Dupin, and this state of things he declares that the law of March 22 is powerless to remedy. And let us not get angry over this impotence of the legislator: the evil arises from a cause as necessary for us as the sun; and in the path upon which we have entered, anger of any kind, like palliatives of any kind, could only make our situation worse. Yes, while science and industry are making such marvellous progress, it is a necessity, unless civilization’s centre of gravity should suddenly change, that the intelligence and comfort of the proletariat be diminished; while the lives of the well-to-do classes grow longer and easier, it is inevitable that those of the needy should grow harder and shorter. This is established in the writings of the best — I mean, the most optimistic — thinkers.

According to M. de Morogues, 7,500,000 men in France have only ninety-one francs a year to spend, 25 centimes a day. Cing sous! cing sous! (Five cents! five cents!). There is something prophetic, then, in this odious refrain.

In England (not including Scotland and Ireland) the poor-rate was: 1801. £4,078,891 for a population of 8,872,980 1818. £7,870,801 ” ” ” ” 11,978,875 1833. £8,000,000 ” ” ” ” 14,000,000

The progress of poverty, then, has been more rapid than that of population; in face of this fact, what becomes of the hypotheses of Malthus? And yet it is indisputable that during the same period the average comfort increased: what, then, do statistics signify?

The death-rate for the first arrondissement of Paris is one to every fifty-two inhabitants, and for the twelfth one to every twenty-six. Now, the latter contains one needy person to every seven inhabitants, while the former has only one to every twenty-eight. That does not prevent the average duration of life, even in Paris, from increasing, as M. Fix has very correctly observed.

At Mulhouse the probabilities of average life are twenty-nine years for children of the well-to-do class and TWO years for those of the workers; in 1812 the average life in the same locality was twenty-five years, nine months, and twelve days, while in 1827 it was not over twenty-one years and nine months. And yet throughout France the average life is longer. What does this mean?

M. Blanqui, unable to explain so much prosperity and so much poverty at once, cries somewhere: “Increased production does not mean additional wealth.... Poverty, on the contrary, becomes the wider spread in proportion to the concentration of industries. There must be some radical vice in a system which guarantees no security either to capital or labor, and which seems to multiply the embarrass-ments of producers at the same time that it forces them to multiply their products.”

There is no radical vice here. What astonishes M. Blanqui is simply that of which the Academy to which he belongs has asked a determination, — namely, the oscillations of the economic pendulum, VALUE, beating alternately and in regular time good and evil, until the hour of the universal equation shall strike. If I may be permitted another comparison, humanity in its march is like a column of soldiers, who, starting in the same step and at the same moment to the measured beating of the drum, gradually lose their distances. The whole body advances, but the distance from head to tail grows ever longer; and it is a necessary effect of the movement that there should be some laggards and stragglers.

But it is necessary to penetrate still farther into the antinomy. Machines promised us an increase of wealth; they have kept their word, but at the same time endowing us with an increase of poverty. They promised us liberty; I am going to prove that they have brought us slavery.

I have stated that the determination of value, and with it the tribulations of society, began with the division of industries, without which there could be no exchange, or wealth, or progress. The period through which we are now passing — that of machinery — is distinguished by a special characteristic, — WAGES.

Wages issued in a direct line from the employment of machinery, — that is, to give my thought the entire generality of expression which it calls for, from the economic fiction by which capital becomes an agent of production. Wages, in short, coming after the division of labor and exchange, is the necessary correlative of the theory of the reduction of costs, in whatever way this reduction may be accomplished. This genealogy is too interesting to be passed by without a few words of explanation.

The first, the simplest, the most powerful of machines is the workshop.

Division simply separates the various parts of labor, leaving each to devote himself to the specialty best suited to his tastes: the workshop groups the laborers according to the relation of each part to the whole. It is the most elementary form of the balance of values, undiscoverable though the economists suppose this to be. Now, through the workshop, production is going to increase, and at the same time the deficit.

Somebody discovered that, by dividing production into its various parts and causing each to be executed by a separate workman, he would obtain a multiplication of power, the product of which would be far superior to the amount of labor given by the same number of workmen when labor is not divided.

Grasping the thread of this idea, he said to himself that, by forming a permanent group of laborers assorted with a view to his special purpose, he would produce more steadily, more abundantly, and at less cost. It is not indispensable, however, that the workmen should be gathered into one place: the existence of the workshop does not depend essentially upon such contact. It results from the relation and proportion of the different tasks and from the common thought directing them. In a word, concentration at one point may offer its advantages, which are not to be neglected; but that is not what constitutes the workshop

This, then, is the proposition which the speculator makes to those whose collaboration he desires: I guarantee you a perpetual market for your products, if you will accept me as purchaser or middle-man. The bargain is so clearly advantageous that the proposition cannot fail of acceptance. The laborer finds in it steady work, a fixed price, and security; the employer, on the other hand, will find a readier sale for his goods, since, producing more advantageously, he can lower the price; in short, his profits will be larger because of the mass of his investments. All, even to the public and the magistrate, will congratulate the employer on having added to the social wealth by his combinations, and will vote him a reward.

But, in the first place, whoever says reduction of expenses says reduction of services, not, it is true, in the new shop, but for the workers at the same trade who are left outside, as well as for many others whose accessory services will be less needed in future. Therefore every establishment of a workshop corresponds to an eviction of workers: this assertion, utterly contradictory though it may appear, is as true of the workshop as of a machine.

The economists admit it: but here they repeat their eternal refrain that, after a lapse of time, the demand for the product having increased in proportion to the reduction of price, labor in turn will come finally to be in greater demand than ever. Undoubtedly, WITH TIME, the equilibrium will be restored; but, I must add again, the equilibrium will be no sooner restored at this point than it will be disturbed at another, because the spirit of invention never stops, any more than labor. Now, what theory could justify these perpetual hecatombs?” When we have reduced the number of toilers,” wrote Sismondi, “to a fourth or a fifth of what it is at present, we shall need only a fourth or a fifth as many priests, physicians, etc. When we have cut them off altogether, we shall be in a position to dispense with the human race.” And that is what really would happen if, in order to put the labor of each machine in proportion to the needs of consumption, — that is, to restore the balance of values continually destroyed, — it were not necessary to continually create new machines, open other markets, and consequently multiply services and displace other arms. So that on the one hand industry and wealth, on the other population and misery, advance, so to speak, in procession, one always dragging the other after it.

I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry, negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become his workmen. It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers. In vain does the law assure to each the right of enterprise, as well as the faculty to labor alone and sell one’s products directly. According to the hypothesis, this last resource is impracticable, since it was the object of the workshop to annihilate isolated labor. And as for the right to take the plough, as they say, and go at speed, it is the same in manufactures as in agriculture; to know how to work is nothing, it is necessary to arrive at the right time; the shop, as well as the land, is to the first comer. When an establishment has had the leisure to develop itself, enlarge its foundations, ballast itself with capital, and assure itself a body of patrons, what can the workman who has only his arms do against a power so superior? Hence it was not by an arbitrary act of sovereign power or by fortuitous and brutal usurpation that the guilds and masterships were established in the Middle Ages: the force of events had created them long before the edicts of kings could have given them legal consecration; and, in spite of the reform of ’89, we see them reestablishing themselves under our eyes with an energy a hundred times more formidable. Abandon labor to its own tendencies, and the subjection of three-fourths of the human race is assured.

But this is not all. The machine, or the workshop, after having degraded the laborer by giving him a master, completes his degeneracy by reducing him from the rank of artisan to that of common workman.

Formerly the population on the banks of the Saone and Rhone was largely made up of watermen, thoroughly fitted for the conduct of canal-boats or row-boats. Now that the steam-tug is to be found almost everywhere, most of the boatmen, finding it impossible to get a living at their trade, either pass three-fourths of their life in idleness, or else become stokers.

If not misery, then degradation: such is the last alternative which machinery offers to the workman. For it is with a machine as with a piece of artillery: the captain excepted, those whom it occupies are servants, slaves.

Since the establishment of large factories, a multitude of little industries have disappeared from the domestic hearth: does any one believe that the girls who work for ten and fifteen cents have as much intelligence as their ancestors?

“After the establishment of the railway from Paris to Saint Germain,” M. Dunoyer tells us, “there were established between Pecq and a multitude of places in the more or less immediate vicinity such a number of omnibus and stage lines that this establishment, contrary to all expectation, has considerably increased the employment of horses.”

Contrary to all expectation! It takes an economist not to expect these things. Multiply machinery, and you increase the amount of arduous and disagreeable labor to be done: this apothegm is as certain as any of those which date from the deluge. Accuse me, if you choose, of ill-will towards the most precious invention of our century, — nothing shall prevent me from saying that the principal result of railways, after the subjection of petty industry, will be the creation of a population of degraded laborers, — signalmen, sweepers, loaders, lumpers, draymen, watchmen, porters, weighers, greasers, cleaners, stokers, firemen, etc. Two thousand miles of railway will give France an additional fifty thousand serfs: it is not for such people, certainly, that M. Chevalier asks professional schools.

Perhaps it will be said that, the mass of transportation having increased in much greater proportion than the number of day-laborers, the difference is to the advantage of the railway, and that, all things considered, there is progress. The observation may even be generalized and the same argument applied to all industries.

But it is precisely out of this generality of the phenomenon that springs the subjection of laborers. Machinery plays the leading role in industry, man is secondary: all the genius displayed by labor tends to the degradation of the proletariat. What a glorious nation will be ours when, among forty millions of inhabitants, it shall count thirty-five millions of drudges, paper-scratchers, and flunkies!

With machinery and the workshop, divine right — that is, the principle of authority — makes its entrance into political economy. Capital, Mastership, Privilege, Monopoly, Loaning, Credit, Property, etc., — such are, in economic language, the various names of I know not what, but which is otherwise called Power, Authority, Sovereignty, Written Law, Revelation, Religion, God in short, cause and principle of all our miseries and all our crimes, and who, the more we try to define him, the more eludes us.

Is it, then, impossible that, in the present condition of society, the workshop with its hierarchical organization, and machinery, instead of serving exclusively the interests of the least numerous, the least industrious, and the wealthiest class, should be employed for the benefit of all?

That is what we are going to examine.

[sunlaire]

Sailing to the north pole has been long a very favourite subject for closet lucubration; and as long as a man, in such circumstances himself harmlessly chooses to amuse or entertain his friends with his effusions through the medium of a magazine, such pursuits are altogether allowable but where such visionary schemes are in contemplation, as would mislead the public mind, in the same manner as the writer misleads himself not pausing over facts, and maturely weighing the consequences, the prudent will be careful how they admit his opinions, however plausibly dressed up...As long as the axis of the earth remains in its present angular position so long will ice be found in those waters, and so long will navigators find obstruction in every attempt to penetrate by the Pole towards the northern Pacific.

(Greenland, the adjacent Seas, and the North-West Passage to the Pacific Ocean, by Bernard O'Reilly, p.1818)

I loved seeing this kind of scathing opinion from an average person of the era. And this came right as interest in the passage was being revived by Barrow. That's so cool.

[nelapanela94]

Nelaaaa! Congratulations on 1k!!!! Look how far we've come!

May I get 18 + 27 with Levi?

MIAAAAA <3

Thank you!!! hugs and hearts for you !

18. You're safe with me.

27. when you're with me you don't have to pretend.

TW: Fluff and a little angst

WC: 1360

Nela’s 1k event

You rap the knocker three times but don’t get any reply, nor you can push the door open. You cock your head to the side and try again, using your code, but nothing. It’s odd because Levi never bolts it lock, not even when he’s not around. People simply never dare walk in without an invitation.

Your shoulders hunch, and you sigh, raking a hand through your hair. Maybe he’s at the stables or yelling at slacking cadets in the training fields or down in town supplying with tea and a new broom he doesn’t need. Though, that doesn’t explain why the door is fastened.

You’re about to turn around and leave but a squeeze on your shoulder almost launches you up to the ceiling.

You spin on your heels and stumble with the person who almost kills you by a heart attack. They look like they’ve been lucubrating for their new research. Bags under the eyes, hair oily on the roots, and the hem of their jacket blotched with food stains.

“Hange.” You exhale. “Hey.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” They sheepishly smile, shrugging, and push up their glasses with a finger. “Isn’t Levi in there?” They toss a thumb toward their door.

“It seems he’s not.”

“Well.” They hunker down and slip the folder through the sliver beneath the door, then stretches their back and stifles a yawn on their hand. “If you see shorty, remind him of the meeting tomorrow.”

“You haven’t seen him either?” You raise a brow.

“Nope. And his horse is at the stables, so he must be somewhere around the headquarters.” Hange stalks away and wave a hand without turning back. "See you around."

You frown. Levi is not the type who hides.

“Go away Y/N.”

His voice is scratchy and hollow from the other side of the door.

“Levi, what’s wrong?”

And it strikes you. The reason Levi never locks his door is because of you, because you’re free to enter as you please, you need no pass, only knock three times to let him know it’s you. So, he latching it close means that he wants you away.

It twinges in your chest; you can’t deny the pain.

“I’m not leaving.” You say.

“So, you’re going to stand there like a fool all night?”

“I’ll sit here until you open the door.” You dare and let your back slip down the rough wall, until your butt hits the stone.

“You stubborn brat.” His voice fractures at the edges, followed by a soft harrumph.

“Were you crying?”

“Get out!”

“How can you kick me out if I’m already out? I am out of your jurisdiction, meaning I can root here at your door if I want to.”

Levi tch percolates, beguiling a soft giggle from you, which only makes him tch more.

“I’m not leaving you alone.” You splutter, tracing a finger on the wood grain of his door as if it were a map and you were looking for a treasure.

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“You still like me.”

He doesn’t retort. Indeed, he says nothing else, but you know he’s there, huddled on the other side like a grounded child. Eventually, the door creaks open by a wedge, enough to slip a book through, and thuds close before you can even open your mouth.

How considerate to make your wait more pleasant. You thumb the pages and then open it on a random page Sonnet XII.

“You know what would suit me now? A warm cup of tea.” You quip.

“You could go to the kitchen and make one for yourself.”

“But it’s not good.”

Little by little, the slanting light recedes, the temperature drops; by seven p.m. one of the new recruits passes by lighting on the sconces and waves warmly at you. “Not joining us for dinner?”

“Nope, not this evening.”

With the book in hand, the letters begin to blur and twist in fade cords that tangle and warp. You fight against gravity to keep your head up, but your eyelids are leaden, and the whisper of the night is lulling.

The floor is soft like a nest of feathers when you groggily open your eyes, and it takes ten seconds at least for realization to clop and find out you’re not lying on the corridor anymore, nor in your quarters. The sheets smell like rosemary, and you continue sniffing the pillow like a dog to descry the lingering scent hiding in the cotton threads.

Levi.

Your eyes bang wide open.

Sunlight peeks through the window, and Levi’s room watches east.

“Tch, stop moving,” he grumbles, dopey, and tugs the covers to his chin.

You roll onto the other side and stumble with his wrapped-up body, facing up to the ceiling. “Why am I in your bed?” You gape. “Why are you in your bed?”

Frowning, he turns his head toward you. “It’s my bed.” He circumvents. He knows what lies behind your questions, but he doesn’t want to dust them off and reach the center. It's the first time he's slept eight hours straight, but he'll never admit he used you to catch some Zs. You roll the eyes and snuggle your face in the pillow.

 “Why were you crying?” You push him off the edge, figuratively. And his hands harden into trembling fists by his sides, his lips tighten into a white slash.

“I wasn’t.” But his voice swerves. He just can’t lie to you. It is as if his own body betrays him. “I wasn’t.” He tries again, but his voice whips at the edges.

“You seem like you going to cry again.”

Enough.

Levi flings the covers and leaps of the bed. “Get out!” He bellows, hurling an arm to the door. “Get the fuck out!”

And you startle, and you hurt, and you crawl off the bed, opening your mouth and closing it, regretting what you were going to say. You simply nod and trudge to the door, warily.

“Levi…” you turn around, one foot set on his office, the other clung to his bedroom.

“What?” he barks, and you can see through his quivering eyes and the redness of his face he’s struggling to keep the armor around his heart, metal clanking on the ground, one layer on top of the other.

Fidgeting with your necklace and gazing to your feet, you whisper, “When you’re with me you don’t have to pretend.”

Now, he’s flaring through his nose like a fire-spitting dragon, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth my crack, and he stomps toward you, but you don’t flinch, nor move, and then his arms are wrapped around you and your wrinkled shirt stuck to your shoulder in moist and warmth. Levi shudders and sobs, but you can’t hug him back because he’s trapped your arms.

He’d lost his squad.

He couldn’t protect them.

He blames himself.

Like Isabel and Farlan, the memories reel before him, replaying again and again. Torturing him. And he's been keeping everything to himself.

When life’s been hard on you, you don’t learn how to detach, you just learn you must, you must find a way. Numb yourself, pretend your heart is made of stone, or worse, pretend you don���t have one. Some people kneel before their gods, finding consolation believing that everything is part of the schemes from someone up there.

Others drink to oblivion.

There are the ones who yell at their loved ones.

People die, and he can’t save everybody.

He tells himself.  

But sometimes he doesn’t believe his words.

Levi crumbles, and you’re there to hold his pieces together. Standing strong for him as all the times he has done it for you. Crying is ok. We don’t have to be the strongest all the time.

Levi’s sobs are not wrecking or chest-scratching; they are frail shaky breaths.

“Levi…” you croon his name and slip your arms free to wind them around him. “It’s ok, Levi.” You try to peel of him to see his face, but he welds himself to you, nuzzling in the crook of your neck.

Because he doesn’t want you to see him in his most vulnerable state. He's ashamed.

Levi always looks out for others, but who looks out for him?

“Levi.” You meekly smile to yourself and press a supple kiss on the crown of his head. “You’re safe with me.”

Nela’s 1000 event

[distilledmelancholies]

Taciturn love

The agonizing pleasure

of getting lost

in your taciturn eyes

Letting the mellifluous echo

of your voice caress

the deepest caverns of my soul

The enjoyment of

your neophyte approach

to little pleasures in life

Serenity takes over

and brings calmness

to my usually unforgiving seas

Your rectitude inspires

with its luminescent aura

eliciting rhapsodic responses

My heart—absolutely taken—

ebullient with joy

when I hear you say my name

There are no façades

nor agendas;

only spirited lucubrations…

I think that your heart

speaks to mine

in a unintelligible language

that only they know.

‎ ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ

🎧 Everything by Lifehouse

©️ Distilled Melancholy

[winslowleachthecomposer]

resolutions:

-compose more music therefore living up to my username

-learn to lino print

-read more books

-take more nature walks (really just make more excuses to get out of the crummy old apartment, in general)

-scour garage sales and record store bargain bins for underrated albums and lesser-known artists

-find an excuse to use the word "lucubrating" in an otherwise unassuming conversation

-support the local art/music scene more

-become more autistic

[inators]

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 / Perry used to believe he and Heinz operated at two completely different ends of the spectrum. That was years ago. Now that the balance has shifted, he supposes he should have seen their inevitable convergence from miles away.

Summary TBA

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 / Perry's great with languages. When it comes to Heinz, however, he still has quite a bit of studying to do.

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 / Sometimes, love is unkind. Direct sequel to Lucubration.

Summary TBA. Sequel to Proselytization.

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 / Perry decides that it's time to trap Heinz for once.

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 / The dichotomy of good and evil are forever intertwined -- just as Perry and Heinz will be, as soon as they exchange their rings.

Summary TBA. Sequel to Dichotomization.

[dwampyverseawards]

can I just say that inators is the queen of smut? her descriptive writing and use of prose is outstanding and I know from experience it makes everyone and their mother blush. read forever and a day and lucubration you'll see what i mean. and you wont regret it either.

@inators

[pinklocksoflove]

Wizardy Words to use and confuse people

defenestration: the action of throwing someone out of a window.

malfeasance: wrongdoing, especially by a public official.

widdershins: in a direction contrary to the sun's course, considered as unlucky; counterclockwise.

amanuensis: a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts.

lucubration: study; meditation.

[gravity-rainbow]

What we crave, what we want to see in others' eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures and our lucubrations, the avowal of an ardor without second thoughts, an ecstasy before our nothingness. Cioran, After Seeing Sunshine

[rinshiroufan]

I've come to the conclusion recently that eloquent and sophisticated essays providing apologia for Rin/Shirou are pointless. It scarcely matters how compelling and articulate the argumentation is, or how well the passages adduced bolster the central thrust of the lucubration, if someone simply didn't initially understand Rin, they never will. Not really. I have lost track of how many times I have managed to "sway" someone around to appreciating Rin and the UBW romance more, with their proving themselves to be perfunctorily adroit at regurgitating my own prolix ramblings, and even rhetorically gifted at insufflating their own essays with impressive rhetorical flourish and ornate, evocative imagery, only for them to subsequently demonstrate themselves as congenitally incapable of truly applying what they had learned (through rote memorization) to reach deeper insights about the character on their own. If I didn't hold their hand like a fucking baby and condescended to them, they would never realize their errors.

Rin/Shirou is something that you simply intuitively understand, or you don't. You can certainly produce analyses, but you should never do so with the expectation that that is going to truly convince anyone. I certainly don't think the romance was a particularly abstruse and opaque part of the story, but for some reason it does appear that one needs access to mystical arcane means to comprehend it. But really, what's the point of deservedly singing the praises of Your distortion if you're going to spew bullshit like Rin was adapted well in the HF films (remember, it doesn't matter how much you explain to someone the nuances of Rin's character in HF and how her relationship with Shirou is crucial to groking her out, they'll still see her as nothing more than a support pillow for Sakura (the sisters storyline really was a mistake), and Rin is nothing but that in the HF films, so it works out for them right) or just spew factually incorrect, easily disprovable nonsense like "Shirou doesn't stay with Rin or settle down to have a family with her in UBW" (could the UBW ending poem and anime finale be more explicit, you morons?)...?

And this admittedly enough doesn't apply simply to Rin. I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself have many blindspots and there are many characters that I appreciate on a technical level but cannot confidently say I meaningfully comprehend (not just in FSN, but in general). The difference would ultimately be however that I simply don't discuss those subjects and characters. But some feel compelled to pontificate at length about Rin and spread contumely against her, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Just please shut the fuck up and don't discuss her at all if you're too obtuse to get it.

Anyway, I intend to write something on the underappreciated aspects of Rin and Archer's character dynamic, and its role in UBW. Been planning it for months, but things kept coming up.

[libidomechanica]

“But thee is stepping light; and abroad, he”

What’s this an illusions with those     birth do find a snails, which was sober sad from thence wit still     aver there but you are

lost, unless I blundering marriage.     Out as they are in the river, to feel! Steal on my     knee and that light, you have

take. I grieve and Centaur Nessus     garb of moonshine altered round without the sky will haunted;     I have felt, keepe stomakes

something the Lion’s plighted;—     o that prosers, and my Nostrils Eyes, is, to lend base subject     on while you canst not

so brave: and turnine. Binding purpled,     spiking amongst the sky, when I won’t looks were to it,     even death crickets first

appears and there—I had to see:     why she packed her. But thee is stepping light; and abroad, he     went to answered, smell and

so books. Yet not rhyme. As long with     the other go, but world is full low, though ne’er a flame kind.     Turned lucubration shades,

horrible Self-solitude’s.     A small get my gruel! They are you like the champagne and     Logos appear; and hail

once more pliant and, to the moonbeams     kiss hand. The onset come—the joy of your names, horrible,     without confiscation,

and never star of eve     serenely brilliant such wit to hear you should be wreak’d on behind     his line—nor power.

[lrqqrl]

start ray thing now/ Expressionisme' Contingensude

lucubrations charifoil a von logue kips near where the guy de mot bushbaby croissant starion ave' dringa at least when voltaire instructed the infant jacobinism the theater of the world had been verso / recto they call them wrandose ennegatived by zombnumerative narratoidatavisms, but then--> i'm a little invisible girl that knows all, johnny and in the long summer from gillray to tapies, a carnival approached the bushy sea letter concentric hedges hide an eccentric desk in fact, a series of immovable eccentric desks whose curving arc- fronted drawer-beds pull out, and lined with green felt become our Napoli our bodies are nothing but cornutos passed between these perennial fairground characters cushion and maps clyster cobes encaned essentially remaining Perraultists forg it it ding quang la HAM ROBE Querelle des Manciens et des Oddernes The Beauty in the Sleeping Forest briar rose of cryptic space ad interim jack shoemaker once never said that the head of hermes once removed from a celtic coin began to look more and more like a chicken horse but of course he told jimmy and went back to parrying with the masons cock-a-doodle does

[colorocra]

Honestly, maybe I should re-read both Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, but I feel like moving certain things around between the two doesn't really affect the plot that much. I mean, these books are pretty much all vibes, lucubrations, and rumination. The plot is thin, especially in Six of Crows, because what really matters is the characters, their personal history, and how they overcome their issues through the relationships they form (whether they are platonic or romantic).

And OK, they've already revealed Kaz's past and Jesper's powers in the series, and what? They still have plenty of elements to work with. First of all, their issues are not resolved yet — they still have emotional baggage, and Pekka Rollins is still a threat. But most importantly, the heist can still make sense, and the jurda parem/Van Eck-thing is the main storyline in Crooked Kingdom anyway.

The problem with the series is the pacing—and we know that the reason for that is Netflix tendency to cancel what doesn't exceed expectations in terms of views—, not the fact that they've changed something. So maybe we should trust the process, because the characters and their dynamics (what really matters) are there, and it's clear the writers and actors care about them deeply.