Babel And Capitalism

The story of "The Tower of Babel" is found in the Old Testament of the Bible, in Genesis 11: 1 - 9. I've quoted it in my post Legacy Of Babel, three days ago. Today we'll dive into its real meaning and it relates to capitalism.

The Bible was written long before capitalism was introduced to our world, of course, so there's no direct relation here. However, the very same thing that The Lord saw and that made Him angry with humankind, is at the core of the capitalist ideology. People with a surface level knowledge of the Old Testament believe that God was angry at the people who would later become known as the Babylonians because their tower reached all the way up into the heavens, which is the domain of The Lord, our God. But when we read the text carefully we see that there's no mention of God becoming angry for that reason. I'll quote it once again here, so that you may see exactly why God confused the languages and scattered these people all over the Earth:

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
_{source: BibleGateway}

Here's what The Lord said: "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." Cooperation granting us the possibility to achieve great feats, that's what made God angry, not the height of the tower. The fact that they spoke one language and therefore could organize and combine their efforts to "make a name for ourselves," that's what God could not abide. If you haven't done so already, follow the above link to the BibleGateway website and take the time to read Genesis, at least the first 11 chapters to get a taste for where the GOP gets their quaint ideas about traditional hierarchies from. From the fact that God doesn't want "His" children to gain knowledge, to the fact that women were created as man's "helpers," to the extremely jealous authoritative figure that is The Lord Himself, in whose image man (not woman) was created; it's as if we're describing the theocracy-seeking SCOTUS that's destroying American democracy right now...

Genesis also is a great help for capitalists, as it was for Kings and Feudal Lords; although capitalism itself is relatively new, it changed nothing about the underlying class relations from the preceding centuries. There has always existed the fundamental division between those who own the means of production, and those who have to work for them to stay alive. In Genesis, God is the capitalist; He owns the Earth and all vegetation and living creatures on it. And He sets the conditions under which His children can exercise dominion over all He had created. The people who became the Babylonians after The Lord had confused their languages, are akin to unions and unionization. Like any capitalist worth their name, The Lord committed the primordial act of union-busting. The commoners aren't to be allowed to join forces. Instead they must be scattered and pitted against each other; "divide and conquer" or "divide and rule" is in fact a Holy commend in the handbook of any capitalist or secular ruler.

And of course let's not forget Primal Sin; God Himself has ordained that, as punishment for being seduced by the serpent to eat from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," women shall suffer great pains while performing their primary task (according to the Bible, not me) of giving birth:

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

And to the man (Adam) he said:

Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

That's Genesis 3, "The Fall." No more Garden of Eden for you. Only hard work will gain you the food you need to survive. This was the result of the first attempt by God's children to rise to His level, by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The second attempt at upwards progression, by combining efforts in Babylonia, was punished by union-busting as described above. Like I said; capitalism changed nothing about the classical and Biblical ideas about the owners and workers, and any attempt by workers to better their fate at the cost of the powers invested in the owner-class, is punished, struck down by The Powers That Be.

So there you have it, another rant by a hopeless leftist atheist who sees links, relations, dependencies and associations everywhere, even in places where they might not exist. Or do they..? ;-)

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