Chapter 7: The Dialectic, History, and Climate Change: Part II

To replace this Eurocentric mode of analysis, we now have the triangle compass that analyzes classes based on how they relate to power, instead of how they relate to the particularly European forms of power. Instead of treating the clerical, intellectual, military, and middle classes as different phenomena, we can recognize that at some level, they're all paid better than workers to keep the workers in line somehow, and analyze them all as the petties they are. We also can replace Marx' worst idea with a more directly dialectical materialistic analysis of class via the triangle compass, and use the triangle compass to dialectically analyze the strands of history, which I will demonstrate now.

For our purposes, we will examine periods of human history based on the locations of the societies that predominated in that period, whether they lived in settled or deserted lands, and whether they lived in wet or dry lands. This environmental analysis will allow us to draw out coming trends of relevance, and guide our strategy in ways a straight class analysis might not.

We begin in the dry desert. It was here where the first great empires arose. Not every empire, of course, but the most important ones. The Persians arose in military alliance with nomads called the Medes (ancestors of the Kurds, interestingly), and two world religions sprang from their empire: Zoroastrianism and Manichaeanism. Israel and Judah were founded by wandering desert tribes. The Muslim caliphates sprang out of Arabia. Various Hindu kingdoms that arose to predominance in India emerged out of the deserts of Rajasthan, as did the Sikh kingdom in Punjab. The Mexica (Aztecs to gringos like me) came to Lake Texcoco from the deserts of what's now the American Southwest, from the land they fled called Aztlan, and brought religious reforms with them in regards to human sacrifice. (Having researched local Native oral histories, I have a whole lot more possibly controversial things to say about Aztlan as a historian, but this is not the place. Expect an essay on the subject in the future.)

And we already see the first commonality between these dry desert empires: religion. Religious faith is the institution that welded the first empires together; the god-kings of Sumer really expected to be treated as such, and usually were, and this is why. If you lead a society that lives in the desert, you almost certainly lead nomads. These nomads will have a military edge over settled folks until the advent of gunpowder (see: the Mongols), which is why they get to found the first empires.

But, being used to surviving harsh conditions, there will undoubtedly be a set of rules for survival and social cohesion codified in the most vivid, enduring way your society can muster: a religion. This religion will be founded by some proto-socialist warrior who will share the loot of war more fairly than their predecessors, and thereby through the loyalty that buys, have a military edge necessary to found an empire large enough to let them endure through time as someone's religious figure. This religion will ideally also give their warriors a reason to fight when further battle is personally hopeless but beneficial to their society, and it will provide enough social solidarity to keep late capitalism and the crumbling of their empire at bay as long as possible. If enough of their followers live in a climate where it matters, maybe some dietary restrictions join this institutional memeplex so their followers don't catch the ol' trichinosis in an era before refrigeration.

Of course, any religious-based society is inherently a conservative one, so the environmental conditions tell us something about class after all. The working class in the form of the nomadic soldiery is too important to the empire for its needs and outlook not to matter most, not just to the leader but to the conquered cities. The leader is their god-king or prophet or judge or tlatoani or what have you, and the moment they forget that, they invite ruin onto the empire. What most atheists would today consider the absurd claims of most religions once had a deadly-serious purpose.

But that unity brought solidarity; those organized religions often helped the poor, not just taking their tithes. The more solidarity a religion brought, the stronger its empire became, to the point where it's just about an evolutionary principle at work: the later a religion arises, the more it tends to address the needs of the poor. Buddhism was fairly non-materialist, Judaism had a social-democratic land tenure system built into the Law, Islam had a formalized welfare state built into sharia, and Sikhism was literally once a theocratic worker's state where anyone within ten miles of a gurdwara ate a healthy vegan meal - not because the Sikhs were vegans, but in case the people being fed were.

Continue reading Part III