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Prabhat Sarkar's theory of recurring "warrior," "intellectual" and "acquisitive" ages, always in that order, harmonizes perfectly with the S&H saeculum, in that each such age encompasses two S&H saecula - the current cycle's warrior age commencing at the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses and ending with the Glorious Revolution, and its ensuing intellectual age ending with the Civil War in the United States, and roughly concomitantly elsewhere.
The present acquisitive age is now in the last days of its second saeculum - so a new warrior age is slated to begin with the resolution of this 4T; and it is quite plausible that what we have been calling "modernity" will end also, forcing presumably Millennial historians to call the foregoing something else, because the new warrior age will usher in what will then be "modern."
Discuss (originally posted in the old-school Fourth Turning forum).
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
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The Warrior begins the organization of society, and hence civilization as well as communal identity. Thus the women do not belong in practice to the berserker from the neighboring tribe who can seize them in a raid. The Warrior who can fashion weapons can also fashion farming tools (thus "swords into plowshares") and might learn how to use the technique for building a defensive ditch into an irrigation ditch. The Warrior is typically very much a man (the Warrior sounds much like a Civic type) , and while he may be able to do things on a big scale he is not good at the fine details. Others will have to work on the details for which the Warrior has neither the talent nor the temperament. But there's not much inequality; there's been no time for accumulation of assets in private hands.
So the Warrior might win battles on the field yet lose the gains at the negotiating table. For that he needs some adept negotiators. The newly-civilized order needs a code of laws, some record-keeping, mathematicians to do some calculating, some magistrates to codify and enforce the laws, and some technicians to monitor the irrigation ditches or other public works. There may be a need for priests to connect the rules of law to the will of powers far beyond humans. And the successful Warrior wants his palace decorated, so art comes into being. Those activities are for thinkers (the Intellectuals) more than for those who order and initiate big projects. Yes, the priest might 'only' be a witch-doctor, but he might be necessary. The Artist-like
The Intellectual is the person who first makes his money by thinking more than by doing. But it is hardly surprising that the intellectuals turn on each other. Smart people often get the hint as Intellectual factions start killing each other over sedition and heresy and start to get scared. Some smart people turn to business which can use the record-keeping, calculating, and fine-tuning words. That is commerce, something that the Warriors find too detailed and that the Intellectual elite consider "beneath" their noble selves. (Just think of the contempt that Plato shows for merchants in his Republic. A merchant culture is prosperous -- but it also creates great disparities of economic result, and it also creates a climate of invidious greed. As the merchant culture attracts attention for its successes the common man sees easy money and starts wanting it.
The masses want to get rich quick, and they become receptive to demagogues and con artists. They don't want to start with a shoestring business that requires work to grow; they want it all NOW! It just does not work. Everything falls to pieces.
In comes the Warrior to set things straight.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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Christianity was founded during the first warrior age.
Islam was founded during the first intellectual age - and Muslims (the Moors) invaded and occupied Spain, Portugal and Sicily.
As the first "acquisitive-cum-laborer" age was winding down, Muslims (the Turks) destroyed the Christian Byzantine Empire.
Fast-forward to the present:
Islam is baaaaack, menacing Christianity again - and in an acquisitive-cum-laborer age!
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
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Oh this is interesting. Hadn't heard of Sarkar before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressiv...governance
My first instinct is to align his archetypes with S&H, but not finding that easy.
Warrior - HERO
Intellectual - PROPHET
Acquisitor - NOMAD
Laborer - ARTIST
Doesn't see quite right. "Laborer" is hard to fit.
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
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maybe...
Warrior - HERO
Intellectual - ARTIST
Acquisitor - PROPHET
Laborer - NOMAD
This is similar to what pbrower suggested above.
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
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08-24-2022, 03:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-25-2022, 02:54 AM by pbrower2a.)
(08-23-2022, 08:45 AM)sbarrera Wrote: maybe...
Warrior - HERO
Intellectual - ARTIST
Acquisitor - PROPHET
Laborer - NOMAD
This is similar to what pbrower suggested above.
Sarkar's theory operates on a longer time-frame than the Saeculum even if it has obvious parallels. It's obvious that the warrior-builder (the building is of fortresses and barracks) is a Civic/Hero type. I see the Intellectual role split between administrators, technician-engineers, record-keepers, chroniclers, poets, and decorators (Adaptive/Artists) and the priests, ideologists, and executive bureaucrats (Prophet-Idealists). Acquisitors might include dissident Prophets who find that putting efforts into commerce is safer than getting into the cut-throat arguments between ideologically-rifted and theologically-rifted intellectuals who find ways to do nasty things to people; most are in fact Reactive-Nomad types. Here at best are the salesmen who fit the product to the customer, the merchants, the manufacturers, the brokers, and the bankers that prosperous societies need. Business formation is safe because the up-in-the cloud thinkers see commerce as too base for them.
The social chaos comes when the Laborer emerges as the numerically-largest class. They see easy money and want a share of it despite their minimal contribution. These people are not as courageous and organized as the Warriors who have largely been eclipsed. They are incapable of the refined and practical thought and creative ability of Adaptive types. They cannot apply their minds to anything high and noble as the priestly-ideological wing of the Intellectual style. They are not clever enough to be business owners or managers and too witless to satisfy makers and customers. They want easy money with little effort. Laborers are the class that expands as Acquisitors create wealth but have no idea of how to pay people appropriately. In Marxist terms, the laborers are the proletariat.
Marx gets something very wrong by lionizing the proletariat. The raw laborer of course deserves a fair shake in life, but the proletarian is unable to lead troops into battle or build military necessities. He is uncreative and unimaginative. He can't do abstract thought or read between the lines; he may be barely literate, but he can't read "between the lines". Any blockhead can learn to read the words in a language with a phonetic alphabet or abjad (Arabic and Hebrew have abjads -- they do not show vowels as letters), but understanding the meaning of what one reads and testing it for internal consistency is a different matter.
OK, but some laborers go far beyond that stereotype and do something remarkable. Sure! If like Zhukov one leads troops in battle then one is not a proletarian even in a supposedly-proletarian state. If one writes soaring poetry or composes great songs (or longer works) then one is no longer proletarian even if one has a proletarian background no matter how sympathetic one is to the workers. Shostakovich and Yevtushenko were not proles. If one does excellent science, mathematics, or linguistics, then one is not a prole. American academics often had great respect for their Soviet counterparts. If one starts a successful business, then one is not a prole... because astute management of capital, resources, time, and labor is not proletarian. (The Soviet state long sought to repress that, treating it as crime and treating its practitioners as criminals -- and what passed for entrepreneurialism in the old Soviet Union was borderline-criminal). To be remarkable in any way, as in playing the violin like Oistrakh, playing the cello like Rostropovich, playing the piano like Gilels, or conducting like Kondrashin is to distinguish oneself far from the masses. The true proles are stupid, crass, and superstitious.
Marx was wrong about the proletariat; it would never lead anything.
Nations go through ages of warriors, intellectuals, acquisitors, and in turn laborers. One of Sarkar's pupils, Ravi Batra, interpreted most revolutions happening when society went from one style of leaders to another. The Iranian Revolution that toppled Reza Shah Pahlavi II as his warrior style became stale and objectionable while the more intellectual clerics offered something more moral and equitable (the idea that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in any way moral or equitable is absurd, but the clergy got to decide life and death of anyone not a cipher in society and that terror is highly effective. The Russian Revolution of 1917 happened as the soldiers (the Bolsheviks were originally military, and the Soviet Union was replete with military shtick throughout its existence) supplanted acquisitors who had overstayed their welcome and brought about chaos in a bungled war. Batra depicted America in a late stage of Acquisitor dominion as shown in intensifying inequality and bureaucratization and the diminishing returns from capitalist enterprise if new.
Trump is certainly not a warrior. He is not an intellectual of any kind. He's not a real capitalist as much as he is an heir to a real-estate fortune and a producer of schlock television. He is as intellectually hollow as your friendly neighborhood ignoramus, and he relates to such people well by pandering to bigotry, superstition, and anger generally unwelcome in polite society but common among the ill-educated. The age of leadership by a pied-piper like Trump is short because it is inept, abusive, and offensive.
Note well: we already see signs that the military and the intelligence services are becoming more decisive in establishing what is possible. A President who got along with them well (Obama) may have been re-elected over the dead body of Osama bin Laden. Joe Biden could do nothing to stop the January 6 Putsch, but the Armed Services (Joint Chiefs of Staff) could declare that the President-elect (who had no power at the time except for persuasion, and he was unable to persuade those involved in the Capitol takeover) was going to be inaugurated. As President he has let the Armed and Intelligence Services do what they do best, and if Joe Biden should be re-elected, then he has the CIA to thank for the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri.
It may be ironic, but the people who most support diversity and human rights are now the ones who most insist upon law and order and the rule of law. The demise of Donald Trump is the result of generals declaring that they will not support the Capitol Putsch and that any stunts that result in the maintenance of a Trump Presidency will be void. I'm not saying that we will have a military coup soon, but liberals are beginning to recognize that the rule of law requires law and order.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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pbrower,
You description of the succession of Sartar's archetypes reminds me of Ibn Khaldun's description of the successive generations of a dynasty, which steadily lose the qualities that made the dynasty successful in its founding era. Khaldun was writing in the late middle ages (ca. 1400). I'll create a separate thread for his work on the Theories of History subforum, but for now here is a relevant quote from his book "The Muqqadimah"-
Quote:The builder of the family's glory knows what it cost him to do the work, and he keeps the qualities that created his glory and made it last. The son who comes after him had personal contact with his father and thus learned those things from him. However, his is inferior to him in this respect, inasmuch as a person who learns things through study is inferior to a person who knows them from practical application. The third generation must be content with imitation and, in particular, with reliance upon tradition. This member is inferior to him of the second generation, inasmuch as a person who relies upon tradition is inferior to a person who exercises independent judgment.
The fourth generation, then, is inferior to the preceding ones in every respect. Its member has lost the qualities that preserved the edifice of its glory. He despises (those qualities). [...long diatribe against the fourth generation excised...]
[...]The four generations can be defined as the builder, the one who has personal contact with the builder, the one who relies on tradition, and the destroyer.
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
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08-25-2022, 08:37 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-25-2022, 12:23 PM by Eric the Green.)
(08-23-2022, 08:43 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Oh this is interesting. Hadn't heard of Sarkar before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressiv...governance
My first instinct is to align his archetypes with S&H, but not finding that easy.
Warrior - HERO
Intellectual - PROPHET
Acquisitor - NOMAD
Laborer - ARTIST
Doesn't seem quite right. "Laborer" is hard to fit.
The ancient classes are similar:
clergy = prophet
noble = civic hero
merchant = nomad
peasant = artist
More connections including these with the four-fold world and sacred center, using the sacred Bach Toccata in F as template:
https://philosopherswheel.com/toccata.htm#imperial
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