An Indian historian-philosopher Prabhat Sarkar (1921-1990) suggests that history is itself cyclical based upon what sorts of people are the elites in a predictable succession from soldiers and builders, intellectuals (priests, teachers, accountants, diplomats, and administrators), entrepreneurs (enough said), and finally laborers.
So imagine that some primitive tribe sees itself under siege from a neighboring tribe that seeks to kill the men, steal the livestock and foodstuffs, and save the women... for themselves. If that primitive tribe has any desire to survive, then it will train a militia, fabricate swords or spears, and build palisades or other fortifications and possibly barracks. Someone will start barking out orders and train warriors, and there is your chief. The alternative is extinction, which means that that tribe disappears into the mists of prehistory. No other sort of leader can preserve one's tribe.
After the war the organization remains. People are no longer so anarchic. Food supplies are more secure because the spears good for killing enemy tribesmen are also good for spearing fish or deer (the nutritive quality of food increases). Farmers who were recently warriors are better disciplined. But know well: that organization has a price, and that can be met only with taxes (and by tax collectors). Formal justice is necessary just to enforce taxes, so there will be courts and judges even if those are unprofessional and part-time. The leader will need story-tellers to exalt his greatness as people's memories fade. There may be a need for shamans or priests to establish some Power behind the new organized order. Maintenance of the palisades will be a public expenditure. Those elites are intellectuals, typically smarter than the soldiers. With them come the obvious problems. Intellectuals can get extremely arrogant and narcissistic, and they readily turn on each other with lethal disputes over such a question as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Smart people, and an intellectual-driven culture fosters a large number of them, find that they can instead turn to commerce. Maybe they can deal timber for the repair of palisades. They might establish a money supply to establish some lifeblood of trade. They might trade with neighboring tribes that recently were at war with them. "You have something I don't have and I have something you don't have. Let's deal". They may be fashioning the tools and weapons, carts, and storage bins. This is the era of the businessman. They establish businesses that run as quickly as possible on autopilot. Their heirs become passive owners who need not innovate at anything other than keeping labor cheap, dividing the 'market' to make people captive clients, and gouging those clients. Satisfying customers, something to be expected when capitalists are still innovators, is inevitable at first. Once the innovation ends, people not the capitalists become nothing more than toilers and income streams. It is far easier to collect rents from tenants who have nowhere to go than to build the original apartments... especially when those tenements become slums. There may be profit in mass low culture... but to keep it profitable that mass low culture must overwhelm anything intellectually rich or demanding. People get paid well for becoming questionable performers, and part of their pay is that those performers get to live in sybaritic indulgence without having to show any noblesse oblige. These performers become the models for youth: sports stars, film stars, and pop musicians.
What's the problem? The heirs make it all look easy, and anything novel and of high quality requires much sacrifice to get good enough. The people who work for them often see the entrepreneurs such as storekeepers and landlords as unnecessary. Under the businessmen forms a proletariat that lacks the courage of the soldiers, the intellectual prowess of the thinkers, and the rationality of enterpreneurs. This is the short-lived, chaotic world of the primitive versions of communes (as in Paris in 1871) or soviets (as in Russia in 1917). Get it? Communism and soviet? Obnoxious, selfish entrepreneurs who do no innovation because their grandparents set things up to run on autopilot can't convince people that enterprise is necessary to ensure that there be the stuff, and they are the first before the wall come the Revolution.
Some of the laborers become soldiers, and the cycle returns to the Warrior Age, which in some respects resembles a First Turning. Sarkar's cycle is on a longer scale of time, one much longer than the Saeculum of which we discuss here. Our saeculum is usually on a shorter scale.
So imagine that some primitive tribe sees itself under siege from a neighboring tribe that seeks to kill the men, steal the livestock and foodstuffs, and save the women... for themselves. If that primitive tribe has any desire to survive, then it will train a militia, fabricate swords or spears, and build palisades or other fortifications and possibly barracks. Someone will start barking out orders and train warriors, and there is your chief. The alternative is extinction, which means that that tribe disappears into the mists of prehistory. No other sort of leader can preserve one's tribe.
After the war the organization remains. People are no longer so anarchic. Food supplies are more secure because the spears good for killing enemy tribesmen are also good for spearing fish or deer (the nutritive quality of food increases). Farmers who were recently warriors are better disciplined. But know well: that organization has a price, and that can be met only with taxes (and by tax collectors). Formal justice is necessary just to enforce taxes, so there will be courts and judges even if those are unprofessional and part-time. The leader will need story-tellers to exalt his greatness as people's memories fade. There may be a need for shamans or priests to establish some Power behind the new organized order. Maintenance of the palisades will be a public expenditure. Those elites are intellectuals, typically smarter than the soldiers. With them come the obvious problems. Intellectuals can get extremely arrogant and narcissistic, and they readily turn on each other with lethal disputes over such a question as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Smart people, and an intellectual-driven culture fosters a large number of them, find that they can instead turn to commerce. Maybe they can deal timber for the repair of palisades. They might establish a money supply to establish some lifeblood of trade. They might trade with neighboring tribes that recently were at war with them. "You have something I don't have and I have something you don't have. Let's deal". They may be fashioning the tools and weapons, carts, and storage bins. This is the era of the businessman. They establish businesses that run as quickly as possible on autopilot. Their heirs become passive owners who need not innovate at anything other than keeping labor cheap, dividing the 'market' to make people captive clients, and gouging those clients. Satisfying customers, something to be expected when capitalists are still innovators, is inevitable at first. Once the innovation ends, people not the capitalists become nothing more than toilers and income streams. It is far easier to collect rents from tenants who have nowhere to go than to build the original apartments... especially when those tenements become slums. There may be profit in mass low culture... but to keep it profitable that mass low culture must overwhelm anything intellectually rich or demanding. People get paid well for becoming questionable performers, and part of their pay is that those performers get to live in sybaritic indulgence without having to show any noblesse oblige. These performers become the models for youth: sports stars, film stars, and pop musicians.
What's the problem? The heirs make it all look easy, and anything novel and of high quality requires much sacrifice to get good enough. The people who work for them often see the entrepreneurs such as storekeepers and landlords as unnecessary. Under the businessmen forms a proletariat that lacks the courage of the soldiers, the intellectual prowess of the thinkers, and the rationality of enterpreneurs. This is the short-lived, chaotic world of the primitive versions of communes (as in Paris in 1871) or soviets (as in Russia in 1917). Get it? Communism and soviet? Obnoxious, selfish entrepreneurs who do no innovation because their grandparents set things up to run on autopilot can't convince people that enterprise is necessary to ensure that there be the stuff, and they are the first before the wall come the Revolution.
Some of the laborers become soldiers, and the cycle returns to the Warrior Age, which in some respects resembles a First Turning. Sarkar's cycle is on a longer scale of time, one much longer than the Saeculum of which we discuss here. Our saeculum is usually on a shorter scale.
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.