In my forthcoming book, The Prophets of Doom, a recurring feature of the analysis – which, in fact, goes hand-in-glove with analysis derived from elite theory as per The Populist Delusion – is the notion that there are four broad social types who may rule. Oswald Spengler called them the Four Estates, while Julius Evola described The Doctrine of the Four Castes, but these amount to the same thing. The first estate is the Warrior caste or nobles or aristocracy, who rule through their superiority in
Before we worry about restraining the warrior class we should begin (those of us who are able) to make ourselves into warriors.
At the moment there is little to no countervailing force to the merchant and priestly class. This is why BAP’s message is so crucial: the political regime won’t change until a rival castle is built and it must be made up of a different breed than the current regime.
Amazingly written, and a very concise analysis of what happened AA, well done! The problem that now faces us is what do we about it?
I can’t help but think that the only way out is through. No medicine will make a person live forever. No project can ultimately save a civilisation. I believe they will be destroyed, but so will we. And what stands in our ashes will be horrifically foreign.
We can already see where we are going with Fuentes and his ilk and their total disregard for the Boomer Truth’s sacred symbols. The fact is we are intrinsically connected to the civilisation that hates us. And to destroy it would be our destruction as well. The medicine that will solve our problems will scour us away as well.
Part of the reason we're in this fix is that the very success of the liberal-capitalist order in terms of wealth has softened manners and put the instincts of societal self-preservation to sleep. Now those instincts, whether asleep or not, don't exist in everyone or are very weak. In some people, you may see an unwitting predisposition toward societal suicide. During the BLM riots I was hearing reports of "progressives" who didn't mind the riots because they believe our society deserved them. So here's what we're facing (at least in the U.S.). On the one side we see institutions increasingly dominated by individuals with either no instincts for societal preservation or an unconscious desire for societal suicide. Opposed to this are people whose instincts for societal survival have fallen into a deep sleep. So the question is: what's it going to take to awaken these instincts for survival?
To get a sense of how asleep these instincts really are, just consider what was chanted at a recent pride event: "We're coming for your children!" shouted the degenerates. Imagine if any assembled group had dared chant such a threat a hundred years ago. They would have been immediately rounded up and either imprisoned or safely embalmed in psyche wards. Three hundred years ago they would have been hunted down and killed. Now people just stew in their indignation but do nothing. How much longer will they remain asleep to all such threats to their way of life and their progeny? The length of their Hamlet-like torpor will determine whether we get out of this or not. A nation with a healthy warrior caste knows what to do with the chronic malcontents who infest every society and will destroy it if given enough leeway. In a warrior caste the instincts of societal self preservation don't sleep, but are ever vigilant of threats to the social order.
Which is why we need a martial order, one that is of a very different breed than Modern Man; one that is both cold-hearted when addressing threats and more vital and creative than any of the 20th centuries geniuses. Unlike what AA and Schumpeter may say about merchants with creativity, I believe it stems more from the Warrior than from the merchant: here's why, creativity is known to be a right-brained type of thought, martial prowess also comes from this same type of thinking. Warfare is about adapting new strategies and tactics, weapons or tools, finding a new way or an effective way to win in a life or death scenario. Therefore the creativity that requires does not come from the slow process of manufacturing or the trade of existing materials.
I think in the Soviet case warrior types (police, military) ended up playing a significant role in sustaining the regime, maybe more so that the large ideological apparatus. Soviet successor states continued this tradition; you can observe it in somewhere like Belarus where organs of internal security are oversized and until recently used to possess some of the social status and prestige of the old Soviet KGB. The large size of the police forces was an important asset to Lukashenko in dealing with the protests in 2020. Probably this warrior class was/is more like that imagined by Georges Sorel, drawn from the proletariat and peasants. This would explain some of its limitations.
The landed aristocracy is returning at least in America. It’s all wrapped up into the hotel / casino world because once you close off the border & help other countries crack down on drugs, the Intel agencies no longer can use drugs to launder money for the banks. Instead they’re forced to launder hard cash through casinos and it’s easy to see Vegas is owned by people associated with Trump. Same with hotels, they become entry points for spying but also prestige, all of it is converging to grab control over the merchants.
One sign of this happening, look at how Trump influenced all those golfers to split off & go play for a lot more money with LIV (since the PGA stopped hosting competitions on Trump golf courses) so he gets the Saudis to bankroll an entire competitive league, which inevitably leads to the merger. That was a more pure form of aristocracy (Trump & his crowd) upending a fake aristocracy (PGA, whose entire audience is merchant class). A lot of this is wrapped up into sport, the Leo Messi deal too, as the owners of that MLS team own a large pipeline firm, who Trump has connections to. Same goes for the teams who won this year in NHL / NBA (which are rigged but the owners represent the real new elite, the Kroenke’s who are married into the Walton Family, Americas largest land owners).
Do you know David Priestland, Merchant, Soldier, Sage: a new history of power? It presents a similar idea. In my book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat I adapted the concept to give each caste a shadow- so the modern media are the clown shadows of priests.
And what of the fifth class? Are the managerials of no import? Are they simply the every present periphery that does the regime's bidding? Like the poor, will they always be with us? I believe that since technology has made egalitarianism more beaurocratized, they are now a permanent class that can wield power in its own right. Frighteningly on par with the warriors, priests, and merchants.
Coming from studying military science and history, I’m not surprised by all this. The reason the warrior tends to be the better statesman have to do with their focus. The priest is concerned with purity of doctrine and rituals. He tends to be inflexible. The merchant is concerned with productivity and process and legality. He tends to be all about negotiation and money. Both tends to be narrow-minded.
The warrior, on the other hand, must have an army to win. This requires him to take a holistic view of society in order to be able to field an army of young, strong, intelligent men well-invested in the future of the state, and an economic base to supply his army with. If he’s smart, he will focus on cultivating a fearsome reputation to make the potential enemies think twice and to move them to negotiations. This put demographics, economics, moral education, food industry, cohesion, and many more within his preview. To have the army, he must deal with the whole society and the whole man to get it. To win their loyalty in face of death, he must serve the relationship between himself and his subject, more than serving himself or his subject. And this dynamic relationship is really what power is about.
Good analysis, AA. I think in regards to the future (from an American perspective), the Warriors and Peasants might make a new coalition, with both Priests and Merchants becoming significantly less influential. We saw this with two of the previous nations you mentioned (NS Germany and Stalin's Russia), both of which were short periods below a century, with a Warrior ruling for the Peasants with support from both Warrior class and the Bureaucrats. I think this was a hiccup in time, kind of a preview of what we might get in a century or two removed from today; partly because of the nature of our Pseudo-Capitalist society which is currently turning in on itself, with no exterior borders or threats to attack.
I have a question; has the idea of civilizations or empires behaving like organisms been covered by you, or one of your adjacent minions?
Sorry, but could I get a bit more clarity please - how did the capitalists overthrow the Warriors to become topdog, and then take on the Priest's as a junior partner?
You said it happened somewhere around Gladstone/Disraeli to WW1/WW2.
Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden and Bright etc can be seen as triggering this process; but the ultimate thing was WW1 wiped out a huge number of the officer class and damaged their rep forever
Thank you very much for that, I definitely remember you discussing the effects of the Corn Laws and Peter Hitchens on the effects of 1M Englishmen dying in WW1.
Can I also ask, can you provide a clearer example of the Priest/Warrior Combo?
I can't think of any situation were this combo lasted for very long.
I thought of the early Muslims- Establishment of Islamic Medina 623 to the end of the Rashidun Caliphate 661.
I thought that maybe an example of Priest/Warrior, but it did not last.
A further example aside from the Gregory one would be much appreciated.
I think the plagues also had alot to do with the end of Feudalism, the populace became more mobile, labour costs grew and a middle class was created, (see the Paston family for an example)
Before we worry about restraining the warrior class we should begin (those of us who are able) to make ourselves into warriors.
At the moment there is little to no countervailing force to the merchant and priestly class. This is why BAP’s message is so crucial: the political regime won’t change until a rival castle is built and it must be made up of a different breed than the current regime.
Amazingly written, and a very concise analysis of what happened AA, well done! The problem that now faces us is what do we about it?
I can’t help but think that the only way out is through. No medicine will make a person live forever. No project can ultimately save a civilisation. I believe they will be destroyed, but so will we. And what stands in our ashes will be horrifically foreign.
We can already see where we are going with Fuentes and his ilk and their total disregard for the Boomer Truth’s sacred symbols. The fact is we are intrinsically connected to the civilisation that hates us. And to destroy it would be our destruction as well. The medicine that will solve our problems will scour us away as well.
Optimism is cowardice. What do you think?
Part of the reason we're in this fix is that the very success of the liberal-capitalist order in terms of wealth has softened manners and put the instincts of societal self-preservation to sleep. Now those instincts, whether asleep or not, don't exist in everyone or are very weak. In some people, you may see an unwitting predisposition toward societal suicide. During the BLM riots I was hearing reports of "progressives" who didn't mind the riots because they believe our society deserved them. So here's what we're facing (at least in the U.S.). On the one side we see institutions increasingly dominated by individuals with either no instincts for societal preservation or an unconscious desire for societal suicide. Opposed to this are people whose instincts for societal survival have fallen into a deep sleep. So the question is: what's it going to take to awaken these instincts for survival?
To get a sense of how asleep these instincts really are, just consider what was chanted at a recent pride event: "We're coming for your children!" shouted the degenerates. Imagine if any assembled group had dared chant such a threat a hundred years ago. They would have been immediately rounded up and either imprisoned or safely embalmed in psyche wards. Three hundred years ago they would have been hunted down and killed. Now people just stew in their indignation but do nothing. How much longer will they remain asleep to all such threats to their way of life and their progeny? The length of their Hamlet-like torpor will determine whether we get out of this or not. A nation with a healthy warrior caste knows what to do with the chronic malcontents who infest every society and will destroy it if given enough leeway. In a warrior caste the instincts of societal self preservation don't sleep, but are ever vigilant of threats to the social order.
Which is why we need a martial order, one that is of a very different breed than Modern Man; one that is both cold-hearted when addressing threats and more vital and creative than any of the 20th centuries geniuses. Unlike what AA and Schumpeter may say about merchants with creativity, I believe it stems more from the Warrior than from the merchant: here's why, creativity is known to be a right-brained type of thought, martial prowess also comes from this same type of thinking. Warfare is about adapting new strategies and tactics, weapons or tools, finding a new way or an effective way to win in a life or death scenario. Therefore the creativity that requires does not come from the slow process of manufacturing or the trade of existing materials.
I think in the Soviet case warrior types (police, military) ended up playing a significant role in sustaining the regime, maybe more so that the large ideological apparatus. Soviet successor states continued this tradition; you can observe it in somewhere like Belarus where organs of internal security are oversized and until recently used to possess some of the social status and prestige of the old Soviet KGB. The large size of the police forces was an important asset to Lukashenko in dealing with the protests in 2020. Probably this warrior class was/is more like that imagined by Georges Sorel, drawn from the proletariat and peasants. This would explain some of its limitations.
The landed aristocracy is returning at least in America. It’s all wrapped up into the hotel / casino world because once you close off the border & help other countries crack down on drugs, the Intel agencies no longer can use drugs to launder money for the banks. Instead they’re forced to launder hard cash through casinos and it’s easy to see Vegas is owned by people associated with Trump. Same with hotels, they become entry points for spying but also prestige, all of it is converging to grab control over the merchants.
One sign of this happening, look at how Trump influenced all those golfers to split off & go play for a lot more money with LIV (since the PGA stopped hosting competitions on Trump golf courses) so he gets the Saudis to bankroll an entire competitive league, which inevitably leads to the merger. That was a more pure form of aristocracy (Trump & his crowd) upending a fake aristocracy (PGA, whose entire audience is merchant class). A lot of this is wrapped up into sport, the Leo Messi deal too, as the owners of that MLS team own a large pipeline firm, who Trump has connections to. Same goes for the teams who won this year in NHL / NBA (which are rigged but the owners represent the real new elite, the Kroenke’s who are married into the Walton Family, Americas largest land owners).
Do you know David Priestland, Merchant, Soldier, Sage: a new history of power? It presents a similar idea. In my book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat I adapted the concept to give each caste a shadow- so the modern media are the clown shadows of priests.
And what of the fifth class? Are the managerials of no import? Are they simply the every present periphery that does the regime's bidding? Like the poor, will they always be with us? I believe that since technology has made egalitarianism more beaurocratized, they are now a permanent class that can wield power in its own right. Frighteningly on par with the warriors, priests, and merchants.
Coming from studying military science and history, I’m not surprised by all this. The reason the warrior tends to be the better statesman have to do with their focus. The priest is concerned with purity of doctrine and rituals. He tends to be inflexible. The merchant is concerned with productivity and process and legality. He tends to be all about negotiation and money. Both tends to be narrow-minded.
The warrior, on the other hand, must have an army to win. This requires him to take a holistic view of society in order to be able to field an army of young, strong, intelligent men well-invested in the future of the state, and an economic base to supply his army with. If he’s smart, he will focus on cultivating a fearsome reputation to make the potential enemies think twice and to move them to negotiations. This put demographics, economics, moral education, food industry, cohesion, and many more within his preview. To have the army, he must deal with the whole society and the whole man to get it. To win their loyalty in face of death, he must serve the relationship between himself and his subject, more than serving himself or his subject. And this dynamic relationship is really what power is about.
Wow.
In the most straightforward and needless terms, you take power and you manage to keep it while enforcing laws preventing them doing what they did.
Good analysis, AA. I think in regards to the future (from an American perspective), the Warriors and Peasants might make a new coalition, with both Priests and Merchants becoming significantly less influential. We saw this with two of the previous nations you mentioned (NS Germany and Stalin's Russia), both of which were short periods below a century, with a Warrior ruling for the Peasants with support from both Warrior class and the Bureaucrats. I think this was a hiccup in time, kind of a preview of what we might get in a century or two removed from today; partly because of the nature of our Pseudo-Capitalist society which is currently turning in on itself, with no exterior borders or threats to attack.
I have a question; has the idea of civilizations or empires behaving like organisms been covered by you, or one of your adjacent minions?
Sorry, but could I get a bit more clarity please - how did the capitalists overthrow the Warriors to become topdog, and then take on the Priest's as a junior partner?
You said it happened somewhere around Gladstone/Disraeli to WW1/WW2.
What roughly happened?
Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden and Bright etc can be seen as triggering this process; but the ultimate thing was WW1 wiped out a huge number of the officer class and damaged their rep forever
Thank you very much for that, I definitely remember you discussing the effects of the Corn Laws and Peter Hitchens on the effects of 1M Englishmen dying in WW1.
Can I also ask, can you provide a clearer example of the Priest/Warrior Combo?
I can't think of any situation were this combo lasted for very long.
I thought of the early Muslims- Establishment of Islamic Medina 623 to the end of the Rashidun Caliphate 661.
I thought that maybe an example of Priest/Warrior, but it did not last.
A further example aside from the Gregory one would be much appreciated.
I think the plagues also had alot to do with the end of Feudalism, the populace became more mobile, labour costs grew and a middle class was created, (see the Paston family for an example)