What's your political compass?
What's your political compass?
I know, it's not exactly the best way to measure where you stand politically but I'm just curious what your results are.
I score far left on the economical scale (almost hitting the edge) and about two squares from the center into the authoritarian quarter.
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Oh yeah, but it’s a warning right? Like all good sci-fi. How capitalism would devolve into feudalism. Eerily similar to what Yanis Varoufakis talks about nowadays.
I don't think Herbert meant capitalism in particular, thing that is constantly hammered is more of generic "be wary of tyrants, prophets, empires, theocracies, shady sects" and so on.
I want to point on something that is marginal in first book, but is a foundation of entire setting and gets back to be relevant in books 4-6, that is how Butlerian Jihad completely fucked up entire humanity by throwing away technological progress, not only more or less dangerous AI (depend on version, Brian Dune have just boring skynet rebellion but Frank early mentions and Dune encyclopedia suggest something rather akin of internal humanity struggle where the bad guys won), but all progress and thus damning humanity to eat its own ass in enternal cycle of feudal atrocities (it's also undialectical as fuck so from here i know Herbert wasn't a communist), while still being entirely depend on magic technology and magic drug.
A friend of mine said that only the book 1 was really good, 2 was so so, and the remaining were waste of time (this may be extremely subjective). I had read book 1, do you recommend to read 2-6?
It’s greatest work of sci-fi ever imo
I can repeat this as many times as needed. Book 1 isn't even the best of original 6, 4th is the one. 5 and 6 are considerably weaker though.
All right, I keep reading. BTW -- I finished volume one of «Selected works» of Marx and Engels, which you have recommended to me, thanks!
I do love how the foundations of the story are “hidden” in some ways, mysterious even to the most informed characters in the series. But yeah, I agree in all, specially that Herbert was not a communist. He was an anarchist, likely an individualist, but still he was a pretty good sci-fi writer lmao
Still, I do feel the criticisms of capitalism are quite clear. The CHOAM, how the emperor rules through it… it’s quite on the nose imo.
In a way it’s quite Leninist. Capital turns monopolistic, and then turns imperialistic. It just became REAL Imperial y’know.
Except CHOAM is not why Emperor rule. In fact, Emperor do not really rule, not more than the Holy Roman Emperors ruled. Dune Empire system was interlocking system of mutual dependences:
- Landsraad hold the majority of people and means of production, but is disunited as only loose organisation of feudal lords can be. They are also the most independent, since overwhelming most of empire is self-sufficient feudal planets.
- Emperor have the biggest army and have shares in trade but do not hold any means of production, his real function is being figurehead at the top and (more real) keeping the nobles from disrupting the system as enforcer of the Great Convention.
- Spacing Guild control space travel, and keep interplanetary wars from happening, but nothing else (especially not spice) and therefore despite being most outright powerful faction, is also the one most interested in keeping status quo.
- CHOAM looks like capitalist, but it's at most protocapitalist, it's what Marx described as merchant capital, and it is form that exist in feudalism. More similar to late medieval Italian merchant houses than to any modern corporation. Note that financial capital is controlled by Guild in the setting, yet another fitting sign of protocapitalist formation. Again, when the most of empire is primitive feudal planets, and commodity production is not primary form of production, CHOAM cannot have deciding power, it can bring in luxuries at best.
- Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilax, Suk Academy, Mentat School, Ginaz School (and in reality also Ix) are organisations with significant influence but not a big players, even though Bene Gesserit and Bene Tleilax have huge ambitions.
All that was puposefully set up in the Great Convention. Overall it's a FEUDAL system, not capitalist.
I do agree. But it doesn’t feel like it’s a pre-capitalist feudal system, or a proto-capitalist one. It feels more like a post-capitalist feudal system. The structures of capitalism are there, but shifted in a way to favour the rentier class much more, to the point they became new feudal lords. Very similar to what is happening right now.
Sure, commodity production is not the center of the economy, it’s rent seeking. But still the rulers are descendants of a hyper capitalist class that came to own everything and with hyper-monopoly came rent seeking. I would argue something like the Spacing Guild to be an evolution of what Amazon could become if left unchecked to completely monopolize “the internet” and logistics.
It feels more like a post-capitalist feudal system
We don't have any indication of pre-jihad times in Frank works. Though both Brian version and Dune Encyclopedia point on kind of post-scarcity economy with huge role of AI. Brian also inserts the periods of Titan oligarchy and then Synchronised Worlds and Noble League between that and the Jihad. None of those were capitalist. So it wouldn't be correct to call this "post capitalist", rather the Empire was either the direct consequence of fall of the post-scarcity civilisation or direct continuation of Noble League (which was itself consequence of fall of the previous civilisation).
But still the rulers are descendants of a hyper capitalist class that came to own everything and with hyper-monopoly came rent seeking
Again, no info from Frank except Houses Corrino, Atreides and Harkonnen being directly descended from victors of Jihad - so not looking like the hypercapitalist but more like warlords. In Brian version empire aristocracy directly come from the Butlerian warlords that tore down whatever was before (look above) and League aristocracy. Only huge capitalist venture was VenKee corporation which was direct predecessor of Spacing Guild, but the Guild came to life as direct result of VenKee being smashed and transformed from a capitalist venture into the literal Guild.
I would argue something like the Spacing Guild to be an evolution of what Amazon could become if left unchecked to completely monopolize “the internet” and logistics.
Other way. Sure, that Amazon (VenKee) did aimed at domination over the empire but lost and was forcibly cut down to become Guild in nearly medieval sense of the word. Also had Norma Cenva as its real head who predicted a lot of future and was one of proponents of the new deal that is the Great Convention.