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Date: Sat, 13 Feb 93 05:48:58 EST
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <
[email protected]>
Subject: precapitalist accumulation of precapital in the seventh century
truckstop
To: Chris Chase-Dunn <CHRISCD@JHUVM>
*Muhammad was a truck drivin' man, lord lord, Muhammad was a truck drivin' man*
The lad born into the lower middle Poor class, who works hard to work his
way up into the ranks of Decent People thanks to his own head for business
(which means something in the lateish twentieth century as it meant something
in the seventh which however are completely different), doesn't sneeze at well
placed relations in the ruling tribe's top lineage, and parlays his business
sense into marrying richly a widow highly favored with valuable material assets
adding up to a formidable profit center, well, this boy is something we can
"wrap our heads around" but hardly expect to Get Religion in the prime of life.
Muhammad was in our terms the owner's wife and CEO of a major long distance
trucking company. He lived most of his life amnong his relatives and other good
citens, sound businessmen following sound buisness practices one and all, in a
combination Truck Stop, Shrine Center, and Politico-Military Entity run by the
same oligarchy, all three. Among the oligarchy, Muhammad ibn-'abd-Allah was
himself known as al-Amin, The Trustworthy. A man whose word was bond, whose
debts were paid up, who helped out those in the hole, amd never lied. Most
important when so much trading is oral and data-storage is the head. Like the
Jewish handshake and the associated incantation *mazel v'brakha*. "Luck and
blessing." Nothing in writing. "How come is not made more mistakes?" This
question, equally applicable to a stock exchange trading pit, is one to which
an answer is unmade, the question unasked, the thought disconcerts.
This sound businessman, The Trustworthy, was not a leader of The Oligarchy
or a stabdout success in The Business Community, insofar as these were
separable; the separation would be stupid to effectuate by the methods of
contemporary socal science. What Muhammad was, was a Regular Guy for his time
and place. Curiously, there is no other founder of one of the World's Great
Religions of whom this may be said. Jesus was an itinerant exorcist in the
"Culturally Deprived," as we would say, and "disadvantaged in economic
opportunity" region of Galilee, whose peasantry had been newly and forcibly
converted to Judaism by King Alexander Jannaeus (103-72). To make a living,
Jesus had to know his demons inside and out, exercise his charm on imaginary
beings before casting his spell in the metaphorical sense upon the Galilean
villagers to build a following for whatever-it-was he led.
Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha was a scion of one of the oligarchic families
of one of those north Indian states called Sangha Republics, whose state
system comrised inadequately sized units inadequately despotic to coerce
resources by the standards set by the Kingdom of Magadha in the Gangeatic
Plain. Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha followed the trend, perhaps one might
even say, "the fad," among young intellectually questing people who, in the
sixth and fifth centuries BC, got "heavy into," as the moderns and postmoderns
say, Indian Philosophy, which as all Great Traditions do when they are at the
outset of self-definition, indulged in the most interminable disagreements
among themselves wherefrom commentators were left for centuries of plenty to
pronounce upon as what was disagreed. The Buddha, whose faith featured that
great innovation, the celebate-renunciate monastic order with distinctive
garb, called the latter *sangha*, the spiritualization of the communities
whereof in one of these his own roots, his ancestry, lay.
Moses (son of), like a curiously contemporary rebel named Amenmesse (son
of Amon), is known as a historical personage principally as a rebel and
traitor, assassinating an official, cpmtractomg a marriage alliance with the
chief of the powerful Midianite Badawi confederation, stealing the story of
his supernaturally managed birth from that of Sargon of Akkad a thousand
years or more earlier (because, lide Sargon of Akkad, he was a bastard: Sargon
means *sharru ken*, "legitimate king," what else). Moses and Amenmesse were
both illegitimate sons of a (the same?) granddaughter of Rammesses II. The
divergence in motive for subversion and treason was Moses' contrived Israelite-
hood, where Menmesse, merely lusting for power, is the more plausible. There
would certainly have been motives for elite Eguptiams. Aaron, Pinkhas, etc.,
to have been a hurry to get out of Egypt, c. 1200, although there was
something called Israel already in North Canaan at the time. (Any more involved
tale is a monument to faith alone.)
The facts and rumours (*hadith*) of Muhammad's life are known to
superfluity, and exist in Left and Right variants; the egaliatarian dimension
is given pride of place in defining these anachronistic political categproes.
The personality of Muhammad is at one and the same time that of the Regualar
Guy and The Perfect Human Being. This is the central mystery of Islam. For
who among us would dare to aspire to mentally converse and spiritually unite
with the One God barring the most hideously painful aerobic suffering, bodies
into pretzels, to qualify for the alleged Experience of the nonexistent Being?
Muhammad, like a Regular Guy of Makkah, liked money, liked women, liked war.
The exact order, I'm not sure. His tradition, of not terribly long standing
since the particular Trade Route, the camel caravan road fron Aden to Damascus,
neatly bissected by Makkah's having been plunked down athrwart ots midsection.
was operational when the preferred route wasn't. That across the Sassanid
Empire, rapacious toll collectors but morally obligated to provide Security.
In the Sassanid slightly-less-civilized-than-Them fashion. Them was
the Roman, later Byzantine, state. The RomByz and Sassanids were the two Great,
Super, Powers, and sensing a responsible component in Superpowerhood to Stand
for Something, the RomByz was by State Religion and Supreme Symbol thereof the
keeper of the quondam instrumentality of its favorite means of mass-executing
Traitors. The Zoroastrian Sassanids, whose Thing was for sacred fires, kept a
fire alter lit they believed that Zarathrustra himself would have been proud
of. It was the symbols, of all possible things, which made a ruin of the Middle
East, True Cross versus Supreme Fire Altar. (Give 50 points to the army captu-
ring one or the other.) Things, fiscal things most of all, were tough enough
everywhere, and *no sane person* believed in all-out Superpower War, The Big
One, at a time like this. What kind of time it was, was a time of Bubonic
Plague.
Justinian The Great had Bipolar Disorder with mood-congruent delusional
symptoms. Of his very numerous accomplishments, the greatest and expensive
of which (like the conquest of Italy) were among the most imaginary, the
cheapest was getting The Plague of Justinian named after him. 10,000 a day
died in Constantinople for months. In the East, where the Rom/Byz fought the
Traditional Persian war, in Justinian's day against the Shahanshah Khusraw The
First Anushirwan ("Great Souled"), the antagonists by 555 shifted attention to
a tedious, economically depraved region which the Greeks called Colchis, our
contemporaries call Georgia, and badk then was called Lazica. A place you got
slaves from. Superpowers, one might almost suppose, were running out of people
to do the work. The fighting, even. Without letting on much, Superpowers tried
if nobody was looking, to downsize, to pinchpenny, to scrounge. One of
Justinian's more devious espionage schemes came to fruition from 555 onwardL
Two monks sent to Ceylon stole some silkworm eggs, wherefrom rost the Byzantine
silk industry peaking in the tenth century. That this business was growing
meant that growth was at Arabia's expense.
The products being carried were Chinese silks, first, foremost, and most
lucratively. Then maybe some frankincence and myrrh from Somalia would be a
sure sell. The sea route ended on the twin throat of the Middle East, the
Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-al-Mandeb Strait. Near the latter was the port
of Aden. Halfway up the Hejaz coast was Makkah. The route terminated at Roman
Damascus.
The Superpowers had become a demographic sink. As a rule, what breeds path-
ogenic microorganisms breeds us, climatically speaking. To find salubrious,
majestic vistas of organic nature, you climb up to where it's cool, life is
hard, and so are the rocks the life grows between. From the healful coldness
of Mother Russia, that sovereign state knwn as Ukraine today, drifted Slavs,
nudged forward by Avars, Turkic pastoral nomads from Grand Central Asia. As
the cultivators undergo die-off, sparse populations take on density, the look
of seriousness, relatively to what and who.
From the middle of Grand Central Asia, freeways were clogged bumper to
bumper. There is no extant origin myth, try this. Two "Iranian" tribes,
Serbs and Croats, had as Indo-Europeans will, pulled off a cattle raid. Their
gods as usual favoring epic poems honoring the heroism of the rustling
profession, they set to great intensity of poetification. Gulled by utter
distraction, the Iranians failed to catch on to the victims, Bulgars of
Turkic tongue and culture, and great disdainers of rustlers generally, came
a-whooping in, to consummate a great cowful snatchback. The Serbs and Croats,
whose mounts had been Previously Owned, found that their brakes failed and
durn near fell into the sea.
To the south was Arabia, that lovely sandy beach but for the lack of water.
Kills germs deader fast with new Dermo-Leather. Try the Arab Raid, 90 day
killing power.
Superpowers had their satellite Arabs, the RomByz the Ghassanids; the
Sassanids the Lakmids. In the third century, Arabs had been independed
politcal actors vis a vis the Roman state, fallen below par. Philip was
Emperor (244-249); Zenobia of Palmyra in the Syrian desert, fought and lost
to Aurelian: a war which gave us December 25, when the entire Roman Empire got
the day off, 274. The birthday of the god Sol Invictus of Emesa became the
birthday of Mithra and the birstday of a cute little kid god.
Arab bards and versifiers were the medium of political propaganda. They set
tribe against tribe, lineage against lineage, for there wan't any National
Enemy. There were just those two vast Superpowers against whom nothing could
be done. What Muhammad almost alone knew was, *there wasn't anything up there*.
Therefore what was up there was the Naational Enemy, for the discomfiture of
whom the National Cause must be contrived. This had some urgency, as
Christianity, Magism, and Judaism fought for market share like soft drinks.
This was, getting back down to earth, peripheral to Muhammad's most vital
interests as a Makkan. The Makkan economy rested upon, as previously described,
the Aden-Damascus caravan route, whose permanence depended upon the fortunes
of war, between the Superpowers, and against their client tribes. Not to
mention tribes whose policy was exclusively their own.
Second, the Makkans operated, shall we say, a theme park, the Ka'aba, whose
purpose was providing facilities for the worship of the fullest possible
selection of deities known to arab paganism. Anything to sell the tickes.
Makkah, as a tourist trap, faced long term deterioration of its tourist draw
pari passu with the inroads into market share made by the "Civilized"
religions.
Muhammad set about, without his problem-solving cognition entering into
it, the solution of both problems. The unification of the trade route and
the mobilization of the Arabs around an Arab Faith whose paramount shrine
would remain the Ka'aba. *Because and only because* this religion, both
unifier of the tribes by whose sufferance the caravans went wheere they
were headed (or failed to) and shield-and-buckler of the Arab People against
coltural penetration from without. *Because* it was as good a cultural
vehicle as the imported brands, and had going for it the peoetical cadences
of the National Language.
Could Muhammad have formulated this as a rational solution to the problems
he faced? No. The politico-military achievement damanded of implementation
attemptors; specifically, victorious wars against all the tribes, in the name
of a transparently scissors and paste religion, would have ended in farcical
collapse.
The Nakkan oligarchy had the better strategy under assumptions of *bounded
rationality*. There is, let me point out, no more Talmudic discussion among the
theorizers of that people know or take into consideration when they are alleged
to "decide" than that which pits the "rational actor model" against the
"bounded rationality" model. The concept of "bounded rationality" was by
convention developed by the Computer-Scientit/Psychologist Herbert E. Simon
in 1954. Simon hels that human "processing speed" was too slow to handle
rapidly changing information. What is more, the human brain cannot store in
main or auxiliary storage all the data. intrmediate results, and outcome data
along with the assumptions constraining the model when the data analysis was
done. The "decision" arrived at will be the most ratinally calculated in terms
of what the decision maker knows may be depended on as the basis of decision.
The unsurprising conclusion one draws is that the decision-maker tends
toward conservatism.
The rational actor model is said to operate when the decision maker has
been made cognizant of the weaknesses induced by those constrained by the
boundedness of bounded rationality. This decision-maker solicits "input" (or
whatever technogibberish word which has supplanted it), or more likely, the
consultant retained by the decision-maker, such that the known or suppositious
bearing of the supplementary sources of information upon the decion will be
given a chance, with some consultant playing advocatus diaboli.
From this cluutered or cumbersome process may derive a wholly musclebound
style of management, as the procedures for certain and unquestionably condemn
data sources to the outer darkeness as trivialiities, well, they are, uh,
still under development. You cna't be sure. The dataset that the executive
rejected became the foundation stone of the vemtire-capitalist's corporation.
Nor may we expect the deciduendum, the object of the decision maker's
decision, to Just Stand There and wait for the decision to be taken upon
it by the experts. Consider, for example, the "Liberal Pablum," as I call
it, of "Multiculturalism." What is the social function of "Multiculturalism?"
(Aside from, in my kinder moments, invective like, "The class conscious
ideology of university vice predents as a class for itself." The VP at Stony
Brook, Provost Tillman Edelstein, is the paradigm case.)
First, it gives practically everybody almost nothing. Those "beneficiary"
consituencies are reminded without letup that they have a vested interest in
receiving the next-to-nonthing from the student government/administration
complex. Though there may be irritation at trivialization, there occurs, too,
objectification.
"Multiculturalism" becomes, therefore, preventive counterinsurgency. It
follows, form the rational-actor-under-condiitons-of-nonformal-rationality
as outlined in "Letters to James B. Rule," 1988, the insurgency which will
eventuate will emerge during a social movemnt period as some constituency
whose members had previously been dismissed as capable of rebelling and
desirous or motivated to do so. The result "will flip out" the planners and
the participants.
By rejecting the compromises of the Makkan elite, Muhammad emperilled the
tourist revenues from the Ka'aba and likewise induced declining patronage of
Makkah by the truckstop clientele. In 622 the Oligarchy expelled Muhammad amd
cliemtele from Makkah. They established a base, whereby they set the Jewish
and pagan tribes against one another, finally securing the surrender and sworn
loyalty of all pagan and most Jewish tribes against a lone Jewish holdout tribe
which was defeated. At this point, the the Muslisms, sitting directly on the
jugular vein of Mekkan trade, did nothing. There was combat during the war
which ensued and lasted ten years. The two sides each had a Won-Lost record
of 1-1. Yet in 632, Makkah had to surrender. Muhammad controlled the trade
route and more and more of the tribes of the interior. By the time of
Muhammad's death, the entire trade route had been unifiedl, Aden to Damascus,
under the control of a single state. Also, the state, comprising those who
embraced Islam, acknowledged the once-in-a-lifetime obligation of the *hajj*.
The Angel Jibreel told Muhammad to Recite! and Lo, he Recided, In the name
of God the beneficent, the merciful, who created Man from clots of blook.
**************
***So far as Muhammad knew, God told him by such means to do everything; and
what AMuhammad did was a smashinlyg successful solution to a problem which,
had it ever been formulated in conventional "problem-solving" format, would
have been insoluble ny means admissible into the "problem solving discourse."
**************
Misery loves company, and I just want to drag the Broad Masses in the US
down to my condition. Just *because*, is all. Not because they have done
anything all that wicked, it's the inequality where the evil inheres. Not
that I can really tell you why. Daniel's the name, Prophecy of doom's the
game. And you know something, I was like that even before I got so Inferior.
So gimme two things, some meek to inherit the earth, I'll get the lawyer to
draw up the conveyance; and a revolutionary agent. And bedamned'if'I know
wuzzat. We aint got the class struggle to kick around any more. (And good
riddance, frankly.)
For curiousity's sake, I'd like some idea of what your gods are saying this
week. Frankly, I'm confident I don't believe in your gods, not one of them,
and if I so much as catch you believing in your gods yourselves, 'twill go
harshly with you. Just tell me what they are saying.
One thing you might get suggested to you is, Burn your true self card! (The
American insectlike subhuman herd conformity in proclaiming "I am an individual
me-being!" is for some other essay.
Daniel A. Foss
