DUNE and Popular Soverignty
“WHY DUNE WILL RADICALIZE YOU”
We, in the west are trapped by the idea that voting is the site by which democracy happens. The explicit articulation of democracy as a set number of votes, as an end in an of itself runs counter to the more ancient roots of governance over human society, wherein sovereignty was expressed through something more intangible.
The ancient Assyrians, The Ancient Chinese, The Ancient Egyptians, and most other ancient civilizations understood something far more primary than the ballot box as the site by which the will of the general populace is expressed.
And more often than not this was embodied in the existence of “God Kings” or “Popular sovereigns”.
To our westernized ears, who are use to viewing the existence of kings or sovereigns as something bad, this seems to run counter to the conventional wisdom of modernity, of the period of time from the fall of feudalism and the rise of liberal democracies. We are accustomed to the notion of some sort of explicit “Social contract” between individuals and the modern conception of the state, usually in the form of legal documentation like a constitution. The long held wisdom of the modern era is as thus “One Man, One Vote”, a right later extended to all races, and sexes. Thus is born the concept of a “universal subject” or “Universal Citizen” That is an individual that is fully equal before the law.
The problem with that, however, is the simple fact that some people own property and other people don’t. So in the case where everyone is a “universal citizen“ some people will be more equal than other people. This contradiction at the heart of liberal democracies goes against the very principles that they espouse. The lofty ideals of liberty are extended to those who have property, and those that have the means by which to secure property usually in the form of money.
In the era before the modern period and the rise of industrialization more often than not property was held in common. In Europe, for example the feudal system had no such thing as private property as it is understood today peasants would often work land that was understood as being the property of some king or Lord, which effectively meant it was held in common. Peasants would often simply find a field set up their farm and gather resources as necessary from surrounding areas. Ownership was understood through lineage as your family work this land for generations, and therefore this is the land by which you made your livelihood. With the advent of private property, which was a violet process of certain people who had gathered enough material wealth to hire, private armies and fence off areas of land previously held in common (see the enclosure act) suddenly there was a distinction between those with property and those without.
Liberal democracy, and the enlightenment period came about as a reaction to the increasingly absolute power of European Kings. The men of property began to rebel against the crown and state that that centralization of all means of production was hindering their ability to further their entrepreneurship the ideals they espoused were those of life, liberty, and property for all with a caveat that all usually meant men of property. But even in this bourgeoning class consciousness of the emerging bourgeoisie class against the absolute monarchies, there was at least for some already the understanding that not everyone had property and that these ideal should be extended to all.
Thus was born the beginnings of the Socialist revolutionaries who took the conceit of liberal ideals to their logical conclusion where in all people would have, as the American revolution would put it “life liberty in the pursuit of happiness“. The initial stages, of course were unscientific such as the “utopian socialist” movements of North America. Socialism at that time was simply the umbrella term used to understand this general sentiment for the abolition of private property as it was understood. It would only be later with Karl Marx and later the Bolshevik and Chinese Communist revolutions that these ideals would be realized in their most full extent.
At the head of every great revolution, there is a figure that is remembered above all as the face of the times. In second revolutionary France, it was Napoleon Bonaparte representing the mass of peasants against other European monarchies. In the Bolshevik revolution, it was Lenin and Stalin. For the Chinese it was Mao Zedong. These popular sovereigns were imbued by the people. The power of their popular will to meet an objective social end.
Liberal democracy will call it dictatorship, they will scream at the top of their lungs that these people were nothing more than petty absolute monarchs, which could not be further from the truth. These were popular sovereigns.
Even the foundations of Liberal Modernity reveals a deeper longing for Popular sovereignty. Washington himself, the face of the Great American Revolution, the first of its kind in modern history to cast off colonial subjugation and bring forth a new democratic model of rule, is elevated to the very same status of a popular monarch of sorts. He was in many ways, an elected king, a man given the power over the people by the people, to help lead them into the future, one of liberty and a new nation. In fact, the original drafts of the constitution understood this, and treated the presidency as much more of a new form of elected kingship, where succession was determined by merit, and not by blood. After Washington, Lincoln was seen as the great People’s king of America, his enemies branding him a tyrant, and his death marked with the words “Sic Semer Tyrants”. But it was this lofty power held by Lincoln that allowed him to crush the bureaucracy of congress and win the Civil War, thus kicking out British influence from the south that funded Southern Slavery. It was the general will of millions of Northerners and Millions of enslaved Black Southerners that enabled Lincoln to fulfill the promises of history whose contradictions were already laden in the creation of the Constitution. Still after there was FDR, who was so popular that he ruled for nearly four terms before succumbing to death. He had cloaked himself with the Left politics at the time, which emphasized the seizing of American industry BY, OF, and FOR the workers and to accelerate American manufacturing to brig them out of the Great Depression. It was this popular mandate that was so terrifying to the ruling class, that term limits were instated.
It is very clear that the rise of modernity which abstracted people from their means of production via private property forced what was previously taken as a given, that government and political entities should exist to serve specific social ends, and our conditioned by the popular will of the masses, has over the past several centuries, but more explicitly the last two in building towards the return of history itself. The days of popular sovereignty have returned.
So You might find yourself wondering WHY did people believe in kings as gods, and why was that so ingrained in culture. Why did regular people reinforce this belief through history? The academically minded of you might go the historical nihilist route, that if you didn’t believe you were persecuted. And although this was undoubtedly true, it is not fully correct.
The ancient temples of old did not come about as a matter of slaves and vanity alone, that is a modern pessimism that one should rid themselves of when studying humanity. To the people of ancient times, it was progress, it was a way of reproducing humanity THROUGH reaching towards heaven that we simply do not understand now in the west. Individuality has poisoned our minds into believing that everyone was oppressed simply bc the participation in some institutionalized form of religion or society is anti-individualist. However, when kings came about that were truly sovereign, that were truly in lock step with the people, they were imbued with this divine power bc they elevated the status of their concrete peoples. The god kings, unlike the politics of the west today, did not stand in the way of human development, but precisely FACILITATED IT.
The Ancient Assyrians, Sumerians, and Babylonians all had traditions of annulling debt annually.
The Ancient Egyptians had God Pharaohs and built the pyramids in their honor
The Ancient Chinese had the concept of “Tian XIa” of the mandate of heaven, which was nothing like the Divine right to rule of medieval Europe, but was indeed premised in the peasant masses. It was the understanding that dynasties are cyclical, that a ruler would come about, destroy the old nobility, sweep away the old order, and most importantly BRING ABOUT SUBSTANTIVE REAL CHANGE, usually in the form of land reform. Breaking up the old nobility and giving their land to the peasants who had far more use for it than they did. The ensuing dynasty was said to have the Mandate of Heaven so long as the peasants were content and were not forced into open rebellion. It was always something deeply tied to the way people reproduce themselves. And thus the ancient wisdom of the Middle Kingdom was preserved for millennia.
Marxs had this notion of the Asiatic motive production, which can trace its roots back to the Mongol empire. The universality of Europe was an abstract one. Each citizen was understood as a citizen, purely in the abstract where they had rights only and so far as they fit certain criteria, which usually meant owning property. The Mongols did not understand universality that way, everyone was a citizen of the Mongol empire, and their cultures were respected so long as they paid regular tribute to the Khan. It was the first instance in history, where people were not only identifying whether their local communities that understood that they were part of something larger than themselves. The Mongols had set borders and understood that everything under their rule was itself universal, whereas the Europeans simply sought to conquer the whole world for the sake of it, believing themselves the most civilized.
The Prophet Mohammad PBUH
The American revolution itself was preceded by the “Great Awakening” which saw the rise of religious fervor in young colonial subjects, and the rise of an anti-colonial messaging in sermons against British occupation. It was this religious fervor that helped create the conditions for Revolution.
Theres a reason why Dune was a huge hit, or why superhero’s or movie stars are so embraced. It is us as people, collectively looking up to ideas, not necessarily people. The people yearn for real sovereignty which in many cases will take the form of the power of a few people elevated to the heads of state. It is the power of the top and bottom squeezing the middle, so that we can bring about the future.
The yearning for a popular monarch is FIRST AND FOREMOST premised in the will of the masses, not the other way around. These giants of history were people after all, but the myth around them is created by the masses.
Do you think the pyramids were built by slaves? No they were built by well compensated workmen who in many cases were buried alongside their works when their time came. People have forgotten the ability of master signifiers to bring people together and seize their own collective civilizational destiny.
Polltics is not simply who gets to rule for the next four years while unelected cabinet members funded by big corporations are the ones really running the show, Politics is primed first and foremost by how the people reproduce their own livelihoods. Whosoever can allow the masses to reproduce themselves, and their livelihoods, and advance humanity forward through history, are the real sovereigns of history. Their power is rooted in the ability to lean into the conditions for people to thrive.
THE GREAT AWAKENING conditioned the AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Bless the maker and his water
Bless the comings and goings of him
May his passage cleanse the world’ and may he keep the world for his people
Paul in the Movie with that hard ass line about the narrow way thru (ie the Stalinist golden path)
“The visions are clear now. I see possible futures, all at once. Our enemies are all around us, and in so many futures they prevail. But I do see a way, there is a narrow way through.”
Versus in the book not realizing the middle path until the throne room
The movie, having to shift things around to make the story more coherent to the silver screen understands something more essential in the book that Herbert himself tries to reject. That is, of course, the power of the sovereign.
Paul in the Book cannot see beyond the fight to the death in the throne room, what remains is a feeling of some predetermined “terrible purpose” that doesn’t become clear to him until the end.
Movie Paul sees all when he drinks the water of life in the movie and instead of blinding moving forward, seizes his destiny of liberation. He embraces the mantle of Lisan Al Gaib, and his heritage as both Harrkonen and Atradies, as well as the Kwizats Haderach while rejecting their initial premises as merely puppets of the regime, and engages in a truly revolution liberation struggle.
It’s like what Marx says in 18th Brumaire “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.”
I t he beginning of Dune it is made clear to not mistake Muadib as being of Caladan, that he is as Freman as those native born.
Again, this is a story about the Fremen as a people, Paul is only a conduit by which their will is enforced. Lisan Al Gaib was not merely a tool of the Bene Gesariat, but in fact became concretized as the prophecy fulfilled when Paul took the mantle for himself. The unity of opposites, manipulation or prophecy, and the truth prevails.