LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

New York lost two greats this weekend first Betty Friedan and now Al Lewis. Lewis played Grandpa Munster and was the Green Candidate against George Pataki for Governor of New York passed away today.

Just two years short of his 90th birthday, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against draconian drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as "Grandpa Al Lewis."

In dispute is his age. Was he 95 or 83? Even Wikipedia isn't sure.

Well the cigar chomping old guy always looked old even in the days when he played Grandpa Munster. So maybe like the wacko Count Dracula he played he was ageless. The Munsters were perfect TV for their time. A parody on the Adams Family and the Universal/Hmmer Horror film craze going on at the time, the Munsters gave new meaning to family values. Indeed perhaps in more than one way they helped a generation appreciate other kinds of families. The show certainly promoted, as did Bewitched, tolerance and understanding. Which is the underpining of most monster pictures be it King Kong or Frankenstien. I won't go into a detailed discussion of the role of the 'other' in popular culture, and deconstruct these TV dramas, suffice it to say they had a major influence on an entire generation making us more liberal. Shudder, see blame it on the Munsters.

I still remember his younger self from the hit series Car 54 Where Are You. He and Fred Gwynne were always a great team on both Car and the Munsters. They were the Lewis and Martin of their day or maybe Rowan and Martin.

Lewis, sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, became a pop culture icon playing the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne's ever-bumbling Herman Munster on the 1964-66 television show. He was also one of the stars of another classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on Car 54, Where Are You?

His run for Govenor was not a joke. It was a serious call for Third Party politics in the U.S. something we are blessed with in Canada. And something that is seriously lacking in the U.S. thus undermining democracy.

Green reflects on the death of Al Lewis

But in 1998 Lewis re-emerged into the spotlight as a maverick New York political candidate. He ran for New York State Governor on the Green Party Ticket, along with Albany native Alice Green, who ran for Albany Mayor this past year.

Green said, "I think most people thought of him as a funny man, but I knew him as this really serious, compassionate person who was committed to doing what he could for social justice."

Green said Lewis was loved by many, and people would just flock to him while they were campaigning together. She said he was known by everyone as 'Grandpa Al Lewis."

And while he played the Grandfatherly type he could still make even Howard Stern blush when he defended civil liberties against the censorship minded grundy's in the FCC.

Lewis rarely slowed down, opening his restaurant and hosting his WBAI radio program. At one point during the '90s, he was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern radio show, once sending the shock jock diving for the delay button by leading an undeniably obscene chant against the Federal Communications Commission.

Good Night and Goodbye Grandpa Munster.

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Betty Friedan one of the Second Wave feminists, along with Simone de Beauvoir, and Evelyn Reed, has passed away today at the age of 85. Known for her groundbreaking work on the contradicitons of Post War American stereotyping of women; The Feminine Mystique.

Friedan was a classic liberal, a fighter for womens rights as individuals and a New York left intellectual, thus her recognition that womens struggle were collective as well as one of individual rights.

"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, `Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children," Friedan said.

The First wave feminists, are often thought of as those women who began the fight at the turn of the 2oth Century Suffragettes as well as anarchists and socialists like Emma Goldman and Elizabeth Gurely Brown, Helen Keller and womens reproductive rights advocate Margret Sanger. But in reality that was the real second wave.

The first wave really began in the 19th Century around the abolishionist movement which gained many women advocates who fought for Afro-American rights and labour rights ending up fighting a losing battle for their own rights.
Friedan and de Beauvoir I would class as Third Wave feminism in this light. As the later feminists of the late sixties and early seventies, Kate Millet , Shulamith Firestone , that continue that groundbreaking work would be known as.

The struggle for womens liberation is the essence of all class and revolutionary struggle. And it's at the root of classical liberalism and anarchism.

Rooted in the utilitarian philosophy of Godwin and Mills, the revolutionary athiesm and humanism of Byron and Shelly, feminism begins with Mary Wollestoncrafts famous essay on Womens Rights. Mary was married to Godwin. And was well versed in the arguements of utilitarianism and Godwins classic contractualism.

That contractualism is the basis of later libertarianism of the Prodhounian and Tuckers schools. Thus greatly influencing the libertarian school of thought in the U.S. including Ayn Rand.

A societies treatment of women, the role they play and the freedom they have is an expression of how liberal, plural and secular a society is. Those who would down play this who denigrate feminism, especially if they are women, and women on the right in particular, do a disservice to the women who fought for their rights. The fact they have a popular and respected voice regardless of their politics is because of the struggles of feminists like Freidan.

I expect to read critical apprasials of her life and work in the coming days. And we can expect the dissing of Freidan by the usual gaggle of right wing women in the next few days. They of course will give faint praise to her, and then damn her. But their voices would not be heard had it not been for Second Wave feminists like Freidan and de Beauvoir. And certainly they would not have been heard if the only womans voice that had been respected had been that of the hopeless romantic adulator of male indivdualism; Ayn Rand.

Friedans critique was one that challenged the dominance of Freud in American culture and the role of therapy that had become the method of social control. Therapy had replaced police and social workers in the fifies and sixties as the new science of mass control. Ironic that what had once been the science of the individual had now become what Reich called Mass Psychology. The dominance of the Fruedian mystique, which is the core of Fiedans critique, is well illustrated in the early movies of Woody Allen and his self parody of the neurotic New Yorker whose always on the couch.

The uncritical acceptance of Freudian doctrine in America was caused, at least in part, by the very relief it provided from uncomfortable questions about objective realities. After the depression, after the war, Freudian psychology became much more than a science of human behaviour, a therapy for the suffering. It became an all-embracing American ideology, a new religion. It provided a convenient escape from the atom bomb, McCarthy, all the disconcerting problems that might spoil the taste of steaks, and cars and colour television and backyard swimming pools. And if the new psychological religion – which made a virtue of sex, removed all sin from private vice, and cast suspicion on high aspirations of the mind and spirit – had a more devastating personal effect on women than men, nobody planned it that way.

But the practice of psychoanalysis as a therapy was not primarily responsible for the feminine mystique. It was the creation of writers and editors in the mass media, ad-agency motivation researchers, and behind them the popularisers and translators of Freudian thought in the colleges and universities. Freudian and pseudo-Freudian theories settled everywhere, like fine volcanic ash. Sociology, anthropology, education, even the study of history and literature became permeated and transfigured by Freudian thought. The most zealous missionaries of the feminine mystique were the functionalists, who seized hasty gulps of pre-digested Freud to start their new departments of ‘Marriage and Family-Life Education’. The functional courses in marriage taught American college girls how to ‘play the role’ of woman – the old role became a new science. Related movements outside the colleges – parent education, child-study groups, prenatal maternity study groups and mental-health education – spread the new psychological super-ego throughout the land, replacing bridge and canasta as an entertainment for educated young wives. And this Freudian super-ego worked for growing numbers of young and impressionable American women as Freud said the super-ego works – to perpetuate the past.

Mankind never lives completely in the present; the ideologies of the super-ego perpetuate the past, the traditions of the race and the people, which yield but slowly to the influence of the present and to new developments, and, so long as they work through the super-ego, play an important part in man’s life, quite independently of economic conditions.

The feminine mystique, elevated by Freudian theory into a scientific religion, sounded a single, over-protective, life-restricting, future-deriving note for women. Girls who grew up playing baseball, baby-sitting, mastering geometry almost independent enough, almost resourceful enough, to meet the problems of the fission-fusion era – were told by the most advanced thinkers of our time to go back and live their lives as if they were Noras, restricted to the doll’s house by Victorian prejudice. And their own respect and awe for the authority of science – anthropology, sociology, psychology share that authority now – kept them from questioning the feminine mystique.

The Feminine Mystique
Chapter 5 The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud

Also see:The Sexual Revolution Continues

Whose Family Values?

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Pro Sports and Criminal Capitalism

NFL IN TORONTO?

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Al Ahram has another brilliant essay in this weeks issue; Egypt and the ghost of Marx

It reminds me of Max Schactman's critique of State Capitalism in the USSR as being Bureaucratic Collectivism. In this case the Egyptian economy went from being a State Capitalist economy under Nassar to becoming a bureaucratic Collectivist capitalism under neo-liberalism.

The similarities are striking. Complete down to the New Class criticism of the Soviet Union and by the fact that social upheaval that had occurred in the Seventies and Eighties by the professionals, technocrats, artists, writers, workers and poor that led to Glasnost is now occurring in Egypt.

It was natural for this kind of situation to lead to the predominance of suppressed "social" grumbling among various sectors of the populace, particularly traditional professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors and engineers, in addition to the armies of the unemployed. It was possible for any organized power opposed to the ruling party to exploit this situation in its interest and reap its fruits without regard to its political or religious nature. This is what the second class -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- did. Over seven decades it has succeeded in securing its bases among large groups including the small bourgeois in the cities as well as low- ranking civil servants and a wide section of professional syndicate members and other marginalised groups that have suffered from the mistakes of development policies over the last three decades.

Except instead of occurring because of Bureaucratic Collectivism it is because of Collectivist Bureaucratic Capitalism. The political analysis in this article about why the ruling class lost the election, though they won the government, to the Muslim Brotherhood is because the State and its capitalist class have become disengaged from the needs of the people. Neo-Liberalism in the Non-G8 world has become bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism with a New Class in charge of what the Economist would call crony capitalism.

From a capitalism led by the state in the Nasser era to a capitalism "practiced" by individuals in the Sadat era, the door was opened wide to monopolistic practices marred by financial and institutional corruption. In the end this resulted in a "catholic alliance" between capitalism and government bureaucracy, followed by the appearance of a new, uncontrolled class -- "bureaucratic capitalists" -- that does not embrace real capitalism as much as its slogans, and which is not led by any ethical or social framework in the practice of its economic activity. In its presence, the state appears to have become incapable of providing the most basic services to its citizens.

With the arrival of the third millennium it appeared as though a new class was being formed in the womb of the Egyptian regime. Its form resembled that of the "comprador bourgeoisie," so named by theorists of the dependency school. This elite relied on external support more than connections on the domestic front, the price of its incorporation into the global market paid by overlooking society's basic demands. Many of the economic laws that have been passed recently can be read in this context.

Since then, it has appeared as though the process of "disengagement" between the state and society that began in the mid-1970s has reached its fullest extent. It has become clear that the state is attempting to replace its social legitimacy with another that is class-based and which relies on wealth that has swelled over the last decade. This development resembles a deal in which the regime benefits from the extraordinary economic capabilities of the new class while shoring up foreign legitimacy through compliance with economic transformation programmes. The new rich, in turn, benefit from the inheritance of a centralized state by moving from the world of a shadow economy to the world of politics and legitimacy through the doors of parliament.

Now compare that with Djilas theory of the New Class in the old Soviet Union and the similarities are stunning.

Djilas' New Class

A theory of the new class was developed by Milovan Djilas, who participated with Tito in the Yugoslavian Revolution, but was later purged by him as Djilas began to advocate democraticegalitarian ideals (which he believed were more in line with the way socialism and communism should look like). The theory of the new class is in contradiction to the claims of certain ruling communists, such as Stalin, who argued that their revolutions and/or social reforms had resulted in the extinction of any ruling class as such. It was Djilas' observation as a member of a communist government that party members stepped into the role of ruling class - a problem which he believed should be corrected through revolution. Djilas' completed his primary work on his new class theory in the mid 1950s. and

Djilas claimed that the new class' specific relationship to the means of production was one of collective political control, and that the new class' property form was political control. Thus for Djilas the new class not only seeks expanded material reproduction to politically justify its existence to the working class, but it also seeks expanded reproduction of political control as a form of property in itself. This can be compared to the capitalist who seeks expanded value through increased sharemarket values, even though the sharemarket itself does not necessarily reflect an increase in the value of commodities produced. Djilas uses this argument about property forms to indicate why the new class sought parades, marches and spectacles despite this activity lowering the levels of material productivity.

Djilas proposed that the new class only slowly came to self-consciousness of itself as a class. On arriving at a full self-consciousness the initial project undertaken would be massive industrialisation in order to cement the external security of the new class' rule against foreign or alternative ruling classes. In Djilas' schema this approximated the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. As the new class suborns all other interests to its own security during this period, it freely executes and purges its own members in order to achieve its major goal of security as a ruling class.

After security has been achieved, the new class pursues a policy of moderation towards its own members, effectively granting material rewards and freedom of thought and action within the new class -- so long as this freedom is not used to undermine the rule of the new class. Djilas identified this period as the period of Khrushchev's government in the Soviet Union. Due to the emergence of conflicts of policy within the new class, the potential for palace coups, or populist revolutions is possible (as experienced in Poland and Hungary respectively).

Finally Djilas predicted a period of economic decline, as the political future of the new class was consolidated around a staid programme of corruption and self-interest at the expense of other social classes. This can be interpreted as a prediction of the Brezhnev era stagnation by Djilas.

How can capitalism be Bureaucratic Collectivist you ask. Well it is simple the IMF and World Bank as much as they are agencies of U.S. Imperialism, are in effect left overs of the post WWII Keynesian social welfare state. They fueled that dependency model of economics until the eighties when they shifted to a neo-liberal model of economic adjustment.

The World Bank in particular promoted the privatization of State Enterprises and attached funding strings that enforced the restructuring of national economies. The IMF used its clout to demand open markets, reductions in social spending and the further privatization of the economy.

The capitalist models they were using were not the existing sustainable local market economies, see my article on Africa, but rather they were opening up the existing state enterprises to investment by the local ruling classes and their bureaucracy, and allowing for international investment into these existing enterprises.

In the former Soviet Union this led to what we call Mafia Capitalism, where the old apparatchiks became the new bosses. The same thing occurred in Egypt. The bureaucracy became the new capitalist class. And since the WB and the IMF themselves are giant bureaucratic monopolies, they only understand dealing with large scale enterprises that are modeled on themselves.

The agenda of the WB and IMF was not to see the development of local sustainable economies but rather to open up closed economies to international investors and commodities.

As the article from Al Ahram shows this resulted in exactly the same collective bureaucratization that occurs under any form of State Capitalist model of development. It doesn't matter what the ideology is. In this case neo-liberal models of economics embraced by the U.S. and Britain impacted in these countries not as opening up the market place but actually closing the markets to the local communities and opening them up to the international capitalist corporations.

At the same time the IMF demanded that states reduce their obligations towards their citizens, claiming that privatization of water, utilities, public transit, and other services would allow for competition. The competition did not occur, rather state services become private monopolies. And reduced their social subsidization while searching for investment markets and investors to shore up their bottom line. Why build infrastructure in rural Egypt when you build housing and hotel developments in Israel or Saudi Arabia.

Egypt is not alone in suffering from this failed model of political economy. Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and all the newly developed capitalist economies of the South have suffered exactly from this same form of bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism. It is apparent in the democratic uprisings in these Latin American countries. Venezuela is an excellent example of the same crony ruling class dominant class being out of touch with the people as Egypt now experiences.

Chavez mobilized those out of power to gain power. The ruling class he faced down and still faces as an opposition includes the wealthy and powerful, the union bosses and their members who benefited from the bureaucratic Collectivist capitalism of the monopoly gas and oil industry, and from the middle classes whose wealth comes from their privilege.

Ironically it is the Left in Latin America that now calls for an end to the power of the bureaucratic Collectivist classes, and is trying new models of social and economic development that is sustainable, locally based and based on worker and consumer collectives and cooperatives.

It is this model that can challenge the globalization model of the WB and the IMF and their crony capitalist class in Egypt.

Also see:

The Need for Arab Anarchism

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I found a reference to Ibn Khaldun in an op ed piece on Freedom of the Press in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram. The article itself is well worth the read, as it gives a classic liberal view of the issue and its importance for the reformation of the Egyptian political system.

Often in the West we are given to believing the portrait painted by the media of the Middle East as a unitary Islamic culture, one that has no liberal traditions and is under the dominant authority of the Mullahs.

Ahmed Naguib Roushdy writes:

John Stuart Mill and John Locke wrote about freedom as a political principle, but it was Mill who fully enmeshed it in a philosophical theory. The Islamic historian and jurist, Ibn Khaldun, who preceded Adam Smith in calling for open markets and free trade by 400 years, said in his famous work Al-Muqaddema that restricting people's freedom would preclude the advance of economic development and commercial exchange. Modern economists and writers still consider that there is a connection between freedom and the welfare of nations.

I had not heard of Ibn Khaldun before reading this piece and so I googled him. As the author said he fits well within the liberal tradition, indeed in modern terms he can be seen as a precursor to both Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

The English Historian Arnold Toynbee says this about Ibn Khaldun;

Ibn Khaldūn, from Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History vol. iii, III. C. II. (b), p. 321
The last member of our Pleiad of historians is ‛Abd-ar-Rahmān ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldūn al-Hadramī of Tunis (vivebatA.D. 1332-1406)—an Arabic genius who achieved in a single 'acquiescence' of less than four years' length, out of a fifty-four years' span of adult working life, a life-work in the shape of a piece of literature which can bear comparison with the work of a Thucydides or the work of a Machiavelli for both breadth and profundity of vision as well as for sheer intellectual power. In his chosen field of intellectual activity he appears to have been inspired by no predecessors² and to have found no kindred souls among his contemporaries and to have kindled no answering spark of inspiration in any successors; and yet, in the Prolegomena (Muqaddimat) to his Universal History he has conceived and formulated a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place. It was his single brief 'acquiescence' from a life of practical activity that gave Ibn Khaldūn his opportunity to cast his creative thought into literary shape.

His major life work can be defined as a Universal History of the Politcal Economy Arab world, It is a Sociology of Economics. In fact his work is remincint of the later works of Spencer, Weber and Veblen.

Ibn Khaldun, a Sufi who died in 1406 AD, was a renaissance man, the real father of sociology. He defined the foundations of sociology more than 4 centuries before Auguste Comte "discovered" them .

During his lifetime Ibn Khaldun is seeing the development of the earliest forms of capitalist primitive accumulation during the period of the last crusade the centralization of Arab control over the Middle East and the decline of European Fuedalism. This would not be recognized in Europe for another two hundred years. He developed a Labour Theory of Value predating Adam Smith, Ricardo and Marx. In fact he is a libertarian economic sociologist.

“Whoever takes someone's property, or uses him for forced labor, or presses an unjustified claim upon him It should be known that this is what the Lawgiver had in mind when he forbade injustice.”

Ibn Khaldun fits well within the World Systems Theory of the evolution of Capitalism as developed by Wallerstein and Arrigi. In fact it places Arrighi's dating of the earliest development of capitalism as far back as the 14th century as correct. Journal of World-Systems Research

Ibn Khaldun: Discourse of the Method and Concepts of Economic Sociology

Capitalists (al-mutamawwiluun)

The term "al-mutamawwiluun" refers to persons possessing a great deal of capital. These are individuals who have acquired great estates and farms. They are considered among the wealthiest inhabitants of a particular city. Their capital is generated through fluctuation of the market, imposition of taxes and commerce. They appropriate the labour power of other people in return for protection and other non-material services. Ibn Khaldun says that these are persons who live in great luxury and are accustomed to it. They compete in this respect with emirs and rulers. Emirs and rulers could use their power to undertake similar activities, something which Ibn Khaldun doest not recommend.

Class structure.

There are, according to Ibn Khaldun, three major classes:

At the top is the class of rulers. This is the class of those holding power. It also includes capitalists.

Thereafter comes the middle class. This is the class between the capitalists and the lower class. It composes entrepreneurs (al-mu^ctamiruun), i.e. those who are engaged in activities such as craftsmanship and the like and who are not capitalists.

At the bottom, says Ibn Khaldun, there is the lower class, described as those who have nothing to gain or to loose.

Surplus earnings in money and kind (al-muktasabaat)

This denotes all types of visible surplus earnings, contrary to utility-produces (al-mifaadaat) which are invisible.

Considering the two terms together, Ibn Khaldun says that al-mifaadaat and al-muktasabaat in their entirety or for the most are value realized from human labour. Human effort and labour is necessary for every unit of surplus in money and every unit of surplus in kind. Labour could be concealed or obvious, but whatever the case, none of these surpluses will be realized without labour

The know-how productivity (al-mifaad al-muqtana minhu)

This is one of the most important terms of Ibn Khaldun's theory of value. It represents the mere know-how labour which results in creation of utility. It is the productive skilled labour that creates value. There is nothing here but labour.

Ibn Khaldun means that when we buy an article, we do not buy only something concrete (the thing in itself), but we buy in fact the amount of labour which is spent to create that article. Since labour differs in its quality, the price of the article must also differ. Ibn Khaldun expresses this qualitative distinction by the linguistically related term al-qinyah.

Labour

Labour is the sine qua non of all, the source of value. It belongs to the things that constitute capital. One's value, says Ibn Khaldun, is embodied in one's labour and this can not be realized without payment. Labour, which constitutes one's sustenance, livelihood and surplus earnings, is divided into primary and additional labour.

Additional labour generates surplus earnings. Increase in demand creates new types of crafts and more labour. The market flourishes, the surplus earnings of entrepreneurs increase. The income and expenditure of the state and civilization­ al-^cumraan grows. The cycle repeats itself with the increase of demand for luxuries. Al-^cumraan increases for the second time. The cycle leads to higher and higher stages of growth, until one reaches the final stage of al-^cumraan where growth cannot be overstepped. [Here lies the rudiments of the Multiplier Effect and of measurement of GNP]

Economic enterprise (al-i^ctimaar)

This term refers to productive activities ­activities that yield surplus earnings­ whether emanating from agricultural labourers, farmers, craftsmen, capitalists and all other tax payers.

Economic enterprise (al-i^ctimaar) results from ambitions and incentives. Business and activities stop when hope and stimulation vanishes. Ibn Khaldun says that man is a natural leader, but becomes apathetic when deprived of his leadership

Those who undertake such activities are called " al-mu^ctamiruun- entrepreneurs. They engage themselves into productive labour through active participation as opposed to, for instance, capitalists (al-mutamawwiluun).

Gross earnings in money and kind (al-makaasib).

The terms "al-makasib" is a general term. It covers income, expenditure, consumption and savings.Labour is the main foundation and source of al-makaasib. According to Ibn Khaldun, gross earnings are achieved after having covered one's expenditures (an-nafaqaat) and one's livelihood (al-ma^caash). The overspill is savings that could lead to:

• accumulation of money as dead capital (ar-riyaash) and/or
• accumulation of capital in kind (al-mutamawwal)

Gross earnings, says Ibn Khaldun, are measured in gold and silver.

Accumulation of money as dead capital (ar-riyaash) is a surplus that exceeds needs and necessities. It denotes money, or treasure (adh-dhakhiirah) as measured in gold and silver.

Accumulation of capital in kind (al-mutamawwal) is also a surplus (maksab) that exceeds needs and necessities. It refers to goods and properties (estates, farms etc.) which result from crafts and non-crafts and which can potentially be converted into cash or gold and silver.

On economics

"In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation."

This sociological theory includes the concept known in economics as the Laffer Curve (the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue follows an inverted U shape).

For sociology it is interesting that he conceived both a central social conflict ("town" versus "desert") as well as a theory (using the concept of a "generation") of the necessary loss of power of city conquerors coming from the desert. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of 'asabiyah "social cohesion." This cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; and it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds - psychological, sociological, economic, political - of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion.

Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is, in layman's terms, the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization (and, presumably, the dominant culture in its region), its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process.

See:The Need for Arab Anarchism

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