A spectre is haunting 2035: the spectre of communism

[imomus]

The British Army has been brainstorming about what the world will be like thirty years into the future. They want to plan for the sort of risks, shocks and challenges the army might be facing in Britain in the year 2035.

According to Rear Admiral Chris Parry of the Ministry of Defense's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, there'll be inequality, overpopulation in Africa and the Middle East, shanty town-style urbanization, climate change bringing heat and soil erosion to developing countries and a big freeze to Europe, people with computer chips in their brains, and Flash Mobs mobilizing faster than the authorities can respond. Oh, and the return of Marxism.

Yes, even as Vladimir Putin promises a new Cold War, the British Army is foreseeing a 21st century resurgence of communist ideology and preparing to battle, well, not the international proletariat but the middle classes:

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".



I must say I think the British Army is right. We're all sick of postmodernism, yet we know that there are really only two ways out of it: fundamentalist Islam and communism. I know which side I'm on.

The idea that the British Army is preparing to fight the British middle class does raise the worrying question of who the army is actually for, though. Doesn't the British middle class basically fund the British Army with their taxes? And isn't "the world's middle classes uniting, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest" pretty much a definition of the normal workings of any republic?

But Britain isn't a republic, of course, and the army is still loyal to the royals. It's Her Majesty's Army, loyal, in 2035, to King William, presumably.

A republic is a nation which has had precisely the kind of revolution the army is preparing to quell; a middle class one. America had its middle class revolution in 1776, France in 1789. Britain, then, is scheduled to have its very own in 2035. Guardian readers -- middle class proto-Marxists every last one -- must be quailing to read that what they thought was their own army may well use "unmanned electromagnetic pulses" against their tactical Flash Mob uprisings, knocking out their communication networks and stymying their attempt to foment the kind of revolution other advanced states achieved in the late 18th century.



A child of the American republic, Jeffrey D. Sachs, sketches out a much more sensible vision of the future in the first of the 2007 Reith Lectures, Bursting at the Seams. Director of The Earth Institute, Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia and a former advisor to Kofi Annan at the UN, Sachs also sees climate change and overpopulation as the major challenges the world faces. But instead of advocating, like the Rear Admiral, giving more money to the army so they can fight the very people who fund them, Sachs wants to take some of it away.

"One day's Pentagon spending could cover every sleeping site in Africa for five years with anti-malaria bed nets," he says.

Comments

[bricology.livejournal.com]

First, I should point out that the following isn't my opinion, it's all well-sourced facts. You can look it up for yourself on Wikipedia and through on-line versions of the primary texts of Islam.

As Wikipedia says, when Muhammad was about 43 years old, he "started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that 'God is One', that complete 'surrender' to Him (lit. islām) is man's religion, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and other prophets."

In 622 CE, Muhammad and his few followers began their warfare against the Meccans, who were polytheistic pagans. Over the course of the next ten years, Muhammad and his followers waged about 80 battles of varying scope, with him eventually subduing most of Arabia and forcing its inhabitants to become followers, or die. For example, the Jewish community of Medina was "invited" to convert to Islam; when they refused, they were wiped out. He ordered the beheadings of somewhere between 600 and 900 of the Medina Jews after they had unconditionally surrendered, and he sold their widows and children into slavery. Indeed, Muhammad bought, sold and owned slaves long after the practice had ended in neighboring areas.

This ten-year war entailed Muhammad and his army engaging in unprovoked attacks, looting, taking prisoners for ransom, torture and executions. Muhammad used to send letters to the kings of the surrounding kingdoms, demanding that they surrender to him and accept that he was God's messenger. He would close his letters with "Aslem, Taslam", meaning "submit or you won't be safe". These are historic facts that even few Muslims dispute.

One of the central beliefs of Islam is that Muhammad was the "ideal man", the "perfect man". His actions are considered normative for all Muslim men. Significantly, many of Muhammad's actions (in addition to his role as a warring conqueror) are difficult for many non-Muslims to accept as virtuous. For example, he had eleven wives, and had sex with his wife Ayesha when she was 9, although some credible Islamic sources put her age as young as 6. He was 53 at the time.

Another of Muhammad's wives was a Jewish captive whose husband Muhammad killed. It's unlikely that she would've been too keen on Muhammad, so it seems reasonable to consider her status that of a rape victim and captive.

Another central tenet of Islam is that the Qur'an is complete, perfect and unchangeable. This is far more than the literalist, inerrantist position held by some Christians that the Bible is 100% literal and true; it's more like if people believed that the Old Testament, where it says that people should be stoned to death for picking up firewood on the Sabbath is legitimate and must be enforced. Islam leaves no room for interpretation or moderation. Indeed, the earliest commentaries written on the Qur'an, soon after Muhammad died, treat it and its assertions and laws very literally. It is the Muslim who acts in accordance with Muhammad's writings that is the true Muslim; those who try to put a gentle face upon it are as much true Muslims as George W. Bush is a true Christian. Islam literally means "submission" to Allah, and Allah cannot change, neither can the words he allegedly spoke through his messenger.
(cont'd...)