That’s the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom! (And the related civilisations.)

It’s super interesting because everyone has at least some idea of Alexander’s conquests but most historical documentaries or highschool history classes just focus on how wonderful and powerful the Greek empire was but they don’t look at the cultural interplay that occurred or how the influences flowed into Greek culture. This is because of the background radiation of cultural supremacism and shit, of course.

This is partly why I’m fascinated by religious studies: your run of the mill history studies tends to be more focused on conflicts between different civilizations or just on one particular civilization but religion is sort of like the fingerprint of a society’s values, the interplay between different cultures, and it traces directly along routes of trade and the flow of information (given that it was usually the religious figures who were literate and it often ancient libraries were maintained by clergy - in fact, this is such a mainstay of history that we have the word “clerical” to mean everything to do administration and documentation but this traces its etymological roots directly to the words clergy, since the clergy and their clerical undertakings were so synonymous).

This is gonna be a hot take but I’m especially interested in religious jurisprudence because ultimately it says a lot about what a society values, what it rejects, the conditions that it reponded to, and how it seeks to establish “the good life” for its followers. This is absolutely a parallel to the (mostly) secular radical projects that seek to achieve their own good life for the people.

In a sense, as radicals, we seek to abolish certain aspects of society that we see as being wholly or largely detrimental and we seek to establish the necessary elements to ensure a good life amongst the masses. This is exactly what the prophet Muhammad did by enforcing a strict code of ritual cleanliness (back when people were legitimately gross with regards to hygiene which risked the outbreak of plagues - he even went so far as to serious consider mandating that people had to brush their teeth daily, and I’m not even kidding lol) and it’s exactly what the tenth Sikh Guru did by establishing very visible articles of faith so that Sikhs are basically walking billboards for Sikhism with the expectation that if you are announcing to the world that you are a Sikh then you’d better be representing Sikh values like upholding justice even at the risk of one’s own life.

If you read what Guru Gobind Singh said about why Sikhs must display visible articles of faith, it’s not all that far removed from Marx staying “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.”

Mao’s Three Rules and Eight Points are effectively laws and axioms that aren’t dissimilar from religious rules about what an army can and cannot do, to the point where the PLA choir still recites this in the same way that a mantra is recited.

I guess a superficial take here would be that I’m trying to cast radical politics as being religious or that communists are basically a cult something but really what I’m interested in is what can be learned about history, where I can use historical/cultural/religious principles and values to agitate and organise for revolution, and to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to enforcing a set of standards for society to achieve “the good life”.

The PLA distinguished itself from warlords because that was the era they emerged from and warlords were undeniably a plague on Chinese society that brought untold amounts of suffering and hardship down on the masses. There’s a lot to be learned from that and even today in China, the police serve the people in a way that is markedly different from the police in America which emerged from slave patrols who were reacting to slaves who attempted to abscond in order to be free.

CW: moderate discussions of animal abuse and slaughter ahead

Judaism made religious prohibitions against taking meat from animals without slaughtering them first. This is perhaps the oldest historical record of animals rights being established as it prohibited Jews from causing immense suffering to an animal by butchering it while it was still alive.

There’s a reason why this law is etched into Judaism and later Islam. The societies that existed before and around these religions either permitted this practice or it was frowned upon but society was still fairly permissive of the practice, and Abrahamic religions reacted to these circumstances.

In a similar vein, are we as radicals not seeking to respond to the lessons and the failures of previous revolutions?

If I were asked to make principles or axioms on this basis, I would literally say things like:

“Do not accept IMF loans except as an absolute necessity” (Yugoslavia)
“Do not allow for uneven economic prosperity that leaves ethnic groups or regions behind” (China, Yugoslavia)
“Enforce strict ideological discipline within the party” (USSR)
“Uphold the rights of people to express their sexual orientation and gender identity without persecution or harassment, do not favour one gender or sexuality over others” (Cuba)
“Maintain strict control over all armed forces” (Chile) etc. etc.

Is that really any different to the Three Rules and Eight Points that Mao established? Is that really so different from the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi’s Code?

The contents are different, sure, but ultimately I see far more parallels than I do points of difference.