Law of Social Cycle: Difference between revisions

The "Law of Social Cycle" theory first appeared in [[Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar]]'s book ''Human Society, Vol. 2'' in the late 1950s and has since been reproduced and expanded on in many books. The theory has probably received the widest publication in the West in the many books of Ravi Batra, a reasearcher and disciple of Sarkar, notably ''[[The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism|The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism, a New Study of History]]'', ''[[The Great Depression of 1990]]'' and ''[[The New Golden Age|The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos]]''. Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah have also written about Sarkars' Social Cycle Theory in the book ''Macrohistory and Macrohistorians''. The theory owes to the work of [[Sri Aurobindo]], ''[[The Human Cycle]]'', which was published in 1949 but originally written in 1916-1918 under the title ''The Psychology of Social Development''.

The Law of Social Cycles is a theory of [[Varna (Hinduism)|Varna]], arising out of the Indian [[episteme]] (Inayatullah, 2002). This law states that while people in any society are all relatively similar, they have generally the same goals, desires and ambitions but differ in the way they go about achieving their goals. An individual's specific methods for achieving success depend on his physical and psychological makeup. Essentially, there are four different psychological types of people, warriors, intellectuals, acquisitors and labourers, who find basic fulfillment in four different kinds of ways.