eir transformation process.
We see, then, that there is a balance among the various parts of the environment which requires careful tending. Any social organization which hopes to survive on the planet must fit itself into that environment. A society which tried to impose its own ideas and needs on that environment would destroy the environment and itself at the same time.
The social organization on Arrakis resembles the feudal arrangement of the entire Empire, at least before the arrival of Paul and the attention he gives the ecology. Under the previous rulers, the Harkonnens ruled the planet, and had done so for eighty years. The Harkonnens had been
holding the planet in quasi-fief under a CHOAM Company contract to mine the geriatric spice, melange. Now the Harkonnens were leaving to be replaced by the House of Atreid
...