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Polybius on the Cycle of Government

 

Following his predecessors, Polybius (born c. 200 BC) saw government as cyclical.  Monarchy devolves into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into mob rule, with its violence and contempt for the law.  Several observations are interesting in light of the monumental changes in governance in the West, with developments over the past decade in the United States of America in particular.

Regarding the sustainability of democracy, Polybius says:

Similarly, it is not enough to constitute a democracy that the whole crowd of citizens should have the right to do whatever they wish or propose. But where reverence to the gods, succour of parents, respect to elders, obedience to laws, are traditional and habitual, in such communities, if the will of the majority prevail, we may speak of the form of government as a democracy (Histories 6.4).

Social change in the USA includes a turning away from belief in God and the waywardness of the mainline denominations from historic Christianity.  Society is not characterised by honouring parents or the elderly.  The rejection of lawfulness is not only represented by mobs robbing stores or people not being convicted of crimes but also by lawmakers and judges using the law as a power for lawlessness, as in the case of 'lawfare'.  The rejection of tradition includes the notion that multiculturalism--multiple traditions--actually strengthen a society.  Instead of unity, the much-divided society breaks down to the point that the rule of the 'people' is not a good rule but a mob rule by violent persons.

Polybius also says that democracy is sustained as long as some remember the former times:

And as long as any survive who have had experience of oligarchical supremacy and domination, they regard their present [democratic] constitution as a blessing, and hold equality and freedom as of the utmost value. But as soon as a new generation has arisen, and the democracy has descended to their children's children, long association weakens their value for equality and freedom, and some seek to become more powerful than the ordinary citizens; and the most liable to this temptation are the rich.  So when they begin to be fond of office, and find themselves unable to obtain it by their own unassisted efforts and their own merits, they ruin their estates, while enticing and corrupting the common people in every possible way. By which means when, in their senseless mania for reputation, they have made the populace ready and greedy to receive bribes, the virtue of democracy is destroyed, and it is transformed into a government of violence and the strong hand. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbours, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honours, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilisation, it has once more found a master and a despot (Histories 6.9).

What Polybius describes as mob rule is what we today might call communism, the rule of a proletariat, the 'masses'. It was on full display in the French Revolution in a Jacobian, pre-Marxist form. Though mob rule, it requires a leader (or leaders--a vanguard of the people).  It is driven by economics—the desire for sustenance, to be sure, but also the desire for 'stuff' and others’ property rather than a desire for honour. Democracy allows a majority to vote for things it wants for itself rather than for the good of society, and this desire for such things that others have is the engine of socialist movements, as we see in New York.  The cost of living in a New York does not fit with many people's wages, and they apparently think the solution is more taxes so that government can give them more.  Communism operates through violence, taking people's property (higher taxes, higher taxation of the rich especially, rent control might be equivalents), and social deconstruction, as pointed out in the quotation, with remarkable applicability to the past several years.

While the USA has no reason to worry as a country after yesterday's elections (they took place in Democrat districts), the nation's citizens will watch with great interest to see how far the far left and communists will manage to devolve democracy into what Polybius describes.  Every lesson in socialism and communism should already have been learned after the murderous 20th century (Russia, China, Cuba, Pol Pot, or the less dramatic but also dystopian and dysfunctional socialism of Europe).  Yet the curriculum for history is rather weak in America, so we shall see if anything will be learned in real time over the next several years in places like New York.

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