History shows a repeated cycle between democratic forms and autocratic forms of politics.
Before their history, the Greeks had another long history- the Mycenaean age. As reflected in the Homeric epics, it was an age of kings, palaces, and courts. But by the time of classical Greece, their politics had progressed to a spectrum of aristocracies, oligarchies, and democracies. In Athens, democracy was a sort of aristocracy, as it was far from including all the people of the city. But at any rate, the relatively egalitarian system established in Athens spurred an age of innovation and empire, still culturally influential down to today. Rome likewise progressed in its early days from kings to a republic of the most complex and rigorous kind. Again, it was largely a collective aristocracy of the well-to-do, but represented significant political progress, and again spurred several centuries of growth and empire.
How surprised they would have been to know that kingship would make a comeback as the norm of European political organization for almost the next two thousand years. The decline and fall of the Roman empire is a story of rising autocracy, from the Augustan arrangement that saved the appearance of the Senate and Republic, down to the frank autocracy of Constantine and his successors through the Byzantine Empire.
In recent times, we have experienced a similar burst of innovation and growth from the egalitarian political systems modeled on Enlightenment ideals. It has been two and a half centuries of social progress and movement towards greater democracy. Indeed, with the end of the Cold War, we had thought a New World Order was on the horizon, and history itself had come to a conclusion. That all countries would inevitably adopt the Western model and live happily ever after, tended to by a European Union-style bureaucracy.
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| Well, perhaps not total democracy. |
What hubris! Our shock is most keen in the cases of Russia and China, which went through existential crises in their conflicts with the West and with basic economics, and were thought would inevitably open up politically as they freed themselves from the shackles of the various communist -isms of the twentieth century. But deeper political patterns were at work. Neither country had ever experienced functional democracy. Unlike the West with its fleeting (if glorious) experiences of Republican and Democratic systems, neither had ever gotten even to that point. Indeed their traumatic experiences of communism had originated as innovative, supposedly democratic political ideas from the West, which immediately curdled into the most cruel sorts of despotism.
And obviously the US itself, at the very height of its political dominance, is now beset by a would-be king. Autocracy turns out to have numerous points in its favor. First is a fundamental psychological archetype, based on the family and richly embodied by religions like Christianity. One must have a god, a father- someone to bow down to and beseech. In our infant democracy, George Washington took the truly radical step of stepping down from the presidency and retiring to private life. But now, the "base" can not fall over themselves fast enough to worship their leader, to withstand any lie or abuse as long as their side beats the other side, and installs itself in power, however corrupt.
Autocracy has, additionally, a sort of Darwinian logic to it. Our own founders in the Federalist papers and elsewhere explicitly feared the rise of a demagogue who could so twist the people from their better judgement, best interests, and hallowed institutions as to leave the constitutional system in tatters. Well, here we are. And we see it all over- in Julius Caesar and the disintegration of the Roman triumverate, in the rise of Napoleon, in the rise of Vladimir Putin and Xi JinpIng- the truly talented leader with the ability and the desire can shake the foundations of current institutions and remake the political system. Our current would-be king may be a man of fewer talents, yet seems to excite many to insurrection and destruction of democratic political institutions. It may look like a farce, but it is only a farce until they get to write the history books. Then it is glorious.
One must also take a hard look at democracy. There seems to be a dynamic where early democracies are limited to an elite, like the early United States. As the franchise is broadened by the natural / internal logic of democracy, the elites have less of a stake in it, and may indeed be attacked by the state. That leads to the danger of a leader like Julius Caesar taking an anti-elite position, using people against the elites, and installing, not a better democracy, but a dictatorship. Where does the defect lie? The fact is that true democracy is unworkable. We see in California the poor decisions frequently made by the ballot box on referendums. Without controlling the media and education environment in a rigorous fashon for the public interest, good public policy has little chance against moneyed interests, propaganda, and apathy. So the search through history has been for representative or other delegating systems that raise the most talented and public-spirited people to decision-making positions. But there can be no permanent proof against shamelessness, greed, and the other inherent vices of humanity.
