Any
socio-political structure, after a long period of firm rule and hence political
stability, will at some point relax its hold and consequently weaken. This weakening is mostly involuntary, though
the Government and its people will not be fully aware. This weakening will attract rebellion and
dissent, and sow the seeds for a Revolution.
If the Government tries to resist—as it naturally will against forces
that would seek to destroy it—it could and would be overthrown by Revolution.
Napoleon Ascendant
The life cycle
of a revolution
Let us first turn to the problem of the practicability of the Anarchist dream. A world without governments will not lead to
a popular movement towards coexistence and harmony. Men, interacting with each other, will
exchange ideas; some ideas will be irreconcilable with others, and the act of
overpowering one with the other will lead to conflict. If there are enough individuals sharing an
idea, they will form a group. They will
eventually come into conflict with rival groups, until finally one or a
coalition of groups will overpower the rest and take power. This rests on the fundamental principle that
nature abhors a vacuum. This is also
why a monarchy is the first and the most natural form of government.
The first kings
must have risen to the top via personal and political struggles, personal in
the sense of one-on-one combat with others challenging his authority, and
political in the sense of him subduing or converting factions to his leadership. These first years were hard, as the idea of
a strong State has not yet been fully realized; the story of Damocles sums it
perfectly—a king’s power still rested on shaky ground, and he maintained it
only by force of will and prowess.
Eventually, the office of the king began to stabilize; it acquired
religion by way of divine anointment.
The dynastic system ensured that there would be a peaceful transfer of
power from father to son.
And under a firm
and enlightened rule and a stable religious basis he cannot fall victim to any
revolutionary movement. But not all
kings are just, and certainly not all kings have a firm grasp on their
power. The State cannot long maintain a
constant state of tension. Only by force of will can a king keep his subjects
pliant, more so when ideologies begin to evolve. By force of will Stalin kept the Soviet
Union and its Eastern European satellites subject to his power. It was only after he died that the conflicts
of different political factions reemerged, and Hungarian revolutionists took up
arms against their conquerors. In the
later Roman Empire, the rule of powerful succession of emperors was eventually
punctuated by sharp decline and a short state of anarchy. The Julio-Claudian line ended with the
assassination of Nero and civil war; the rule of the Antonine Emperors ended
with the rise of the Praetorian Guard and more civil war.
Any
socio-political structure, after a long period of firm rule and hence political
stability, will at some point relax its hold and consequently weaken. This weakening is mostly involuntary, though
the Government and its people will not be fully aware. This weakening will attract rebellion and
dissent, and sow the seeds for a Revolution.
If the Government tries to resist—as it naturally will against forces
that would seek to destroy it—it could and would be overthrown by Revolution.
Unfortunately,
the “democratic” state caused by a Revolution cannot long endure. Democracies
make for very poor governments in the wake of a successful uprising. As we already noted, factions will squabble
with each other, and by necessity, a stronger, more centralized government—sometimes
a new monarchy—will evolve. That is why
though the modern times eschew the existence of a divinely anointed monarch it
reinvented the office of dictator.
We cannot say
simply that democracies are governments in transition. Monarchies are also not permanent states, as
we have already discussed. If we
examine the life cycle of a nation, we shall see that governments alternate
between democracy and monarchy. For example, in Rome, the line of Etruscan
kings was overthrown in favor of the freer Republican government. The Republic, devolving into a conflict of
various political factions, was overthrown by the military leader Julius
Caesar. His rule was ended by
assassination and followed by civil war.
In the wake of civil war the Roman Empire emerged, its imperial
government constantly erupted by “democratic rising” and civil war.
Is this cycle of
a country alternating between a democratic system and a monarchic system
healthy? Yes, of course. In fact, it is as natural as the pumping of a
heart. A healthy life cycle of a
country involves a long period of contraction—the centralization of control,
the taking in of power, and the emergence of monarchy—and then a short period
of release, which is the exercise of democracy. Like a heart, a country cannot long stay in
a state of contraction: a long period of monarchy is oppressive, tyrannical,
suffocating. Power is like air. Even when one takes it, in order to fully
exercises it one has to release it.
When one has money, one has the potentiality of power; but to fully
realize its power it has to be used, exercised. Neither can a country, also like a heart,
stay in a state of release. The vacuum
of power will become too much and the country will be forced to take in power
like a pair of lungs taking in air. To
deny either the contraction or the release, will result in a violent response
towards it.
Revolution is
the violent exhale. Monarchic rule is
the intaking of breath, of consolidation, and of stabilizing the country. But like air, freedom cannot long be
contained. There must be a release,
either slow or violent, of liberties.
And like inertia, once air begins to escape, momentum builds. More air escapes, and the monarchy becomes
more democratic, freer. If one tries to stop or struggle to keep air,
the body reacts painfully.
This is the sad
truth behind Revolutions: far from being a novel idea, it is a natural part of
the cycle of a nation. One will try to
rise against an established institution, but will be forced to replace it by
necessity. Relaxation and
contraction. We can actually anticipate
revolution by observing its tell-tale signs: the slow release of air,
characterized by concessions of liberties or freedoms slowly being granted to
the citizens. If it is resisted, as was
the case with the hard-line Communists in a last ditch effort to undo all of
Gorbachev’s legacy in 1991, there will be popular rising. If it is not, then the nation will enter a
relaxed, democratic state.
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