Changes, rowdies, earthquakes ... We no longer know which term is appropriate to describe the series of political upheavals taking place before our eyes. Exit Matteo Renzi, after Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. If we add Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the presidential campaign in France, the upcoming elections in Germany, we can see how fractured the old landscapes are at the moment. These changes reveal in particular the versatility of voters, their exasperation and their weariness. They show the growing influence of mood movements over political life, to the detriment of rationality and the long term. Consequently, some fear that democracy will deteriorate under the pressure of populism and uncontrolled passions. An old word, in ancient Greek, was used to name this kind of disorder: ochlocracy. Forgotten, it is now out of use. However, it is worth revisiting.
As opposed to "demos", the people, "ochlos" designates the crowd, which is chaotic, tumultuous, disorderly and unpredictable. Democracy is indeed the power of the people, but it is framed by the people. laws he gave to himself. The decisions come from citizens, but they deliberate logically, because they are supposed to be educated and informed in order to have informed and reasonable opinions. On the other hand, when the domination of the crowd takes hold, the reign of mass emotions, the whims of the multitude, we witness the collapse of the system. Floating at the whim of popular passions, carried away by the crowd, democracy, pressures in depressions, risk of sinking. If this is the case, if the populace replaces the people, then another regime, the Ochlocracy, takes its place. This is what Polybius maintained, in Book VI of his “Histoires”, which attempts a summary of classical Greek political thoughts, and in particular condenses the essentials of Plato and Aristotle.
Almost no one today frequents the prose of this author. He was in his time (between -200 and -120 BC) a prominent figure in Greek history: general after the death of Alexander, he became hostage to the Romans, before the man of The state is not transformed into a historian, diplomat and political theorist. Few texts, over the centuries had as much influence as this abstract, which deeply marked Cicero, but also Machiavelli and Rousseau, among other major thinkers. As the philosopher Jean-Claude Milner (*) has just reminded us, we mainly retained from Polybius the theory of a cyclical evolution of political regimes. Their forms would follow each other in a loop, from monarchy to ochlocracy, as if the wheel of history was spinning indefinitely.
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Roger-Pol Right
Roger-Pol Droit is a writer and philosopher. (*) "Relire la revolution", Jean-Claude Milner, Verdier, 2016.
https://www.lesechos.fr/09/12/2016/LesEchos/22336-053-ECH_connaissez-vous-l-ochlocratie--.htm
Above a representation of anacyclosis :Cycle of political regime successions, developed by Polybius, in which populism succeeds democracy, before returning to the monarchy.
I think everyone will have noticed that it is very difficult to call these days the system of governance as being "democratic" (in the strict sense I mean), in the sense that we live within so-called liberal democracy, that is to say systems of governance based on the exchange of goods, of its distribution within social classes1 and on solutions to maintain the production of abstract value
We also note that the development of social networks has made it possible to accentuate a trend, based on emotions rather than reflection, on appearances rather than structure ...
It would be a bit of an exaggeration to take it literally if I can say the concept of anacyclosis, in the sense that our society is a mix of all of this, but it clearly appears that this very old concept is extremely relevant. and predisposes us to anticipate the future.
Where it becomes even more interesting is when we make a comparison between anacyclosis and economic cycle:
https://www.francois-roddier.fr/?p=471
The anacyclose was based on the cycles of governance within ancient societies, these being relatively slow in terms of evolution, it is now necessary to make some adjustments due to the acceleration of the current phenomena.
Insofar as the tyranny succeeds the ochlocracy, is in view of the challenges of tomorrow (migratory flow, peak oil, global warming, economic crisis) this chronology of powers unfortunately seems to stick well to the historical course.
What do you think?
(1) Most of the citizens / politicians debate revolves around the notion of "distribution of wealth", everyone always wanting more obviously ... without understanding that the essential of "injustices" is intrinsically linked to the structure of the system ... that no one really wants to change ...