Doomed to repeat history

How the US Constitution was built on ancient Greek political fortune-telling

In light of gestures broadly at everything,¹ one might be searching for explanations and predictions. How did we get here, and where are we going?

One appealing kind of answer is anacyclosis (literally ana “again” + cyclos “cycle”), the idea that generations of people follow recurring social patterns, leading to predictable patterns in history. In this theory, children react to the world their parents made, making a new world, that their children react to, and so on. After a certain number of generations, people recreate the kind of social structures their great-great-grandparents created. Those who know how to read these patterns have prophetic, or at least predictive, powers.²

There are whole books about anacyclosis. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote The Cycles of American History. Strauss and Howe wrote The Fourth Turning (and the more portentously titled The Fourth Turning is Here).

Perhaps amusingly, the idea of anacyclosis itselfs recur over generations. Before Strauss, Howe, and the Schlesingers there was Carlyle, Machiavelli, Cicero, and, my favorite, Polybius.³

Polybius, born around 200 BC, wrote a 40-volume work, his Histories, that analyzed the Roman Republic’s rise to global power. He explains Rome’s constitution, trying to understand how their political organization connected to their military success. Along the way, he lays out a theory of anacyclosis, the relevant cycle being six types of government.⁴

First comes a primordial strong-man leadership he calls (1) monarchy. Monarchy evolves into a kind of benevolent despotism he calls (2) kingship. However, as rulership is passed from father to son, the kings eventually forget their virtues, and kingship decays into (3) tyranny:

In old times, then, those who had once been chosen to the royal office [...] were exempt from all vituperation or jealousy, as neither in their dress nor in their food did they make any great distinction, they lived very much like everyone else, not keeping apart from the people. But when they received the office by hereditary succession and found their safety now provided for, and more than sufficient provision of food, they gave way to their appetites owing to this superabundance, and came to think that the rulers must be distinguished from their subjects by a peculiar dress, that there should be a peculiar luxury and variety in the dressing and serving of their viands, and that they should meet with no denial in the pursuit of their amours, however lawless. These habits having given rise in the one case to envy and offence and in the other to an outburst of hatred and passionate resentment, the kingship changed into a tyranny[.]

The “noblest, most high-spirited, and most courageous” citizens band together, topple the tyrant, and take charge, creating (4) aristocracy, literally aristo “best” + kratos “state,” that is, the rule by the best kind of people.

J. M. W. Turner’s The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire. Polybius believed that one of the reasons that Rome’s superior government helped it defeat Carthage: “the multitude at Carthage had already acquired the chief voice in deliberations; while at Rome the senate still retained this; and hence, as in one case the masses deliberated and in the other the most eminent men, the Roman decisions on public affairs were superior, so that although they met with complete disaster, they were finally by the wisdom of their counsels victorious over the Carthaginians in the war.” (Source: Tate Britain, via wikipedia)

Just as hereditary succession causes a kingship decays into tyranny, so aristocracy decays into (5) oligarchy (literally oligo “few” + arche “rule”, that is, rule by the few), which the people overthrow to create the final kind of government, (6) democracy:

Next, when [the people] have either killed or banished the oligarchs, they no longer venture to set a king over them, as they still remember with terror the injustice they suffered from the former ones, nor can they entrust the government with confidence to a select few, with the evidence before them of their recent error in doing so. Thus the only hope still surviving unimpaired is in themselves, and to this they resort, making the state a democracy instead of an oligarchy and assuming the responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Because people remember the problems of monarchy-kingship-tyranny and aristocracy-oligarchy, they set up a new system, which is immune to the problems caused by hereditary rule. It is, however, susceptible to the limited memory of each generation:

Then as long as some of those survive who experienced the evils of oligarchical dominion, they are well pleased with the present form of government, and set a high value on equality and freedom of speech. But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error. So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.

… I’m getting chills…

Anacyclosis is an attractive theory. It explains, for example, why the middle-aged Greeks and Spaniards I’ve known are so politically relaxed. It’s not because Mediterranean people are constitutionally more chill than Americans; instead it’s because Greece and Spain had authoritarian regimes through the mid-1970s, and the current ruling generation, who grew up under authoritarianism, prefer to live in mildly dysfunctional countries rather than give power to authoritarians who promise to undo that dysfunction. The United States, by contrast, has never had an authoritarian regime, and we must go further back in time, to the 1960s or even 1940s, to find points in history where Americans truly feared authoritarianism. Our ruling generation has forgotten the dangers of kingship-tyranny and aristocracy-oligarchy, so we are about one generation “ahead” of the Greeks and the Spaniards in terms of political crisis.

Polybius believed you could design government in a way that would mitigate anacyclosis: if a constitution mixes monarchical, oligarchic, and democratic elements, then each element will constantly decay into another, making a kind of dynamic equilibrium that never collapses. The American Founding Fathers, having just expelled a literal king, and being well-read in ancient philosophy, were interested in “mixed” forms of government. The separation of powers in our Constitution draws directly from these ideas.

If anacyclosis is a good theory, and “mixed” government is in fact sufficient to prevent political collapse, then the question is whether our federal government’s separation of powers is a sufficiently good implementation of “mixed” government.

If it’s not a good theory, then I guess that’s one less potential crystal ball.

1. Amusingly, this is a meme that goes back to at least 2011, gaining steam in the mid 2010’s, and now adapted to new circumstances.

2. Polybius himself says: “Anyone who clearly perceives [the cycle of political revolution] may indeed in speaking of the future of any state be wrong in his estimate of the time the process will take, but if his judgement is not tainted by animosity or jealousy, he will very seldom be mistaken as to the stage of growth or decline it has reached, and as to the form into which it will change.”

3. Not to be confused with the urban legend of the same name.

4. Polybius, of course, wasn’t the first one to have anacyclosis thoughts: he borrows from Plato’s Republic.