The Four Cycles Of Rulership

In the course of politics may be perceived a grand division between the rule of the upper classes and the rule of all the classes. The former exists during the ascending and part of the culminating period, the latter during the rest of the culminating and most of the declining period. The former is itself divisible, according to the class which rules, into the rule of the priests, the rule of the warriors, and the rule of the rich. The priests and the warriors generally begin together, with varying vicissitudes in their rivalry among different peoples, sometimes the priests getting the upper hand and forming what they pretend to be a theocracy or rule of a god, but generally ending by their being supplanted by the warriors, who form an era of aristocracy. Then the warriors, and the priests with them, are brought under control by the rich, the merchants, manufacturers, and financiers, who form an era of plutocracy, during which, as is natural, takes place the greatest advance in material prosperity.

Throughout this period the rulers rule by their own might, each by the peculiar power of which they have the monopoly, the priests by learning, the warriors by arms, the rich by money, each of them in turn getting possession of most of the land. The priests, however, assert that they rule by divine right; and the warriors, at first asserting that they rule by the right of the sword, might making right, at last get the priests, when subdued, to admit and to teach that they too rule by divine right. The rich have hardly ventured to put in this claim very seriously: they rule by their own superior shrewdness; they are the capable men, who, having managed their own affairs well, have shown their fitness to manage the affairs of others also; at best, owing their advancement to their native endowments, they claim to rule by natural right; or lawyers, who are the accompanying shadow of this class, try to make out that property is the essential thing in government, since it pays taxes, therefore claim that as those who own most contribute most and have the most at stake, it is logically right that they should have the most to say about the disposal.

All these classes pay themselves for the work they do in ruling the rest, and like all monopolists they pay themselves well. At first each ruling class recognizes some duty it has to perform toward the ruled, of guiding and protecting them and furthering their interests; for at the beginning in each class there were competitors and only those succeeded in getting the upper hand who won the people to their side by their promise and performance of favoring them and of viewing their own rule as a trust.

Each class must, of course, rule itself as well as the rest, and it does so generally at first by selection of its leaders, and finally by hereditary succession, at first trusting only the execution to them, at last also the decision, at first in a republican form, and finally in a monarchical, though each class has its own way, the warriors coming to monarchy quickest and the wealthy slowest. Also each class in turn becomes degenerate, as its power passes on into the hands of descendants who owe their elevation only to their birth, look more and more to mere enjoyment, and taking more pay do less work; until at last they are superseded by the original superior men of the next class, thus each class-rule forming a small cycle by itself with its own waxing and waning. But when each of the succeeding classes come into power, it pulls down its predecessor only from its pre-eminence and position of privilege, and continues to use it as a support, so that the priests remain in high office under the warriors, and the priests and warriors under the rich, but each in a changed form, the priests, as we have seen, as preachers, and the warriors as paid officers of the army; and as each remembers its quondam domination and continues to have its own interests, it forms a party in the political life of the state. Through all these changes there is a constant growth of the power of the central government and of its action upon the people: ever more and more does it regulate the doings of society, substituting laws for customs.

At last the lower classes, winning education, arms, and a certain amount of wealth, for their inferior possession of all which they make up by their larger numbers, come into power, overthrowing the others from their predominance, but, as each class did before, leaving them as parties, and only placing themselves at their side as participants in the government. This introduces the last half of the great division of the course of politics. We have now reached the culminating period of civilization, with its manifoldness and complexity of occupations and interests. Enjoyment dissipates. Before, when there was little variety of recreation, the people took their amusement by meeting together and talking over their common affairs. Then concert was possible, and conspiracies of almost a whole class could be hatched, and revolutions could be planned and successfully executed. But later every one becomes engaged in seeking after his own pleasure, and finds it at most in small cliques of boon companions; for the meeting of even a whole town in a theater is merely to receive similar impressions, without any common action on their own part. Concert and united action, thereupon, become much less usual. The ascending period of civilization is always marked by revolutions; the declining period is a long quiescence, disturbed only by occasional futile uprisings or riots that do more harm than good.

This last half of the great division of politics is further distinguished from the first half by the fact that now all classes rule all. The power of government reaches its maximum, and it is prepared to regulate everything. Affairs of state needing special officials, these are now chosen directly or indirectly by the people as their representatives and agents; or if any one of the old rulers is left, he is reduced to being regarded and treated and made to behave as such. These agents are paid by the people, with salaries, which are not so large as the emoluments the former rulers took to themselves; and their offices are now a public trust, not because they are solicitous so to view them, but because the people require it of them; and they do not rule in their own right or by divine or by natural right, but in the right of the ruling and ruled (the self-ruled) people, or by a conventional right given to them by all the classes. This condition has generally been the demos or lowest class, but the rule of all the classes, and called democracy, but mistakenly, since it is not the rule of would be better called pantocracy.

In such democracy itself (for the term is too habitual to be discarded) the most powerful of the old classes is that of the rich, upon which the others lean; and this class of the rich, or the three first classes in one under this name, though they prefer to look upon themselves as aristocrats, may even regain influence and power so great as to overbalance the rest, forming a state which is describable by the somewhat incongruous term of plutocratic democracy. Over against this condition, the demos proper may wish to get the upper hand entirely and entirely suppress the other classes. This movement is today known as socialism, though this term is more truly appropriate to our present condition, and what is so distinguished is democracy proper (in the literal sense); and sometimes for greater clarity, it is dubbed social democracy; which, in the full extent of its aspiration, has never existed, and, as we shall see further on, probably never will exist, at least not in our cycle of civilization.

The democracy such as has existed and as now exists, or pantocracy, which rules by agents and makes laws by representatives of the whole people, always sets out with a multiplicity of representatives to whom the appointment or the oversight of innumerable other agents is entrusted, in the form known as republicanism. But as responsibility divided between many is diluted and tends to be little observed, the degeneration of republicanism works for the concentration of power in one representative, to whom is entrusted the direction of all the others. Under this one all-powerful individual all the classes are reduced to an equal position of inferiority, and other individuals can rise to power only as they win his favor or that of his favorites. This last stage can be reached only when the people at large are so un-warlike, and so distracted and divided by their several occupations and amusements, that a comparatively small army in the one man’s pay can keep them all in subjection. And when once reached, it can in spite of its enormous and growing evils never be subverted from within the nation by the people, for the additional very good reason that the people have nothing to substitute for it. 

Previous degenerate rulers, as we have seen, because they were of a class, could be overthrown and replaced by the better rule of a newly uprisen class, in a line of progress. But in a succession of single rulers representing a degenerate people, although any and every one of them on becoming degenerate may be pulled down by the people, or by the court, or by the army, he can be replaced only by another single ruler of the same sort, better perhaps at first, but with the same proneness to quick deterioration. Or the only rivaling power is that of the rising priesthood, who also tend to come under the dominion of one of their own number and either share in or get possession of the political power, and in either case augment rather than mitigate the evils that come from the rule of some men over others who are not strong enough to hold them to a strict accounting. Such is the despotism—cæsarism or imperialism, ultimately more or less mixed with hierarchism—in which all republicanism and all civilization has hitherto ended.

-excerpted from “The Climax of Civilization” By Correa Moylan Walsh (1917)