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All political roads lead to Rome – again

25th January 2019

By: Rebecca Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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One of the enduring political- cultural legacies of the French Revolution (erupted 1789) was the adoption of the political terminology, and the concomitant division of politics, into ‘left’ and ‘right’. For nearly 200 years, these concepts had value. But for some time now they have clearly been obsolete. Where, on the left-right spectrum, can you place a Chinese Communist State, strictly maintaining its political-ideological dominance, which vigorously pursues capitalist economics? You can’t. Any attempt to do so is a waste of intellectual effort that only leads to absurd results.

Instead, in much of the world, we have reverted to a much, much older political division, one that, in the Western world, goes all the way back to Classical Antiquity. Basically, it was the division between those who thought that most decisions in a society should be taken by well-educated elites and those who thought that they should be taken by the mass of the citizenry. To use two words derived from ancient Greek, the former believed in oligarchy and the latter in democracy.

It was in Republican Rome that the struggle is most obvious and long-lasting. The Roman Republic had a very strange – or, at least, singular – Constitution, even by the standards of the time. It was no democracy. Most day-to-day power was vested in the elite (which was a meritocratic elite of wealth, open to citizens from any social background who managed to make themselves rich). Yet it was far from a proper oligarchy, for, although the power of the mass of the citizenry was constrained, it was never- theless real. The citizen body was not merely consulted – it made real and important decisions. While the votes of the poor counted for less than the votes of the rich, they still counted. Candidates for high office had to court both rich and poor voters. Poor Roman citizens conceived of themselves as free men.

Late in the republic, domestic politics became dominated by the struggle between those who wished to maintain (or even, in extreme cases, expand) the powers of the elite, and those who wished to bring about political and socioeconomic reforms that would benefit and strengthen the mass of the citizenry. The former called themselves the ‘Optimates’ – the ‘best men’ (modest, they were not). The latter were known as the ‘Populares’, from ‘populus’ – the people. It is very important to understand that these were not political parties or movements. They can be best thought of as political philosophies. They were both loose alignments of people with similar political outlooks. The leaders of the ‘Populares’ were just as much members of the elite as their opponents.

The ‘Optimates’ openly despised the common people, calling them ‘unwashed’, regarding them as dishonest, fickle, a mob, and looking down on them because they had to work in trade and industry to make a living. (However, this did not automatically translate into callousness: at least some leading ‘Optimates’ supported policies that helped the poor.) They also looked down on ‘Populares’ leaders as unscrupulous opportunists, seeking to manipulate and exploit the people for their own benefit.

(It was this struggle that ultimately brought done the republic. The power of the ‘Optimates’ was broken, but, paradoxi- cally, the result was not democracy but the creation of the Roman Empire. The leader who led the ‘Populares’ to their ultimate victory was a certain Gaius Julius Caesar.)

Two thousand or so years later, what is striking is that, today, we have members of elites openly attacking and denigrating ordinary people, ordinary voters. This is most obvious in the Western world, because it is in such sharp contrast to the traditions of established democracies. Now, some democracies have traditionally had tough politics. American politics has always been dirty. Australian politics seems to always be very dirty. But insulting and even smearing opposing politicians is one thing; insulting and smearing voters is quite another.

To denounce the people who had the temerity to vote for their opponents, or in favour of a policy that they oppose, to call them (or clearly imply they are) racists, misogynists, backward, deplorable, ignorant, and so on, means that the elite denouncers are no longer interested in democracy. They are no longer interested in winning over voters who are currently in the opposition camp but who might be wooed away at the next election. In democracies, all parties have core voters, but all also have soft supporters and all election victories require winning over these and floating voters.

Self-righteously and smugly sneering and smearing all those who voted against a candidate or policy favoured by important elites – political, social, cultural – is also intended to delegitimise the views held by those voters, to prevent their views and (especially) concerns being examined and debated, which is also deeply anti- democratic. These elites think they can achieve their objectives in other ways – in some cases through courts, and in other through supranational organisations.

This is not to say that democracy has been insidiously overthrown by oligarchy, from within. But it is to say that there is a real danger of this, and that democrats have a fight on their hands to maintain true democracy – in which the votes of ordinary people can and do change things – and prevent the creation of façade democracy in which the decisions of the elites are what count, and voting changes nothing. Look at how some elites in the UK are blatantly trying to thwart the implementation of the British people’s decision, in the 2016 referendum, to leave the European Union.

This threat is not restricted to Western democracies: there have been too many cases in recent years of African elites manipulating matters (admittedly using cruder methods) to render the votes of ordinary citizens meaningless. And South Africa, after decades of misrule by the apartheid oligarchy, has recently found itself misgoverned and robbed again by another exploitative oligarchy. Those oligarchical forces have not yet been vanquished here, nor elsewhere. But the modern self-styled ‘Optimates’ make the same mistake as their ancient counterparts: in the end, they cannot prevail against the majority of their fellow citizens.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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