Polybius on Critical Moments of Revolution and Political Decline: Anacyclosis

Polybius on Critical Moments of Revolution and Political Decline: Anacyclosis
Historical Development of Ancient Political Theory
Terese Howard
4/27/10

Political states change.… Do they change in predictable cycles? A number of political theorists throughout history have argued that political states do change in recurrent predictable cycles. Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Hegel, Marx – these theorists and more all believed that the form of political states evolve in a cyclical fashion. The last stage is not the end, but is the stage before the cycle begins again. Stage one comes about again as a result of the last stage. In Marx, as drawing from Hegel, it is a result of the dialectic – the implicit disconnect (alienation) the people feel between their labor and the flows of capitalism must bring about communism. In Polybius the flow is not necessary in a casual philosophical since (as it is in Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Marx), but is the probable course of events as observed from history. For Polybius, living in Greece and Rome between 203-120BC and studying the history of those places, this was how history had panned out and furthermore he believed there was logical reason for it to have happened that way and to continue to follow that, or a similar, cycle.
Polybius sets forth six (or seven, depending on how you read him) political states or governments: monarchy, (kingship?), tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and ochlocracy (mob-rule). Monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are considered the normative or superior governments, while tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy are considered the degenerate forms of those corresponding governments. Monarchy gone aria naturally becomes tyranny. And tyranny, taken on its natural course, will be turned into aristocracy. For Polybius, as noted, this is not a casually necessary progression but it is a natural progression. Polybius explains that, “there are six kinds of governments, the three above mentioned which are in everyone’s mouth and the three which are naturally allied to them” (Polybius, Book VI, 275). The natural alliance between the forms of government drive them to move from one from into the next. The word “natural” here refers to an understanding of nature not necessarily as without reason but as independent from reason. While reason is a component in the shifts from one form of government to another, nature follows its course regardless of the intentions of human reason. The natural flow of governments moves from one to another without needing someone to rationally decide what should or must be done next. People naturally act in such a way that these shifts happen regardless of the use of reason.
The first form of government which Polybius sets forth is monarchy. Monarchy comes directly out of the most original societies. Society emerges when the misfortunes and hardships of living, “owing to floods, famines, failure of crops or other such causes” (Polybius, 277) lead people to join together in interdependence. It is “owing to natural weakness” that men originally joined forces to create society. In this natural interdependence “it is a necessary consequence that the man who excels in bodily strength and in courage will lead and rule over the rest” (Polybius, 278). This natural bodily strength and courage places the man (yes, man) who is bravest and strongest in a position of authority. People naturally turn to him as a leader. It is at this stage that society is labeled as under a monarchy. Yet, at this stage the leader holds his power only to the limit that his strength will take it. The ruler is not more powerful than he is strong.
The passage from monarchy to tyranny has an intermediate stage – kingship. This form of government is different than the original monarchy in that kingship is passed on by blood while original monarchy is an earned authority. Polybius explains the shift from monarchy to kingship saying, “[W]hen in time feelings of sociability and companionship begin to grow in such gatherings of men, than kingship has struck root” (Polybius, 279). Family ties hold members together and lead people to join and defend those who have direct blood ties. Kingship takes root as “the people maintain the supreme power not only in the hands of these men themselves, but in those of their descendants, from the conviction that those born from and reared by such men will also have principles like theirs” (Polybius, 283).
It is under the government of monarchic hereditary succession that monarchy turns into tyranny. As kings become accustom to acquiring power without any hardships or work of their own but merely by succession, they begin to use that since of effortless entitlement to tyrannize over society. Polybius states, “[W]hen 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…and that they should meet with no denial in the pursuit of their amours, however lawless” (Polybius, 284). This decline from monarchy to tyranny is instigated by the absence of hardship or effort which the ruler holds under hereditary succession. Born into the position of leadership without ever needing to earn that position, kings become tyrants.
The state of tyranny does not last forever though because people cannot withstand that sort of tyranny forever. Noble people join forces to over throw this tyrant and stop the abuses. In this way, through effort and joined forces, aristocracy overtakes tyranny as the political power. Here Polybius says, “The people now having got leaders, would combine with them against the ruling powers for the reasons stated above; kingship and monarchy would be utterly abolished, and in their place aristocracy would begin to grow” (Polybius, 285). The aristocratic rule begins with those who had the intelligence and courage (and wealth) to overthrow the tyrant. When the tyrant is gone, they rule with this effort and trial fresh in mind.
Yet again, however, when the positions of the aristocratic leaders is passed on without effort, be it through hereditary succession or some other means, the new rulers, who have no experience with struggle and never knew the horrors of the tyranny, take on many of the characteristics of the tyrant before them, abandoning “themselves some to greed of gain and unscrupulous money making, others to indulgence in wine…, others to the violation of women…and thus converting the aristocracy into an oligarchy” (Polybius, 285). In this way, the government deteriorates into a selfish rule of those in power seeking to gain power, rather than those seeking to reconvene order by maintaining power.
Because of the abuses of oligarchy, like tyranny, people do not withstand its power endlessly. At a point whomever takes “courage to speak or act against the chiefs of the state…[will have] the whole mass of people ready to back him” (Polybius, 287). The courage of a few here turns into the revolution of the masses – seeking to overthrow the powers that have kept them in pain and without power and replace them with a power for all. Polybius states,
“When they have either killed or banished the oligarchs, they no longer venture to set a king over them, as they still remember with terror the injustices they suffered from the former ones, nor can they entrust the government with confidence to a select few the evidence before them of their resent 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” (Polybius, 287).
Democracy takes over oligarchy as the people take on the effort and responsibility of overthrowing the old government and governing themselves. This process values equality highly as the answer to the oppression of the one or the few which they experienced before.
It is this very equality and freedom that leads to the deterioration of democracy into ochlocracy. Polybius explains, “[W]hen a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustom to the freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence” (Polybius, 287). Born into freedom people forget they need to work for freedom and end up abusing it to the point where conflict takes over as some try to get more than their share of that freedom. This state of mob-rule takes over society such that the democracy can no longer rule. Mobs of people seeking more power make it impossible for all the people to share power equally.
Ochlocracy itself, though, is at some point overthrown and turned back into monarchy as the people see the problems of their lack of leadership and see democracy as the cause of this decay. Thus the people turn to one good person to rule monarchically. Yet again society is governed by a monarchy and the cycle begins again.
What can be seen in all of these shifts of government? There are three key components to each of these revolutionary moments or political declines. First, Aristotle’s conviction that the inferior want to be equal and the equal want to be greater (Aristotle, Politics, 1302a) holds true for Polybius as a force of political power shifts. In movement from tyranny to aristocracy, oligarchy to democracy, and ochlocracy to monarchy, the inferior are striving to be equal (though equal here does not only mean the sort of equality sought in democracy). The “negative” shifts are driven by the equals desire to be greater. Equality is favored in Polybius as a positive force driving politics to its better states. It is the desire to be greater than equal that leads to the forms of government which are most abusive. Though equality cannot stand in totality, as is seen in the fall of democracy to ochlocracy, it is still a positive force. For Polybius, it seems that democracy is at the culmination of the cycle because of its emphasis on equality, and that its failure to maintain itself and this absolute equality is the result of humanities natural pull to becoming greater.
The second key component of Polybius’s revolutionary moments is effort. Each shift of government is due to either the great efforts of a person or people or to their lack of effort. Through hereditary succession and positional succession (i.e. authority passed on via a set position without the person ever needing to earn that authority) which take no effort on the part of the successive rulers, rulers lose connection to the real issues society is faced with and to the effort it requires to address these. These rulers begin to think they are innately entitled to these luxuries instead of seeing them as a result of their hard work of overthrowing the previous oppressive government. Those who have had to put effort into earning power know what that power is worth and tend to use that power to maintain what they worked for in the first place. The effort of overthrowing an abusive government and implementing a new one keeps new leaders in cheek with the societal reasons they are in power. In Polybius, revolutionary generations and revolutionaries themselves are the best rulers.
Finally, it is essential to all good governments that they have a memory of the past. Through a since of history people can recognize the good they have or the effort that has been put into creating any good that does exist in society. Without remembering the horrors of the past, governments are apt to recreate those horrors and treat their role in government as a given. For Polybius, historical memory is a deterrent to abuses of power. History reveals the cycles of political government as well as holding those cycles in cheek with the past and with its future goals.
If Polybius himself is giving three words of advice to societies in this work I believe they may be: one, don’t try to be greater than equal; two, use effort to create and maintain government; and three, remember the societies history.

Polybius. The Histories: Fragments of Book VI, tran. W. R. Paton, Harvard University Press: Cambridge Massachusetts, 1923.