Yes, that’s exactly what I intended to write: 400,000 years – the oldest (probable) Homo sapiens remains found by now are about that age. 400,000 years of tyranny and dictatorial societies, we should point this out clearly (not that other hominids or animals have democratic societies). Right-wing supporters use to say that dictatorship is a 20th century invention, or that evil entered history with the French Revolution, which is simply nonsense. Do you think prehistoric, ancient or medieval people had civil rights and freedoms? That they elected their leaders?
Certainly not. Apart from Conservatives, Marxists also used to think that the first communities were idyllic commun(al)ist societies, based on the simple idea that people had almost no material possessions. But archaeology, ethnography and common sense show us nowadays a totally different picture. It’s not about possessions, but about power. Otherwise richer societies would always be more autocratic than poor ones. It’s about who has the best weapons, the largest number of (armed) supporters and the will to use them against their opponents. It’s sure that primitive communities were usually autocratic, ruled by military and spiritual leaders and they waged wars against each other for controlling essential resources (water, food, raw materials), this also implying some groups subdued and oppressed others. Material progress just brought some order, wealth usually serving as a distinctive feature between various ruling and ruled castes.
Democracy came later. Much later. Except for some partial, small-scale and short-term experiments, such as Athens, Heliopolis, Kharijite states in the Middle East etc. democracy and civil rights were an anomaly for most of our history. Not even after the American and French Revolutions, these didn’t beacome a norm (think that even the most advanced societies didn’t have universal suffrage, including female vote until the end of the 19th century). Most countries have no more than 20-30 years of truly democratic history.
But why do we talk about this? Tyranny is still a reality, and writing blogs won’t change much. After all, you can’t use a website to blow up Kim Jong Un, for example (unfortunately). No, indeed, but we can “blow up” the ideas standing behind autocracy.
Because it’s not just a political, but also an ideatic conflict. Tyranny may be brutal, barbaric, violent, but it usually has some phylosophical “justifications”.
Dictatorships are different: absolute monarchies, or aristocratic regimes, oligarchies, military juntas, Fascist dictatorships, Communist regimes etc., but the ideology behind them can be reduced to some basic ideas. We can simply call them “Integralism” or political “Organicism”, after a pro-Fascist, Far-Right doctrine that stated these principles clearly in the first half of the 20th century. But its ideas are valid for all tyrannies, from ancient Sparta to modern dictatorships.
The idea is that the society is, or should be organized like a living organism, with each individual as a single cell. Each individual has his strictly defined place in the society, and performes a certain function. Among such functions is leadership, which is exercited only by some “chosen” individuals (after all, bone or muscle cells don’t think and don’t take decisions, only nerve cells do that, and only the brain rules the entire nerve system and the entire body, isn’t it?). So, ruling a country is a job only assigned to an “elite”: the aristocracy, junta, “vanguard party” (having a pyramidal structure, with the supreme leader on top – the monarch, “crowned by God(s)” or even a god himself, the Pope, the Fuhrer, el Caudillo, the Secretary General of the Party), which is entitled to think and decide what’s the best for the entire society. And what happens when a low caste “cell” starts to think on its own or even directly disobey to the elite? Well, the “immune system” (Gestapo, Ohrana, NKVD, DINA…) reacts and eliminates such a “cancer”. You may take any totalitarian ideology you may think of (Reactionary, Bolshevik, all strains of Fascism, Juche etc.) and find out on your own how they all fit this model.
In such societies, most people are slaves to an abusive, arbitrary power, who decides what they should think (or whether they should; a very “popular” slogan in Nazi Germany told Germans that they didn’t have to think anymore, because the Fuhrer would do it in their place!), forces them to pay arbitrary taxes, sends them to war for various bizarre reasons, and is entitled to imprison, torture or even kill them when it wishes so. People are not citizens, but mere subjects to the ruling elite.
The opposing ideology came into existence during the Age of Enlightenment, states that all human beings are born equal and should have equal rights in front of the state authority. State should be based by social contract, with both the authority and citizens having their precisely defined rights and duties. According to this phylosophy, ruling a country is not just a job for a small elite, but is something of public interest, and all citizens should have the right to participate in taking political decisions. After all, this is true citizenship.
Which of these two ways is best for mankind? It should be obvious. Everyone enjoys freedom, or should do so. Also, arbitrary power means total corruption, which leads to economic inefficiency and nasty repercussions. But the real reason for writing all this text is that when we deal with a certain political doctrine, we should ask ourselves wether it fits into the first or the second category; it’s democratic, or it’s “Integralist”, reactionary, antidemocratic and totalitarian. If one has the power to choose and he choses tyranny, he’d better prepare to be nothing more than a slave or worst…