The most rudimentary forms of civilization involve man's organized interactions with others of his cultural group under rules of social interchanges. An authority higher than the individual unites people together whether from a small group of local extended families, an expanded tribal system, or a government with positions beyond the individual leaders which pass power on to consecutive generations. As governments developed and attempted to force their wills upon the people they governed, an obvious problem developed. Since the government derives it power from those it governs, a populous cannot be governed unless it submits to that government.
The philosophy of this social contract has undergone intensive analysis since its popularized conception in the seventeenth century with notable advocates John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. The social contract states that the power of the government, specifically that of a monarch, is derived from the subjects that empower it. Thomas Hobbes famously describes the processes of governing man whose natural state is anarchy and is subdued with promises of protection and threats of violent death usually carried out via execution.
In the nearly five centuries since the birth of this political philosophy, the world has change. Monarchs no longer dominate the spectrum of governments in power around the world. Mercantilism is no longer the prevailing economic theory of Europe. Life imprisonment has replaced the death penalty in most Western nations since the 1970s. Instead of having a government ruling over illiterate masses with the threat of exploitative military enforcement, the people now decide who oversees their nation's domestic and international affairs.
Neither Hobbes and Locke's world nor our own have succeeded in uncovering the perfect government, but in the centuries since the European Enlightenment, the common man has gained a voice of authority after a long struggle. Still the task of governments has not changed. Strength is in the appeasement and distraction of the masses to rising against the body of government as the French did in their bloody revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.
Ancient Rome's deteriorating economy encouraged emperors to give large food handouts to prevent the one million people in the city from rioting over grain prices which gave origin to the phrase "bread and circuses (
panem et circenses)" to describe the collapse of civil duty and only give sustenance to public approval.
A thousand years later the people's voice still thundered. The 1381 Peasant's Revolt in England came about because of government incompetence and high taxes. The American and French revolutions occurred largely because of high taxes and the political oppression of the common man. The 1790s stirred Europe into a revolution frenzy with several smaller revolutions occurring through the early 1800s, especially the Europe-wide 1848 revolution. Under the Soviet regime in Eastern Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, Hungary rose up in 1956, and Alexander Dub
ček's initiated the Prague Spring in 1968. Both sought anti-centralization. The recent and widely televised 2011 London riots were also credited, in a large part, to a common and growing frustration of the government's mismanagement of economic policy's.
After two millenia of documented uprisings caused largely by economic stimuli, does this still impact modern governments? Yes. As Thomas Hobbes explains in
The Leviathan, governments are created to protect and control people, but if the government fails in its purposes, the people should and shall rise up as the American Founding Fathers explained in several Lockean documents. People outnumber government enforcers since the regime's protectors come from the population it governs. Thus, if a significant portion of the populace is dissatisfied enough to riot, a new government can be created.
George Orwell's novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four touches on a similar topic. As the main character, Winston Smith observes,
"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely, sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. And yet --!
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they will never become conscious." George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 60-61.
Considering the absolute power many monarchs held centuries ago, modern man is the most privileged class ever. The goals of cultures differ from each other and from themselves through time. Food and wealth accumulate with those in power, and since man needs to eat, he will always rise up when the life of those he loves is threatened.
When evaluating the policies of your country, make sure to consider them based off historic perspective and the goals of the current regime then consider how that impacts the population as a whole: beneficially or detrimentally. No man or government is perfect, but since we have to share the world, let us do so with the satisfaction of making it as good a place for as many as possible.
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Agatha Tyche
