Demokratia to Chrimata Kratia: The Fall of Democracy

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. – Plato

The word democracy originated in the Greek language in Athens around the year 508 BC and literally translates from the Greek word ‘Demokratia’, into English as ‘rule of the people’. It was designed as a system of political structure intended to level certain aspects of previous hierarchical states which had prevented citizens from participating in the running of the nation. Obviously the system created by the Greeks in Athens was flawed as it excluded slaves and women, placing the power only into the hands of the male citizens. The premise, however, was revolutionary, and laid the foundation for modern politics. Recent events across the globe have shown that the tumultuous world of democracy is once again plummeting into despair, transitioning from the rule of the people to the ‘Chrimata Kratia’. The rule of money.

At home in the United Kingdom this transition is not as drastic as in other parts of the world: our system is not as obtusely corrupt as in other nations and our politicians do a much better job of talking away the issues of government arms contracts with other countries. However when you stop to look at the 2015 election which happened in May and at the results of said election, it is clear to see that our system is failing us.  In short, the results of the general election lead to the imposition of an all out Conservative Party government in the House of Commons, more able to implement their right-wing plans of economic austerity now that they are no longer restrained by the shackles of the Liberal Democrats. The public outrage at recent Tory plans to cut the welfare bill and raise the threshold for inheritance tax have been met with the naive tagline of “you elected them, now they have a mandate to initiate their plans”

Anti-Austerity and Anti-Conservative Protesters

But do they? When you stop to look at the statistics from the election, you not only notice a destructive issue in our electoral system but also recognise that the Conservatives were far from an actual majority. With only 36% of the vote our first past the post electoral system allows the Conservative Party to rule the country, however it doesn’t take someone with the mathematical prowess of George Osborne (or lack thereof) to recognise that 64% of the population voted something other than conservative austerity. The reality that the majority are not fairly represented in government is not only a travesty but a symptom of a decaying democratic state. Look closer at the figures and you start to see the extent of the illness: Only 1 UKIP MP was elected with 12.6% of the overall vote – they should be the third largest party – and then we have the SNP, who after only receiving 4.7% of the vote share, have 56 MPs in the house of commons and are second only to Labour in respects of opposition party size.

The people of the UK are not represented by the elect in Westminster and thatis how our democratic state has failed. There are cries that we have no alternatives, no meaningful suggestions to propose, I decry those cries with a simple call for electoral reform; a proportional representation system based on the D’Hondt method, similar to how MEP’s are elected, but seemingly not good enough for our main electoral system. I wonder why?

Now from my home to the home of democracy: Greece. Greece has a rich history of philosophers from Thales to Plato, of Medical developments, of plate smashing. But its greatest accolade by far is that it can proudly state it is the birthplace of democracy. As previously mentioned the word ‘Demokratia’ first appeared in writings from Athens in 508BC as the republic developed a system of citizen representation. Fast-forward 2523 years and the story is very different: women can vote, foreigners who are citizens can now vote and so it would seem democracy has triumphed. Look again.

In the election of January 2015 Greece saw the anti-austerity, anti-establishment, left-wing coalition party Syriza elected, and Alexis Tsipras become Prime Minister upon a tidal-wave of public support. The party had a track record of opposing cuts to the public sector and appeared to be unwilling to conform to EU demands in order to receive economic bailouts. It should be noted that their track record, and their appearance were ambiguous throughout the short election run; this has worked both in and against their favour. With the Greek debt amounting to over 100% of national productivity the European Union and the International Monetary Fund were calling for greater levels of austerity and set targets for the Greeks to meet in order to receive financial bailout.  Syriza put the decision to the public: more austerity and more bailouts or a new direction? The vote was overwhelming with over 60% voting no to more austerity. In turn Tsipras decided to ignore the will of his people, instead deciding to take the 84billion euro bailout offered by the EU and the IMF; in return he has decided to subject the nation to more fiscal austerity, increasing the retirement age, slashing state pension and purging social welfare.

Greek protesters say no to EU demands for more austerity

Many have claimed that the Prime Minister had his hands tied firmly behind his back by the EU, with Yanis Varoufakis former Finance Minister claiming he had to choose “between being executed and capitulating, and he decided that capitulation was the optimal strategy”. This huge step away from the party’s origins has drawn criticism not only from the public but from within the party itself; Tsipras recently ousted several of the left-wing members who opposed the bailouts from within his administration, including the vocal Marxist Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafanzis. By Wednesday 22^nd of July 2015 the Greek Parliament must pass additional reform to meet EU requirements, to conform to IMF demands, and to ignore the will of its people. The words of dictator Benito Mussolini have never seemed more true, “Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy”.

Yet it is not only Europe which appears to be failing at maintaining the facade of democracy. American democracy, one of the younglings of the modern age at only 239 years old – has traversed many of the obstacles faced by many much older states. The federal system was designed to promote democratic standards with every state having a say in the running of the country through elected representatives. The idea being that such vast political devolution would prevent autocratic centralisation as seen under the red coats.

The problem in America is that while President Obama and the Democrats hold majority in the Senate, the margin by which they hold majority is not as great as the margin by which the Republicans hold majority in the House of Representatives. This, obviously, leads to frequent political stalemates, with political form often hard to pass. This is nowhere more clearly seen than in the government shutdown of 2013 where the Congress as a whole refused to pass legislation to fund government operations. This all occurred as a result of the Republican attempt to prevent the continued funding of Obamacare, a programme aimed at benefitting the most vulnerable.

The Republican majority in Congress has prevented reform across the board, but more recently has prevented the gun control reforms pushed for by President Obama. In a poll by the John Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2013 it was clear that Americans favoured reform; 89% said yes to gun purchase background checks and over 80% said yes to prohibiting the sale of firearms to high risk citizens. While democracy suggests that reform should be passed, the Republican majority Congress rely on the 2^ndamendment of the Constitution that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Seemingly they also ignore that the constitution specifies this is only necessary to continue a well regulated militia which I would hope the Republicans don’t also want.

The will of the American people is unheard by the government. The murder of African-American citizens by the police forces, the refusal to reform gun laws and the massively uneven distribution of wealth are a result of the capitalist facets of the American dream. Unfortunately it is solely a dream for the wealthy and the corporations, for the majority their reality is slowly becoming a nightmare.

1% hold all the wealth. The 99% occupy Wall Street

Democracy as it is theorised no longer truly exists. Across the globe we are seeing the will of the majority ignored by those in charge and this is absolutely clear in the case of Greece whereby over 60% of the population seem to have had their votes against austerity discounted. The government of the United Kingdom is not representative of the differing political opinions across the union, and the government of the United States is more occupied with profit, funding and dollars per barrel of oil than it is with acting on the desires of its people.

The last 2500 years has seen the perpetual rise and fall of democracy all over the globe; at this moment we are undeniably experiencing one of the many pitfalls on the journey of the democratic state. We have moved to a state where money is everything, and the voices of the poor go unheard. Yet change is possible. While unity is important and desire is invaluable, a realisation of the struggle ahead is key. As one American political thriller movie states“people should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people”.

How successful were the revolutions of 1848?

The year 1848 saw an explosion of revolution across the whole European continent, from Paris to Prussia and from Switzerland to the Habsburg Monarchy. With aims of achieving laissez-fare liberalism in some states and democratic parliamentary hierarchies in others, it is clear to see that the aims of the various revolutions were diversified across the entire continent. The contemporary orthodox historiography of the 1848 revolutions is often considered to be provided by Karl Marx, often thought of as the father of socialism, who claims that the revolutions were unsuccessful in their entirety as they were unable to establish permanent socialist hierarchies in their respective states. He goes on to claim that this was caused by the middle class who had started to gain ground in the economy and were therefore detached from the idea of socialist revolution[1]. While this may have been the case in revolutionary Prussia and the other German speaking states, it was Marx’s beloved proletariat that opposed the growth of revolution in France which is represented in the argument of Roger Price, who claims that the role of the workers was en large seemingly unimportant[2]. There are however several approaches to the question ‘were the revolutions a success?’, yet the general lack of success across all of the revolutions in this period is a commonly accepted idea; while some change occurred in the respective revolutionary states a lack of monarchical leniency, peasant support and structured revolt were responsible for the great deal of political continuity which emerged from this period.

One key aim of the revolutionary forces of 1848 was to establish laissez-fare style economics within a nation’s trading markets. This was certainly at the forefront of the fight by the Parisian revolutionaries of 1848 who wished to implement policies that would level out the economic playing field of 19^th century France in order to encourage social and economic development beyond the deep-set agrarian focus of the society . Marx continues to claim that the revolution was an abhorrent failure and that the inability of the revolutionary forces to maintain the Republic was representative of socio-economic infancy[3]. In reality however the French nation, for a period of three years, had managed to establish the 2^nd Republic which to an extent utilised the Laissez-fare economics they had strove for. Both Amann[4] and Fasel[5] fervently disagree with Marx on this front and instead proceed to argue that the peasantry were unwilling to follow the revolution, instead choosing to defend the establishment, because of a lack of agrarian reform. This lack of reform saw high levels of taxation which were one of the main qualms of the French revolutionary forces, in fact Fasel notes that ‘Taxes both direct and indirect, were doubtless the most hated burden’[6]. This attempt to achieve economic equality can also be seen as one particular focus of the Prussian revolutionaries. The economy of Prussia had suffered greatly as a result of its lack of integration with the other ‘German’ lands, and the internal tariffs imposed by King Frederick had done little to support trading relations. The desire to create an equal economic relationship with the other states would however require greater unification and this was entirely opposed by the king. This is therefore one of the only revolutions of 1848 where to a great extent there was very little success at all. Siemann instead argues that the leaders of the German states were not willing at all to compromise on a democratic basis in 1848. In fact the royals’ powers with ‘their entire internal diplomacy’[7] were intact after the revolution. In support of this argument Price provided the analysis that very little was achieved due to the imbalanced ratio of bourgeois to proletariat in Prussian society. Frederick was originally willing to consider democratic reform but faltered after demands of greater German unification were made, in order to protect the assets of his nobles and subsequently his own authority. The Prussian revolution to a great extent had a detrimental impact on its society as a whole, as the media wanted more rights for the people but did not want those rights filtered to the poor and uneducated which resulted in a middle class ‘frightened by what they saw as the growing insolence of the working classes’[8].

One could argue that Frankfurt saw the greatest degree of success during the European revolutions of 1848. A clear focus of this particular revolt was the demand for greater unification across all the states of Germany to allow greater opportunity for trade and social development. The revolutionaries believed that this would also allow for greater development of class equality, and through parliamentary reforms the revolutionaries sought to allow lower classes to have as much of an impact on the running of their country as the bourgeois and the nobility. This idea is known as the devolution of power, whereby the autocratic hierarchy of tradition would make way for a more democratic system of representation[9]. To an extent this system of devolution was successful. Although unification of Germany did not occur, and the tariff system remained in Prussia, the creation of the Frankfurt Assembly and the instigation of universal suffrage created an, admittedly short term, level of equality that was previously unseen in Europe. This outcome compares directly to the experience of the greater Habsburg Empire in 1848. The revolutions saw the peasantry freed en large from the rule of the landed gentry known as the robol, and alongside this the empire became a single customs union, with the exception of Prussia under Frederick, which allowed for greater economic and social development. While Price comments that these changes were a large step for the Habsburg societies, Jones provides a more convincing argument and argues that the changes seen during the revolution were negligible because ‘the overall power of the monarchy was stronger than ever after 1848’[10] due to its control over the improving trade networks which was far from the utopian laissez-fare system. To further the idea that the revolutions in the Habsburg Empire were to a large extent unsuccessful, one must consider the absolute refusal of the leaders for German unification. This came about as a result of the Habsburgs being backed by the Russians and the British Empire who supported the maintenance of the status-quo and supported the crushing of the revolution in the Schleswig-Holstein crisis; reaffirming the failure of the revolutionaries to achieve their aim of parliamentary democracy[11].

One possibility that must be considered is the idea that the revolutions were en large unsuccessful, which is shown in the poor leadership and lack of structured political goals that the revolutionaries possessed. In France for example, Fasel makes it clear that he believes poor leadership was the main cause for the fall of the republican forces during the counter revolution. He goes on to comment that the government resigned themselves to accepting the conservative backlash of the revolution in order to minimise and protect themselves from Parisian radicalisation similar to that of 1789[12]. This argument is not only supported by the aforementioned historian Amann, but also by K.Boardman, who concluded that the French revolution was not as successful as it could have been over a longer period of time because of the instability of the French government, and its inability to provide reforms which would tackle the demands of a society which was heavily focus on agrarian culture[13]. The speed with which revolution swept across Europe meant that strong leadership had no time to flourish and instead ‘those who now claimed a share in political authority were unprepared’[14]. Furthermore these undeveloped governments proceeded to utilise all of the bureaucratic tools of the old regime. In France for example, in June 1848, Cavaignac used the French military in a situation similar to that of 1789, to crush a chaotic uprising and this resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people. This continuation of the old regime arguably contributed a great deal to the lack of success of the revolutions, not only in France, but across the whole continent[15]. This poor governmental structure and lack of clear political goals can also be witnessed in Germany. Although the Vorparlament was created as an attempt to achieve greater democracy, it achieved very little, as the state continued to rely heavily on the pre-existing organisations and military of the old regime. The revolutionaries in the German lands lacked unity, so that the peasants were disillusioned by the ‘abstracts of middle class liberalism’[16], and the bourgeoisie were petrified of the revolution and how it may escalate after having witnessed the workers uprising of March which resulted in widespread damage to a great deal of property. This frailty in unity was compounded by the newfound freedom of press, which did nothing but enlighten people to even the smallest of class divisions furthering the weakness of the revolutionaries and exposing them to ‘acute divisions which the German population only became aware of for the first time in the year of the revolution’[17].

While Marx may have argued that the revolutions were a complete failure as they failed to establish permanent change, one must consider the arguments of contemporary historians who have the tool of hindsight. One can then see that while permanent change was not immediately established, the ability to stage an uprising, and the creation of the Frankfurt assembly for example, paved the way for future revolution and future social developments such as the unification of Germany in 1871.  In considering how successful the revolutions of 1848 were one must observe the short term, medium term and long term consequences. In doing so it becomes apparent that short term change in the form of constitutions and trade agreements was achieved, and although poor leadership and the counter reformation annulled the work of the original revolutions in the medium term, one cannot deny that in the long run the revolutions of 1848 had the desired impact as they provided the opportunity for greater change to occur; this can be seen clearly in the German unification of 1871, the longevity of the 3^rd French republic beginning in 1870 and the spread of increasingly liberalist democracy across much of Central and Western Europe.

[1] K. Marx, The revolutions of 1848 (Harmondsworth, 1973).

[2] R. J. Price, The revolutions of 1848 (Basingstoke, 1988).

[3] K. Marx,

[4] P. Amann, ‘The Changing Outlines of 1848’, The American Historical Review, 68/4 (1963), pp. 938-953.

[5] G. Fasel, ‘The Wrong Revolution: French Republicanism in 1848’, French Historical Studies, 8/4 (1974), pp. 654-677.

[6] G. Fasel,pp 664

[7] W. Siemann, The German Revolution of 1848-49 (Basingstoke, 1998).pp221

[8] R. J. Price, pp48

[9] Europe in 1848 : revolution and reform

(New York, 2001),

[10] P. Jones, The 1848 revolutions (Harlow, 1991).pp76

[11] W. Siemann, pp220

[12] G. Fasel,

[13] K. Boardman and C. Kinealy (eds.), 1848 : the year the world turned? (2007),

[14] R. J. Price, pp43

[15] P. Jones, pp97

[16] W. Siemann, pp219

[17] W. Siemann, pp219

Bibliography

• Amann, P. ‘The Changing Outlines of 1848’, The American Historical Review, 68/4 (1963), pp. 938-953.
• Boardman, K. and Kinealy, C. (eds.), 1848 : the year the world turned? (2007).
• Europe in 1848 : revolution and reform D. Higgins. ed. by D. Dowe (New York, 2001).
• Fasel, G. ‘The Wrong Revolution: French Republicanism in 1848’, French Historical Studies, 8/4 (1974), pp. 654-677.
• Jones, P., The 1848 revolutions (Harlow, 1991).
• Marx, K., The revolutions of 1848. ed. by D. Fernbach, New Left review (Harmondsworth, 1973).
• Price, R. J., The revolutions of 1848 (Basingstoke, 1988).
• Siemann, W., The German Revolution of 1848-49 C. Banerji (Basingstoke, 1998).