Road to a democratic revolution

Before looking at history let’s look at the term “democratic revolution” and what it is. Basically, it’s a political science term describing a revolution in which a democracy is formed, replacing a previous non-democratic government, or where change is brought through democratic means.

If you look at stone age, you’ll find that in hunting-and-gathering groups, nobody can own more than they can carry. So, there is no way to accumulate wealth. If you want meat, then you’ll have to cooperate in the hunt. These were societies where nobody could control anybody else, and so they had to make their decisions democratically. They were small societies: rarely more than 50 adults. On the rare occasions when they had to make a major decision, they would actually sit around and debate it until they reached a consensus. Direct democracy, if you like.

People have been running their affairs that way ever since we developed language — which was almost certainly before we even anatomically modern human beings. That is who we are, and how we prefer to behave unless some enormous obstacle gets in our way.

The enormous obstacle was civilization. The mass societies that we call civilizations arose less than 10,000 years ago. Until very recently, all of them, without exception, were tyrannies. The mass societies had many more decisions to make. Their huge numbers made any attempt at discussing the question as equals impossible, so the only one that flourished were the ones that became brutal hierarchies. tyranny was the solution to what was essentially a communication problem.

Fast forward 10,000 years, and give these societies mass communications. You don’t have to wait for the internet to happen, just invent the printing press. Wait a couple of hundred years while literacy spreads, and presto! We can all talk to one another again, after a fashion, and the democratic revolutions begin. We didn’t invent the principle of equality among human beings; we just reclaimed it.