On the island of Avilyogh:
the chief town has a "Councilhouse," where adult males discuss public business;
the baron presides but votes "...only in case of a tie." (p. 62)
When Charlie remarks that this sounds democratic, the lord Dzenko retorts:
"'Avilyogh is backward... Its lords never have managed to put the commoners in their place and run things efficiently.'" (ibid.)
Although Charlie is startled, the authors know that civilization involved centralization of power and loss of earlier forms of direct democracy, sometimes to be replaced later in history by representative democracy.
Poul Anderson shows us a small part of this process in Time Patrol when the Wanderer says that the Gothic king, Ermanaric:
"'...envies the power of the Roman Emperor, and wants the same for himself over the Ostrogoths.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT p. 417.
Tharasmund replies that Ermanaric:
"'...must pay double weregild, and at the Great Moot vow upon the Stone of Tiwaz to abide henceforward by olden law and right. Else I will raise the whole country against him.'" (ibid.)
At the moot:
"...the Goths finally voted to split the hoard in three equal shares, one for Ermanaric, one each for the sons of Embrica and Fritla. The king's men having slain those, the two-thirds fell to Randwar the fosterling. Overnight he became wealthy.
"Ermanaric rode livid and mum from the meeting."
-ibid., p. 433.
Ermanaric wants everything. Struggles and history continue.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I prefer the system seen on Avilyogh, where power is DISTRIBUTED, not concentrated in the hands of either a single person or group of people. Such a mutual checking and balancing of power will tend to at least sometimes lessen the inevitable abuses of power to be found in ANY political system.
Sean
Sean,
I like the Avilyogh system because it is direct democracy but dislike it because it excludes females.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
In a warlike society that is only to be expected! And anyway females will have an indirect voice thru telling their husbands what they think will be better for Avilyogh. Because it is to be expected some males will heed their wives or mothers.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Another point I should have made is that the fatal flaw of autocracy is that it demands too much of even the most able and well meaning autocrats (and there have been some rulers like that!). The ideal autocrat has a perfect grasp of the basic institutions, needs, society, economy, etc., of his realm. And that has simply never been the case. In fact, I would argue the most successful autocrats have been those who did not try to rule in tight, minute detail, but were willing to delegate, to trust lower officials, barons, city magistrates, orders, institutions, etc., to have the knowledge and ability to do what needed to be done. It follows from that a limited state, often with some kind of parliament, will arise.
And, of course, we know too well what happens when autocrats are bad, most esp. those dominated by fanatical belief in an ideology. We get monsters like Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the Castros, Pol Pot, etc. An ideological autocrat becomes cruel when the world stubbornly refuses to conform to what his ideology says it should be.
Sean
Sean,
A good autocrat is not an autocrat. That is an example of dialectics: something turning into its opposite.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That was what I was trying to say in my more verbose, long winded way. But I don't think all the autocrats of say, the Eastern Roman Empire, were bad men. I suppose, with them, it came down to them accepting tacit, de facto limits on their formal powers.
Sean
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