Talk:Anacyclosis

What is it?

So what is it? Blast ^{[improve me]} 21.06.07 1143 (UTC)

This page appears to have merely one source (it's a Johnny One-Note). The very same idea of a political cycle occurs in the much-more-read Plato's Republic, and is answered by Aristotle. Plato says that Monarchy needs peers to breed into and to handle its affairs, which leads to Aristocracy; that Aristocracy gets met in their daily matters by gentlemen, who though not nobly born can perform some tasks better than they, and eventually take power from them in a type of rule he calls Timocracy; that less capable or moral people take power to form an Oligarchy; that the better sort of people cannot stand the rule of the Oligarchs and actively take power from them to form Democracy (not representative, but voice-vote up or down and choosing functionaries by lot); that the lesser sort of people, who are a large part of the majority, next take power and form what he calls an Ochlocracy; and that this form cannot solve the people's problems and they accept a Tyrant. Next he says that a Tyrant cannot succeed himself without taking on the trappings of a Monarch, so the cycle completes itself.

Notice that the Oligarchy is not stated as being the way that the word is used today, say, in Latin America or Russia. It's just a bad few who are ruling for no specific purpose. Rather, it is Aristotle who contradicts Plato by saying that Athens is a democracy, and that the only system of rule that is a real contender is a specific form of Oligarchy - that of rule by the few who are rich. That's the source of the modern use of the word. "Plutocracy" means the same thing, but that's considered a silly word. I wish the word Oligarchy had not so been taken, for Liberals are a few (well, not a majority or plurality) who can rule without any explanation whatsoever as well. 74.10.198.105 (talk) 20:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)