This is the second in a four part series on the transition between democracy and dictatorship. In the first part
we looked at historical examples of democracy to dictatorship transitions to see if there might be a pattern. Let
me now introduce you to someone who compared many more than three or four examples.
Arnold Toynbee, in his A Study of History, outlined a civilization life cycle. The civilization life cycle roughly
paralleled that of an individual organism such as a person, or of a corporate body, such as a family. The steps in
the life cycle were birth, growth and crises, the unsolvable crisis, the time of troubles, the universal state,
the interregnum, and death. This life cycle was not a straight line graph, but took a civilization through growth
spurts and contractions cycling between stable health and crises of sickness. Our discussion is focused on a very
narrow band within that life cycle; the point of what Toynbee calls the Time of Troubles and the Establishment of
the Universal State. Toynbee classified Western Civilization and its American offshoot as one civilization that
was the child of the Hellenic (Greek and Roman) Civilization. Toynbee suggested that the Hellenic Civilization
started in Greece and spread widely seeing its unsolvable crisis while still mainly in Greece. The expansion of
the Hellenic Civilization throughout the Mediterranean Basin and through parts of Asia to India took place after
the civilization had already met its crisis and could not resolve it. The expansion of Hellenic civilization came
in the time of troubles and universal state of the civilization life cycle. This time of troubles usually lasts
several hundred years. Civilizations are long-lived, often lasting ten to twenty times a human lifespan. Some
country within the civilization eventually comes to the fore and consolidates it under one government and
administration. This consolidation Toynbee called the universal state. The Roman Empire was the universal state
for the Hellenic Civilization, but it was not the first attempt at consolidation and expansion to the farthest
limits the civilization could bear. Alexander the Great tried his hand long before the time of Caesar. Likewise,
the attempts of Bonaparte and Hitler to consolidate Europe under one government and code were preliminary attempts
to bring our own Western Civilization into a universal state.
Toynbee was writing 60 years ago, and at the time he suspected that our civilization had met its unsolvable crisis
in the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He saw us marching toward the universal state,
toward consolidation of power into one country, and finally to one man and administration. Caesar secured foreign
territory for Rome. He also fought civil wars to consolidate power in his hands alone. Again, one of the factors
in the Romans accepting Caesar was that he promised security and stability. The people would be protected from the
wars from within and without. They let go of some of the freedom of their citizenship for the illusion of
security.
Within a handful of centuries, the Roman Empire and the Hellenic Civilization were dead and buried in history. The
security did not last. Things fell apart. The people no longer inherently trusted their own culture. They
looked to their slaves and foreign workers and subject peoples for answers. They looked to foreign religions such
as Christianity that didn't involve the old Greco-Roman pantheon. They also looked to the peoples outside their
borders who were pressing in on them, the Vandals and Goths. They looked in these places for the vitality their
dying civilization lacked. The civilization slowly died away. The promised security eroded. There were invasions
of the rotten husk of the empire.
We now seem to be poised on that brink between the time of troubles that we saw in the last century with its horrid
wars and the universal state. Already Europe starts to consolidate. The European Union is a set of baby steps on
the way to one economic and administrative empire for the old core of the civilization. Looking around for other
likely candidates for Western Civilization's version of Rome, we immediately stumbles over the United States. It
has the sort of unrivaled power that Rome had. This does not mean that the United States will be the seed of the
universal state of Western Civilization; it is just the likely current candidate. If the universal state holds off
for twenty or fifty years, the European Union or some new influence may be the power to reckon with.
The remaining two parts of this series will investigate where our civilization stands today and the likely path of
events in the near future. The last column will be a question and answer dialogue about the transition between
republics and dictatorships.
F. B. Knight is Curmudgeon-in-Residence at the Attila the Hun School of Management. He can be reached for questions at
fbk@attilathehunschool.net.
