Military democracy

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Military democracy is a concept of Marxist history. It describes a pre-state form of the organization of historical societies that were in constant armed conflict with their neighbors. This form of social organization is characterized by an elected (and thus removable) army commander, an electoral assembly of the free and a council of elders. Only those who have their weapons with them are entitled to vote. The military leaders are not recruited on the basis of consanguinity or tribal affiliation, but are selected on the basis of their military merits and because of their unconditional obedience to the supreme leader. The old tribal nobility ofGentile society, however, is largely disempowered in these societies.

In Soviet historiography in particular, military democracy was at times viewed as a social epoch in the transition from gentile society to a politically constituted state.

Origin of the concept

Lewis Henry Morgan developed the concept in his work Ancient Society following Aristotle 's determination of the role of the basileus , who assigned him military and priestly functions, but not a civil leadership role. Morgan saw military democracy as characterized by the features mentioned above ( the military state of society, and the system of administration consisting of an elective and removable supreme chief, a council of elders and a popular assembly ). Above all, he had the model of the elected war chief of the Iroquois in mind.

Like Morgan, Karl Marx emphasizes the separation of civil and military leadership into gens and tribe. He noted: "basileia, used by the Greek writers for Homeric kingship (because warfare is its main characteristic) with boule and agora is a sort of military democracy." For Marx, the "great war soldier" were the Iroquois, the Teuctli of the Aztecs , the βασιλεύς (basileús) of the Greeks and the Rex of the Romans Designations of the same office at different levels of "barbarism". The Athenians had the office of basileus in the 8th century BC. Abolished because he repeatedly interfered in civil life and used his military means of power for battles with the gentes. With this Marx turned against George Grote's identification of the hereditary monarch of the old society with the commander in war.

Pontiac , Ottawa War Chief (painting by John Mix Stanley based on an older model, c. 1835–1850)

Friedrich Engels generalized the concept based on the model of the ancient Greek polis , whose free citizens were also warriors or lived in constant readiness for war. For Engels, the military leader (always different from the civil chief, who was called Sachem among the Iroquois ), the council of elders and the popular assembly were permanent institutions in societies that were permanently involved in wars and regarded warfare as the main purpose of society. Such societies came into being under conditions in which it was easier to reproduce by plundering neighbors than by productive labor, for example through the spatial proximity of immobile farmers and mobile nomads, through settlement pressure or through strong population growth, rivalry and the dissolution of the gentile organization with increasing local and linguistic separation. In many cases, campaigns of revenge have developed into a permanently warlike way of life based on robbery and in which the reputation of the members of society depends on their military success.

Further development and criticism of the concept

Some Soviet historians referred to the Greek kingdoms of Homeric times as military democracies, while others point to the problem that the roles of “people” and “nobility” are clearly defined differently in the Homeric epics, especially in the Diapeira of Canto II of the Iliad even if the general ( Agamemnon ) in situations that threaten to slip away, the hilt is taken from the hand of able and cunning warriors ( Odysseus ). Above all, the existence of monumental buildings like in Mycenae as insignia of unrestricted power does not seem compatible with the concept of a largely egalitarian military democracy, which also does not allow the entire military retinue to be permanently concentrated at the headquarters of the military leader. However, relationships of allegiance can also be hierarchical and time-graded, as Tacitus reports. There was also a hierarchy of chiefs among the Iroquois.

Soviet ethnologists transferred the concept to the Huns and other Asian equestrian peoples who lived off the pillaging of their neighbors, since the khans largely corresponded to the image of military leaders drawn by Morgan and Engels. Also on the Teutons , the Caucasian peoples, the early Celts , the Zulus and the Cossacks of the 16th – 18th centuries. Century, which developed a tight organization on a military democratic basis with elected atamans , the concept was applied.

The Danish archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen sees the bronzeitlichen settlements in the Carpathian arc an expression of, but still significantly decentralized society (already layered Decentralized stratified society ), which he interprets as a transitional form to a greater concentration of power and that may be occupied with the concept of military democracy can. He argues similarly with regard to the early Irish Celtic period.

Marxist historiography, too, often viewed military democracy as a form of transition from a gentile to a politically structured society. On the other hand, Otto Manne-Helfen argued that the world of Agamemnon , that of the Zulus and that of Attila were far too different to be covered with the term military democracy. In particular, their fundamentally different economic basis (arable farmers, sedentary cattle breeders, nomads), according to Marxist criteria, do not allow the assumption that they could develop a similar political superstructure. However, Marx himself never used the term epoch for military democracy, but spoke of a political “form” at different levels of development.

Running hoplites. Attic amphora , approx. 550 BC. Chr.

In spite of these objections, the Soviet historian AN Bernshtam assumed that military democracy represented a higher form of social development than that of the slave-holding gentile society, since in it he was the pioneering force for the destruction of these societies, e.g. B. the Roman Empire saw.

Pierre Vidal-Naquet undertakes a class-theoretical definition of military democracy : He sees the Doric polis foundations between the 7th and 5th centuries BC. The bearers of military democracy in the hoplites as a separate social class . They embody a type of military citizen or warrior citizen who willingly both integrate himself into the phalanx and defend his individual rights as a free citizen. All areas of life were militarily reshaped and the aristocratic lone fighter of the Odysseus type was replaced by the disciplined army of citizens who developed a civil and military dual identity.

Helmut Castritius generally criticizes the adoption of a concept for characterizing pre-industrial societies that arose at the time of early industrial society.

literature

  • Helmut Castritius: Terminological problems of the historian using the example of the term military democracy. In: Archive for Conceptual History , Volume 20 (1976), pp. 100–119.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yury Bromley: Soviet Ethnology and Anthropology Today . Walter de Gruyter, January 1, 1974, ISBN 978-3-11-085653-8 , p. 134–.
  2. ↑ Karl Marx: the ethnological excerpts. Edited by Lawrence Krader , trans. by Angelika Schweikhart, Frankfurt 1976, p. 297 f.
  3. ↑ George Grote: A History of Greece; from the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great. London: John Murray, 1846-1856 (12 volumes).
  4. ↑ Friedrich Engels: The origin of the family, private property and the state. Following LH Morgan's research. Hottingen-Zurich 1884. In: MEW 21, p. 141 ff.
  5. ↑ Marx, p. 216 f.
  6. ^ Juri V. Andreev: People and nobility in Homer. Klio Volume 57 (1975), translation: Bernd Funck Online .
  7. ↑ Tacitus: Germania 13.
  8. ↑ Peter Hilsch : The Middle Ages - the epoch. UTB, 2017, p. 55.
  9. ^ Friedrich Schlette : To reflect the military-democratic conditions on the ideology of the Celts. In: Ethnologische-Archäologische Zeitschrift, Volume 25, 1984, pp. 470–478.
  10. ↑ Dittmar Schorkowitz: Post-communism and decreed nationalism: memory, violence and history politics in the northern Black Sea area. Frankfurt 2008, p. 190.
  11. ^ Kristian Kristiansen: Chiefdoms, states, and systems of social evolution. In: T. Earle (Ed.): Chiefdoms, power, economy and ideology. Cambridge 1991, pp. 16-43.
  12. ↑ p. 19.
  13. ↑ So z. B. Joachim Hermann : Military democracy and the transition period to class society. Ethnological-Archaeological Journal, Volume 23, 1982, pp. 11–31.
  14. ^ Otto Maenchen-Helfen: The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture. University of California Press 1973, pp. 191 f. German expanded edition: The World of the Huns: An Analysis of Their Historical Dimension. Vienna, Cologne, Graz 1978.
  15. ↑ Pierre Vidal-Naquet: The black hunter. Forms of thought and societies in ancient Greece . Frankfurt 1989, p. 90.
  16. ↑ Castritius 1976, p. 100.