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Loading... The Politics of Aristocratic Empiresby John H. Kautsky
None No current Talk conversations about this book.  thcson | Aug 5, 2014 |  no reviews | add a review
The Politics of Aristocratic Empires is a study of a political order that prevailed throughout much of the world for many centuries without any major social conflict or change and with hardly any government in the modern sense. Although previously ignored by political science, powerful remnants of this old order still persist in modern politics. The historical literature on aristocratic empires typically is descriptive and treats each empire as unique. By contrast, this work adopts an analytical, explanatory, and comparative approach and clearly distinguishes aristocratic empires from both primitive and more modern, commercialized societies. It develops generalizations that are supported and richly illustrated by data from many empires and demonstrates that a pattern of politics prevailed across time, space, and cultures from ancient Egypt five millennia ago to Saudi Arabia five decades ago, from China and Japan to Europe, from the Incas and the Aztecs to the Tutsi. Kautsky argues that aristocrats, because they live off the labor of peasants, must perform the primary governmental functions of taxation and warfare. Their performance is linked to particular values and beliefs, and both functions and ideologies in turn condition the stakes, the forms, and the arenas of intra-aristocratic conflict the politics of the aristocracy. The author also analyzes the roles of the peasantry and the townspeople in aristocratic politics and shows that peasant revolts on any large scale occur only after commercial modernization. He concludes with chapters on the modernization of aristocratic empires and on the importance in modern politics of institutional and ideological remnants of the old aristocratic order. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)306.2Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and Institutions Political institutionsLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (5)
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Wikipedia in English (3)
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Behind the glittering royal facade, which many modern historians still polish, lay a merciless social hierarchy. Small groups of aristocrats competed with each other for power and prestige while exploiting peasants to the utmost. Aristocrats did no useful work and could not have cared less about peasant welfare. The peasants were too ignorant of their own oppression to organize collective opposition. The "government" that aristocrats exercised was concerned only with war and extortionate taxation. Peasants may have been free to resolve their internal affairs as they pleased, but they could not escape taxes and rarely knew for what purpose, or even by whom, they were being taxed.
The author outlines the origins, ideology and economy of this extremely durable social system. I think his analysis of aristocratic ideology is especially insightful. He explains why regular work was resented by aristocrats and why potentially beneficial investment was pre-empted by aristocratic luxury consumption and war. The tragic consequence was a complete lack of societal development. The aristocrats did not want change. Peasants came to accept the "natural order of things" because no alternative was conceivable.
Aristocratic empires ended when commercialization increased. Commerce brought political change as merchants and city-dwellers began to gain influence. This contrast between aristocratic empires and commercialized ones seems sensible, although the author does not discuss commercialization in any detail. In general his portrait of pure aristocratic empires is very theoretical. The author provides selected examples, but not any detailed case studies. His model probably fits some empires better than others. It will be up to future generations of historians to scrutinize it more closely.
I think the author's analysis illuminates social life in ancient empires more clearly than any other book I've read on the subject. I therefore strongly recommend this book to all readers interested in ancient history and the history of government. I also recommend Bruce Trigger's "Understanding Early Civilizations" as a useful complement. The early civilizations Trigger discusses are prototypical examples of Kautsky's aristocratic empires. As far as I can remember Trigger's case studies also support the main argument in Kautsky's model.