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No, you're pushing these as accepted theories when they are not. Strauss-Howe has had quite a bit of criticism and so far as I can tell Kyklos/Anacyclosis seem
by dpark 10y ago
No, you're pushing these as accepted theories when they are not. Strauss-Howe has had quite a bit of criticism and so far as I can tell Kyklos/Anacyclosis seems to have little attention at all except from people interested in historical philosophy.
You're also conflating two different theories that don't mesh meaningfully. The Strauss-Howe theory is predicated on complete cycles of ~90 years. I'm utterly confident that the US has not cycled through anarchy, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy twice.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoActually, they are so baked into economics that they are overlooked. Sismondi in his development of the business cycle theory, now a fundamental feature of economic theory and thus political theory, cited Polybius frequently. The point is that there are cycles of societal organization that can be demonstrated fairly unambiguously.
- dpark 10y agoIt's one thing to say that social structures show evidence of cyclic behavior. It's another thing entirely to say that it's an accepted fact that every democratic society will inevitably fall to anarchy and be reborn as a monarchy.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoI mean history is pretty replete with examples...more than enough books have been written on this. Note that the Anarchic period is usually very short and often accompanied by war because people can't figure out how to live without a ruler apparently.