Despite Democracies and Kraterocracies are polar opposites if each other, occasionally transitions from one into another happen. Such transitions are often violent and chaotic, and society tries to adopt itself to a new reality. Modern trend tends to mostly flip Kraterocracies into Democracies, but the opposite also happens. Most famous transition into Democracy was French Revolution and most famous transition into Kraterocracy was fall of Roman Republic and rise of Roman Empire.
Here I will explain why both of these, and other transitions happened and how such transitions normally go. This article is about Rome going from Democracy to Kraterocracy. I will write a separate one on the transition from Kraterocracy into Democracy.
From Democracy to Kraterocracy
Ancient Rome's transiton from Democracy (Republic) into Empire (Kraterocracy) is the most famous of such events. That does not happen just to backward Africans in Somalia and Uganda. The jevel and pride of Western Civiliation, Rome, was reduced to rubble and plunged into Dark Ages. What Kraterocracy destroyed over the course of couple of centuries, took more than 15 to build back.
Why it Happened.
CGPGrey in his videos claimed that when some very valuable resource that dwarfs all other sources of income is found, then country turns into dictatorship. That happened to one of the most famous Republics in history, Roman Republic. Except the resource Ceasar found is rather trivial by modern standards: land.
Before becoming dictator for life Ceasar spend a lot of time in Gaul (modern France), conquering and subjugating Gaul in the name of Rome. People talk a lot about crossing of Rubicon or famous opulence of early Roman Empire. However, there is surprisingly little information as to why it happens. To be more precise too little analysis of existing information. It is very likely that Ceasar found a lot of valuable goods, such as gold in his campaign, he also took many of the conquered Gauls into slavery.
However, what there was one thing, more valuable that gold or slaves and that is land. Italy is not very bountiful when it comes to agriculture, back in Roman times it did not produce enough to feed Rome. Rome imported grain from Egypt, making relationship with this state paramount. In addition to that shipping of this grain from Egypt to Rome was equally essential.
These are all complex operations that required traders, shipbuilders, crew and so on. To manage all that a complex republican form of government was needed. People who do all these operations are essential for functioning of the Roman state, thus they all had to have a say in how the state and society operates.
However, most fertile in Europe land of Gaul (modern France) paired with readily available slaves from Gaul to work on it made all these structures unnecessary. All that was needed for prosperity was a strong army to force Gauls to work the land for their new Roman masters. Unlike educated Italians who with their trading and shipbuilding skills could just sail away from dictatorship, primitive Gauls knew no other way to live but to toil land.
Possibly Gaul's psychology also made them more slave-able than Italians. Perhaps the entire tribe will submit if their leader surrenders. So, they had no choice, but work for their new Roman masters, Ceaser and his successors rather than the whole Rome to precise.
It is these facts that allowed Ceasar to cross Rubicon and install himself as dictator for life. It is these facts that kept this system in place even after Senate assassinated Ceasar. Ceasar needed loyalties of his own legionaries to take on Roman Republic. They would not have fought for a whim of one man, he had to offer them enough wealth to switch their loyalty to him from the Republic. Whatever Ceasar and his legionaries have found in Gaul was more than what Republic could have paid them, so they backed Ceasar against the Republic and then backed Augustus when Senate assassinated Ceasar.
After winning civil war, Ceaser alto took direct control over Egypt, further solidifying his and military's grip on food production.
That is how Roman Republic have fallen to the rule of the military. First it became autocratic populism and then eventually Kraterocracy.
Why Roman Empire was a Kraterocracy rather than Monarchy.
Some people envision Rome as a monarchy where good and enlightened King rules together with his trusted advisors and Senate. It was anything but, there was no any succession laws and for every occasional designated successor, several more became Emperors as a result of coup or downright civil wars. For all effective purposes it was a Kraterocracy, a system where strongest or most cunning takes power by either assassinating his predecessor or defeating him on the battlefield.
Even during so called Principate time of the early Empire many of the Emperors such as unpopular Tiberius, crazy Caligula or infamous Nero only held their power because military supported them. However, no matter how crazy Caligula was in the eyes of Romans, he was loyal enough towards his legions, so they simply forced everyone to accept his rule. Caligula was eventually assassinated.
By crisis of the 3rd century and so-called Tetrarchy, Rome effectively evolved (or devolved) into an institutionalized Kraterocracy. Every time previous emperor dies or killed, his top generals take legions under their command and fight their peers until only one out of four remains. He becomes next emperor and keeps power for as long as he manages to dodge assassination attempts.
How Kraterocracy Destroyed Rome
One trivial but erroneous answer would be war. Constant civil war since crisis of the 3rd century surely contributed to damage. Even more misguided would be to blame it on barbarians, that "conquered" Rome in 476.
However, neither of these were as important to the final outcome as the damage to social structures and social contract that Kraterocracy wrecked on Rome. Society only works together if they are united by common benefit or common gain.
A pirate crew is united by prospects of sharing the loot. They perform their individual tasks on the ship, work together and risk their lives all for this material gain from the loot they can steal. Take common gain away and crew will disperse.
Society fundamentally works the same way, so long as system can promise its members significant material gain for their contribution, they work in the system. Take that gain away and society falls apart.
Roman Kraterocracy took that gain away. No matter what one did, it was impossible to match wealth or power of the emperor or his legionaries. Some more benevolent emperors, like Augustus spend some of this wealth on people to buy their loyalty and sympathy. Later emperors stopped doing that and crowds deserted them.
Crisis of the 3rd century was the final nail in the coffin. The fed-up crowd tried to restore the Republic by lynching one of the barracks emperors only to see him being replaced with another barracks emperor.
Disillusioned with such a cynical slap in the face, citizens of Rome, started to ignore the society and fend for themselves. Rome as a polity and a nation essentially ceased to exist. Emperors and their legions were left on to exist on their own.
Sure, some vestiges of Roman system, such as Senate continued in Byzantine Empire, but that was more a facade than a political body with real power: a folly, born from emperor's desire to keep appearance and legacy of the republic. Similar to how some African leaders imitate western world, so called cargo cult.
Emperor's personalist rule managed to last a century in the east due to very defensible position of city of Constantinople, that could be defended with only a handful of soldiers. Every so often the eastern empire would be reduced to controlling only this city by invaders from either Balkans or Anatolia.
Emperor's personalist rule in the West disintegrated under its own mismanagement in 476. Unable to recruit Roman soldiers from disillusioned Romans, Emperors went to replace them with German mercenaries. Eventually these mercenaries supplanted Romans and military force in charge.
Some of the disillusioned Roman citizens went on to found new trade republics, such as Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Zara and Ragusa.
However, all these were but shadows of the society Rome once had. Culture, education, prosperity and quality of life, all of that fell to Kraterocracy. A once shining pinnacle of civilization became nothing more than rubble where Germanic tribes fought for control of what was left of the former glory.
Dark Ages slowly evolved into equally backward Middle Ages. It not until more than a millennium later, that Europe even attempted to bring back Roman glory during Renascence.
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