Thucydides Roundtable, Book III: Understanding Stasis
The second factor mentioned above — a self-adjusting system of tradeoffs that supplies negative feedback — also seems applicable to domestic political tensions. If A. gains power at the expense of B., B. is going to start trying harder. There will now be a greater number of people that A. needs to keep satisfied, or cowed. A. is more likely than before to be blamed when things go wrong. This is why aggrandizement tends under normal conditions to be self-limiting.
During the Peloponnesian War, domestic conditions at Corcyra (and then other city-states) were not normal. The crucial abnormality was the availability of external power without responsibility for it. By inviting either Athens or Sparta to enter into its domestic struggles, a party contending within a city-state nullified the two self-limiting mechanisms sketched above. Getting one of the behemoths to fight your domestic battles for you gave you a power which your adversaries could not resist, and which had a good chance of eliminating them root and branch. You would not have to face them tomorrow. And since the armed forces of the hegemon had no relationship with your adversaries, there was nothing but their sense of humanity to moderate their intervention. At times, we see such humane intentions (Nicostratus in 3.75: He at once endeavored to bring about a settlement), but such efforts always fail, probably because the hegemon’s commitment is limited (he was about to sail away) and because as an outsider he doesn’t realize when he is being manipulated (the leaders of The People induced him to leave them five of his ships).
A. thus savors the realistic prospect of exterminating B.
But at the same time, because there are two hegemons out there who are nervously watching their dominoes, A. knows that B. may have a realistic prospect of exterminating A. As much as the extreme potential gains, it is the extreme potential losses which take this conflict out of the “normal” realm of self-regulating equilibria and also contract the time horizon. Behavior that would normally bring future punishment (formal or informal) now has the greatest survival value:
. . . the superior readiness of those united by [party spirit] to dare everything without reserve
The horrors of Corcyra flow from particular circumstances. Pace Hobbes, it is not merely the absence of a unitary power that leads to such a graphic breakdown of civilized norms. Nor is it the fact of armed conflict — although, if an armed conflict were sufficiently destructive, we would anticipate the same demoralization that followed the plague at Athens. It is the combination of domestic divisions with the willingness of external hegemons to intervene. This combination dismantles the feedback loops that normally keep competitive behavior “within bounds.” Only a corner solution remains, and most of what we call civilization gets discarded on the way to it.
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Neville Morley:
November 8th, 2016 at 7:42 am
This is a fantastic discussion, and I think you’re absolutely right to reject the idea that Thucydides is promoting a single explanation in the way that e.g. Hobbes seems to think he is. I’d like to suggest a slightly different reading, though, building on this. If it’s fair to characterise your argument about the causes/origins of the stasis as ‘not A, not B, but A + B’, then I’d suggest as an alternative ‘A and/or B and/or C’. That is to say, Thucydides’ account is over-determined, with lots of different factors coming together, and he doesn’t do the work of distinguishing between necessary, sufficient and incidental conditions as he’s offering a narrative rather than a normative theory. It’s left to us as readers to think, well, that’s what happened in this specific situation; how far is this a danger in other situations that share some but not necessarily all of these conditions? (Answer: always a risk, human nature being what it is and social bonds being fragile, but never an inevitability). In other words, we can talk about ‘polarisation’ and worry about what’s happening in current politics without implying that everything is about to fall apart. We can even defend Hobbes’ reading as a legitimate inference, given his assumptions, so long as he doesn’t claim that this is Thucydides’ own view.
A. E. Clark:
November 8th, 2016 at 3:09 pm
Very good points, Prof. Morley, and I am grateful for your comment.
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You are right that Thucydides does not distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions, or at least not in so many words. But he describes this war’s blood-curdling, pry-their-fingers-from-the-sanctuary-altar vendettas as something new in Greek experience. Yet it was for him too obvious to need saying that neither war nor factionalism were new. I think it is reasonable to infer from his presentation that it was the confluence of the two factors (as well as the human drive to acquisition and dominance, which he seems to take as universal) which dissolved all restraint in domestic rivalry. By placing it early in his exposition, Thucydides highlights the fact of invitations to the external powers as a key and unusual factor. For these reasons I don’t think an “and/or” formulation does justice to his thought.
larrydunbar:
November 13th, 2016 at 4:35 pm
“…and worry about what’s happening in current politics without implying that everything is about to fall apart.”
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I think you are correct, as long as structure remains inplace and culture is resilient enough to withstand the stress put on the state. Which is why Conservatives and Liberals in today’s U.S.A. are going after structure, at least they are going after how our schools, universities, and other government/private institutions are structured.
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They both believe their cultures are strong enough to withstand the breaking down and apart of the structure that has kept our financial, ecological, and social environments the envy of the world.
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the dynamics of resilience and change of resilience between structure and culture is also one reason the Right is so terrorized by the Left. The Left has no qualms about throwing bombs (literally or figuratively) to tear down structure, because the Left doesn’t really rely on structure, for resiliency, at least not as much as the Right does.
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There is good reason the Republican leadership is wrestling the White House from Trump and only gives the Tea Party lip service. They need structure and fear anything that promises to destroy structure. The Left, not so much.