Thucydides Roundtable, Book VIII: What Do You Mean by “We”?

Thucydides thus anticipates a branch of economics called Public Choice Theory, the study of how agents — that is, officers of a corporation or a polity — may pursue their own private interests to the detriment of the organization they serve. It is a problem which corporations seek to solve by “aligning” compensation with performance so that their employees will find it in their own interest to increase the corporation’s profit. This is precisely what Pericles sought to arrange by such devices as death benefits for the families of fallen soldiers: “Where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.” (2.46.1)

Other societies have relied on psychological identification at least as much as economic incentives.  The Communist Party of China has for many years taught the citizenry to view the Party-State as their parent. This exploits — as a free resource, so to speak — the filial devotion long ingrained in Chinese culture. Other sovereigns have associated themselves with the supernatural to which their culture gave reverence: “There’s such divinity doth hedge a king.” And of course sovereigns have always employed symbolic recognition as an incentive, because it is much cheaper than economic incentives. When it was pointed out to him that the Legion d’Honneur was a bauble, Napoleon said, “It is with baubles that one leads men.”

That even holders of high office tend to act on their own account, and that the destiny of nations is often the hard-to-predict resultant of individual self-seeking and dissembling, emerges in this final book (and chiefly in reference to Athens).  That may be why it contains no speeches. The speeches of Thucydides are artful constructs summarizing collective interests; but here the collective is dissolving into individual components.

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