Revolt of the Lesbians

I am continuing re-reading a translation of Thucydides book “The Peloponnesian War” about the 27 year war between Athens and Sparta back in the fifth century B.C.

In general accounts in textbooks about this war, two tragic events are always mentioned as the major events. The first is the plague that ravaged the cooped up Athenians early in the war. The second is the misguided aggression by Athens on Sicily to recoup their losses after losing the first phase of the war. But the event that most impressed me on my first reading of Thucydides many years ago was the Revolt by the city of Mytilene on the Island of Lesbos, and the Athenian response to it. So far in re-reading, that impression still holds.

Mytilene was an ally of Athens after the Persian invasions of Greece. Athens bit by bit turned her allies into subject states paying tribute. Mytilene on Lesbos and a few other allies remained “independent.” But it was clear that after Athens had subdued everyone else, there would be nothing to stop Athens from tightening its grip on Mytilene. So, when the war between Athens and Sparta broke out, the leaders of Mytilene saw it as an opportunity to get out from under the thumb of Athens. They approached Sparta for help.

As appears almost usual, the Spartans saw other people’s problems as just a lack of leadership. So instead of sending an army or a fleet, they sent one man, Salaethus. The Spartans did later send some ships, but they scurried away at the sight of the Athenian fleet. Apparently, the Spartans figured that one Spartan could provide the leadership that was lacking. Actually, on a number of occasions this seemed to work, one war, send one Spartan. But it does appear also that the Spartans wanted to avoid polluting and corrupting too many of their own by exposing them to the temptations of the outside world. On this score they were usually right, as Spartans who went abroad often succumbed to the different life.

Salaethus first tried to whip the Mytilene upper and middle class into soldiers to break the Athenian siege. This did not work. So he turned to the lower classes, figuring that they would be more used to submission and obeying orders. However, once armed, the lower class Mytilene became a free man, with ideas and opinions. The opinion was that the “leaders” of Mytilene had botched things. They wanted peace with Athens. They forced a conditional surrender to the Athenian commander Paches. The condition was that the fate of the city would be left in the hands of the assembly back in Athens. As it turned out, this was an easy decision for them: kill all of the men and sell all of the women and children as slaves.

After voting this and sending the directive back to Paches at Mytilene, the Athenians began to have a change of heart. Thucydides puts the debate into the mouths of Cleon and Diodotus. There were no longer any Conservatives in Athens it would seem, only Liberals and Liberal Extremists. Cleon, representing the extremist view, shows how easy it is to slip from a Liberal position into Fascism. Diodotus argues that the people of Mytilene should be spared, not out of compassion, but because it is expedient. They should not want people to feel they need to fight to the death against Athens because that is what they will get if they lose. On why Athenians should change their minds and rescind the order to exterminate the people of Mytilene, Diodotus says, “You punish those who advise you for their bad judgment, but you forgive yourselves for the bad judgment of following their advice.”

The Athenians vote “by a show of hands” to overturn the order to wipe out Mytilene, but it is close. A ship is sent to rescind the order and arrives only in the nick of time. Nevertheless, they kill all of the leading people of Mytilene, give over all of the land of Mytilene to Athenians, and turn the rest of the people into peasant renters. The democracy of Athens was a vicious little democracy. This isn’t to say the Spartans were any better. Their “democracy” was perhaps more equal than that of Athens but on a much narrower base of voters. But the Spartans were equally without compassion. They carried out the same fate on the Plataeans a short time later, when that city surrendered to them. Fortunately, most of the Plataeans had already escaped to Athens beforehand.

How Can Liberals Win ?

I pointed out in a previous posting that Liberals tend to be fragmented into unconnected minority groups. On the other hand, Conservatives almost by definition are the largest natural subgroup of a community, either the majority or clearly the largest minority. That is because Conservatives want to preserve the current structure of society, which they perceive as beneficial to themselves. If they wanted to change it, then they would be Liberals. If the majority or the largest minority (when there is no majority group) wanted to change things, they would. So if things are not changing dramatically, then Conservatives are clearly dominant.

So how can Liberals ever win, if they are always just a bunch of disparate minority groups in a community? One way is to become the majority or the largest and dominant minority. One way this can happen is for the Conservative majority “leadership” to thoroughly overplay their hand, become incompetent, corrupt, and oppressive, driving some of their own to become Liberals and driving the Liberals into a combined group, forgetting their differences and focusing on the issue of the failed Conservative “leadership.” This is called a revolution.

Examples are the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and of course the American Revolution. Revolutions are singular notable historical events because they do not occur very often.

A handicap for Liberals is that Revolutions are precipitated by incompetence among Conservatives. That is, it is not Liberals who start revolutions but Conservatives. Nevertheless, idealistic Liberals are forever attempting to foment a revolution, wasting away their lives in bohemian coffee houses and such, arguing what they would do when they are in charge. When the young Benito Mussolini and one of his mistresses were walking down a tree-lined avenue one night after attending a rousing socialist meeting, Mussolini remarked, “These are the trees on which we will hang the pigs.” And his mistress laughingly replied, “And where are the trees on which we will be hanged?” Actually, they were about ten miles away.

Actually, sometimes Liberals are in the majority or nearly so, but not in control. The reason is that they are divided. By the Anna Karenina Principle (defined by Jarod Diamond) all the unhappy people who want to change society are unhappy for different reasons. Liberals are divided among various different interest groups, many of which are rivals. “Divide and Conquer” works for the Conservatives but rarely for Liberals.

The only way for Liberals to win is for them to unite. If the Conservatives decline to be sufficiently incompetent, corrupt, or oppressive to drive them to the unity of a revolution, then the Liberals must form a coalition. They must unite under one banner in order to take control. This means compromise. Different rival unhappy ethnic groups need to bury their animosities and take up the causes of their competitors. The unhappy poor and unemployed need to throw support behind ambitious rich Liberals who must condescend to embrace the masses for the sake of a rapid political advancement. Unhappy conservative minority regionalists must take up the cause of people they despise so long as they are in another province. This is not easy. It doesn’t happen often. That’s why they usually have to wait for a revolution or near revolution.

American Conservatives are pretty homogeneous. There are several kinds, but most belong to several kinds. There are Religious Conservatives, Social Conservatives, Fiscal Conservatives, and Intellectual Conservatives. Most Religious Conservatives are also all of the rest. Most Social Conservatives are Fiscal Conservatives. Most Fiscal Conservatives are at least sympathetic to Social Conservatives. Some non-Religious Conservatives do not like their religious comrades, but it is not a breaking point.

American Liberals on the other hand are pretty heterogeneous. Jewish and Muslim, Italian and Irish, Polish and Hispanic, Feminists and Blacks, the Unemployed and Labor Unions, preservationalist Environmentalists and alternative energy Environmentalists, animal rights activists and multiculturalists, atheists and religious ethnic minorities, and so on. They are not only different but rivals or competitors, or downright do not like each other. But to win, they must put aside these differences, bite their tongues, pretend to be friends, and shout the common party lines.

This is all pretty tenuous.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the existing Democrat Party coalition of the 70 years following the American Civil War, enlarged by a mini-revolution brought on by the Great Depression, and sprang Liberals into a dominant position. The existing coalition was a union of Southern Segregationalists, Northeastern Labor Unions, Western Farmers, Immigrant and Ethnic Communities, and so on. This coalition ruled the Presidency for 20 years and the Congress for longer.

In the late 1960’s the Democrat Party tore itself apart and in the next few years put itself back together again as a different animal. A new coalition was formed that long kept dominance of Congress but had a much harder time with the Presidency.

Clean, Cheap, and Plentiful

A high tech company I am familiar with in Arizona had to shut down some of its manufacturing processes today due to Hurricane Katrina. It seems that the supply of hydrogen gas ran out and the regular just-in-time shipments stopped. The hydrogen gas comes from Texas. There it is made in chemical processing plants from methane. The methane comes from petroleum wells. The methane comes mixed in with the oil and is separated by gas processing plants. It also comes from gas wells. All of this has been affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Methane gas is also plentiful in the Persian Gulf oil fields.

Hydrogen is said to be a clean, cheap, and plentiful fuel, and its use would free us from the oil industry and Middle East fuel dependency. Not today.