Republic
Republics are governments in which the Third Estate or "public" controls the state rather than a de jure aristocracy or monarch, but with little to no democratic participation from the lower classes.[citation needed]
Etymology
The term "republic" comes from the Latin rēs pūblica ("the business of the public"), which referred to the civil society of the Roman Republic from the fourth century BC until the accession of Augustus. The Roman Republic was an organ of patrician and aristocratic domination with little to no representation of the free Roman working class and none at all for slaves. Reformers such as the brothers Gracchi of the second century BC who attempted to carry out land reform and tax reform were brutally murdered by the ruling class,[1] and this has been cited as a factor in the killing of Julius Caesar.[2] This lockout of the proletariat and urban professionals from political affairs resulted in the frequent protests, rioting, and usage of the secessio plebis which characterizes Roman histories.
History
From ancient times up through the European Middle Ages, republics usually meant an elite group of electors who chose representatives from within their own class to run the affairs of all society. These were common in city-states, especially in Italy, because of the relatively equal power of the bourgeois populations concentrated in these cities in contrast with the dangerous inequality of the feudal countryside. As mercantile relations expanded during the 16th and 17th centuries, areas with developed markets like the Low Countries, England, and Corsica came to favor large-scale, modernized republics, triggering the bourgeois revolutions.
The limited suffrage of the republican system was somewhat expanded during the bourgeois epoch, as in the American and English representative systems, but these still included minimum requirements for land, wealth, or peerage. Through class struggle, European and American proletarians and peasants expanded their republics to include universal suffrage and lower barriers to entry into government, which allowed for the highly effective socialist agitation and organization of parties like the SPD. Although bourgeois authors such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were careful to distinguish a republican system from a democracy, drawing on the historical differences in the two systems, bourgeois rhetoric since the 19th century has conflated the two as bourgeois republics have adopted minor democratic elements.[3] The identity of republic and democracy is key to modern bourgeois ideology, and "democratic republics" or bourgeois democracies are by far the most common political system of the 21st century. Bourgeois republics are characterized by indirect democracy, ballot elections, multiple houses of government, long terms of office, and elite policy-producing apparatuses such as think tanks. The phrase "republic" or "democratic republic" is also used to refer to socialist states which lack the socialist development to achieve a more comprehensive form of democracy, such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or the People's Republic of China.
Republican systems have also existed in other class societies from India and Arabia to Central America. A related concept is the Germanic Thing, a relic of the representative governments of the Germanic tribal societies that survived into the Middle Ages in Sweden, Iceland and elsewhere. Political and ideological support for the institution of a republic, including in order to replace a constitutional or absolute monarchy, is called republicanism.
References
- ↑ See Parenti, Michael (2003). Template:Citation/make link. Template:Citation/identifier. Parenti, Michael (2003). The Assassination of Julius Caesar. ISBN 978-1-56584-797-2.
- ↑ See ibid.
- ↑ Finley, Moses (1985). Template:Citation/make link. Template:Citation/make link. London: Hogarth. Template:Citation/identifier. Template:Citation/identifier. Finley, Moses (1985). "1. Leaders and Followers". Democracy Ancient and Modern. London: Hogarth. pp. 5 and passim. ISBN 978-0-7012-0663-5. OCLC 12507316.
Further reading
Parenti, Michael (2003). The Assassination of Julius Caesar. ISBN 978-1-56584-797-2.
- Cockshott, W. Paul; Cottrell, Allin (1993). Template:Citation/make link. Spokesman Books. Template:Citation/identifier.
Cockshott, W. Paul; Cottrell, Allin (1993). Towards a New Socialism. Spokesman Books. ISBN 978-0-85124-544-7.
- Finley, Moses (1985). Template:Citation/make link. London: Hogarth. Template:Citation/identifier. Template:Citation/identifier.
Finley, Moses (1985). Democracy Ancient and Modern. London: Hogarth. ISBN 978-0-7012-0663-5. OCLC 12507316.