Ochlocracy

Ochlocracy (Greek: οχλοκρατία; Latin: ochlocratia) is government by mob or a disorganized mass of people. Ochlocracy is also used as a pejorative term for democracy and more specifically, majoritarianism. Quotes Members of the oligarchy curry popularity with the mob (ὄχλος), as the Civic Guards at Larisa courted popularity with the mob because it elected them. Aristotle, Politics trans. by H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, BkV v 5; 1305b25-30; Vol 264 pp. 404-405. In putting no trust in the multitude (which is why they resort to the measure of stripping the people of arms, and why ill-treatment of the mob and its expulsion from the city and settlement in scattered places is common to both forms of government, both oligarchy and tyranny. Aristotle, Politics, trans. by H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, BkV viii 7; 1311a 10; Vol 264, pp. 442-443. Ochlocratia, such a state, as in which the rude and rusticall people moderate all thinges after their own luste. OED, 1584. We will not carry on any further our picture of the ochlocracy, in which all social union was entirely dissolved, and the state surrendered to the arbitrary will of a turbelent populace. Karl Otfried Müller, The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race 2nd ed. rev., John Murray, Albemarle Str. London, 1839. Vol II, pg 10. The commonest of the old charges against democracy was that it passed into ochlocracy. Amer. Commw., Bryce, III. v. xcv. 337. year: 1888. OED. Our motto must be: liberty, fraternity and inequality. Democracy must never degenerate into ochlocracy. Sir Charles Waldstein, Aristodemocracy, From the Great War back to Moses, Christ and Plato, An essay, Longmans, Green and Co., NY, 1917. p. 327. Ochlocracy, the dictatorship of the mob, is the goal toward which the development of the mass-democracy of Caesarism is leading. Hermann Rauschning, The Revolution of Nihilism, Alliance Book Corp., NY, 1939. pg 86. Ochlocracy never had brilliant advocates like monarchy, aristocracy, or socialism. There is nobody in the "democratic" camp who can be compared for brilliancy — I do not say orthodoxy in each case — to de Tocqueville, Marx, Maurras, de Reynold, Trotzky, Spengler, Proudhon, Plato, Bainville, Aristotle, Ortega, and St. Thomas. Democracy never had, and probably never will have, an appeal for the man of original genius. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd (1943), p. 105 Ochlocracy (even more so than aristocracy) is based upon change and instability; ochlocracy is revolution in permanence. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd (1943), p. 109 See also Conformity Democracy Herd mentality Leadership Masses Mob Tyranny Tyranny of the majority External links ochlocracy Category:Political systems