Military democracy is a term coined by Lewis Morgan in his work “Ancient Society” to refer to the organization of power at the stage of transition from the primitive communal system to the state . Full members of the society were considered adult and healthy men. They were supposed to appear at a public meeting with weapons . Without him, the warrior did not have the right to vote . Military democracy existed in almost all nations, being the last stage of pre-state development of society. For example, the Roman community of the period of the kings , as well as the Greek policies of the " Homeric era ", can be attributed to military democracy. Archaeologically, the era of military democracy corresponds to the period of the beginning of the use of metals , which led to changes in the economic and political development of societies.
Among the ancient Germans, the election of a leader was confirmed by raising the right hand - acclamation and raising the leader on the shield . The procedure for electing the kings of the Frankish state , the East Frankish kingdom , the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire differed only in that the elected monarch was not raised on the shield.
Among the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, the ataman and smokers were elected by all the smokers in the military rad.
The term was widely used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , as a result of which it was also widely used in Marxist historiography .
See also
- Chiefdom
- Veche - a national assembly in ancient and medieval Russia ;
- Comitia - a popular meeting in Ancient Rome ;
- Kurultay - a national assembly among the Turkic - Mongolian peoples;
- Maslikhat - national assembly in the Kazakh Khanate ;
- Ting (Tag) - the national assembly of the Scandinavian peoples and the ancient Germans ;
- The gentry is a military estate in the Kingdom of Poland and the following states.
- Stratocracy
Literature
- Morgan L.G. An ancient society or study of the lines of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilization, trans. from English, 2nd ed., L., 1935
- Marx K. Synopsis of the book of Lewis G. Morgan "Ancient Society", in the book: Archive of Marx and Engels, vol. 9, [M.], 1941.
- Engels F. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State , K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., Vol. 21, M., 1961.
- Tolstov S. P. Military democracy and the problem of the “genetic revolution” // Problems of the history of pre-capitalist societies. 1935, No. 7-8.
- Kosven M.O. On the issue of military democracy // Transactions of the Institute of Ethnography. New Series, 1960, vol. 54.