In The Network State, the author discusses “three cycles” which organisations of all kinds: states, companies, religions, political movements, etc. tend to follow over time.
-
The Left Cycle: A revolutionary class gains power and becomes the ruling class. As it does, having consolidated its power, it acts to protect it, manifesting many of the properties it originally opposed. Eventually, it is faced with new revolutionaries dissatisfied with it.
-
The Right Cycle: “Strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times, and hard times create strong men”.
-
The Libertarian Cycle: An innovator, fed up with bureaucracy and excessive caution of a large organisation, strikes out on their own, recruiting a small team of like-minded individuals. If successful, they must eventually recruit others who do not have the all-consuming dedication to the original goal. These people require structure and guidance to do the tasks assigned to them and voilà, bureaucracy emerges. Eventually some the independent-minded within it become dissatisfied and start the cycle over.
We are now at the point where the once-radical leftists who have taken over the administrative state, media, and large corporations have become the ruling class and see those who dissent from their shared collection of sacred nostrums as the enemy and work together to destroy them.