At this moment all social classes participate in city government, with the preponderance of the petit bourgeoisie, we then arrive at the democratic regime, with the participation of all citizens in the government through popular assemblies. It is the government of the people. It meets in the public square or in the temple. All citizens intervene with their right to vote, and they decide whether there will be war or peace, the number of officials in the city or the election of its magistrates. The town deals out justice. This democracy does not include the whole town, since one part of the old servile class is left out, but the condition of those dispossessed has sensibly improved.
During the democratic regimes of the eras of great demographic fractionation, it is the citizens who resolve all city matters as an independent state, by a direct vote.
Human evolution does not ever stop. Once the apex is reached decadence begins. We observe, in the first place, that general interest for city matters is followed by the citizens’ great indifference. They begin to tire of intervening in the assemblies and, in an ever increasing number, stop attending them. Each day, the assembly sees the number of attendees reduced. On the other hand, a new spirit dominates social life. Up to then wealth was shared, there were neither great potentates nor great misery. Each one within his profession dedicated hours of rest to the manifestations of the spirit. But very soon, a great desire for wealth dominates the high lineage of the middle class, that, in its great majority continues to attend the assemblies and soon modifies the laws to protect itself and increase its wealth.
Commercial and industrial progress also contributes to the concentration of wealth. Great companies are born, while small commerce and industry disappear. Then, great fortunes and magnates of industry make their appearances, while small merchants and industrialists, ruined, go on to increase the humble classes. In short, society will have changed its aspect and the preponderance of the middle class will be substituted by that of a very rich class vis-à-vis a famished people. Such a change brings with it the intensification of class hatred and, forthwith, anarchy and civil war. This struggle presents the characteristics of terrible savagery. Hatred towards the enemy makes them forget their love for the city.
Old local patriotism disappears and, even rival parties will ask for the intervention of a foreign power, if in this manner they can destroy the enemy within. A similar anarchy and civil war, takes control of the cities towards a foreign power, to a dominating center that rapidly extends its hegemony on a great number of cities and on a great territorial extension. We enter into the imperial era.
We have indicated its characteristics, that is, a loss of the personality of the nations that go on to make up part of the empire and acquisition by those subject to the rights of the citizens. Afterwards, under a new imperial domination, comes the political and social regime that it had at the beginning.
The chart clearly indicates the phases of the social evolutions that begin by a first one, that has a duration of four centuries, during which the nation’s gradual progress arises under the domination of the imperial aristocracy. There follows a second phase in which power is taken over by the wealthy aristocracy until the middle class intervenes.
This phase of wealth and democracy aristocracy, has a duration of two and one-half centuries and, therewith, ends the first era of great fractionation that then had a total duration of six and one-half centuries. Then comes the phase of anarchy, civil war or decadence of democracy, and the cities, free until now, fall under the hegemony of an imperial nucleus. This federal phase has a duration of two centuries.
The unitary absolutist phase follows with the ascending process of the centuries, after which the decadence of the regime begins. A central power debilitation process is produced and, finally, disintegration comes and the nations of the empire remain under the domination of the new imperial nucleus that will subject the old citizens to the regime of servitude and slavery with which the century ends.