Pro ideas are premature and timely on the example of the Gracchi brothers

The circumstances in the history of the Gracchi brothers were such that a little-known episode of the political struggle in the Roman republic of the II century before the PX turned into a kind of model demonstration of one of the principles of the historical process, as if allowing you to look at the internal machinery usually not hidden behind the decorations of historical processes.



The history of the agrarian reform of the Gracchi brothers is a clear demonstration of how ideas ahead of their time differ from timely ideas.
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Tiberius and Guy Gracchus were reformer brothers, who shared 15 years of age difference, but shared a common idea: they both believed in the importance and necessity for Rome overdue land reform - and, with a difference of exactly 10 years, she tried conduct.

The land reform of the Gracchi brothers was one of the many attempts in the history of Rome to provide all of the common Roman citizens (plebeians) with land plots in Italy. There were enough prerequisites for land reform, but there was an important obstacle in its path: the interests of noble Roman citizens (horsemen and patricians), which this reform significantly touched.

The elder brother, Tiberius Grakh, tried to hold her first, elected as a tribune of the people (essentially, a deputy) in 133 BCE, but something went wrong: the lobby of aristocrats and moneybags prevailed - and in the same year Gracchus Sr. was killed, his body is thrown into the Tiber, and the reforms are curtailed.

The next attempt was made by his younger brother Guy Grakh, elected by a tribune of the people exactly 10 years after Tiberius - in 123 BC. By that moment, neither the need for reform nor the opposition did not disappear, but the balance of forces over the past decade has changed enough so that Guy Grakh was able to begin and carry out the same and even more radical reforms than his life costing his older brother.

This is the most vivid historical example known to me, illustrating the rule: not the most progressive, but the most relevant wins in the competition of ideas.

The novelty and revolutionary nature of an idea means nothing.

The world is not changed by good ideas, but by ideas for which:

• there is a demand;
• and the possibility of its implementation.

While these two conditions do not match - the idea is useless. And when suitable conditions arise, the demand will give birth to it.

And this is good news for those who are worried about how many good ideas we had missed, because those to whom they had the idea “didn’t fartanul” - if any idea came to someone’s one and only head, and it was no longer repeated - it still didn’t have the light to be realized, because the key to the realization of the idea was, in the last place, the idea itself.

On the other hand, when the conditions and circumstances are ripe, then you will not suffocate the idea, and you will not kill.

In the absence of demand and conditions for its implementation, the idea cannot be appreciated - that is, the visibility of the idea is directly proportional to its relevance.

And to force it is useless: it will also come out sideways, if you still notice.

I back it up not so much with a historical example as with a suitable analogy from the history of slavery in North America from colonial times until cancellation.

Imagine the fate of ideas about the benefits of free trade and greater efficiency of hired rather than slave labor in the 17th century — ideas that were remarkable and rational (one couldn’t even stutter about the moral aspect), and not to say that they had no social base was from the beginning; and every year this base was increased by thousands of people brought from Africa; but economically, slavery in this period was in its prime - and neither the presence of any demand for ideas could, for the time being, outweigh this factor.

It took the industrial revolution to take place in order for industrial capitalism in the United States to stand on its wing and rush ahead of the archaic southern states with their cotton plantations. And, as soon as this happened, people didn’t even need to report about new opportunities - they were already in the know, because they hadn’t stopped torturing their fate for 350 years - the slave-owning economy immediately cracked at the seams.

This law cannot be reversed by any force - there will simply be more victims who will not change anything: a series of wars, revolutions and enormous human sacrifices of 1917-1924 failed to revive the idea, on the altar of which they were brought - the experiment ended in failure and socialism was born stillborn.

Of course, we lose some of the useful and timely decisions too: but ideas along with their carriers go through the same natural selection as all living things - and natural selection is not the same thing as manual sorting - it works with inaccuracy, rather big error, but still the main principle is unchanged: to pass it - the balance must be in favor of life, in favor of survival, in favor of progress. Therefore, good ideas always win, even if with a margin of 51/49 - the balance is always in our favor.

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