Sphinx

One of the many ways in which we can read Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue’ is as a study of trade-offs, and how people calculate and evaluate them. The Athenians explicitly use such language; for example, off-setting the loss of respect and trust among Greek neutrals if they destroy Melos against the increase in fear among their subjects, with the view that the result is a net gain in their security – and their claims about Spartan reluctance to help their allies unless it suits them takes for granted a similar way of thinking. It is of course a paradox of their position, insisting on an unsentimental evaluation of present circumstances rather than speculating hopefully about what might happen in future, that their calculation rests so heavily on assumptions about how people will behave and hence how events will turn out – and Thucydides effectively critiques their assumptions, both by showing the Melians refusing to follow the same logic and by narrating the subsequent events that show how poorly the Athenians actually anticipate future developments.

Whereas the standard (e.g. Yanis Varoufakis’) way of representing the Melian Dialogue in terms of game theory focuses on individual decisions in a situation of unequal power, studying how people’s approach to that same situation changes with greater experience, one might equally present it in terms of choices between different sorts of benefit and loss, over different time scales and/or with different degrees of probability: because of their dominant position in the short term, the Athenians disregard longer-term risks, while the Melians disregard immediate disadvantage in favour of hypothetical future possibilities of salvation. As usual, the key point is that both are shown to be wrong…

In the case of my own choose-your-own-adventure game – latest version nearly finished, and as ever when I write about this topic I hope I’m not going to argue myself into another re-design – this is expressed primarily through the narrative, commenting on the consequences of the player’s choices: if the Athenians slaughter the Melians in the authentic historical manner, the story closes by looking forward to the sure-to-be-glorious-triumph expedition to Sicily, while if they opt for short-term caution, or even start favouring ethical integrity over power, the result may be less favourable in immediate terms. The Athenians can ‘win’ in multiple ways – indeed, arguably it’s difficult for them to lose – but that does depend on how the player decides to define winning, and that is largely a matter of whether they can achieve the sort of trade-off between advantage and integrity, short- and long-term perspectives that seems right to them. (Plus there is some uncertainty and randomness built into the game, but that’s a slightly different issue).

The main issue in designing the game has always been: can the Melians win? As before, it depends on how you define winning – in terms of trade-offs: crudely, you and your people can survive as subjects of the Athenians, or you can die as citizens of an independent state (there are some other possibilities and variations, but the one thing not on offer is the Athenians leaving you in peace; if you take the Melian role, you face the historical Athenians, not a modern player who decides to implement an ethical foreign policy…).

Cutting across this ‘slavery or death’, ‘sovereignty or survival’ dynamic is also one between mass and elite; it’s always worth keeping in mind that it’s the Melian oligarchs who decide that it’s better for everyone to be slaughtered by the Athenians than ruled by them. It’s clearly implied that the Melian people would opt for continuing existence, given the option; certainly that’s the Athenian view of why the Melian leaders want to talk to them in private, and arguably it’s another count against the Athenians that they know this and go along with it anyway, indifferent to the fate of the population – unless they assume that the Melian oligarchs will eventually see reason as well.

What if the Melians had a Meaningful Vote? It’s difficult to avoid thinking of Brexit at the moment, especially in this context. It’s clear that there are various people who would, for different reasons, love to be in the oligarchic position – May wanting to enforce her plan, the E ‘R’ G fanatics wanting to crash out with no deal – but lack sufficient support for their chosen trade-offs (total shambles as long as it stops Freedom of Movement and Disaster Sovereignty respectively). The EU, playing the Athenian role, can limit its concessions to the former and ignore the latter on the basis that these would-be oligarchs’ preferences are not the final word, even if they persist in their self-destructive irrationality. But, like the Athenians, they follow this course with the risk that a short-term victory may have serious longer-term consequences…

Before people start yelling at me, yes, it’s certainly true that it’s not just a few well-heeled ideologues who believe that economic harm is acceptable as the price of freedom from the EU, especially if that harm largely affects other people; crude material interest is not the only desirable good. The question is how much harm over what sort of timescale is acceptable for how much freedom, and that’s a discussion that still needs to take place, given that many Leave figures are still promising gains rather losses from their plans. One imagines that there were Melians with a similar perspective, given Greek emphasis on political independence as an essential part of life.

And this, as I keep saying, is why the Melian Dialogue matters: it doesn’t offer answers, but helps us think through questions in a relatively neutral context. Thinking ourselves into the roles of Athenians and Melians, we have to consider not only what it is that we want, but what it’s possible to get, at what cost – given that this also depends on what the other side want and do (the Melian Dialogue is, above all, utterly opposed to Cakism). That dynamic between the two sides is vital: how far does the situation itself, the condition of having the clearly dominant or clearly subordinate position, lead to a hardening of positions and escalation of rhetoric? The Athenians experience the Melians’ responses as irrational and deluded, and become more convinced of their own superiority as a result; the Melians see Athenian arguments in terms of bullying and tyranny, and so become ever more persuaded of the importance of protecting their freedom at all costs…

It is sadly too late to force everyone in government to play the game and think about the implications for Brexit; but maybe we can get this in place before the next crisis…

Update 15/12: prompted by a blog post from Simon Wren-Lewis on the question of why the deranged E ‘R’ G types seem willing to risk getting no Brexit at all in the pursuit of their goal of Hard No Deal Brexit, I’m inclined both to reiterate the idea that a situation of uneven power distribution may push both sides towards more extreme positions, rather than leading toward a reasonable compromise that gives each side something of what they want, especially – and I don’t really make this point above – if the decision is framed as a one-shot, once-and-for-all decisive moment rather than a stage in an ongoing process (arguably the original Melian Dialogue fits that template pretty closely, though the Melians could have played a longer game of surrendering with the aim of seeing how events then played out, whereas seeing the negotiations with the EU in these terms, as the moment when everything gets set in stone, is one of the basic failures of the whole discussion so far). And there’s a Thucydidean sentence for you… Frame this instead in terms of the internal British debate, or just the Tory party debate: both Hard Brexiters and Continuity Remainers see this as a once-and-for-all crisis point, where May’s compromise doesn’t offer either of them anything of what they want – but the former most definitely fall into the Melian role by virtue of lack of numbers compared with the not-totally-batshit division, hence recourse to all of the cakist unicorn-based optimism that the Melians offer.

But we can also think back to an earlier passage in Thucydides: the stasis at Corcyra and its analysis of the dynamics of factionalism and polarisation. Again, the crucial point is the tendency towards extremism, in rhetoric and actions, combined with loyalty to one’s faction rather than any common identity. The Tories and right-wing press under May have applied this to the whole country: you’re with us or you’re a traitor. The Hard Brexiters are now applying it even to members of their own party. And those who think of themselves as moderate, and try to reach a sensible compromise, are the first casualties…