ABSTRACT
Numbers are a formidable collective resource. The volume of aggregated individual resources depends crucially on the size of the group contributing to a common pool whether the resources in question are money, goods, labour time, votes, small weapons, muscular strength or sheer occupation of space. Political democracy comprising regularly scheduled elections based on universal adult suffrage can be regarded as the institutionalization of the power of numbers in accordance with the normative principles of majority rule and one person-one vote. The 'democratic class struggle' and the left-right alignment it produces are not the sole content of democratic politics although they are probably the most universal and enduring basis of conflict. Democratic political orders with universal suffrage and competing political parties experience a cyclical alternation of periods dominated by protest from the left and retrenchment by the right. The periodicity of left and right in democratic politics is not necessarily equivalent to the alternation of parties in power.
