Royal Absolutism as a Pathway to Egalitarian Democracy in Western History

[Petr]

This thread is meant to be a re-presentation of this Old Phora thread:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/forum/the-academy/political-arena/47500-democratic-tyranny-is-not-an-oxymoron

Simply put, royal absolutism mightily paved the way for egalitarian mass democracy in the Western civilization by means of putting down and castrating aristocratic power, turning the noblemen into mere high-ranking servants of the crown, or mere glittering but impotent courtiers, instead of the proud and semi-independent feudal warlords they had once been. The crown also considerably curtailed clerical power - and even before the "Enlightened Absolutism" was a thing. Thus it was easy for egalitarian revolutionaries, once they had grabbed control of the centralized state machinery, to continue where the monarchs and despots had left off, considerably accelerating their policies.

The best way to introduce this topic - which boils down to the principle "High & Low against the Middle" - might be this piece written by Roland; IMHO, this is one of the most concisely insightful pieces ever written on the Old Phora, taking inspiration from the theories of Bertrand de Jouvenel:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/forum/the-academy/political-arena/47500-democratic-tyranny-is-not-an-oxymoron?p=1334654#post1334654

Petr, I synthesized a theory of the relationship between absolutism and equality from de Jouvenel and other thinkers in the tradition of aristocratic liberalism over at nic's forum. It's clunky and spergish, but I think it captures some of the topics you've been discussing here.


Two terse and contentious definitions:

A notable/noble/aristocrat is a self-sufficient individual with resources adequate for self-sustenance and the physical enforcement of his liberty against others. He is a man of good stock with excellent physical and mental capacities, good character, future-oriented goals, and a relatively loyal and equally robust extended family. Often he is an independent power that exercises authority over a set of consenting individuals, as in autocephalous societies like medieval kingships where a federation of aristocrats is presided over by a "king", or unwilling individuals, as in heterocephalous societies where kingship is imposed exogenously through conquest. Such a man is "free" in the ancient sense of the term.

The masses, in contrast, are individuals who are only self-sufficient to a limited extent and who, if at all, occupy positions of authority with a very limited scope, such as the head of a family. Often they are subject to the authority of the notables. Here we find the early bourgeoisie, the peasants, the proletariat, the serfs and slaves.

With these definitions in place we can assert an equally contentious axiom of human behavior:

Man has a will-to-power such that in every association he will inevitably attempt to maximize his power and aggrandize his person at the expense of others in that association.

Absolutism and equality

Wherever there is a set of nobles and each has relatively equal military and economic resources, there will be a true balance of powers and the tendency toward absolutism will be muted. However, where there is a chance for one noble to compel obedience from the others, there will be conflict, from which the positive relationship between absolutism and equality emerges. The reason for the conflict is clear: the independent authority of the less-powerful nobles represents an obstacle to the imposition of the aspiring absolutist's will.

Historically, the two principle ways for the absolutist to conquer the federation of conquerors are 1) by appealing to the interests of those subjugated by the rival nobles (Caesar), or 2) by conquering foreign peoples and employing them in offices traditionally performed by the other nobles (Alexander). In each case the authority of the exalted is marginalized at the expense of uplifting the unexalted.

The conquest of the conquerors does not signal the end of absolutism's egalitarian march; instead, the absolutist must continue down the hierarchy of independent authorities until there is no longer any impediment to his will. In each case those who are subject to, or enemies of, the authority in question ultimately benefit from absolutism's attack on the authority. Below the rule of the nobility are the religious, ethnic, municipal and familial authorities, all of which present potential obstacles to the absolutist's power, and all of which subjugate a potential class of new allies for the aspiring monarch.

But this trajectory is not followed uniformly to its conclusion in all possible associations. In non-democratic manifestations of absolutism, such as those that obtained in early-modern Europe, the process of equalization is arrested by external and internal restrictions.

External restrictions include the existing effective authorities that remain independent by virtue of their physical distinction from the personality of the absolutist, such as the Church, the nobility and the common people. The physical distinction between the monarch and other authorities magnifies class-consciousness within each authority so that the authority is strengthened vis-a-vis the monarch. Thus we see in the history of absolutism that the triumph over traditional authorities was rarely complete.

Internal restrictions originate from the absolutist himself and include those cosmological and religious principles that govern the scope of an individual's will-to-power as natural law did in the middle ages and Christian common law did in the age of absolutism. In addition to the moral and religious principles that may temper his appetite, economic calculation itself provides an internal restriction on the absolutist, as Hoppe has demonstrated. These restrictions explain the relatively "conservative" and pious dispositions of many monarchs.

Most of the external and internal distinctions are only eliminated with the success of the revolutions against absolutism. Empowered by the egalitarian creations of the absolutist, the masses finally wrest control of the monarch's apparatus for the enforcement of his will – the State – from the monarch himself. Borrowing the legitimacy accumulated by the State over the centuries of its growth, the masses then set about eliminating every opposition to its authority. In the place of the concrete personality of the monarch they set a whole multitude of egos, but the goal of the state remains the same, and its power increases.

No longer the manifestation of a single concrete person but rather the embodiment of the will of everyone under its power, the State is able to eliminate nearly every external restriction on its power. What the absolute monarch failed to do over the course of several centuries is accomplished in a few years by the new "republics."

No longer requiring the legitimacy of divinity to justify the state (for the State is now a creation of the people), the State abandons its commitment to a supernatural origin of law. Divine law is supplanted by positive law, which permits every arbitrary rule to be classified as law and enforced.

Both of these innovations accelerate the process of equalization so that every time a new aristocracy or elite threatens to emerge, the State quickly allies with those subjugated by the new elite, becoming the ally of workers, minorities, women, etc. Since there are authorities in all spheres of life, the State extends its legislative power to all spheres of society and effectively becomes total.

The great French Revolution was of course a classic example of this phenomenon in action. The Victorian-era writer Charles Kingsley described how the Jacobins took over the state machinery of the ancien régime for their own purposes:

Three Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution: On the Ancien Régime as ... : Charles Kingsley : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book digitized by Google from the library of New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

archive.org

[Alexis de Tocqueville] shows, moreover, that the acquiescence in a centralised administration; the expectation that the government should do everything for the people, and nothing for themselves; the consequent loss of local liberties, local peculiarities; the helplessness of the towns and the parishes: and all which issued in making Paris France, and subjecting the whole of a vast country to the arbitrary dictates of a knot of despots in the capital, was not the fruit of the Revolution, but of the Ancien Régime which preceded it; and that Robespierre and his “Comité de Salut Public,” and commissioners sent forth to the four winds of heaven in bonnet rouge and carmagnole complete, to build up and pull down, according to their wicked will, were only handling, somewhat more roughly, the same wires which had been handled for several generations by the Comptroller-General and Council of State, with their provincial intendants.

“Do you know,” said Law to the Marquis d’Argenson, “that this kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants? You have neither parliament, nor estates, nor governors. It is upon thirty masters of request, despatched into the provinces, that their evil or their good, their fertility or their sterility, entirely depend.”

 

[Petr]

And Lenin himself, writing on the eve of the Russian Revolution, in January 1917, was very conscious of this phenomenon, and yearned to see the monarchical state machinery in the hands of revolutionaries:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jan/31.htm

The extent to which present-day society has matured for the transition to socialism has been demonstrated by this war, in which the exertion of national effort called for the direction of the economic life of over fifty million people from a single centre. If this is possible under the leadership of a handful of Junker aristocrats in the interests of a handful of financial magnates, it is certainly no less possible under the leadership of class-conscious workers in the interests of nine-tenths of the population, exhausted by starvation and war.

 

[Macrobius]

Well, two historical examples of 'centrialising monarchies' in the West are Edward IV in England, the Yorkist who created the state eventually inherited by Henry VII and the neo-Lancastrians (Tudors, and later Stuarts, inherited with some mods by the Hanoverians), from whom the US eventually rebelled, and in Spain, their Catholic majesties, Isabel and Ferdinand, from whom the rest of the New World rebelled. For at least half the planet, this leaves us with France and Portugal, about which history, of centralized monarchy, I know rather less.

So, it would seem, the phenomenon, at least with those two anecdotal examples, was a 15th century event -- that is, in the immediate run up to the Reformation and quite possibly a trigger for it.

One could argue that in the West, it was the centralisation of the state that led immediately to the Wars of Religion era (1517-1917?) that more or less devastated Europe, since central monarchies competing for territory have a strong motive to find polarising issues like Religion, and press them into the service of the (Westphalian) Nation-State.

One should, of course, distinguish what if any difference there is between a 'centralised monarchy' and a Westphalian-style Nation-State. The original territorial model was, of course, a continuation of the Constantinian 'Respublica Christiana' as Roman Imperium, with the Augustan over-State as a slight addition to the more basic 'Caesar/Czar' model of kingship for the Nation-States themselves.

 

[Petr]

Profound observers have often noted that the inner logic of centralized state power can force even those who wield it to actions they themselves might not personally wish to commit - like, for example, many Yankee commanders like William T. Sherman might not have hated the slave-owning South all that much, or been very passionate abolitionists, but raison d'État still compelled them to crush Dixie, for their secession threatened the great imperial destiny of America.

And in pre-modern times, this could be the stuff of great Shakespearean tragedies - the ruling father might sometimes be compelled to kill his own son (like David and Absalom), or something similar, to prevent his realm from being dismembered after his death.

As depicted in this Vinland Saga manga comic:

Vinland Saga Chapter 44 | Read Vinland Saga Manga Online

You are reading Vinland Saga Chapter 44 in English. Read Chapter 44 of Vinland Saga manga online.

ww1.readvinlandsaga.com

 

[Petr]

T.B. Macaulay thus explained the difference between tamed aristocrats, who were well-rewarded, high-status servants of the crown, but possessed no independent power of their own, and those noblemen who were still patriarchal war-chieftains of their own people (Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya is a still-existing example of this type):

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1468/1468-h/1468-h.htm#linknoteref-336

Though proscribed and a fugitive, [the Earl of Argyll] was still, in some sense, the most powerful subject in the British dominions. In wealth, even before his attainder, he was probably inferior, not only to the great English nobles, but to some of the opulent esquires of Kent and Norfolk. But his patriarchal authority, an authority which no wealth could give and which no attainder could take away, made him, as a leader of an insurrection, truly formidable. No southern lord could feel any confidence that, if he ventured to resist the government, even his own gamekeepers and huntsmen would stand by him. An Earl of Bedford, an Earl of Devonshire, could not engage to bring ten men into the field. Mac Callum More, penniless and deprived of his earldom, might at any moment raise a serious civil war. He had only to show himself on the coast of Lorn; and an army would, in a few days, gather round him.

 

[Petr]

G.K. Chesterton made this poetic depiction (dealing with the English history) of the process whereby royal functionaries eventually become more powerful than the Monarch himself - centralization empowers the bureaucratic class.

Symbolizing this shift in the balance of power, king Henry had Thomas Cromwell executed, but a century later Oliver Cromwell had king Charles executed:

https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readings/secretpeople.html

The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;​

There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.​

And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,​

And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.​

They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,​

Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.​

The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak,​

The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.​

​

And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:​

He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.​

The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,​

And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots,​

We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,​

And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.​

We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;​

And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.​

 

[Petr]

Profound observers have often noted that the inner logic of centralized state power can force even those who wield it to actions they themselves might not personally wish to commit - like, for example, many Yankee commanders like William T. Sherman might not have hated the slave-owning South all that much, or been very passionate abolitionists, but raison d'État still compelled them to crush Dixie, for their secession threatened the great imperial destiny of America.

This classic Counter-Currents article points out the same mechanics of imperial power were working in the overthrow of Jim Crow system a century later:

The Cold War on Whites

5,371 words “The world is white no longer.” – James Baldwin For white nationalists — whose cyber-based “movement” is still in its infancy — simple explanations tend to be the rule. The reductionist “anti-Semitism” that dominates WN ranks and serves as a catch-all explanation for the predicament...

counter-currents.com

In this new era, to maintain America’s leadership of the non-Communist “free world,” Americans could no longer ignore (or control) the world’s nonwhite majority.​

​

The Cold War, as a consequence, would be fought largely for the hearts and minds of the former colonial world (what a French journalist in 1955 called the “Third World”).​

​

Truman, like most of the early cold warriors, was not exactly a racial egalitarian. As a Missourian, whose heritage was more Southern than Midwestern, he was not without racial “prejudice,” though in the course of his Senate career, he came to support anti-lynching legislation and the abolition of poll taxes. It was Cold War imperatives, however, that made him into a forthright proponent of “civil rights.”​

​

Most of Truman’s top advisers, including the “Wise Men” who helped him create the Cold War state, came from the old WASP elite and tended to be racial conservatives (contemptuous not only of Negroes, but of Jews). Though at times sympathetic to Southern concerns and with no particular affection for “the poor Negro” of liberal imagination, they too would be forced to embrace the cause of civil rights — linked, as it was, to the Cold War.​

​

In this anti-Communist war it waged, the United States was now obliged to demonstrate that historic white racism was not part of its international anti-Communist coalition.​

​

Anti-racism, as a result, became almost as important to US international interests as anti-Communism.​

...​

​

The two administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower would be qualitatively less sympathetic to civil rights than was Truman’s.​

​

Nevertheless, the logic of Cold War civil rights had already taken hold of the government, propelling it ever closer toward the racial chaos we know today.​

​

Though no racist, Eisenhower wasn’t keen on civil rights. Under his administration, blacks lost the easy access to the White House that they had acquired under Truman; only once, late in his presidency did he ever meet with civil rights leaders. Moreover, as a former soldier who had spent a good part of his career in the South, he had developed a real sympathy for Southern life (as “open-minded” Yankees do).​

​

If civil rights were to be introduced (and he felt that some symbolic changes ought, perhaps, to be made for the sake of “national security”), he was convinced that it should be done slowly and moderately.​

​

A few weeks before the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, which put the Constitution on the side of desegregation, he is reputed to have told Earl Warren that “segregationists are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside big overgrown Negroes.”​

​

His was a generational attitude that was less and less shared by New Class elites. Thus, even though introduced by the Truman administration, the Republican National Committee was quick to take credit for Brown, portraying it as “the Eisenhower administration’s many-frontal attack on global Communism” — however unenthusiastic Eisenhower may have actually been.​

...​

​

At the same time, US embassies abroad deluged Washington with information on Little Rock’s unfavorable international impact and John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, warned that both the UN and the nonaligned Third World was watching to see if the US was really committed to civil rights.​

​

With the impending threat of violence in the streets and the plummeting of US prestige aboard, Eisenhower finally acted, sending in the 101st Airborne Division in order to stop, among other things, “the disservice . . . that has been done to the nation in the eyes of the world” — as “our enemies . . . gloat over the incident and use it everywhere to misrepresent our nation.”​

​

As the first president since Reconstruction to mobilize the army in defense of black civil rights, Eisenhower had not wanted to intervene, but the breakdown of law and the continuing Soviet propaganda binge about US “racial terror” had forced his hand.​

​

He acted, revealingly, more to uphold federal authority and repair the country’s international image than he did to promote racial equality. In a national televised address, he said “it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence, and indeed to the safety, of our nation and the world.” In a word, Little Rock’s resistance to desegregation was a threat to national security.​

​

At this point, the Cold War logic of civil rights became nearly irreversible.​

​

* * *​

 

[Petr]

And since I cited The Vinland Saga, here is some more - an illustration of how the peasant serfs were often less than enthusiastic to fight for their landlords, the feudal nobility whom the centralizing monarchs were cracking down upon (although there certainly were also cases of genuine affection between noblemen and their low-class dependents):

Vinland Saga Chapter 92 | Read Vinland Saga Manga Online

You are reading Vinland Saga Chapter 92 in English. Read Chapter 92 of Vinland Saga manga online.

ww1.readvinlandsaga.com

 

[Petr]

And it had already happened once before - the European monarchs who castrated aristocratic power in the early modern era (roughly 1500-1800 AD) were, in a way, just following the example of ancient Roman emperors who had done the same to the traditional Roman nobility.

(Although as respectable Christian rulers, they could not resort to such cruel and open means as Roman emperors or Turkish sultans, not being able to purge the defiant noblemen with despotic arbitrariness - although Ivan the Terrible of Russia was a brazen exception to this rule. Instead, they just slowly but surely drained vitality and real power out of the nobility.)


Let it not be forgotten that Julius Caesar, the founder of the imperial system, himself started his career as a definitely "populist" politician, who rose to power (besides his military skill) with semi-democratic gestures, a populare who let the discontented elements of the Roman society to understand that he was their champion against the senatorial oligarchy. Plutarch wrote in his biography of Caesar:

Plutarch • Life of Caesar

An English translation. All of Plutarch's Lives are onsite; in turn part of a very large site on classical Antiquity.

penelope.uchicago.edu

14 1 Caesar, however, encompassed and protected by the friendship of Crassus and Pompey, entered the canvass for the consulship; 2 and as soon as he had been triumphantly elected, along with Calpurnius Bibulus, and had entered upon his office,26 he proposed laws which were becoming, not for a consul, but for a most radical tribune of the people; for to gratify the multitude he introduced sundry allotments and distributions of land. 3 In the senate the opposition of men of the better sort gave him the pretext which he had long desired, and crying with loud adjurations that he was driven forth into the popular assembly against his wishes, and was compelled to court its favour by the insolence and obstinacy of the senate, he hastened before it, 4 and stationing Crassus on one side of him and Pompey on the other, he asked them if they approved his laws. They declared that they did approve them, whereupon he urged them to give him their aid against those who threatened to oppose him with swords. 5 They promised him such aid, and Pompey actually added that he would come up against swords with sword and buckler too. 6 At this impulsive and mad speech, unworthy of the high esteem in which Pompey stood and unbecoming to the respect which was due to the senate, the nobility were distressed but the populace were delighted.

The Alt Right YouTube channel "Unbiased History" is a great example of half-humorous, half-serious subversion to the currently dominant egalitarian narrative, being loudly and proudly pro-aristocratic and anti-democratic, siding with patricians and scorning the plebs.

Urban Dictionary: humerious

(hew-mere-ious) One is being "humerious" when they are "half joking" or being "half serious." It's a method of speech where someone makes a statement in a humorous way that implies/hints a serious idea behind it. Unlike being completely serious, it charms the target person, which usually results...

www.urbandictionary.com

But when they reach Julius Caesar, the "Unbiased History" is clearly in a predicament: it admires the great deeds of Caesar, but at the same time, it cannot help observing that he was kind of, sort of, democratic politician. So with some amount of awkwardness, it declares that the champion of the populares is now the supreme Chad, whereas the representatives of aristocratic optimate party (like Cicero, Cato, and Cassius) are now inferior Virgins and Wojaks (and from that point on, for the rest of the series, the senate is treated with contempt). He's clearly hoping that the viewers will not notice this major political change of course!

See here at 07:30:



And here at 02:40:

 

[Petr]

In this case, too, we can see how the power and internal logic of the imperial system was greater than the private wishes of its figurehead - the crown was greater than the king. Richard Nixon might have had many "Alt Right"-like sentiments, but the US developed into a more and more bloated global empire under his rule all the same:

 

[Petr]

Multiculturalism also has royal precedents. In fact, perhaps the most common way for the spread of cosmopolitan ideas in pre-modern times was when the ruler (like Peter the Great for example) or some member of the ruling family fell in love with alien ways and began to foist them on his own people:







This principle would of course apply to the spread of Christianity as well - kings like Clovis the Frank making their subjects follow the religion they themselves had adopted. But also in Japan, the Soga clan played a crucial part in the spread of Buddhism, against the fierce nativist Shinto opposition - see here at 3:55:



And also:

 

[Petr]

Simply put, royal absolutism mightily paved the way for egalitarian mass democracy in the Western civilization by means of putting down and castrating aristocratic power, turning the noblemen into mere high-ranking servants of the crown, or mere glittering but impotent courtiers, instead of the proud and semi-independent feudal warlords they had once been.

This costume drama illustrates how the French monarchy, even in its official ritual ballet, emasculated the rebellious noblemen, turning them literally into mere satellites of the Sun King:

 

[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

Of course it was a pathway to "democratic" rule. The so-called democratic countries are monarchies, after all.

 

[Petr]

Already Aristotle, who has been called as "the master of those who know," described with clear words the similarity between tyrannical rulers and democracies:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0058:book=5:section=1313b

Also the things that occur in connection with the final form of democracy7 are all favorable to tyranny—dominance of women in the homes, in order that they may carry abroad reports against the men, and lack of discipline among the slaves, for the same reason; for slaves and women do not plot against tyrants, and also, if they prosper under tyrannies, must feel well-disposed to them, and to democracies as well (for the common people also wishes to be sole ruler). Hence also the flatterer is in honor with both—with democracies the demagogue (for the demagogue is a flatterer of the people), and with the tyrants those who associate with them humbly, which is the task of flattery. [1314a] [1] In fact owing to this tyranny is a friend of the base; for tyrants enjoy being flattered, but nobody would ever flatter them if he possessed a free spirit—men of character love their ruler, or at all events do not flatter him. And the base are useful for base business, for nail is driven out by nail, as the proverb goes.1 And it is a mark of a tyrant to dislike anyone that is proud or free-spirited; for the tyrant claims for himself alone the right to bear that character, and the man who meets his pride with pride and shows a free spirit robs tyranny of its superiority and position of mastery; tyrants therefore hate the proud as undermining their authority. And it is a mark of a tyrant to have men of foreign extraction rather than citizens as guests at table and companions, feeling that citizens are hostile but strangers make no claim against him.2 These and similar habits are characteristic of tyrants and preservative of their office, but they lack no element of baseness.​

Sic semper tyrannis! Abe Lincoln played well the part of a levelling, pro-democracy tyrant. The proud Southrons were an obstacle to the power of the Leviathan state, and thus they needed to be put down.

And in much the same aristocratic-republican spirit Edward Gibbon mused thus, in the 1780s, on the very eve of the French Revolution:

https://ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume2/chap44.htm#ofpersons

The distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a mixed and limited government. In France, the remains of liberty are kept alive by the spirit, the honours, and even the prejudices, of fifty thousand nobles. (99) Two hundred families supply, in lineal descent, the second branch of English legislature, which maintains, between the king and commons, the balance of the constitution. A gradation of patricians and plebeians, of strangers and subjects, has supported the aristocracy of Genoa, Venice, and ancient Rome. The perfect equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens. In the decline of the Roman empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. The emperor could not eradicate the popular reverence which always waits on the possession of hereditary wealth, or the memory of famous ancestors. He delighted to honor, with titles and emoluments, his generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to the persons of their wives and children. But in the eye of the law, all Roman citizens were equal, and all subjects of the empire were citizens of Rome. That inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete and empty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact his laws, or create the annual ministers of his power: his constitutional rights might have checked the arbitrary will of a master: and the bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia was admitted, with equal favor, to the civil and military command, which the citizen alone had been once entitled to assume over the conquests of his fathers.​

 

[Lord Osmund de Ixabert]

"Royal centralisation as a pathway to the façade of egalitarian democracy" would have been a more accurate title, since egalitarian democracy has never existed.

 

[Petr]

Even in simple images, it is easy to detect this development from despotic monarchism to modern Leftism - Thomas Hobbes's book Leviathan had this famous frontispiece:

Now, it is a quite simple matter to convert this basic notion - many small players coming together to form one mighty instrument of power - into more democratic or egalitarian-Leftist direction, as this old-school Communist propaganda shows:

 

[Petr]

For what it's worth, here is the take of the Libertarian idol Ayn Rand on the subject:

—Ayn Rand Lexicon

The Ayn Rand Lexicon: This mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism is compiled from Ayn Rand’s statements on some 400 topics in philosophy, economics, psychology and history.

aynrandlexicon.com

There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.

 

[Petr]

And Will Durant opined that already at the dawn of Western civilization, tyrannical autocracy had acted as an "icebreaker" for the emergence of Greek democracy, by overthrowing the old aristocratic elites.

See how Durant applies slick Hegelian dialectics on this issue - that Greek tyrants like Peisistratus served ultimately not their own proud ambition, but the cause of popular freedom that came to be from their actions, in spite of their own intentions being different:

https://erenow.net/ancient/durantgreece/43.php

Probably Athens had needed, after Solon, just such a man as Peisistratus: one with sufficient iron in his blood to beat the disorder of Athenian life into a strong and steady form, and to establish by initial compulsion those habits of order and law which are to a society what the bony structure is to an animal—its shape and strength, though not its creative life. When, after a generation, the dictatorship was removed, these habits of order and the framework of Solon’s constitution remained as a heritage for democracy. Peisistratus, perhaps not knowing it, had come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.​

…​

​

The “tyranny” of Peisistratus was part of a general movement in the commercially active cities of sixth-century Greece, to replace the feudal rule of a landowning aristocracy with the political dominance of the middle class in temporary alliance with the poor.*​

…​

​

Arrived at power, the dictator abolished debts, or confiscated large estates, taxed the rich to finance public works, or otherwise redistributed the overconcentrated wealth; and while attaching the masses to himself through such measures, he secured the support of the business community by promoting trade with state coinage and commercial treaties, and by raising the social prestige of the bourgeoisie. Forced to depend upon popularity instead of hereditary power, the dictatorships for the most part kept out of war, supported religion, maintained order, promoted morality, favored the higher status of women, encouraged the arts, and lavished revenues upon the beautification of their cities. And they did all these things, in many cases, while preserving the forms and procedures of popular government, so that even under despotism the people learned the ways of liberty. When the dictatorship had served to destroy the aristocracy the people destroyed the dictatorship; and only a few changes were needed to make the democracy of freemen a reality as well as a form.​

 

[Petr]

When the struggle between the absolutist "divine right" monarchy and its enemies was at its height in Western Europe, in the late 17th century, the latter often brought up the Ottoman Empire as an example of what absolutism truly meant.

For example, in England Whig propagandists liked to goad Tory supporters of royal absolutism by asking them, "Is this what you really want?" - as T.B. Macaulay put it:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2439/pg2439-images.html#link2HCH0004

The thoroughpaced disciples of Filmer, indeed, maintained that there was no difference whatever between the polity of our country and that of Turkey, and that, if the King did not confiscate the contents of all the tills in Lombard Street, and send mutes with bowstrings to Sancroft and Halifax, this was only because His Majesty was too gracious to use the whole power which he derived from heaven. But the great body of Tories, though, in the heat of conflict, they might occasionally use language which seemed to indicate that they approved of these extravagant doctrines, heartily abhorred despotism. The English government was, in their view, a limited monarchy.

Such "Turkish despotism" actually had some genuine similarities with Communism, in the sense that in a truly absolute, pagan monarchy the property of the subjects would never be safe, but always very conditional, and could in both theory and practice be taken away at any time - the "Naboth's Vineyard" phenomenon.

And this despotic principle actually went even further, for Western travellers observed in the Ottoman Empire that the Turkish grandees, who had been promoted to high positions by the sultan, could not pass on their titles and riches on to their descendants, but those went back to the sultan (that is, to the state) when they died; this practically meant the abolition of the right of inheritance - which happened to be one of the main planks of the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm​

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3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.​

Algernon Sidney, one of the fiercest Whigs of the 17th century, mentioned Turkey and its practises as pagan tyranny that no Christian country should dare to imitate:

https://books.google.fi/books?id=mt6lu0MtKCUC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q&f=false

As to civil dissensions, in all monarchies (but that of Turkey, where these three court maxims take place contrary to all Christianity: first, as soon as the monarch has a son, all his brothers and nephews are killed so that there be no competitor; secondly, he destroys the nobility and makes that no man can be heir of his father’s goods; thirdly, he weakens all conquered provinces to an impossibility of revolt – Atque ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant45) the court factions have been far more pernicious than popular tumults in commonwealths.

But even the French bishop Bossuet, who was one of the greatest defenders of divine right absolutism in the history of France, did not dare to awow such "Turko-Communist" principles, but rather sought to distance his own position from it:

https://books.google.fi/books?id=3jiGsoP_ExgC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PR50#v=onepage&q&f=false

To be sure, one can indeed hope that a God-reflecting monarch will be neither as murderous as Saul or Herod nor as feeble as Pilate; for one of Bossuet’s great points is that monarchs must be absolute but not arbitrary. Unquestionable sovereignty must unquestionably be regular, lawful, respectful of property and personal rights – and not degenerate into the gouvernement à l’Ottomane which was soon to be described in the final pages of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes.​

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There is among men a kind of government which is called arbitrary, but which is not found among us in well-ordered states.​

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Four attributes accompany these kinds of government.​

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Firstly: subject peoples are born slaves, that is to say truly serfs; and among them there are no free persons.​

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Secondly: no one possesses private property: all the sources of wealth belong to the prince, and there is no right of inheritance, even from father to son.​

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Thirdly: the prince has the right to dispose as he wishes, not only the goods, but also the lives of his subjects, as one would do with slaves.​

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And finally, in the fourth place, there is no law but his will.137​

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Declining to ask whether arbitrary power is “permissible or illicit,” Bossuet contents himself with noticing that “there are nations and great empires which are content with it; and it is not for us to awaken doubts in them about the form of their government.” Nonetheless such power is “barbarous and odious,” and is “quite far from our own moeurs,” so that in France “there is no arbitrary government.”138​

 

[Macrobius]

Even in simple images, it is easy to detect this development from despotic monarchism to modern Leftism - Thomas Hobbes's book Leviathan had this famous frontispiece:

Now, it is a quite simple matter to convert this basic notion - many small players coming together to form one mighty instrument of power - into more democratic or egalitarian-Leftist direction, as this old-school Communist propaganda shows:

I think it is well known that in philosophic terms, Liberalism and Fascism share a common source in Hobbes. This statement was given by Strauss I think, or possibly his teacher Schmitt. I should give a link.