monarchism – Page 2

Executions in North Korea

I take this as an encouraging sign

North Korean army minister ‘executed with mortar round’

As a supporter of the principle of absolute monarchy, I do not believe that the problem with North Korea is that it has a hereditary ruler. Indeed, now in the third generation, I would expect to see the benefits of hereditary rule to be starting to show themselves.

So far I have been disappointed. North Korea’s government remains terribly bad. As I have written previously, I attribute this to the fact that, while hereditary, the government does not rest on the principle of hereditary right. Its political formula is built on a form of Marxism, and while the extra stability given to it by its ad-hoc monarchism has served to preserve it well beyond the normal lifespan of Marxist states, it doesn’t confer the full advantages of an explicitly hereditary system.

What I am interested in, when it comes to the guessing-game of looking at the politics of North Korea, is whether the Marxist-politburo “scientific” government or the early-modern Monarchical government has the upper hand. The first is bad, the latter good.

The story that has leaked out of North Korea is that Kim Chol has been executed for unfeelingly carrying on with high living during the mourning period for the late King, Kim Jong-Il, and further, that the young King, Kim Jong-Un, was so outraged that he demanded “no trace be left”. Therefore the unhappy vice-minister was stuck out in a field to be blown up with heavy weaponry.

That is seriously badass — we’re talking Tudor. The vital points are that (a) the offence was against the Royal Line, not the state or the politburo. And (b) the punishment was driven by personal anger, not a scientific principle of government. The Soviet Union was famously practical and humane about executing the deviationists, this is the opposite. Finally, it suggests that, if there is still some kind of internal power struggle going on — perhaps a continuation of some struggle over successsion — those with power are determined to win it absolutely. These three elements all point to better government for North Korea going forward.

Does this mean I want future King William V indulging in such Bond-villan escapades, come the Restoration? In extremis, yes. If senior, trusted members of the administration back the wrong side in a civil war, there is much to be said for going 16th-century on their arses. In peacetime, not so much. A good administration is one where the rule of law can be counted on. Once it is established that the King can rule by personal whim, he has little need to, since he will gain more by running a successful state.

Of course, with North Korea, it is not clear that the best thing would be for the government to improve. If the government failed and collapsed, the natural outcome would be a reunification under the South Korean government, which has an enviable track record over the last half century.

However, South Korea’s government has only one way to go, and that’s down. It is not twenty years since the country stepped onto the democratic conveyor belt, and it is not reasonable to expect the quality of governance that the DJP exercised to continue into the future. That doesn’t mean we should expect rapid decline in the quality of life there — One of the major misunderstood patterns of history is that secure autocracy produces peace and prosperity and, enjoying wealth and freedom, the subjects, associating wealth and freedom with the ruling class, expect that as they have the wealth and freedom of the ruling class, they should gain political power as a natural consequence. The autocrat is replaced or shackled, and the momentum of the former peace and prosperity produces a flourishing of improved life that the new regime first unfairly takes credit for, and then gradually proceeds to destroy.

Those who benefit most from their government are least loyal to it.

So, the story coming out of North Korea is consistent with a hereditary ruler cementing his dominance over rival power centres within the régime. That is by no means the only explanation, so any optimism should be very tentative.

Commentary on "Kingdom 2037"

OK, so I’ve written the first example of what I think should be in the Reactionary Library. I feel tempted to make a big deal of it, and then I remember the problem, that it’s not very good. I’m making it a separate post (to follow), because the idea is it’s supposed to stand on its own, but it doesn’t, so here’s a load of supporting commentary. Responses & comments can come here, so I’ll close off comments on the article itself and point them here.

It talks about a scenario where an openly absolute Windsor monarchy has been established in England (more likely England & Wales, maybe Great Britain or Great Britain & Northern Ireland, but that’s one of many points not addressed). It doesn’t talk about how that happened, which is more important and more difficult.

The first part emphasises the continuity with the traditional monarchy, while no continuity with the last 300 years of prime ministerial government. There should be no trace of the House of Commons, because even if it had value it would be a focus for recreating some kind of democracy. I originally wanted to leave the House of Lords out too, but I want the important people of the country to see themselves as insiders, with duties to the system, so formalising their role is helpful.

The reason for the important people having hereditary peerages is that, when it comes to any kind of power, loyalty is more important than exceptional ability. That’s not to say that incompetence is OK, but if your system of government depends on having people of exceptional ability, then it’s broken. Instead take the most competent people from the pool of those brought up to privilege and loyalty, and if they’re not good enough to, say, run a car company, the solution is not to have a government car company. The Victorian meritocratic civil service was exceptionally effective, but it was a step down the wrong road. The motto of the civil service should be “Good Enough for Government Work” (what’s that in Latin?)

The idea of the King abdicating in old age is tricky: I’ve argued against it in the past, because it isn’t traditional and it creates uncertainty and possibly faction. I don’t think it’s really avoidable, though. In the past monarchies had a lot of problems with infertility and with heirs inheriting at a very young age; in the modern world those difficulties should be very rare, but kings partly-incapacitated with age will be more of a problem than ever before. It’s more important, though, that there’s no authority that can impose it. It has to be the king’s own decision.

I’ve written before on the idea of the oldest child, male or female, inheriting. Also not traditional, but probably for the best.

My idea for the most senior administrators is that they have already “made it”. They are not struggling to hang on another year, they get the wealth and status, and they get to keep them, even if they are replaced.

A lot of this stuff is about public attitude rather than systems. The highest aim of an ambitious person should be to establish a dynasty which will remain important for generations. It’s not as easy to see how that works in a modern volatile economy as in an agricultural society where land ownership was reliable long-term wealth.

The point I’m trying to get to is where the King’s senior people are insiders rather than players. They work for the system because it is their system and because it is their duty.

The alternative is for them to be professionals rather than aristocrats, consultants rather than politicians, hired on contracts. I don’t think that’s as desirable, but it may be easier to get to.

The military thing is fairly obvious, I think, given the already existing relationship between the Royal Family and the military. It gives the system extra stability.

When it comes to economics, everything depends on what the world economy is actually going to be like in 25 years. The biggest question is what economic value do unskilled workers have? In the max-automation scenario, they are probably valueless, but it becomes cheap to effectively institutionalise them. If some of my speculations on AI turn out correct, they could be useful as supervisors of machines. Since their role would be to provide motivation and direction for the computer systems, it would be more important for them to be “good people”, trustworthy and loyal, than to be particularly skilled. This is a reversal of the 20th century view of human capital: we have spent 200 years trying to get people to be better machines — in this scenario the machines will be machines, the people need to be better people.

For the purposes of the exercise, I’ve stipulated less economic change than is really probable, but there have to be some assumptions, and they might as well be familiar ones for now.

That means some kind of welfare safety net is essential. The key is to get rid of entitlements. If you’re going to be supported by other people, there has to be some reason why they would want to support you. If you go out of your way to make yourself unpleasant, as far as I’m concerned you can starve.

I wouldn’t be surprised if things were more like they are now; with low taxes and light regulation, there should be jobs for nearly everyone. In that case the welfare problem would be a lot easier.

For taxation, I’d rather have less tax and all from land, but in this medium-term scenario, Royal wealth is power, and I don’t think it’s safe to keep it all “re-invested” in the economy. I’m also not sure it’s possible to raise 25% of GNP from land taxes. It should be possible to find a few things that can be conveniently taxed to raise about 10%, without unduly distorting the economy.

I didn’t get to monetary policy. Neoreactionaries tend to be Austrians, and I lean that way myself, but I don’t see that restoration implies Austrianism. A restoration is going to be cautious, where it can be, and a radically different monetary policy, such as a gold standard, isn’t all that cautious. So it’s an option, but I’ll leave the question for the moment.

Legal system is straightforward. There is some tension between making sure the authority of the king is unchallenged, and ensuring the administration is consistent and predictable enough that the country is an attractive place to live and do business. At the end of the day, though, it is very strongly in the King’s interest to achieve the latter.

A well-run state would be such a rare thing that it would attract huge numbers of foreign rich. That is an economic bounty that would go a long way to securing the new regime against its many enemies, but there is a risk that the native population might start to be marginalised or ignored. I am seriously worried about social problems, particularly if there is a large bottom segment of the native population which fails to adapt and ends up in deep poverty, while extremely rich foreigners flood in. On the other hand, I believe a comfortable unconditional safety net is too corrupting to society.

Ultimately, no blueprint can protect the native population if it truly doesn’t have any value to contribute. The monarch’s legitimacy comes from being King of the English, not simply owner of an island. Again, the military would tend to be a stabilising force in terms of the status of the people. If the military starts being run by foreign mercenaries, we have a problem.

A social conservatism is part of the overall project, but I’ve shied away from explicitly establishing it. My thinking is that merely ceasing to promote and subsidise immorality will be sufficient to move things in the right direction, whereas attempting to impose a traditional family structure will stir up a lot of trouble. I didn’t answer the question of exactly who keeps a child if the recognised parents split up, which is quite important.

There is no reason to allow people to go around openly trying to overthrow the state. But real censorship of information is practically impossible. Subversive ideas will circulate, but subversive organisation will not be tolerated.

Of course, if all it consists of is a tiny group of extremists, it’s not worth acting against them. It’s more likely though that there will be significant foreign-backed democracy movements.

The handling of private arms is a compromise between efficient policing and containing rebellion. Private arms are normally allowed, but commanding armed men is reserved to the state and its chosen allies.

The general principle here is that ordinary people are free, but those closer to power are subject to greater suspicion. If you have real power, you will be expected to positively show loyalty. In historical monarchies, it generally wasn’t the peasants who landed in the Star Chamber or its equivalent.

The actual activity of the Royal Family took little work, as it is basically compatible with how it has functioned since the Abdication. The aim is to preserve the family and its position, and the method of doing so is much the same even if the position is elevated.

Read the article here

Kingdom 2037

(see previous article for commentary)

It is 2037

William V is King and Ruler of England. He lives in Buckingham Palace and is guarded by soldiers in fancy uniforms.

He has 5 children, the eldest is heir apparent.

The old Parliament Building houses his personal art collection. It is not open to the public. The House of Commons is abolished. The House of Lords no longer meets regularly, but is summonned to a 1-day meeting every two years at a Royal residence, and ad-hoc committees are appointed, usually meeting by videoconference.

Adminstration

Downing Street is demolished. Government offices are in Whitehall. Essentially the entire central government fits in a few office complexes near Green Park.

The Lord Chancellor is chief administrator of the government. He is answerable to the King. It is not clear to outsiders what are his positions that are approved by the King, and what are the King’s positions represented by him. He has a peerage, which like all peerages is hereditary. He has been rewarded for his service with the peerage, if he did not already have it, and with an estate to go with it. His heirs will probably tend towards the King’s service themselves. Government service is open to all classes, but those with familial ties have a significant advantage.

The official salary of the Lord Chancellor is high but not spectacular: in 2012 terms, maybe GBP250,000.

Defence

The King is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. He has a Chief of General Staff — a personal appointment. In peacetime, the Lord Chancellor has no detailed responsibility for the armed services or for foreign policy. The army is possibly a bit bigger than strictly necessary, and is directly associated with the monarchy. That said, there will not be a large army if there is no foreign threat that requires it.

Economy

Government can intervene in the economy, but will do so either tentatively or on a small scale. Poor relief will not officially be from government, but via “Royal charity” funded mainly or partly from the King’s personal revenues. Any government employment schemes would be on the same basis, as private business owned by the King.

Justice and Police are government functions funded from the government budget. The distinction between government spending and the King’s personal spending and expenses isn’t fundamentally meaningful, but it distinguishes areas that are run according to publicly defined rules from those which are essentially under personal supervision.

Health and Education would be largely private with some charity. Both would be nearly unregulated. Customers without assets could contract to supply labour via a hospital or school, if that can be made profitable.

If England is one of the first countries to move in this direction, it would become a magnet for the global rich. If the world economy moves in the direction of greater automation and few productive jobs for low-IQ/low-skilled workers, then personal service is likely to be a growth area.

(Personal service is currently depressed due to the low status which results from the present-day “system”-oriented theory, and also due to high taxes and a general culture which admires rebellion).

Taxation runs at about 25% of GNP. About half of this is raised from taxes on land, and there are also sales taxes on a selection of goods, and turnover taxes on a selection of businesses. The government runs to a budget, which is paid for out of the tax revenue, and the surplus goes to the King. The King accumulates land and financial assets, and spends a substantial amount on the welfare charities.

Immigration is not tightly restricted, but the King’s charities prefer to support citizens than foreigners, and would help with resettlement abroad in preference to supporting immigrants. Foreigners can live and work freely, but are subject to an income tax.

Law

The legal system and trial by jury is retained, but formalities are reduced and the discretion of judges enhanced. PACE is abolished. All reporting restrictions on court procedings are abolished, including those relating to family law. The highest court is a royal audience.

Legislation is passed by royal decree. An advisory committee of Lords and senior lawyers is appointed by the King.

Marriage is not legally recognised, but adults can publicly take responsibility for children. It is a crime to maltreat the children in one’s care. If poverty is used as a defence for such maltreatment, forced adoption can be ordered by the court. If necessary, there may be state orphanages, but they would be run cheaply and the expectation is that family or a charity would do a better job.

Private citizens are permitted to use force to keep the peace. They are allowed to carry weapons, but this is not a fundamental right, and individuals can be ordered not to go armed by competent authorities. Organised armed bodies are required to have a Royal charter, which can be withdrawn. Some private security companies have such charters and provide armed guards. The guards have no special legal powers beyond those of independent citizens, though.

Communications

There is a small state-run media consisting mostly of official announcements. The ceremonial of monarchy is maintained.

Private media are not subject to any special regulation, but it is a serious criminal offense to oppose the King’s rule. Criticism of government policy is allowed and individuals or groups may publicly petition the King, but criticism of the system of government is sedition. Also, to combine any crime, such as vandalism or obstruction, with complaints about policy, thereby constitutes sedition.

Foreign content which breaches these rules can be transmitted and indexed, but not specifically promoted.

Police officers are organised along similar lines to today, with each officer holding a Royal Warrant. Their role is to preserve the King’s Peace and protect the realm from internal enemies.

Authorities may only demand information or other cooperation from private parties via a limited system of court warrants. However, state investigators are not restricted from using whatever non-intrusive methods of intelligence and evidence-gathering they can find. Rules of evidence are oriented only towards the reliability of the evidence in question.

Local Administration

The government is mostly centralised, but each county has a local office which organises roads, planning, water & sewerage, and anything else that remains a locally-provided service. These offices report to the Lord Chancellor and are centrally funded, but consult locally.

Succession

The King will probably abdicate in old age, though it is up to him. His eldest child will succeed, and is brought up to do so. The younger children know that there is a risk of being called upon.

Long Live The King!

(comments please on the related commentary post)

A Consumer of Theory

The thing in the last post about politicians being consumers of theory reminded me of something. I read “Dreams of My Father” a couple of months ago. I found it very thought-provoking.

Strangely, the least important thing about the book is that its author later became U.S. President. The fascinating aspects are quite independent of that. The book is the best account I have read of the life of a small-time politician: the business of politics and the kind of person who participates in it. On the other hand, the book doesn’t tell us that much about the second Barack Obama, the one who became Senator and President. He is a later creation.

Anyway, Obama is a perfect example of a consumer of political theory: he neither has a political theory of his own, nor is primarily motivated by theory. His motivation is “be important by helping black people”, and he simply picks the first theory off the top of the pile and follows it. Even where he can clearly see the shortcomings of the theory, he doesn’t attempt to innovate or look elsewhere, because that’s the theory he has, and that’s the movement he’s part of. His choices are to carry on or to give up.

That’s why it’s so important to have a theory out there, rather than a handful of inchoate principles.

The Library

Candide and anonymous commenter suggest in comments that my programme of a few posts back just looks like an excuse to w—, let’s say waffle, on the internet instead of doing real work.

On the contrary, it is a project that demands a lot of work aimed at some measurable deliverables.

True, I followed my post with some very typical “waffle on the internet” posts on human nature. They do not advance the project in the slightest, however.

The Project is to define the methods of moving from a collapsed liberal order to a secure, effective, responsible government.

Since there are many forms of collapsed liberal order, there will probably need to be many methods. Because a newly-created government is by definition not stable, there will need to be methods to maintain the government in place, without sacrificing effectiveness or responsibility.

If anyone fancies it, we could have methods to move from still-functioning liberal government to a stable, effective, responsible government. I can’t see it myself, but I’m open to suggestions.

What do we have so far? Very little. We have some very iffy sketches from Moldbug: the “True Election“, the “Reboot“. We have a couple of historical Restorations to look at. Examples of fascist or Marxist takeovers might provide a few clues, but are unlikely to be usable as-is.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask, in the case of a national bankruptcy or a disputed election, what happens next? Do those who are left call on a retired statesman, a general, the Queen? Do they appoint Lords Lieutenants to administer in their name, or Barons to rule as independent subordinates? Is a committee of airline pilots appointed to oversee? What will the universalists be doing at the same time, and how will our aims be achieved instead of theirs?

We need a library of this stuff. Even if, when the time comes, it doesn’t really work as a user-guide because of general unpredictability, it will enable those who follow it to look as if they know what they’re doing, which in terms of public opinion will be of more benefit than our waving a banner around and looking like loonies would be today.

The kind of people who end up with power are generally not theoreticians, or even motivated by political theory. They are consumers of theory, and will seize on a theory that serves their purpose at the time. Having a ready-to-wear theory available on the shelf would be enough to put neoreaction in the game.

That is the project. Unlike neoreaction itself, it needs a good and respectable name — something like “Restoration Library” (that one’s taken by some Christians, but it’s a starting point). Something with an arbitrary component might be better for uniqueness and recognisability — “The Caddington Library of Restoration”, say.

There is a huge amount to do, but we can make a start. If we were anywhere near ready, the library should actually be printed as books. Mind, by the time we actually are nearly ready, the credibility benefit of paper might have gone.

For now, it’s just a matter of creating and collating the material. Presentation can wait. Some selectivity will be needed even now, though nothing we have currently is very good, it isn’t worthwhile to weigh ourselves down with any old tripe that fits the criteria, such as Breivik’s blueprint for civil war.

This is an ambitious project, but I think it is genuinely a feasible route to implementing our principles. Marxism’s successes in the 20th Century didn’t come because its theories were overwhelmingly persuasive; they came because Marxism had theories and nobody else did.

And in any case approaching the principles from this direction really brings home how far they are from anything anyone could actually act on. I have written half an essay on one example of what a restored royal government of Britain might look like in 20 or 30 years’ time, and it’s hard work, even with generous helpings of wishful thinking. Backtracking from that to how it could have come about will be even more difficult.

The Neoreactionary Programme

I’ve not been sure, in the years since I started reading Mencius Moldbug and moving towards neoreaction, that we neoreactionaries really exist. Is this really a school which has a future, or is it just a wild idea of a handful that has probably always been around and probably always will be without going anwhere?

However, it seems that our enemies have noticed us, so it looks like the anti-enlightenment is a thing that exists. Since we exist, what is our programme?

The main thing about the neoreactionary programme is that there isn’t one. A programme is something a political movement has, and we are not a political movement, we are an anti-political movement.

The nearest thing we have is what Moldbug put forward as The Procedure

Step 1: Become worthy
Step 2: Accept power
Step 3: Rule!!1!

We are not competing for power, we are preparing to accept power.

The time is not yet ripe for power to come into neoreactionary hands. It is fortunate that the time is not ripe, because neoreactionaries are not ready.

Indeed, we’re not, or at least I’m not, even preparing to accept power personally. If we win, we will not rule, but our ideas will. The people who rule will probably be the same bastards who rule now, but with better ideas and a better political formula. After all, the idea of neocameralism is that rich people have power. The idea of monarchy is that the hereditary King has power. Neoreactionaries are in the business of producing theories for other people to rule by. I don’t want to be a Royal Advisor, let alone a King, but I hope that some Royal Advisor will have read my blog.

Our activity for the present is not to enact our ideas, or even, primarily, to spread our ideas. It is to improve our ideas. What we have is little more than a set of principles: a loosely-connected collection of features of a good society. For example:

Competition for power is illegitimate
Equality is a false goal
The hierarchy of security needs: peace, order, law, freedom.
Government requires personal responsibility

The difficult question is what social structures can exist which would exhibit these features. I reject Moldbug’s neocameralism as unstable. I suggest absolute monarchy as the alternative, but not with very great confidence. I advance the idea in order to test it: to understand how it might fail, and to search for alternatives.

For the last couple of months, I have been hanging out more with libertarians — more than I did when I actually was a libertarian. I’ve been doing that to talk to them about my ideas, in order to refine and improve them. I can talk to libertarians because I used to be one, and I can explain neoreaction as a development of libertarianism because for me that is what it is*. I am not talking to them in order to convince them (though I wouldn’t mind that); I am talking to them in order to get their criticisms. And I’m not looking specifically for libertarian criticisms, it’s just that they’re the easiest for me to talk to. (Does that mean I’m looking for my keys under the lamppost? Probably).

(When I was a libertarian, participation in libertarian meetings was a bit pointless: “You think drugs should be legalised and taxes should be lower? So do I. No, actually I don’t drink.”)

So stage 1 of the Procedure is still in progress, and the essence of it is to improve our ideas to the point where they have a good chance of actually working. That means explaining how a neoreactionary ruler can resist challenges, and how neoreactionary principles can be applied in various plausible scenarios of future systemic breakdown. We really want a lot of detail on this — the equivalent of at least tens of books — and we need it to be good. (The list of principles I scribbled above could use some work, too).

Propaganda really isn’t a priority. In the sort of scenarios where success is feasible, public opinion will be very fluid, and a small group who know what they’re doing will be able to carry the public with them to the degree necessary.

It is worth keeping in mind that knowledge of the faults of democracy already exist in the public consciousness, just dormant or buried under strata of habit and conventional wisdom. It’s not necessary for us to actively argue that (a) the present government is terrible, and (b) the other lot are more or less equally bad. Most intelligent people already accept both. We only have to wait for those facts to become relevant. At that point the task will not be to attack the old system, it will be to show a feasible and superior alternative. That’s what we should be preparing for.

*Of course, it doesn’t have to be. One could come to neoreaction from mainstream conservatism, or from distributism, or from nationalism. In theory it would be possible to come via a kind of luddite environmentalism, but that would probably create a lot of friction.

Thoughts on the Diamond Jubilee

I saw a post recently attacking constitutional monarchies (can’t find it now, I think it was one of the Ortho types). There is also an article by Sean Gabb, specifically criticising HM Queen Elizabeth

Both articles are correct on the facts. A constitutional monarchy is, for practical purposes, a republic, with all the faults of a republic

Further, the Queen’s practical influence over the last sixty years has been, as far as we are able to tell, smaller than it could have been and harmful in its direction.

Does that mean that neoreactionaries should stand against the celebrations of the second Diamond Jubilee in British history? Of course not.

The value of our monarchy is not in the effect the monarch has either on public opinion or on the government —- both are negligible. The value is as a reminder and as an alternative. Some day this war’s gonna end. One day, maybe one day soon, though I don’t hope for it, democracy will fall apart: due to lack of electricity or money, unresolvable election disputes, exposure of criminal entaglement of all of them, civil war among the progressivists, or some other Black Swan I haven’t even thought of. When it does, we will need a ruler with some other basis of legitimacy. And we have one, ready to hand.

If it does happen soon, the new ruling monarch will, like Juan Carlos in 1975, not doubt see himself as a caretaker, overseeing the handover to a reconstituted democratic regime. But it doesn’t have to be that way. That is where we come in, between now and then: our role is to make the concept of restored monarchichal rule an alternative.

That’s not so very far-fetched. Democracy could go out of fashion. Try just dropping into conversation the suggestion that Her Majesty (or the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cambridge) could not actually be worse as a ruler than Gordon Brown or David Cameron, and quite a few will accept the point. That doesn’t make them Royalists —- they still see the idea as unthinkable, but not as actually bad. The unthinkable can become thinkable very quickly if the right noises are made publicly (I have another article planned about that).

I wrote much the same thing on the occasion of the Duke of Cambridge’s wedding. My argument is that the actual merits of members of a constitutional monarchy are not relevant. They, like the rest of us, are products of a liberal democracy. The choice of both the Queen and the Prince of Wales to concentrate their public attention on matters of great unimportance (the Commonwealth and the environment, respectively) is one forced on them by their situation. Could they have done better? Undoubtedly. But you restore monarchy with the Royal Family you have, not the one you might wish to have.

I suppose there is another path, the only one open to republics, to start from scratch: let somebody rule absolutely, and start a dynasty. It could work. It’s not at all preferable, though: the first King must actually be a politician, and the politics is likely to stick: the North Korea precedent again. It would be easier for a republic to adopt monarchy if a constitutional monarchy could make a success of it first.

Failing that, probably the best bet for a republic is total collapse, and a recapitulation of the phylogeny of monarchy via anarchy, warlordism and feudalism. Possibly this is what John Robb has in mind when he talks about neofeudalism —- I’ve not quite been able to understand him. The whole process needn’t take longer than a couple of generations, provided technology doesn’t regress too far on the way.

Restoration of a constitutional monarchy to an absolute one seems a much smoother process.

Blame the devil

Neutrino Cannon posted a link to a comment dialogue between Clio and Vladimir, on monarchy, with Vladimir taking the reactionary position.

The discussion includes the question: Why did Europe’s monarchies fall?

Neither participant gives any attention to a theory I quite like, which is that the devil did it.

When there was only one religion, loyalty to the monarch was an moral absolute.

After the reformation, religious loyalty took a higher place than any other.

Edward, Mary, Elizabeth and James managed to navigate the new waters, though not without difficulty or incident. Charles ran aground, and while the Commonwealth failed and was rejected, enough of the theory it established survived to poison history ever since.

In France, anti-clericalism became a more important force than protestantism, but undermined monarchy also. That’s secondary though: I think it’s easy to underestimate the influence of the English revolutions of 1688 and 1776 on the French. It’s true that England never got on with the revolutionary French regime, but isn’t that often the way of things when a democracy thoughtlessly stirs up revolution in other countries? Writers in England and America were writing retrospective justifications for their seizures of power, and those were used by the Jacobins and later the 19th century European revolutionaries. Most of Europe was still monarchical until WWI, and Woodrow Wilson wiped the rest out in 1919.

There really was a total change in the dominant political ideology of Christendom, from Divine Providence to Nationalism and the Rights of Man. I personally don’t actually believe “the Devil did it”, but if I had to pick one point to represent Satanic interference in history, that would be it. Marx and Hitler were just products of history, aftershocks of that cataclysm.

As the power of religion to justify kingship waned, there were attempts to put monarchical centralism on a firmer theoretical footing than Divine Providence. Perhaps Hobbes is the first Neoreactionary. But the Whigs won out.

Update: don’t miss Devin Finbarr’s contribution: the unexpected richness of North America gave defeated radicals a springboard to return with power

Formalism Recap

Aretae responds, with the other prong of his anti-formalism.

To clarify, there are two possible weaknesses to formalism. The first is that it might simply fail to achieve its purpose: it is supposed to free us from the destructiveness of power used to maintain or increase power, by unifying power into a single sovereign — but even a de jure absolute sovereign may still have to compromise, with the popular, the wealthy, the well-armed, and those compromises might lead to just as damaging internal conflict as the more explicitly dispersed power structures we are familiar with.

The second possible weakness is that whoever is in power might resist beneficial innovation in technology or social organisation, for fear of the unpredictable results.

Strictly speaking, the second is just an instance of the first: if a ruler has absolutely no fear of being usurped, he has no reason to resist disruptive innovation. So if I perfectly dispose of the first problem, I can go home.

My previous post was a response to the first weakness: that even if de jure absolute, the sovereign would have to face threats, and if he feels he needs to deal with a threat by compromising on policy, we are back in coalitional government.

In the original statement of formalism, Mencius Moldbug had one solution for these weaknesses: the machine-gun. If that really works, great, but I’m not totally convinced.

So my recent posts were to say: if the sovereign really has to compromise, giving away power is bad, but giving away money and status is not so bad. I’ve actually made the same point before, on Over-Mighty Subjects.

Bear in mind that what I’m trying to create here is not a future written constitution or a handbook for princes, but a political formula which will support good government.

The machine-gun solution sounds far-fetched, because we assume that use of excessive force against popular insurrection will turn neutrals against the sovereign and make the problem worse. But we live with a political formula of popular sovereignty, which says the ruler has a duty to listen to and to appease the mob. There is therefore a presumption that the mob is right and the government is wrong. In my formula, the duty of the ruler is to prevent faction by keeping his sovereignty intact and undivided. The common presumption would be that the mob is wrong and the rulers right. I don’t think this is far-fetched — on the contrary there is ample precedent for such a popular attitute.

So, I’m the sovereign (this argument applies to formalism generally, so it doesn’t matter right now whether I’m the hereditary king, or the SovCorp CEO, or the ruler under some other formalist system). I have absolute power, but there are a few guys who if they really wanted to, could cause me trouble. Let’s say Alrenous, who asked me how one gets latent power, is running a TV broadcaster: if he started using that to build a political base — well, I could have him shot, but he might already have so much support that that would start to undermine the political formula. Or if I had him shot too soon, before he’d really made a move, I’d be creating a whole lot of paranoia.

Alrenous gets invited to head office/royal palace, and we have a chat. I explain that I have no wish to interfere in his business, so long as he doesn’t challenge my rule or my exclusive competence over law and policy. The Honorable Sir Alrenous leaves the palace and goes back to work, with official marks of status and a pension for life, and makes no move towards politics. Other TV magnates get the same treatment. If one rogue does try to build a political movement, well, that’s treason and he should have taken the deal. The guys who did take the deal will stay onside.

That’s not a perfect solution to Formalist Weakness #1, but it’s adequate: I leave business mostly alone, because I want the economy to flourish and pay me taxes, but I don’t tolerate active opposition, and because the virtue of loyalty, the key part of the political formula, is popularly established, that stance is understood and respected. I collect taxes and become stupendously rich: the optimium level of taxation over the long term is probably around 30% of GDP, a bit less than governments collect now, but while current governments waste 50-90% of it, I spend a third to a half on essential state services, and the rest is mine.

(I assume you would probably prefer not to spend 20% of your income on making the sovereign or SovCorp shareholders stupendously rich, but it’s still a better deal than you get now.)

As an aside, those riches are necessary: we are used to the idea that successful businesses can influence government, but the main consequence of the separation of powers is that government influence can be bought incredibly cheaply. Steve Sailer marvelled recently at the concept that it seems to be cheaper to buy the presidency of the USA than to buy the college football championship. In Britain, the cost of buying policies is a couple of orders of magnitude lower still — entire 5-year general election cycles are fought with single-figure millions of pounds, total. If the ruler actually had control of the money the government currently wastes, he would be utterly immune to the influence of a few piddling millions here or there. It seems weird to write, as I did above, about governments bribing businessmen, but it shouldn’t.

Back to the main point: buying off the latently powerful with status and money is not perfect, but it’s an adequate response to the danger of internal factions arriving and skewing policy away from effective government, and towards strengthening one faction or another. But not being perfect, it does not eliminate Formalist Weakness #2. I’ve bribed the TV broadcasters, they get their pensions and their knighthoods and they swank around, but meanwhile someone’s invented the internet, and these TV guys could be on the way out.

Sure, I can do the same again with the internet crew. But, there’s always some risk, while I know exactly where I stand with the TV lot. Also, if the TV companies as a group realise where things are headed, my deals with them might start to break down. The safest thing for me to do is to strangle this internet crap in the cradle. I make policy, I’m unchallenged, it’s central to the culture that nobody interferes with my rule, so if I say many-to-many publishing is a threat to state stability and is not allowed, that’s the end of that. And so it goes: the economic and social structure is frozen, because the one we have is the one that keeps me in power. This is Aretae’s point in his latest piece: “The coalitional nature of government is therefore primarily interested (in effect) at stopping innovation.”

If states are small and in competition, the threat of falling behind economically balances the threat of internal instability. It’s ambitious enough, though, to be trying to engineer how one state should work. We’re not realistically going to get to choose how big states are — that depends largely on military aspects that are beyond my expertise, and in the long run subject to change. Moldbug’s Patchwork of city-states would be great, but all we can do is hope.

All I can really say is, If you knows of a better ‘ole, Go to it. An aversion to disruptive innovation is likely to be a feature of any stable government at all, and I don’t accept that unstable government is a price worth paying to avoid it. Note that our current governments, behind the curtain, are moderately stable, and indeed we have the aversion to innovation that goes with that. In the mid 19th century, power fell into the hands of factory owners, and for a hundred years we had all the innovation that could benefit mass manufacturing industry. That was very good for economic growth, but don’t be fooled for a moment into thinking it was perfect: I think if you look at the mutualists and agorists, they have substantial evidence that policy over that period was specifically pro-mass-industry, not generally pro-growth.

Aretae says small states and hyper-federalism will protect disruptive innovation, but the ruling coalitions of those small states, however concentrated or dispersed, will have exactly the same interest in preventing disruption, and what’s to stop them cooperating to achieve that? Hasn’t that been the dominant mode of international relations for the last half century? Small states become federations, federations become large states. All in the name of peace, trade and internationalism, of course, but what is the end result? ACTA.

The problem is real, I don’t have a solution, but the more secure the sovereign is in his power, the more the risk-benefit balance tilts towards growth rather than stability.

Honour Given and Taken

Not long ago, Fred Goodwin was a Knight, his successor Stephen Hester was in line for a £900K bonus, and Chris Huhne was a cabinet minister.

It would be neat in a literary way to show that these three withdrawn honours are part of the same thing, but it’s more interesting, and more true, to see how they’re all different.

Going in reverse chronogical order, Huhne is in some ways the most straightforward. He was in a position of trust, and he is accused of criminal dishonesty.

On more detailed reflection, oddities emerge. For one thing, while it would be nice to think that laws and policies are being made by people who are honest and trustworthy, the idea that any of his rivals or colleagues are honest enough to admit their mistakes or crimes is laughable.

For another thing, why is it the decision of the police to prosecute that triggers his resignation? The facts are not really any better known than they were before.

I suspect that what forced him out was the media deciding to claim that he must be forced out. That doesn’t necessarily indicate any particular animus to him on behalf of the media; a cabinet resignation is worth pushing for just for story value. It might be that earlier, there were reasons for the press not to try to do him in, but those are now gone.

I could suggest a couple of possible reasons: one is that the media seemed somewhat invested in the coalition, but is now more soured on it. (The 2010 story of David Laws tells against that theory somewhat, but he might have been more specifically unpopular to the media). Another theory might be that Huhne’s activity on climate change protected him, but that has mysteriously become less of a concern.

Ultimately, I don’t think we can know what’s really going on, and that’s why day-to-day party politics isn’t worth paying attention to.

On to Goodwin then. On the one hand, if Goodwin was rewarded for benefiting British Banking, it is fair to say that the any benefit he bestowed was more than undone. On the other, the whole process did not seem to have much to do with either justice or wise decision-making; rather it had all the appearance of a stampede.

Whatever knighthoods are for these days, it can’t be what they were originally for. It’s a bit murky. Interestingly, knighthoods would fit well into a formalist system, as a treatment of the coalition problems I just wrote about. It could serve as a formalisation of informal power: a recognition that the recipient has some power, is loyal to the sovereign, and is being rewarded for that loyalty. If that were the basis of honours, they would not be withdrawn for incompetence, or even for criminality, but only for disloyalty. It would mean that that person ought not be permitted to obtain any power again.

Finally Hester. Hester is CEO of a bank which is making modest profits in a difficult market. As such, he would normally expect a substantial bonus. The same stampede which took away his predecessor’s knighthood took that as well.

There are legitimate questions about the amount of money made by banks and their employees, which I am not going to address — anyone worth reading on the issue would be either more knowledgable or less personally interested than me.

The question of bonuses per se is a separate one, though. What it amounts to is that companies that award large bonuses (relative to salary) are run in a more formalist manner than most other corporations. In many organisations, valuable employees are rewarded with more responsibilities, or better job security. Arnold Kling recently raised the point that this can produce bad outcomes. These companies avoid that, giving responsibilies as tasks rather than rewards, and rewarding valuable employees more directly with cash. This is the appropriate response to the sort of issue that Arnold Kling raised, and which Aretae picked up on as a widely applicable example of bad governance.

The fact that this formalist measure to improve governance arouses such opposition (again, independently of the actual sums involved; Hester’s salary for 2011 was over a million pounds, and attracted little attention), says a lot about what is wrong with modern political culture.

So, three very different honours: a minor position in our corrupted and ineffective system of government, an anachronism that might once have been a formalist recoginition of power and reward for loyalty, and a straightforward, honest payment for value. All removed, for better or worse, in the same way, by an unthinking popular stampede, triggered by a media driven not primarily by ideology but by a need for drama.