Meritocracy matters, history flips
I just read The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800, and the main thought I came away with was that the more intelligence and status are decoupled in a society, the greater the likelihood of revolution. I assume here that the wealthy bourgeois who were marginalized in the ancien regime attained their gains via sly cunning; surely a simplifying assumption. In any case, demagogues such as Jean-Paul Marat and Maximilian Robespierre acted and organized on behalf of the working man, but unsurprisingly they were personally marginalized intellectuals. The populace may be roused into vicious action against the elites of the age, but the snake always needs a wily head, invariably from aspirant elites.
Secondarily, I am struck by the quicksilver changes in the Spirit of the Age. In 1783 the American republic was a peculiar experiment, an aberration in the age of monarchy (there were small republics). Yet by 1800 the French Revolution had swept such expectations away, at least for a time. These 17 years arguably witnessed changes in the order of societies on a scale far greater than the 1960s across the West, or throughout the Easter Bloc during the 1990s.
Labels: History
An interesting contrast to pre-Revolutionary France is pre-WWI Austria Hungary. The Austria-Hungarian empire (which included Czechoslovakia and part of Poland) was incredibly fruitful in the sciences, the arts, philosophy, etc., but power was held by a very retrograde hereditary aristocracy, often with military-school education. Anti-progressive ideology was developed to extreme sophistication, while powerless intellectuals developed art forms which were revolutionary in a cynical, hopeless kind of way.
Razib said:
the more intelligence and status are decoupled in a society, the greater the likelihood of revolution.
The Bolshevik revolution is probably a good example of this in that many of its leading lights were bright. However, Russia would probably have been much better off without it. High intelligence might be a good thing a lot of the time but it does sometimes have the unfortunate effect of causing its bearers to imagine impossible utopias.
bearers to imagine impossible utopias.
but it might have been a better deal for them! ;-)
Anti-progressive ideology was developed to extreme sophistication, while powerless intellectuals developed art forms which were revolutionary in a cynical, hopeless kind of way.
i thought austro-hungary was relatively liberal in some phases? e.g., jews were very pro-empire because it provided a cosmopolitan framework for them to operate without getting crushed by local nationalism (and gentiles like f.a. hayek also regretted the empire’s collapse and the subsequent rise of nationalism). though of course, louis xvi was a rather liberal king compared to his predecessors so perhaps the contrast is apt.
Actually, I think the real pattern of revolution tends to be caused more by the decoupling of actual physical power and official political authority, though in those eras, such as the modern one, in which power begins to highly correlate with intelligence it reduces to the same case.
In various eras in which changing military technologies have changed the underlying source of military power, changes in political control have frequently followed or at least been attempted.
For example, the source of Athenian power was their navy based on the less affluent citizens, rather than the wealthier hoplite class which dominated the land armies and also the politics of most of other Greek states.
Or the victories of the English yeomen whose longbows repeated defeated French chivalry played a role in the relative democratization of English versus French society. And on the Continent, the growing power of massed pikemen—such as in the Swiss Cantons—sometimes played a similar role.
In some of these cases, I suspect the trend was more in the direction of the less intelligent, or at least the less well-educated.
And in a media-drenched society like our own, much power derives from the control of the media, which is partly based on mind but probably more on money. So we see our political system dominated not so much by the smart as by the very rich, even if they pretty clearly do not fall into the other category.
RKU:
“Chivalry” or “cavalry?” Though of similar root, the meanings–at least in English–are quite distinct.
The Austro-Hungarian empire was cosmopolitan and liberal in some senses, but with no significant political participation (above all by national minorities) and a conservative established church. The Hungarian part of the empire was also much more conservative than the Austrian part. Austrians were famous for a combination of strong theological conservativism and conventional piety with very lax practice.
In Eastern Europe, Jews were often counted as Germans. E.G., the patriotic Russian composers opposed the “Germanists”, many of whom were Jewish.
Gene Berman
During the period RKU is describing (14th and early 15th CE), in France chivalry and cavalry were roughly synonymous, even if the chivalry tried walking e.g. at Agincourt :) Not so at the same time in e.g. northern Italy.
RKU
(BTW, both the military development of the English longbow and the sociological changes in the English military associated with it began with Edward I’s campaigns in Wales. I strongly suspect you already knew that).
RKU, in some ways your point is tautological – if physical power (of which military power is usually the first principal component in the pre-gunpowder era) is badly miscorrelated with nominal authority then yes, we have at best metastable power relations.
I _think_ Razib is referring to a special case of general Pareto circulation (right, Razib? BTW, many thanks for the book recommendation – I will have to get it); where there is a combination of unusual blockage of circulation (both up and down) of the most/least intelligent, e.g. the Ancien Regime’s incredibly rigid rules of nobility and similar conditions on a good chunk of the Continent (e.g. the conservative Stadtholder (sp?) regime in the Seven Provinces), and the usual cyclical weakness (in this case the late 18th C French fiscal crises), you can get revolution. Compare in France the long lasting, effectively permanent changes of the Revolution (i.e. that persistent even throughout the Bourbon restoration) with the ephemeral changes of the (radical) Jaquerie and (attempted counterrevolution) Fronde.
(yes, I know the above is vastly simplified – sorry Razib and John E – I lack your broad knowledge in these fields)
Think of what Razib is talking about as a population inversion which can be triggered to lase :)
Think of what Razib is talking about as a population inversion which can be triggered to lase :)
haha. you seem to be making fun! ;-)
john, i’m going to have to do more reading on the AH empire at some point…everything i know from glances, no focus….
In some of these cases, I suspect the trend was more in the direction of the less intelligent, or at least the less well-educated.
well, i’m struck by the fact that isaac newton’s grandfather was probably illiterate. i think in many pre-modern (before 1500 or so) situations the correlation between being in power and being clever is weak, in part because so few of the clever people were in the elite in the first place. with the spread of mass literacy that changed…and many people were not only outside the halls of power; they were conscious of it, and, resented it.
Francis, The Viennese Enlightenment (short, easy)
Johnston The Austrian Mind (thorough, easy)
Schorske, Fin-De-Siecle Vienna (more dense)
Toulmin Wittgenstein’s Vienna (good social background, shows W’s technical roots)
Gellner Language and Solitude (develops the cosmopolitan angle — Gellner was a Czech German Jew who became a Briton).
All are really highly recommended.
An amazing proportion of modern intellectual life traces back to Vienna or Prague, including in the sciences. Some Polish scholars were also under Austrian rule.
Speaking of Pareto, all of Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty is now online including the stuff he wrote for it. I said here I planned on reading his contributions, but I still haven’t got around to it.
Requiring registration would keep out people like =