2. Are traditional monarchies less bloody?

Instead of responding to the issue of freedom in monarchies, which I had originally intended to do next, my next answer to Scott Alexander’s Anti-Reactionary FAQ will address something a little easier, Scott Alexander’s assertion that monarchies have a record of killing their own people. Quote:

Michael’s argument ends by saying: “Kings and emperors very rarely, if ever, engage in mass murder against their own people.”

I propose a contrary hypothesis – traditional absolutist regimes have always had worse records of massacre and genocide than progressives. However, technology improves efficiency in all things, including murder. And population has been growing almost monotonically for millennia. Therefore, it is unsurprising that more modern absolutist regimes – like Nazism and Stalinism – have higher death counts than older absolutist regimes – like traditional monarchies.

On the other hand, traditional monarchies have some pretty impressive records for killing their own people.

No, they do not. Communism killed 92 million people throughout the 20th century, in labor camps, purges, and through mass starvation. This is in contrast to war, where people are mostly killed in the midst of an ideological struggle, rather than as part of intentional state genocide. It is difficult to say how many people liberal democracies will ever kill because we have the benefit of massive wealth, universal surveillance, and global hegemony on our side. Killing is not necessary because we have spying and the police state instead.

Communism has an impressive record for killing its own people. Democracy under the French Revolution had an impressive record for killing its own people. All modern European states do not have impressive records for killing their own people. Prior to Communism, European states have only mass-killed their own people in a few isolated instances.

There has never been a century in history where monarchies killed 92 million people, adjusting for the lower populations of the time and considering deaths proportionately. Never. Remember that Communism is progressivism carried to its logical conclusion, equality of outcome for everybody, and that the modern United States is at constant risk of sliding in that direction. When the President talks about “income inequality,” as a bad thing, he means that we should consider equalizing incomes, which is Communism. Whenever “income equality” was enforced in the 20th century, it led to mass murder. All for the sake of equality, of course. The only way to avoid the spectre of Communism is to accept the reality of income inequality and deal with it. Unless we argue that every attempt at Communism during the 20th century wasn’t “real Communism” and that “real Communism has never been tried”.

Alexander cites a few examples to argue his point that monarchies have horrible records of genocide and massacre:

• the Albigensian Crusade, one million gnostics killed

This was in 1209. I fully acknowledge that Europe was a bloody place at the time. It was similar then to how Africa is today. The Albigensian Crusade was against Cathars, a gnostic sect that preached that matter was evil and only spirit was good, and that everyone should practical sexual abstinence, even in marriage. It is easy to see why such beliefs would be seen as threatening in medieval Europe and prompt a genocidal response. At the time, countries didn’t have the immense material wealth needed to allow such an unusual religious sect to flourish without repercussions for the stability of local civilization. I’m not saying it wasn’t a tragedy, just saying that I can understand why it happened. A republic at that time, if it existed, may very well have had the same reaction, given the perceived threat of such a sect in a purely Catholic country.

• the Harrying of the North

William the Conquerer subjugated the northern portion of England, killing 100,000 people, or 5% of the population. This was in 1070. There are similar examples from tales of national unification in China, Japan, Mongolia, and elsewhere. To unite a piece of land under a single political ruler requires some bloodshed. If conquerers never conquered, we would still be living in 150-person tribal units and civilization would never have emerged. The Romans had to shed a lot of blood to take over Italy and the rest of the area around the Mediterranean, as well. Should they have just been nice pacifists instead, sitting in their tiny city-state and never expanding to create the Roman Empire? I don’t think so.

In the long term, conquerors unified China, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, etc. If the Harrying of the North never happened, the United Kingdom may have continued to have barbarians in the north for another thousand years, and the great rise of British civilization may never have happened. Developmentally speaking, blood needs to be spilled for lands to be unified and for mankind to take the next civilizational step. I didn’t make the rules, I just work here.

I don’t dispute that forming a modern monarchy might require some amount of bloodshed as well. If a monarchy forms on a spot of land, say somewhere in Europe, it may very well need to wage a military campaign to carve out its territory. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Fighting happens, the wills of men clash, and that is part of civilization. Modern liberal democracy has certainly proved itself willing to shed plenty of blood to ensure that as many of the planet’s people as possible are forced to adhere to its values.

What is a true risk is when a monarchy extends its control over an area that doesn’t want it and has the continued means to resist it. Examples: the American Colonies and Ireland. Irish people have shown over the centuries that they really, really want to be independent and really, really are willing to shed English blood for it. When a monarch tries to take over land that is not an appropriate part of their domain, when they are not “cutting reality at the joints,” reality will hit back and people will die. It’s best to avoid this, if possible.

• the German Peasants’ War

In 1524, between 100,000 and 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers had an uprising and were slaughtered by aristocratic armies. This is certainly unfortunate, but is nothing like the systematic murder and oppression by Communist regimes. These peasants challenged the system, and the system killed them. Communist regimes seek out people to kill, arbitrarily labeling huge groups as class enemies, whereas the Peasant’s War involved people actively fighting against the aristocracy.

In my previous installation of Monarchy FAQ I explained that Europe was a bit chaotic prior to 1638. Crazy things happened, more men were killed in duels than in war, torture was commonplace, and so on. I am not proposing a return to that era, but rather to societies modeled on the 1638-1914 Golden Age of monarchy, with some inspiration from certain Enlightenment values, like basic civility. So, if there was a Peasant’s War in Germany in 1524 where 100,000 people were killed, that is bad, but it seems hard to imagine a modern monarchy would have similar issues.

If you look at the Wikipedia disambiguation page for Peasant’s War, you see that the majority of the serious incidents in Europe occurred prior to 1638, when political order was not yet consolidated across the European continent. There were many unstable borderlands, especially areas bordering the Ottoman Empire, which suffered economic and social strife due to frequent warfare.

To compare Europe in 1524 to today is not really fair. First of all, our technology is much better. If Europe at that time had the benefits of the Green Revolution, the peasants would have been well-fed and they would not have revolted. Conversely, if America in 2008 did not have the benefits of international free trade and the Green Revolution, millions of Americans may have starved during the Great Recession and revolted. This would have inevitably led to the Army being used to put down the revolts and might have led to a lot of casualties.

This is all speculation, of course, but my point is that Europe in 1524 did not have the same technological base as Europe or America in 2014. That means that the political situation is a little different. I claim that a monarchy in modern civilization, with all the benefits of combine harvesters and artificial fertilizer, would be able to adequately feed itself, even during economic recessions, and so the people would never get so discontented as to rebel. Note that these instances of monarchical killings were not the aristocracy killing peasants out of spite, but defending their system against existential threats.

Throughout most of the Middle Ages, peasants were usually quite content, had adequate food, were defended from external threats, and so on. I link this page not because I agree with the title, but because it overviews the lifestyle of medieval peasants and dispels some myths about life at that time.

• Burning Of Books And Burying Of Scholars, China 213 BC

This outrageous incident doesn’t have very many European parallels. In Europe, some books were burned at times, but scholars were never buried alive en masse. Studying the history of monarchy in general, I’ve often found bizarre incidents that occurred only in China which have no European comparison. As a European-American with only limited knowledge of true Chinese culture, history, and thinking, I can only clarify that I am proposing monarchy as a system to consider only for societies with a lot of people of European descent, and that I am not in a position to make government recommendations for other groups. I have no idea what the best system of government for Chinese people is; for all I know it could be modern Communism. I am skeptical that Chinese ancient history is very informative for proposals for reinvigorating monarchy in 21st century Europe or America.

Next, Alexander mentions King Leopold of Belgium. Leopold’s Congo regime killed over a million Congolese in the worst instance of colonial atrocity ever. I completely agree with Alexander that this was a horrible thing which should never be repeated again. I am strictly anti-colonial. I even think the UN should stay out of Africa.

However evil King Leopold was, though, this case was extremely atypical. There were thousands of monarchs in post-Renaissance Europe who did not engage in mass murder, of the inhabitants of colonial possessions or otherwise. I never said that monarchy is a perfect system of government, just better than all others invented thus far. Monarchy is a crappy system of government, because all systems of government are crappy. Some are just less crappy than others.

It is easy to cherry-pick: King Leopold, the Rape of Nanking, the Harrying of the North, yadda yadda. The insistence of Abraham Lincoln that the United States stay in one piece led to 600,000 deaths as well, and the Reign of Terror and the French Revolution were no picnic either. All of these events were based on “freedom,” “democracy,” and “equality”. The drive for economic equality by Communism led to 92 million deaths. Read about the Khmer Rouge if you want some background.

Humans are bloody creatures. If the South tried to split away from the United States again today, there would be hundreds of thousands of deaths. Everyone has blood on their hands, including Democracy. The reason that democracies tend not to go to war with one another is because the United States is an all-powerful nuclear hegemon that mediates conflicts between them. All that does is provide more evidence for the truth that having a single leader at the top of any hierarchy promotes peace. If the United States were a nuclear monarchy, the same relative peace would exist. Monarchical wars are limited skirmishes over tangible properties, whereas democracies tend to go to total war. The blurring of the distinction between ruler and ruled means that we are all targets when democracies go to war. In a monarchy, only the ruling family and the aristocracy are the targets.

I hope this overview has been helpful. Analyzing which forms of government cause the most bloodshed is complex, not simple, and if you have a strong conviction one way or another, you may be wrong. It is hard to say that liberal democracies are inherently less violent because they have the benefit of massive 21st century wealth and global nuclear hegemony. If a monarchy had that kind of power, it would also have little incentive to murder its own citizens. When comparing apples to oranges, it’s all about the framing—and the frames that were inculcated into you during childhood. Pick your frames with caution.