I’m currently working on a longer post responding comprehensively to part 2 of Yvain’s FAQ, but in the meantime, a few comments on the stability of monarchy. As usual, I will be using Yvain’s pen name “Scott Alexander” interchangeably with his old Less Wrong handle “Yvain,” because that’s how my brain works. On Less Wrong, JoshuaZ said:

the more general notion that monarchies are more stable as a whole is empirically false, as discussed in the anti-reaction FAQ.

Before continuing to read this post, I suggest reading part 2 of Yvain’s FAQ and coming to your own conclusion first. I encourage you to do so because I want to make a point about epistemology. Yvain’s FAQ has the ability to make people confident that monarchies are unstable although it lacks sufficient information to argue the case. It certainly is possible to argue that monarchies are unstable, but Yvain’s FAQ simply doesn’t cover a wide enough cross-section of monarchies for it to be remotely suitable as an argument against their stability. It just cherry-picks monarchies during time periods when they were particularly unstable.

Let’s briefly review Yvain’s points against the stability of monarchy. First, Yvain on Austria:

Habsburg Holy Roman Austria was conquered by Napoleon in 1805, forced to dissolve as a political entity in 1806, replaced with the Kingdom of Austria, itself conquered again by Napoleon in 1809, refounded in 1815 as a repressive police state under the gratifyingly evil-sounding Klemens von Metternich, suffered 11 simultaneous revolutions and was almost destroyed in 1848, had its constitution thrown out and replaced with a totally different version in 1860, dissolved entirely into the fledgling Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, lost control of Italy and parts of Germany to revolts in the 1860s-1880s, started a World War in 1914, and was completely dissolved in 1918, by which period the reigning emperor’s wife, brother, son, and nephew/heir had all been assassinated.

Now, this sounds nice. Before considering these claims at object level, let’s think about the psychological reaction of an intelligent reader, say Eliezer Yudkowsky, who knows quite a bit about history in general, but probably not so much about the details of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary in the 19th century. Reading as someone who does know quite a bit about history in general, it may tempting to overestimate the reliability of Yvain’s framing because it sounds like he knows what he is talking about. Many of these comments are indeed factually correct. But how relevant are they, specifically, to the claims of reactionaries? The average reader knows far less than they think they do.

Without some familiarity with the framing of reactionary claims, as made by reactionaries themselves, it is impossible to tell. The reader lacks sufficient information because they are only reading one side of the story. All they know is the one-liner from the bad guys, “monarchy is more stable than democracy”. Consider that as a small nugget to be placed on one side of a the scale. On the other side of the scale, we have a sizable rock, Scott Alexander’s well-written answers.

Meanwhile, consider background knowledge. Since kindergarten, we are conditioned to believe that democracy is “the worst form of government, except all others which have been tried” (basically, the best thing ever) and that monarchy is equivalent to dictatorship. So, the average reader has a huge pile of background assumptions that are already on Yvain’s side, plus a large chunk of well-written, fun refutations written by Yvain himself, all coming down against a single one-liner, or short paragraphs, presented on behalf of the reactionary side, which is essentially a completely foreign way of thinking to the reader.

Is this fair? A lifetime of pro-demotist conditioning and an excellent writer providing witty banter that confirms the assumptions of this conditioning, versus a mere few lines with no context? It is what it is, but perhaps critics should withhold their judgment until they have more exposure to reactionary framing.

Object Level

The claims on Austria, one more time:

Habsburg Holy Roman Austria was conquered by Napoleon in 1805, forced to dissolve as a political entity in 1806, replaced with the Kingdom of Austria, itself conquered again by Napoleon in 1809, refounded in 1815 as a repressive police state under the gratifyingly evil-sounding Klemens von Metternich, suffered 11 simultaneous revolutions and was almost destroyed in 1848, had its constitution thrown out and replaced with a totally different version in 1860, dissolved entirely into the fledgling Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, lost control of Italy and parts of Germany to revolts in the 1860s-1880s, started a World War in 1914, and was completely dissolved in 1918, by which period the reigning emperor’s wife, brother, son, and nephew/heir had all been assassinated.

Repeating myself: the intelligent reader, even one with a knowledge of history, very likely lacks the knowledge to evaluate this claim by comparing to his own background of known facts. Most contemporary Americans don’t read Austrian history. If they do, the presentation they read has a heavy Demotist framing, like all Yankee history does.

First, conquered by Napoleon. Napoleon was a Demotist leader who arose from the blood-soaked chaos of the French Revolution. In fact, in reactionary Julius Evola’s Men Among the Ruins, there is an entire chapter describing Napoleon as a Machiavellian leader completely different in kind from the natural leaders of traditional systems, explicating these differences point by point. So you have a monarchy (Austria), and a Demotist dictatorship (France). The Demotist dictatorship is run by an excellent military leader who uses mass conscription for the first time in modern history, giving him an overwhelming military force. He then uses this military force to recklessly lay waste to countries around him, all of which band together to defend themselves against this menace.

When the monarchy loses this war, it’s then monarchy’s fault? If a bully punches a weak nerd on the playground, is that proof that reading books is lame and we should all become bullies ourselves? That seems to be Alexander’s rhetoric here. Monarchy sucks because Napoleon was able to invade it and mess it up.

Rather than being a point against monarchy, this is actually a point against Demotism. The rise of Demotism ruined the relative peacefulness of Europe, bringing about a Continental war that caused between three million and six million deaths for nothing. It was the beginning of modern total war, the worst invention in history. If there were no French Revolution, there would have been no Napoleonic dictator, and no Napoleonic wars in the first place. Is this not an argument for monarchy, rather than against it?

The next fact is how Austria was “forced to dissolve as a political entity” in 1806. Note that Yvain’s analysis begins at the beginning of the age of Demotism, when Austria began to be threatened by internal rebellions and external Demotist threats, rather than analyzing the 800 years that Austria existed before this. When Austria was “forced to dissolve” as a political entity, did the fundamental structure of the Austrian monarchy change? Absolutely not. Did the daily life of the inhabitants change? It did not. Was it Austria’s fault that it was again conquered by Napoleon in 1809? It was not. Being invaded by a Demotist horde of sans-culottes, radical left wing partisans, is not a point against the right wing system being harassed in this manner.

So, to my mind, the first three claims that Yvain makes can be thrown out entirely. That Austria was conquered by a newly-formed and intimidating country with much more fertile land and population of conscripts is not relevant to the historical stability of monarchy.

Yvain claims that Metternich founded a repressive “police state” in 1815. Since the term “police state” usually refers to Nazi Germany or the Communist Soviet Union, with which the “repression” in Austria is not even vaguely comparable, this term is misleading. What Metternich was doing was suppressing revolts in a highly volatile and inflammatory environment of populist uprising. To the modern American mind, this automatically makes him the bad guy, but all he was doing was defending the existence of the centuries-old Austrian monarchy. If Metternich did not work to put down rebellions, Austria would have been ruined, as it nearly was during the Revolutions of 1848.

Is it evil for a state to defend itself? Especially a relatively libertarian monarchy like Austria, where peasants did as they pleased and the government only consumed a few percent of GDP, in contrast to a country like modern America, where everything we do is spied on, people are thrown in prison for possessing marijuana, and the government makes up 40% of the GDP, regulating and sticking its fingers into nearly every aspect of human life?

If Metternich defending Austria against movements whose explicit purpose was to destroy the government was repressive and evil, that shows a view where monarchy itself is basically viewed as evil. If the reader reads Yvain’s paragraph with a founding assumption that monarchy is bad, then presented information that only makes sense in light of this framing, then what has he really argued?

1) *Yvain begins writing with the assumption that the reader is against monarchy*
2) He points out that Metternich sent the police against those trying to destroy the state.
3) Therefore, monarchy is bad.
4) Q.E.D.

This argues nothing. To those at the time, comfortable with centuries of prosperous Habsburg rule in Austria, compared to the Reign of Terror in France and the ensuing destruction of the Napoleonic Wars, who can blame Metternich when he tried to suppress populist revolts? The king in Austria had done nothing to offend the people. He did not tax them inordinately. He did not pry into their lives. He did not pass oppressive laws. He did not expand the state to consume 40% of national GDP. It was merely the very existence of the monarchy that irked these revolutionaries. For that, they were willing to create rivers of blood to satiate their desires for revolutionary power. Metternich did nothing wrong. To this day, he is seen as a master statesman who is widely admired among modern diplomats, as detailed in Henry Kissinger’s book Diplomacy.

When Yvain writes that Metternich’s name is “evil-sounding,” this is just a joke. He is playing on the joviality, confirmation bias, and low cognitive load mental state associated with people interested in reading arguments supporting what they already believe and have been told to believe since they were children. It’s similar to the glee of children hitting a piñata — from the start, the audience knows which side is supposed to win, and they get to be entertained along the way to the predetermined outcome. Democrats are the good guys, monarchists are the bad guys, and I’ll be darned if we break the cavalier attitude of beating up on the bad guys and use more academic, neutral language to describe what actually happened. If Yvain’s accusation of “evil sounding” gives readers a single point of what they view as Bayesian evidence in favor of the pro-democracy argument — and I know it does — then it’s an unearned point.

Note that writing in support of monarchy, I cannot be cavalier. That’s because the vast majority of the audience is not already in agreement with my side. Instead, I have to take a neutral tone. Also, I cannot rely on my audience having been indoctrinated to agree with my side for their entire life prior to encountering this blog post. I have to demolish assumptions and build up new arguments from scratch. This is far more difficult.

Continuing with the object-level analysis, Austria suffered “11 simultaneous revolutions” (you might as well call it one Revolution, when revolutions happen in the same country at the same time, they are generally considered one Revolution, not 11) in 1848. Again, that’s the Demotists’ fault. If I am a teenager resentful towards my father because he grounded me, and I put sand in his gas tank, is that evidence that the structure of a family is unstable and must be destroyed? No, that’s evidence that I’m a dick. The same applies to the revolutionaries of 1848. They rebelled against a stable, centuries-long monarchy with grievances along the lines of, “we want control”.

Part of the problem had to do with social changes brought about by urbanization and the rise of the working poor. There were crop failures in 1846. The working poor had to spend half their income on food. The Revolutions of 1848 were a failure, however, and these problems were fixed under the rule of the monarchy. Problems happen, and they need to be fixed, regardless of what the government is. Reactionaries do not claim that monarchy is a perfect or utopian government — certainly not — just that it sucks less than the democratic merry-go-round of lowest-common-denominator genuflectors.

To quote Wikipedia, “In the post-revolutionary decade after 1848, little had visibly changed, and most historians considered the revolutions a failure, given the seeming lack of permanent structural changes.” There was a lack of structural changes, but Austria continued onwards, remained a significant country, and, by most accounts, a pleasant place to live. There were not mass starvations in the cities. There were not concentration camps or mass executions by secret police. There was no Reign of Terror or Age of the Guillotine, the rewards of “power to the people” in France.

All of Yvain’s further claims on Austria, except World War I, are again evidence against populism, not for it. Revolutionaries assassinated members of the royal family, caused instability, and so on. The blood is on their hands.

The fault for starting World War I is not with Austria. The blame for that lies with my own ethnic group, the Slavs. Austrians began taking over parts of the Balkans, which were among the most backwards, primitive parts of Europe (they remain so today), and a Slavic nationalist decided to assassinate the Austrian Archduke. Being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have greatly helped the Balkans, not hurt them, but the nihilistic Black Hand, without any constructive ideology aside from “screw everyone who isn’t an Orthodox Slav,” disagreed, and sent their assassin to murder Franz Ferdinand. Then, Russia got involved.

Russia has no business getting involved in the Balkans. Millions of lives would have been saved if Russia could just realize that the Balkans are too distant from them and not their responsibility to defend. The attitude of Slavs was, and remains, “Slavs first, even if Europe is destroyed and millions die”.

Meanwhile, on Earth Prime, the Balkans were absorbed into the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, adopted basic features of civilization like running water and toilets, and stopped being angry, drunken Slavs for long enough to participate in non-backwards Europe.

This concludes my overview of Yvain’s comments on Austria. Without the historical background and reactionary framing outlined above, it’s very easy to leap to conclusions about what his comments prove. But the seditious and murderous actions of revolutionaries do not prove that monarchy is an unstable system; rather, they provide evidence precisely to the contrary.