Revolution
It is generally agreed that the modern world was born in the years between 1788 and 1800. These 12 years cover the French Revolution, the early years of an independent USA, and the end of Catherine the Greats reign in Russia. It was also the time when the British first created settlements in Australia as various European nations laid claim to vast expanses of land in the Southern Hemisphere many times larger than themselves. What is most striking about the birth of the modern world is that nobody saw it coming, much less set about creating it.
The modern world was born out of enormous social upheaval. This social upheaval was the culmination of a number of major changes in economic ecosystems. One of these was that the feudal system that underpinned European Society for hundreds of years was unravelling. The economic fundamentals of the feudal system are based on the worker being allocated a portion of land to work, for which he pays the landowner a fee. The fee was initially a portion of the produce, but later, an amount of money. The idea was to provide incentive for the worker to maximise production, while the wealthy retained control. The opening up of the New World [introduced more and more agricultural capacity into this economic ecosystem with every passing year. Initially this resulted in a greater demand for breeding stock, and the introduction of new exotic crops, which initially benefitted the agricultural worker by raising their income. Over time, advances in technology and transport aided the efficiency of the new world, until a tipping point was reached and the price of agricultural produce plummeted. With the ‘rental’ price paid by the feudal worker unchanged, and their earnings substantially reduced, their livelihood was at risk. At the time this literally meant their lives were at risk.
At the same time that this was happening, the lives of the wealthy were reaching new levels of excess. Their incomes were boosted by their investment and activities in the New World and their cost of living was reduced by the abundance of produce now available to them. They appear to have been oblivious to the fact that they were living in abundance while all around them people were starving. Rather than seeing an increase in theft as a sign of wide spread desperation, they saw it as an increase in immoral behaviour and increased law enforcements and the harshness of penalties to curb these ‘sins’. When the jails and workhouses were full, some countries, most notably Britain, sent the prisoners to the colonies as a form of slave labour, (convicts) [1] Global expansion also required a global military presence, the cost of which was born by the working classes in conscription and higher taxes.
Social inequality and injustice were not new to these societies. For hundreds of years, including the 1700s, the Ottoman Empire made regular spring raids on a thawing Russian countryside to plunder a society weakened by harsh winters, capturing slaves and other bounty. The newly formed American nation had both slaves and convicts. Throughout the New World natives were ill-treated as the military might of the various European empires enforced new laws and values designed for the convenience of the Europeans. In this pre-Darwin era everything that happened was justified as being God’s will. However, anything done by the poor to the rich, was clearly the devil’s work, and deserved punishment by a vengeful God. This was the hegemony that had the poor accept their fate and the rich enjoy their privilege. The victory of the American colonialists over the might of the British Empire broke this spell.
People will risk everything when they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The harsh economic environment ensured they had nothing to lose, and the American victory over the British provided the hope that they had everything to gain. The incredibly brutal, bloody, barbaric and terrifying French Revolution was the result of such circumstances. It was a revolution so horrific in nature that every other country that knew of it feared it happening to them – especially the elite. In Britain in particular, the elite voluntarily negotiated the transfer of wealth and power, (to a 24 year old Prime Minister, William Pitt), in exchange for a more stable society. So how unstable will modern society have to get for the elite to voluntarily transfer their power and wealth?
Several countries finds itself in a very similar situation to 18th Century Europe. For example the USA is governed by the elite, who continue to prosper from its global expansion while the same expansion has the poor and working class struggling for survival. It’s previously omnipotent military has been unable to convincingly defeat what was considered an inferior force in a foreign land. And its hegemony – that unchecked capitalism is good for everyone, and that the poor only have themselves to blame for their plight – is being questioned. They already have the highest levels of incarceration in the world as well as the highest levels of gun ownership. If they do manage to avoid the 21st Century equivalent of the French Revolution, then they may not avoid the sort of society post-apartheid South Africa now endures. Here, even the middle class live in fortified enclosures and drive fortified vehicles in an attempt to protect themselves from the rest of society.
Of course post-apartheid South Africa is not what Nelson Mandela would have envisioned for his country. Perhaps he was unaware that the game of monopoly in his country was closer to the end than the beginning. Certainly having watched the economic disaster that is Zimbabwe[2] he would have been pleased that he did not tip the board and start a fresh. Fortunately there are other options.
Recap
- Reward for effort – if there is no opportunity for sufficient reward, efforts are redirected
- Value is relative – people will risk everything when there is nothing to lose
- Trade requires difference in value – revolution puts everyone in survival circumstance
- Money is a catalyst – revolution can render money worthless
- Trade creates economic ecosystems – modern economies are like rainforests, they can recover quickly from the fall of an individual, not at all from a mass clearing
- Economic measurements are incomplete – economic measurements do measure social upheaval.
Footnotes:
[1] Some historians now argue that some Court Judges were given lists of skills required in the colonies and sentenced the accused accordingly. This theory certainly helps explain how surveyors and stone masons accused of stealing bread found themselves transported to the other side of the world for this petty crime.
[2] The economy of Zimbabwe shrunk significantly after 2000, resulting in a desperate situation for the country and widespread poverty and an 80% unemployment rate.[10] The participation from 1998 to 2002 in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo set the stage for this deterioration by draining the country of hundreds of millions of dollars.[11] Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe has been a major problem from about 2003 to April 2009, when the country suspended its own currency. Zimbabwe faced 231 million per cent peak hyperinflation in 2008.[