What is a “revolution”? Oh! What an inexhaustible source of inspiration for a humanitarian! And what kinds of revolutions are there? Is a counter-revolution a revolution? What does Marx say, and what does Rabinovich say? Let’s categorize revolutions. Velvet, orange, top-down, bottom-up, spontaneous, organized. And let’s spread the categories across a spectrum. This revolution is redder than that one is blue. And that one is more orange than pink. Another couple of dozen dissertations and books. Who benefits from the revolution? If, say, a revolution occurs and the existing ruling class is overthrown, who takes the helm? Those who overthrew it? Just like that? Or did a group of scoundrels emerge from the crowd of revolutionaries, managing to climb to the throne on the crest of the wave of popular anger? And what about the rest? What is actually happening?
If we consider the Earth to be the center of the universe, then the trajectory of the planets across the sky will be complex, winding, and mysterious. Everything becomes much simpler if we place the Sun at the center of the universe or, scratching our heads, abandon the idea of a center altogether. The same goes for social theory. One can have infinitely complex theories of revolution that operate with a branching categorical apparatus; however, everything becomes much simpler—and also much more interesting—if we change our perspective or, scratching our heads, abandon the concept of a reference point altogether.
For example, one could assume that the state does not exist. It is not there at all. It is something that exists only in people’s memories. It is a construct, an idea that benefits the ruling elite, allowing them to define an individual’s belonging to something and channel their herd instincts in a productive direction. People seriously start to think about whether it is beneficial for the state, say, to take a new loan from the IMF or what can be done to improve the situation for the state, or to find someone to blame for making things worse for the state. But if you were to ask a specific person, say Peter, why he needs Crimea, he wouldn’t know what to say. Yet he would still shout about it.
It’s much more convenient to collect tribute if it’s not an act of armed banditry, but “taxes for the state.” However, there is no difference between racketeering and taxes; even the goals are formed in the same way: “for protection against other bandits.” It’s much easier to mobilize the crowd by implanting yet another ideology into their minds, with the goal of “the good for the state.” It’s much easier to ask people to die under bullets, hanging on barbed wire, if it’s “necessary for the state.”
The truth of life is that the ruling elite will always exploit the people to the fullest. Whether times are good or bad for the “state,” everything that can be taken will be taken. The line is drawn where the majority of the population says “enough” and goes to the shed for pitchforks. This is not a conscious impulse from some “elite.” It is the result of the poaching by a few elites who grab everything within their reach. In this case, society will always be teetering on the brink of social explosion. It doesn’t matter whose Crimea it is, how much oil costs, how much to take from the IMF, or who the president of the country is. Life will not get better for the people. They will take everything.
“Let me ask you,” you might say, “what about hospitals, roads, education, public order?” There is no contradiction here. First of all, all these things are created primarily in the interests of the ruling elites, at least to wage war more effectively or to be better prepared for war against other bandits. Secondly, these so-called public goods cannot be created by the people on their own. They can only be produced under coercion. And since the people, in the absence of a ‘state,’ are unable to have public goods, the ruling class, having created such goods through the forced mobilization of the population, then sells them back to the people rather than giving them away, and at a steep price. How do they sell them? Starting from cheap self-promotion with ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the doors of a new school, to a more subtle form of ‘selling,’ where the presence of a new hospital or fresh road allows them to extract even more from the people without provoking discontent.
Above, in a few words, the theory of the stationary bandit was described. This theory suggests that a state is formed when a bandit, unable to find a single village in the area that hasn’t been completely plundered and running out of resources for sustenance, realizes that it’s better to leave a little behind rather than completely destroy a village. This way, the village won’t starve to death, and he can return to exploit it regularly. Similarly, humans transitioned to agriculture when hunting could no longer sustain the tribe. Everything in the forest had been consumed. This theory implies that the state has some structure that can be compared to that very bandit. But what about “Western democracies”?
In reality, there are many bandits. It’s always a gang. One way or another, they either came together to make their tasks easier, or fate brought them together, or they found themselves in a situation where, after starting to “cultivate” a territory, they discovered that there were other bandits (gangs) in the same area, and they had to negotiate. Negotiation is necessary because there are two conflicting zones: the first is the individual yield of each bandit, which can be increased by taking from a fellow bandit. The second is the overall yield from the “milking territory.” This cannot exceed the level of tolerance of the people.
Yes, bandits need to negotiate. Just as OPEC agrees on oil production limits, so do bandits in structures that can be called “the state,” meaning more or less stable ones, exist in a state of agreement. This can be either an explicit agreement or a “cold war,” or reputational deterrence relationships, like in the Italian mafia. If gangs cannot come to an agreement, they mobilize the population and start fighting each other. The reason for the fight can be that one of the bandits, who has formally gained power in the “state” and believes, as he was taught in school, that this is grounds for usurping the resources, stops sharing with other bandits. Then other bandits set up a music stage in the central square of the country with huge media screens, distribute “smashed oranges,” and mobilize the people “for the good of the state” against the overreaching usurper. In the end, the people remain as poor as they were, but the usurper will have to step aside. It can be beneficial when bandits have some sort of dispatcher. Then conflicts can be resolved without involving angry crowds. However, in that case, the “state” becomes dependent on the health of that dispatcher. Additionally, in such a state, there remains the problem of poaching—having divided private sources of resources with the help of the dispatcher, they will milk the population to the limit. Sometimes, bandits seriously enter into agreements and do not violate them due to deep internal connections that make them interdependent. Such bandit formations are the most stable, and what we see as a result of “societal evolution” is actually a typical “survivorship bias” and a result of natural selection. States where such an agreement has not been reached simply do not last long. Yes, such states exist right now, but they are either relatively young or lack agreements among bandits simply because there is only one bandit in the state, which is extremely likely for small countries by population. In other words, those so-called “Western democracies” are mature bandit formations that have found the formula for decentralized equilibrium.
What is the secret of their success? The secret is simple. The agreement allows for the resolution of the “overall yield” problem and creates a cartel arrangement, where the parties adhere to yield quotas, just as OPEC members comply with oil production quotas. Having a contract enables a departure from the practice of poaching and the frantic competition among people to extract as much as they can. Why is it beneficial to yield slightly less than the maximum? First, it increases the value of the “barrel of yield.” Second, it creates an “emergency cushion” for unforeseen circumstances. In the event of war or a natural disaster, a population that has not been pushed to the brink will be able to withstand a greater blow than one that has been fully drained. In other words, the “emergency cushion” is just as necessary for the ruling class as roads, universal literacy, and a developed system of industrial standards. It serves as a means of protecting their milking territory from other potential milkers. It becomes clear that such “states” could only have formed historically, when the borders of the “milking territory” had some natural reasons. The presence of “natural borders” determined both the unacceptable transaction costs for a bandit to change the milking territory and the unacceptable transaction costs for other bandits wishing to increase their yields at the expense of others. They either had to negotiate or disappear from the political map. No “state” whose borders were drawn artificially, cutting across ethnicities, cultures, and geographical barriers, is likely to achieve a quick agreement among bandits. They will either have one bandit in control, or they will be in a constant state of real (or “velvet”) war among gangs, or the situation will only appear to be in equilibrium as long as the “dispatcher” is alive.
Allowing the population to receive a little more than what is necessary for survival is beneficial also because the people have no place to put these excesses except to invest in the businesses of those very bandits. The bandits, by limiting their predatory impulses through a contract, gain additional benefits. The contract itself, or the established system of checks and balances equivalent to such a contract, also serves as a public good, but only within the society of bandits, among themselves.
What happens to a “state” that is run by bandit poachers in the face of external threats or natural disasters? Such a “state” finds itself in a very dire situation. Mortally dire. It becomes easy prey for other bandits, especially if there isn’t a “historically decentralized gang” nearby that has no interest in foreign lands (since such a gang has long transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming), but rather another tangled group of poachers, a “monobandit state,” or a state of “poachers with a dispatcher.”
The absence of external threats won’t save a gang of poachers in the face of serious problems. We remember that in such a state, the people are constantly on the brink of “I’ve had enough, where are my pitchforks?” And during significant upheavals, this sentiment can easily be crossed. Those familiar with history will recall how the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki from 1783 to 1785 led to a series of poor harvests in France. Burdened by debt, King Louis XVI of France was unable to stop the crisis or feed the people. And on July 14, 1789, the people stormed the Bastille, marking the beginning of one of the bloodiest chapters in world history known as the French Revolution, which completely reshaped the political map of Europe.
But today, poachers from third-world countries will not seriously attempt, beyond mere propaganda, to compensate for the loss of population; they will not freeze loans, will not pay compensation to the victims, and will not care for the refugees. The truth is that the bandit poachers are not afraid. They have a fully fueled business jet ready to go, and all the most valuable things, including children, have long been outside the territory of exploitation.
In the boiling cauldron of spontaneous uprisings, true armed gangs will eventually crystallize, controlling entire territories and exploiting the populations within them. Young people, lacking jobs and means of survival, will have no choice but to join these gangs. Moreover, having weapons makes sex and money more accessible. These gangs will fight each other and the remnants of the “legitimate authority.” They will resort to terrorist methods of control, as “soft influence,” due to the lack of legitimacy, will cease to be effective. They will seek sponsors and support from abroad, promising a share in future profits. Sponsors will emerge, especially if a natural disaster that overflows the cup of public patience also affects neighboring areas, which urgently need to find new sources of income. The new bandits will engage in drug manufacturing and trafficking, kidnappings for ransom, and carrying out “contracts” for neighboring gangs. It’s possible that one of the gangs or a new cartel could overthrow the remnants of the previous authority, and then the events will be labeled a revolution, but without velvet and flowers. Conversely, if the previous bandits manage to defeat the newcomers, this period will be referred to as a “time of troubles.” But it will still be a civil war.