Absolute Monarchy, Revolution, and the Bourgeoisie

So I was thinking about the Russian Revolution (as is my wont,) and wondering why everyone was so vehemently against the bourgeoisie and not, at least in their rhetoric, the nobility. (I’ve long wondered the exact same thing about the French Revolution.)

If there is one thing that all commentators seem to agree on, including the man himself, it’s that Nicholas II (aka Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, final Tsar of all Russia,) was not fit to rule. He was not an evil man (though he did send millions of his subjects to their deaths,) and he was not an idiot, but neither was he extraordinary in any of the ways necessary to rule an empire.

But this isn’t reason to go executing a guy. After all, Russia managed to survive the tsardom of Peter the Great’s retarded half-brother (principally by making Peter co-tsar,) so there’s no particular reason why the nobility couldn’t have just stepped in and run things for Nicholas. Poor little Alexei probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer, and then one of Nicholas’s brothers or nephews would have been in the running for tsar–seems like a pretty decent position to hold out for.

But in an absolute monarchy, how much power does the nobility have? Could they intervene and change the direction of the war (or stop/prevent it altogether?)

Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) consolidated an absolute monarchy in France (with the height of his power around 1680.) In 1789, about 110 years later, the French Revolution broke out; in 1793, Louis XVII was executed.

Peter and Catherine the Greats (1672 – 1725; 1729 – 1796) consolidated monarchical power in Russia. The Russian Revolution broke out in 1905 and then more successfully in 1917; Nicholas was executed in 1918. Assuming Catherine was fairly powerful until her death, (and I suspect she likely would have been deposed had she not,) that gives us about 110 or 120 years between absolute monarch and revolution.

Is there a connection?

Obviously one possibility is just that folks who manage to make themselves absolute monarchs are rare indeed, and their descendents tend to regress toward normal personalities until they just aren’t politically savvy enough to hold onto power, at which point a vacuum occurs and a revolution fills it.

Revolutionaries, by and large, aren’t penniless peasants or factory workers (at least, not at the beginning.) They’re fairly idle intellectuals who have the time and resources to write lots of books and articles about revolution. Lenin was hanging out in Switzerland, writing, when the Russian Revolution broke out, not slogging through the trenches or working in a factory.

As I understand it, the consolidation of absolute monarchy requires taking power from the nobles. The nobles get their support from their personal peasants (their serfs.) The Royalty get their support against the nobles, therefore, from free men–middle class folks not bound to any particular noble. These middle-class folks tend to live in the city–they are the bourgeoisie.

Think of a ladder–or a cellular automata–with four rungs: royals, nobles, bourgeoisie, and peasants.

If the royalty and bourgeoisie are aligned, and the nobles and peasants are aligned, then this might explain why, when Russia and France decided to execute their monarchs, they simultaneously attacked the bourgeoisie–but said little, at least explicitly and propagandically, against the nobility.

By using the peasants to attack the bourgeoisie, the nobles attacked the king’s base of support, leaving him unable to defend himself and hang onto power. A strong monarch might be able to prevent such maneuvering, but a weak monarch can’t. Nicholas II doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d imprison infant relatives for their whole lives or have his son tortured to death. He didn’t even bother taking another wife after the tsarina failed to produce a suitable heir.

I see the exact same dynamic happening today. For the peasants, we have America’s minority communities–mostly blacks and Hispanics–who are disproportionately poor. Working and middle-class whites are the bourgeoisie. College students and striving rich are the nobles, and the royalty are the rich.

Occupy Wall Street was an attempt by student-types to call direct attention to the wealth of the royalty, but never got widespread support. By contrast, student protests attacking bourgeois whites on behalf of black peasants have been getting tons of support; their ideas are now considered mainstream, while OWS’s are still fringe.

There’s a great irony in Ivy League kids lecturing anyone about their “privilege,” much like the irony in Lenin sitting on his butt in Switzerland while complaining about the bourgeoisie.

But in this case, is the students’ real target actually the rich?