The French Revolution (1789-1799) and TechnoFeudalism



 


The French Revolution (1798-99) is considered the penultimate event of the Long 18th Century, but why should we be interested in the Ancien Regime? Charles Bastille (here) argues that the Trump Regimes, rather than being considered Fascist, should be considered Techno-Feudal and the French Revolution was the end of Feudalism in France. In other words, we are already living in a TechnoFeudal society and it is heading for a bloody revolution.





ChatGPT analyzes the TechnoFeudal System (graphic above)*** as one in which a weak (or weakened) State becomes dependent on platforms of the Tech Lords (Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft) granting them weak regulation and sovereignty over their vassals and serfs. TechnoFeudal rent (fees, subscriptions, data extraction and gatekeeping) replaces profit as a way for Tech Lords to extract surplus.

Taking the Feudal Hierarchy one step further than ChatGPT, the Tech Lords promise to replace Government Bureaucracies with automation. The vision is that there is nothing Government does (Creating Laws, Military Defense, Issuing Licenses, etc. etc.) that cannot be replaced by mobile apps and robots running AI Models.

Returning to the end of the 18th Century, how does TechnoFeudalism align with the actual end of Feudalism? At the beginning of this post is output from the FR18 model. By forecasting the model in to the 19th Century, we see that the Urban Growth Controller (FR1) peaked during the French Revolution and started to declining afterwords while Urbanization itself (FR2) continued to take off.**

In other words, Urbanization in France reached the point where Feudal arrangements would no longer support the Urban population (persistent bread shortages, crop failures, wars, epidemics and other problems that the Feudal Economy could not resolve). Are we heading in that direction today? Is TechnoFeudalism a viable economic system?

The vision for TechnoFeudalism relies on a future of unproven promises to be delivered by Artificial Intelligence. AI is predicted to (1) cure disease and discover new drugs, (2) provide unlimited Fusion Power, (3) solve environmental problems created by Capitalism (Climate Change, Specie Extinction, etc.) and (4) etc., etc. These are big, unproven, ahistorical promises that one can be skeptical about.

TechnoFeudalism might also result in a Dystopian Future where Facial Recognition Software will be used to create the Orwellian State (if you can't imagine this, watch the Person of Interest TV Series). 

The Future is simply not knowable, but trends that have a high level of inertia are unlikely to simply go away.

NOTES

** If you are interested in Economic History, the Urban-Controller is the dominant component (rather than the standard overall growth component found in most models) suggesting that the Feudal Economic System was simply not able to provide unlimited, uncontrolled exponential growth needed for the Modern Capitalist System. For more information about the state space systems models and data sources, see the Boiler Plate.

*** This is not to say that Techno-Feudalism has replaced Capitalism. The two will coexist for many years in the future, as ChatGPT notes:
 

Readings

Models

If you are interested in history, there are more interesting aspects of the FR18 model. The model is unstable but can be stabilized with instructions in the code. Stability creates a Steady State Economy for France in the mid-20th Century.

Some other interesting aspects of the French Feudal economy are revealed by the FR18 model Measurement Matrix, discussed below.

FR18 Measurement Model


The FR18 Measurement Model has two components that explain 100% of the variation in the indicators: FR1 = (Growth-U) Urban Growth Controller and FR2 = Urbanization. From the time plot at the start of this post, the actual data (solid lines) shows the Urban Growth Controller peaking in 1800, after the French Revolution, and Urbanization taking off at the same time. The Urban Growth Controller made the French Bourgeoisie Revolution possible.

The three minor controllers, explaining very little variance are: (1) FR3 = (0.735 N - 0.465 L - 0.465 HOURS), a Marxian Labor Controller, (2)  FR4 = (0.425 Q + 0.534 L- 0.719 HOURS- 0.179 N) a Malthusian Employment Controller and (3) FR5 = (0.7701 Q - 0.505 L - 0.342 N) a Malthusian Labor Controller. However, the controllers pick up topics of interest from the Political Economy of France.
 





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  The Long Eighteenth Century, as noted by Wikipedia ( here ), is: ...a phrase used by many British historians to cover a more  natural  historical period than the simple use of the standard calendar definition of the  eighteenth century  (1 January 1701 to 31 December 1800). They expand the century to include larger British and Western European historical movements, with their subsequent "long" 18th century typically running from the  Glorious Revolution  and the beginning of the  Nine Years' War  in 1688 to the end of the  Napoleonic Wars  in 1815 . In this blog, I will expand the periodization to include the entire World-System. Quantitative State Space models for World-System countries during this period are available here  (for example, the W18 model). Periodization For the Quantitative Historian, selecting a time period over which to display statistical data or estimate models is an interesting problem with no s...
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Boiler Plate

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  State Space Model Estimation The Measurement Matrix for the  state space models  was constructed using  Principal Components Analysis  with  standardized  data from the  World Development Indicators . The statistical analysis was conducted in an extension of the  dse package . The package is currently supported by an online portal ( here ) and can be downloaded, with the R-programming language, for any personal computer  here .  Code for the state space  Dynamic Component models (DCMs)  is available on my Google drive ( here ) and referenced in each post. Atlanta Fed Economy Now My approach to forecasting is similar to the  EconomyNow model used by the Atlanta Federal Reserve . Since the new Republican Administration is signaling that they would like to eliminate the Federal Reserve, the app might well not be available in the future. While the app is still available, there have been some interesting development...
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