The Revolution was not ASB. There were certainly elements that were misfortunes, but there have been plenty of examples throughout history where things have spiralled out of control. This is especially the case in societies with mass urban populations. Rulers who have had things their way for generations don't make a habit of grasping changing societal [power structures and technological changes that mean it's not sustainable any longer. The idea that a spiral to radicalization is alien space bats is just ridiculous.
I'm not saying it was ASB. I'm saying that it was so unlikely that people living in a world where it didn't happen would consider it so unlikely as to
call it ASB.
There is at least a 30-40% chance of it happening here, and if it doesn't, it is highly likely to come to its head somewhere else.
You're pulling those numbers from thin air, of course. In any event, I consider the chances to have been far lower. And as I have repeatedly argued: no, it's
not likely to just come to a head elsewhere. You can't replicate the intellectual climate that made it possible, nor the same social conditions. You can replicate some of the same intellectual influences, and some of the same social conditions, but bringing it all together
again in the same way is vanishingly unlikely.
The growth in the urban poor,
You appear almost obsessed with this one factor, even though it isn't very relevant at all. Urban poor have existed throughout many times in history. (Urban unrest plagued the Roman Empire again and again, for instance; that's how far back it goes.) But it
doesn't typically lead to the fixed outcome you are so certain of. It mostly just leads to localised violence and looting, and then everything calms down again. Even when pressure is constant (which it
rarely is), the most realistic outcome is reform, not revolution.
increased literacy and cheap publication of inflammatory materials meant the mob have much more power than anyone realized.
It happened because people are more receptive to ideas of "you are being cheated out of what you could have" than "you're doing fine with your lot in life, just accept others have more and always will". The growth in media, from pamphlets to radio to TV to social media, means we get exposed to more and more communications, which tilts our beliefs ever more towards the resentful negative ones we are more receptive to.
Increased access to media is often argued to similarly work in the state's favour (effective propaganda). Methinks those two cancel each other out, quite often. If your argument is solid, then no propaganda campaign to keep people docile could ever work, because simply spreading agitprop will rile everybody up (sincer it's negative, so according to you effective) whereas the propaganda will never work (since it's positive, so accorsing to you less effective).
I don't buy it for a second.
In fact, without the French Revolution as a warning sign of how the mob can grab power, the rulers in other countries are more likely to be overconfident in refusing to give way to reform.
That may prove to be the case in certain times and places. You seem to think it will be a general rule, which is your bias speaking, but okay. I say: what of it? Rulers have miscalculated on such matters countless times. Rarely does it lead to anything like the French revolution. Because, as I have argued, the French revolution wasn't the rule, but a vanishingly rare exception. A once-in-a-few-centuries perfect storm.
The trend existed in certain countries but not others. There was no gradual reform in the Papal States, or the Two Sicilies, or the Balkans. In Russia, serfdom was actually becoming more entrenched.
Did I claim it was going to be everywhere? Or at the same pace everywhere? In any event, you are too confident in your Russian analysis. Without the French revolution and Napoleon thereafter, the attitude of Alexander is going to be almost impossible to be predict. He veered wildly between wanting to be modern and "Enlightened" and being the protector of tradition.
Even where reform was happening, in most places it was towards supposed "Enlightened" despotism, which was mainly centralization of powers away from aristocracy to central governments. As we saw in the Habsburg monarchy or the Spanish dominions, that can cause its own revolts and revolutions.
Again, I've never said everything will be milk and honey. But we're looking at normal issues here. Nothing that's going to cause transformative change on a continental level. Struggles between monarchs and nobles are as old as civilisation itself.
Human beings are naturally negative, discontented and resentful of others who have more. We evolved in societies of 30-40 people with relative egalitarianism between people in our group, and occasional warfare with the handful of other groups. Our brains are not developed to handle being in a society with hundreds of thousands around us and some people will clearly far more money, wealth and status than us. In modern society, if people have a stake in the system, they have a tendency towards caution about expressing that negative discontent. But if they live brutal, impoverished lives with no economic or political power, they are prone to radicalization. And the increase in literacy and pamphleteering had created a medium to take advantage of that. If it doesn't happen in France, it will happen elsewhere. There will be a spark in one of these other societies elsewhere.
I have major caveats with this hypothesis of yours, on which your whole argument hinges. Even to the extent that humans have any "natural jealousy", however, you --
again -- just blindly assume that this will inevitably lead to something like the French revolution. Which is nonsense. It will lead to exactly what I predicted earlier: "
[the aggrieved populace] just throw over the apple cart and hang a few designated victims, loot a bit... and things go back to normal."
That's what happens almost every time. Exceptions like the French revolution aren't the norm-- or we'd see such events a
lot more frequently. But we don't, because it's far too easy to maintain the status quo. Everthrowing the existing order only ever happens when all other options have been exhaused or squandered.
The expansion in the state was at the time widely considered a compromise, moderate method to ward off communism. The idea it caused the 1960s movements is crazy. Without it, the radicalization would have happened in the 1950s.
Not what I wrote. My point is that radicalism (of any kind) causes more radicalism. It's about the amount of available energy in a system. Fast-moving molecules: heat. Slow-moving: things stay cool. If you agitate things, if you introduce radicalism... things are going to bounce around. You heat things up. You reach a boiling point. If you prevent radicalism, things stay cool. The reaction to radicalism is more radicalism. The reaction to moderation is more moderation.
The French revolution is the explosion of radicalism that instigated Modernity-- which is an inherently radicalised era. We're still living in a "heated" society, and it started back then. Keep things cool then, and Modernity as a whole will be much less heated.
The idea you can stop certain ideas from existing just because the French Revolution didn't happened is crazy.
The French revolution is what brought certain ideas to prominence and dominance. It was a course-altering event. Prevent that, and the course of the "history of ideas" is going to go in a different direction. Thinking you'll end up in the same destination if you change direction hundreds of kilometers back...
that's crazy.
You will always have people coming up with utopian society reordering ideas. You will always get occasional situations somewhere in the world that are powder kegs. You will always get some rulers that refuse to give way. And you will thus always get the occasional group in power that tries to do extreme things.
You will very rarely get all of those things at the exact same place in the exact same place in the exact right combination to produce a transformative revolutionary development. The ultimate flaw of your whole line of reasoning is that you assume that these things
will inevitably co-incide again (on short notice, instead of once every few centuries or so). I keep saying it: "perfect storm". You can't just replicate that.