The Absolute State Part 2

So in the previous post we discussed how the Late period is marked out by a shift from Feudalism to the Class State via a shift in how the State is perceived, to the Absolute State, where these internal class relations are diminished to arbitrary social relations. This manifested in the Tudor/Stuart period in England, the former producing the class state in alliance with the Reformation, and the latter ending in the Absolutism of Cromwell and English Puritanism. It also manifested in Athens, the City State idea reduced the landed nobility to an oligarchic class, as seen in the Archons before Solons reforms and Peisistratos raised a faction above them in alliance with the people and the budding Third Estate.

In the Late period, the state comes to be defined around its relation to a dynastic principle, which varies from culture to culture, and often the State’s transition is aided by the forces of mind and money, raising the Third Estate of the urbanites to significance. This period is where you get your common rights of man, your freedoms, your democracy and philosophy, the positioning of power in cities instead of the countryside estates. In this post we will round off and refine the history of this period.

So throughout the Summer period, the estates progressively lose sway over the idea of the State and it moves increasingly into the cities. In this three-hundred-year period from 1500 to 1800, from 650 to 350 BC, the State increasingly becomes absolute. In correspondence, the idea of the nation grows with it. The state organised on loyalty as in Feudalism, begins to matter less and less; the tree, beginning at the trunk with the King, and extending into the Lordly branches, then their servants and then the people of the land, and beyond the king towards the Pope, is cut, and all that remains is the Absolute ruler and the people of his State.

This is apparent in the development of Athenian Democracy. Spengler doesn’t outright state it, but he strongly suggests he is grouping Solon in with the Tyrants of the mid to late sixth century based on how he describes the invention of the Athenian nation. The Solonian reforms (early 6^th century BC) established a fuller version of the class state and empowered the people through the Ecclesia against the Archons, before Peisistratos seized power on populist grounds (560s – 527 BC). He and his son Hippias played an important role in unifying Athenian conscience and giving them a place in power. Their mistake however was the succession of father to son, which added with Hippias’ harsh rule after the Tyrannicide of his brother and his attempted alliance with Persia, sowed the seeds of scorn against the Tyrants, not merely for their harshness or treachery, but also because they confirmed the danger of dynastic bloodlines. When Sparta invaded in 510 BC, installing Isagoras and a new oligarchy in power, national consciousness had already been formed by the century. Attempts to dissolve the Boule resulted in revolts against the oligarchy, resulting in their banishment and Cleisthenes’ installation, who would then go about instituting democracy in Athens.

Developments in Europe surrounding the Monarchy followed a similar but converse trajectory. In 1614, there was tension between the French Crown and the States-General when the Crown ceased to summon it. Charles I of England ruled England without Parliament between 1629 and 1640. As this occurred, the 30 years war erupted in Germany (1618) which Spengler asserts was a war premised on the tension between imperial power and the Fronde. The goal here, of course, was the assertion of absolute monarchy as the Western form of the Absolute state. The centre of Baroque politics, and the pinnacle of the Absolute state for its time, was Spain under the Hapsburg cortes. The Hapsburgs were on the cusp of world domination, and it was the intention of James I of England (1603 – 1625) to mimic it. James also had troubles with English parliament being the King of Scotland before succeeding Elizabeth I. Now the King of both nations, he made attempts to unify them, taking the title “King of Great Britain” to English Parliament’s objection. James’ own plans for an absolute state involved securing it through marrying Charles, then Prince of Wales, to Infanta Maria Anna. The failure of this marriage resulted in a pivot to favour the anti-Hapsburg House Bourbon. The chaos of securing marriage links with foreign, and moreover, Catholic, dynasties, antagonised both the English Fronde and the strengthening Puritans.

In the wake of these mounting tensions across Europe, various “great individual statesmen” rose to the front of politics. In Spain, Olivarez, in England, Cromwell, in Germany, Wallenstein, France, Richelieu, Oldenbarneveldt in Holland and Oxenstierna in Sweden. They variously stood for different notions, Wallenstein, for example, defended the Empire idea with the Emperor as absolute state, whilst Cromwell obviously stood opposed to the absolute monarch on religious grounds and class allegiances with the backing Fronde, but all of them were frankly the true centre of statecraft instead of the contemporary kings.

It matters not the details of the conflicts that arose, but how they ended are of great significance. The English Civil War (1642 – 1651), the 30 years war (1618 – 1648), the Catalan and Portuguese rebellions (1640) were premised on the tension between the development of the absolute state and the class state. In France and Spain, ultimately, the kingship won, asserting the power of an absolute monarch, but in England, the great man of this period, Cromwell, was pitted against Charles and was abetted by the aristocracy. The result, however was he ascended to Lord Protector and continued the role of the Absolute Monarch, disbanding parliament and further centralising power under a military dictatorship, in function until his death.

For a century and a half, the State is perfected in this form. The French and Spanish nations remained absolute monarchies, but England and Germany, their kings having lost their respective conflicts, remained governed aristocratically governed. The Glorious Revolution severely limited the powers of the king and subordinated him to parliament, which exercised its power over succession with the cases of William III, George I and George II.

In Greece, Democracy didn’t mean an end to history, the following century and a half from 500 to 350 saw the annihilation of Tyranny and the destruction of absolute Oligarchy, causing extreme factionalism among the peoples of the poleis. After the Persian wars this narrowness of politics becomes extreme, there is no art of diplomacy, only an amateurism gained from lack of political tradition.

So to summarise, the Absolute State emerges when the State asserts itself over the classes that constituted the prior class state. The Estates typically resist this to varying successes. Culminating out of this are popular and national reforms which finalize the form of the state in relation to its culture. The tyrannis was replaced by oligarchy, then democracy, as expressions of the finishing of the polis type, and the monarchies of the 17^th century asserted themselves as literally “absolute” in authority as personifications of the state. Their resistances varied in success, but the absoluteness remained regardless of outcome.