When did you grow up and realize history is a linear march of progress towards a better humanity?

>>17861010 (OP)
if it is, it's squiggly as fuck

>>17861010 (OP)
The only thing the Revolution perfected was the Ancient Regime, really.

And it only perfected it in the sense that after the revolution, the prerogatives of the nobility were generalized for the rich.

>>17861010 (OP)
There are more slaves alive today than at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. The myth that human societies have gotten less exploitative/barbaric with time is just that, a myth, propagated by sheltered children who haven't seen enough of the world to know better yet.

>>17861010 (OP)
pic not related

>>17861010 (OP)
no it isnt. Its a repeating cycle of good vs evil
Material progress? sure. But humanity never progresses

>>17861064
The world used to be full of monarchies and republics, farmers and hunters, settlers and nomads living side by side.
And people could move to wherever they felt comfortable
But we've become stuck in the modern period with a system which claims to be the best of everything thats come before and the end of history

>>17861075
I am currently not a slave while liberals here keep telling me that my life would be worse and I would be a serf or slave if I somehow lived at any time in the past. So there's that.

>>17861075
>There are more slaves alive today than at the height of the transatlantic slave trade
Today we consider debt bondage and quasi-serfdom to be slavery. At the time they were not considered slavery. Moreover, "transatlantic slave trade" is only one sector of the world and not counting all the slaves in the arab, indian and chinese worlds.

So no in modern day there are not more slaves when 80% of the human population of the time would've been considered slaves in modern terms.

>>17861088
You wouldn't be posting on this site to begin with were it not for cobalt mined with child slave labor in your electronics. Every day you (and everyone else ITT) relies upon incalculable human suffering for their lifestyle. Nothing ever really changes in that regard.

>>17861098
That's cool but it seems my kind's lot has indeed improved

>>17861097
There are way more literal slaves today (upwards of 80 million) than there were in the past simply thanks to increases in population. I'm not talking about "debt slaves" either, I'm talking about full-on slaves.

>>17861099
But the amount of cruelty hasn't actually changed is the point. Just because we're better able to pretend we don't constantly rely on barbaric practices like slavery doesn't mean we don't.

>>17861105
I don't think slavery is inherently cruel, being in a lower status in society doesn't necessarily mean your experience of life is automatically worse

>>17861101
1) no, your numbers are wrong. The top estimate is 50 million
2) in medieval england, 40% of the population were serfs. These are LOW numbers relative to the rest of the world. 50% of the 1500 human population being in a state of serf bondage would be 250 million slaves from that sector of agriculture alone. This is not counting all the brothels, forced labor, and various other myriad forms of brutal exploitation engaged in the past by the powerful.

>>17861116
and before some smarmy retard comes and claims "serfdom wasn't slavery", in the literal modern day, forcing someone to work for you in a state of hereditary debt bondage WOULD BE LEGALLY CONSIDERED SLAVERY

the distinction between serfs and slaves in the past was that serfs had more legal rights. MODERN DAY SLAVES HAVE LEGAL RIGHTS, SLAVERY IS LITERALLY ILLEGAL AND REVILED ACROSS THE GLOBE

>>17861116
>The top estimate is 50 million
Maybe a decade ago but I work with a Think Tank that tries to track this shit and it's certainly much more than that today

>>17861087
>And people could move to wherever they felt comfortable
Joke's on you man, travel used to be the most liberal for maybe a decade or two before WW1.

>>17861141
that's good work you're doing. have any good advice for where donations are best sent to stomp out the fell practice?

>>17861010 (OP)
Lemme get this straight.

So the French Revolution and all pro-democratic revolutions/overthrows of monarchy was caused by the expansion of the cities, which led to the expansion of the bourgeouise/middle class and academic class, which then seeked to overthrow the aristocratic/gentry class monopoly because they had limited power in it, and then create a democratic system?

Why does the bourgeouise always lean to democracy?

>>17861010 (OP)
it's not
otherwise the greek dark ages wouldn't have happened
late antiquity/early medieval dark ages wouldn't have happened
mongol sack wouldn't have happened

we are due for another societal collapse

>>17861177
- the aristocracy was already sidelined by the 1700's (this is not the same as monarchy)
- the french nobility were divided on the issue, and many were pro-reform/revolution
- the expansion of cities didn't cause the expansion of the middle-class; the two are the same process

>>17861177
Because the theory that it was beneficial for their individual interests was solid. Then, it turned out, the theory in practice was very beneficial to their interests. To the point that liberal nations mogged everyone else economically and led into present conditions where liberal nations triumphed.

However this is not necessarily permanent because liberal policy aided development is starting to hit diminishing returns, so the field is becoming ever more open for competing ideologies to hijack what they built if they are more effective in the exercise of political power.

>>17861188
>- the expansion of cities didn't cause the expansion of the middle-class; the two are the same process

Sorry, what? Surely the expansion of the cities led to the expansion of the middle-class?

>>17861177
>Why does the bourgeouise always lean to democracy?
They do not. The bourgeouise revolution led to a constitutional monarchy, an oligarchy and a constitutional monarchy followed by yet another constitutional monarchy. The Jacobite intermezzo only happened because they figured that moving fast and breaking things would not come 180 and break them. Which happened because they had no idea how to do politics and because they operated within the mental framework of an absolutist monarchy.

The Middle Class's main demand is that state finances should be under public control because they ended up holding a lot of public debt and investment they'd like to at least keep an eye on.

>>17861010 (OP)
It was, up until whites decided to try and include non whites in their civilizations as equal members. Since then its been improving where it can in spite of the non white burden.

>>17861010 (OP)
That kitsch painting you posted instantly evaporates such nonsense from seeping into my mind.

>>17861295
>It was, up until whites decided to try and include non whites in their civilizations as equal members.
Your civilizations were degenerate beforehand *because* they allowed this to happen. Every cause is a symptom.

>>17861177
French Revolution was pretty fucked, actually. The king largely excluded the nobility from politics and the nobility largely excluded the bourgeois from power. The kings then radically centralized power and removed their people's ability to take care of their own affairs without bureaucratic oversight.
At the same time, the king was commercializing the whole political system and staffing his bureaucracy heavily with Tiers etats. So he ended up with a bourgeois that knew that everything was for sale and knew that state power was absolute, but had no experience with politics outside of participating in a strictly regulated, absolutist system. And the nobility had been trained to only talk about politics in the most generic, pie-in-the-sky way and think of it as a delightful distraction unrelated to their weal and woes.

>>17861286
To be fair, isn't a constitutional monarchy fundamentally just a peaceful compromise between the Bourgeoise and the Monarchy/gentry?

>>17861429
No. The British, Polish, Swedish and Japanese ones were a compromise between the king and the nobility.

The role of the Bourgeoise in the french revolution seemingly specifically came about because the nobility was excluded from engaging in business and politics and had been largely replaced in the bureaucracy.