French "Revolution"

>It also increases the power the people have over the state

That's not true at all. At least during the Ancient Regime you knew who ruled over you, and you could petition to the king, or use personal connections with intermediary institutions like guilds, nobility and the Church to reach the highest levels of the state.

Post-revolutionary France is ruled by secret societies like the Grand Orient de France with no accountability and no way the common people can actually have any influence over it.

>direct democracy

You mean like in Switzerland, where intermediary institutions are very much alive and descentralization is still the norm?

France could be like that without the revolution.

Oh, and "corrupt self-serving middle men" still look out for you, if not out of goodness in their hearts, for honour and tradition. The traditional nobility in France, the ones that didn't move to Versailles, didn't let it's peasants be expropriated by bourgeois Parisians, for example (neither would the Russian nobility let it's peasantry by dekulakized).

Corrupt self-serving bureaucrats are much worse, because they have no connections with the land and are truly only in it for themselves and their own personal enrichment.

Yes it did. It's not perfect but it's better than fucking feudalism.

>Centralization goes against democracy.
How in the fuck do you figure that? Federalism is just one more wall between the people and the government, one more layer of self-serving bureaucrats, one more extra distance between the people and the real power of the country. This is why bureaucratic elites love federalism so much, it allows them to deal with fellow bureaucrats instead of having to deal with the pesky people, who no longer have any direct influence on the country.

>Post-revolutionary France is ruled by secret societies like the Grand Orient de France
Yeah not going to bother with this nonsense. It's hilarious though that you think that even if those tinfoil conspiracy theories were true, it would even be worse than feudalism.

There is literally nothing wrong with feudalism.

The richest, most innovative, most developed regions of the world are the ones that experienced most feudalism. Countries that were centralized at a earlier date, like Russia, China and Portugal, tend to become corrupt shitholes.

>The French Revolution was a mistake

What did he mean by this?

lol it's literally the other way around, centralised countries like France and England dominate in every way. Comparing with countries that aren't even Western is complete nonsense.

My point is that countries like England and France, that have a history of descentralization, are more developed and innovative that countries like Russia and Portugal, that have a history of centralization, the same way that Japan is more developed and innovative than China for the same reason.

While the English aristocracy was fighting for it's Magna Carta rights and praising the days of Alfred the Great as the political model that should be followed, the Russians were crushing the Novgorod Republic.

The only way centralized countries are actually superior is militarily, which explains their domination since the XIXth century. But I still believe a descentralized England, or descentralized France, would be better than modern England and France (just compare Britain during the Winter of Discontent, at the height of their socialist experiment, with now, after Thatcher reforms).

You missed the egalité part, or else I don't know how are you surprized. Everyone must be equal before the state, so everyone must be french and regionalism supressed.

It sucks, I know.

>china
>centralization

>countries like England and France, that have a history of descentralization
You can't be serious.

France and England have been completely centralised on Paris and London since the Middle Ages.

>the same way that Japan is more developed and innovative than China for the same reason.
Kek. Japan was literally spooked into innovation.

Prior to that they were more or less at par with Qing/Ming China and prior to that, less than fucking China.

China is the utmost historical example of centralization of all power in a single authority permanently fucking up a country. It's periodic collapses and civil wars are a feature of this, not a bug.

>hurrr freedom means anarchy

Universal empires covering an entire civilisation happen because the civilisation has exhausted itself of all creativity, not the other way around. And France is not a civilisation, it's one nation.

That's not true, againt all efforts of French kings, up until the French Revolution there were still strong regional institutions in France, like the Parlements.

And in England, descentralization was not really geographic, but manifested in the strong political power of the aristocracy, which never got itself subjected to the King the way the French nobility got.

Im pretty sure he's commenting on China's centralization =/= modern centralization.

There was still a lot of leeway in terms of local rule and governors were merely appointed & termed """lords""" using the European term.

In addition they fucking policed themselves.

France and England were far more centralised than any other country in the West, and continually centralised more and more throughout their history. In France the parliament was even abolished completely by the time of Louis XV. Your federalism = success theory fails completely, deal with it. You want federalism, look what happened to the HRE.

>descentralization was not really geographic
Then it's not decentralisation. You're thinking of parliamentarism or aristocracy vs monarchy. That's the main difference between the English and the French model, and pragmatically neither can be said to be better than the other (although the latter is clearly more democratic).

Yes, this was basically what I meant. Imperial chinese "centralization" has not relation with what we would consider a centralized state.

They dominated before becoming centralized. Since going down the road to serfdom both Britain and France have lost their position in the international community and become inferior, backwards shitholes.

Portugal is historically considered to be the first European country to have become a nation-state, already by the 14th century.

Centralization in France was a long process, it can be said to have begun in the 12th century but still in the 18th century there were holdouts that didn't exist in Spain, for example, where the Nueva Planta decrees abolished all regional institutions and laws, or Russia.

Which is very typical, actually. Political processes that begin in France, being indigenous to it's culture, face more resistance than when they are applied elsewhere, which is why France is more resistant to it's failures. Separation of Church and state and enforced secularism, for example, it's considered a French ideal, but it was only applied there in 1905, after much political fight and resistance, while in Latin America, where resistance was lesser, it was applied earlier across the XIXth century. Therefore it's consequences, like the political marginalization of a parcel of the population that depended on the Church to represent it's interests was less felt in France than in Latin America.

It's the same with centralization of political power. Being a typical French idea in the West, it was more resisted in France than in Spain, or Russia, or Sweden.

>You want federalism, look what happened to the HRE.

It became the economic and intellectual powerhouse of Europe. Not bad. If it wasn't for those centralizing Prussians and their heirs, the Nazis, no one would think anything bad of Germany, it would still be the lands of poets and thinkers.

Fuck no, they centralized first, thus enabling all those colonial efforts.

I once read a book about nationalism. Revolutionary France is the first example of modern nationalism. Even tough most of what you are saying you sort of had to be French speaking to fit into France, that was the only real requirement.

As for OP's point in 1793 the Jacobin cracked down on a group that they called anarchistic, because they opposed the centralization of power. So the Jacobin weren't the most radical of their day necessarily.

Also you might notice that in the term "Th French revolution", there is the word "French". Kind of a big part of it

interesting point lad

>Those should be French. If not then you need to fuck right off.
And Siberia should be Russian, and California should be American?

wew

conservative fuck

Because France do not tolerate anything that isn't France, ergo you're French, not a jewish or a catho french, you're french and it end here every others manifestation of non-french stuff is shunned upon, french are THE nation-state, state and the nation are the samething and it destroy any kind of separatism, also fuck multiculturalism.

It's the other way around. Again compare with HRE.

>If it wasn't for those centralizing Prussians and their heirs, the Nazis, no one would think anything bad of Germany
Nobody would think anything, of Germany, it simply wouldn't exist.

Yes? lol wtf

>Hate multiculturalism
>Hate catholicism

Is France /pol/:the state?

>France is not a civilisation

France IS civilization.

>Yes? lol wtf
right of conquest it is then
hehe, I simultanously love and hate the smug French attitude

They were bolshevist freemasons and probably jewish aswell.

King and country not egalitee and fraternitee ok.

Vichy France best France.

y'all were a big part of it as we know it today. im hoping you guys take your fucking country back. france is wonderful and i would hate to see all that wonderful culture go the way of the dodo