#22 - Kamil Galeev

0:00Kamal, welcome to the Network State Podcast. Thank you so much. Nice to see you. So you've got a very interesting voice on X and a voice on Substack. And I think we're both sort of, I don't know, politically idiosyncratic kind of people who like to sort of see things from a distance. And we've carried on discussion over the last few years and so on and so forth. Do you want to introduce yourself for the audience for those people who don't know? You're CamilleKazani.Substack.com. I think you're, go ahead. Yeah. So thank you so much for introduction. My name is Camille Galeev. and I'm writing a pen name, Kamil Kazani.

0:35Okay, great. I know whether you wanted to say what your pen name was, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So originally I'm from Russia. I'm a Kazan Tatar. So that is where my nickname is coming from. And I'm primarily interested in the social institutions and how they work, in their dynamics. And at this point, my primary focus of interest is revolution. So basically, when transformative social change happens, how and why. And I find it really interesting and promising, partially because in modern discourse, revolution and coup, they have a sort of like theological or religious meaning, a sort of like miracle just in social sphere.

1:15So what I find interesting and promising is just trying to parse it into a sort of like more mechanic sequence of events just to see like how it is happening in real time. And that is what I'm primarily interested in right now. Okay, got it. And so the thing is, you mentioned you're, you know, you have a Tatar background or Tatar background. Is it Tatar or Tatar? Oh, no. How should I pronounce it? Okay. So I find that interesting and helpful because basically, you know, for example, when I'm understanding China, I will try to read things from a Chinese nationalist perspective or Chinese communist perspective, but also from a Chinese liberal perspective.

1:54and that I could kind of triangulate and figure out, you know, like views from that. And so I like reading your views and I kind of, you know, can contrast that from the Russian nationalist perspective or the Estonian perspective. And it's helpful because I think then you can sort of triangulate and figure things out. And there are a few of your posts over the years I found insightful. And so one that you did recently was a very good one where you basically said something like, people think that what a revolution means is everybody's free and so on. That's how it's always promised. But the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution were followed by extreme regimentation and a marked loss of freedom.

2:37Right. And maybe you can talk about that. Yes, I think that is indeed somewhat counterintuitive and kind of may sound as a sort of heresy to most people. But I think it is pretty obvious, because if we look at the countries where some sort of like great fundamental revolutions happened, that really shook the political order from the upside down. that could be Russia in 1917, or it could be France in 1789, or some could even say it's England in 1642, we would see the pattern. And the pattern is, in these countries, we have a capital, which is clearly a capital, and very pronounced. It's the largest city in the country.

3:24And basically everyone hits on the Bay Street. So basically one, and that is the first pattern we see, is that revolutions really happen only in monocentric countries. So usually what we see in countries like the US in 19th century - There has to be a London, a Moscow, or a Paris where there's like a clear capital. Okay. And in the US in 1860s, there was nothing like that. I would even say that in China in the early 20th century, one reason why Russian revolution, it basically happened in a blink of an eye. And in China, there was long and bloody civil war for decades. Is that China just did not have this pronounced capital in a sense that St.

4:04Petersburg was. Well, it was preceded by the warlord era, right? So that almost was by definition, like the Chinese Civil War was preceded by the warlord era. And so that was almost like definitionally decentralized, right? Well, one could say that originally when they overthrew monarchy, like see higher revolution, that that was the beginning of it. But basically, that is what's interesting, what happens. So in China, they overthrow monarchy, and the power just breaks down. And you immediately have lots of regimes and statelets. So it's not like someone else can see this power. And my understanding is that revolution is something very different.

4:39That is what happened in France or in Russia. It's where there's a pre-built omnipotence. It falls into other hands. But for that, you need to have it in the first place. Yeah. So, I mean, a better term then for revolution is really, perhaps from the corporate world, hostile takeover. I think that is a not bad, I think that is not bad framing. I am really enjoying it. Because a hostile, go ahead. You can use that if you want, if you find that good. Yeah. No, I think it's really a great comparison. I'm now really enjoying reading Tocqueville. So he's primarily known in the Angle phone world as the author of Democracy in America.

5:16Democracy in America. The one who wrote on American political institutions. Right. But what else has he done? Actually, I don't know. It's a good ruver. Half year, he wrote on his home country, on French Revolution. It's pretty interesting because he originally did not intend to. He wanted to write on Napoleon. But as it often happens, so he tried to, when you are writing about Napoleon and his career, you kind of have to dive into the revolution. Yeah. when you're diving into the revolution you become like interested in how it happened in the first place so it's interesting because he never really finished his book on napoleon but he finished a great and interesting volume one of his future intended multi-volume history that was basically mostly on louise the 14th on the sun kings and his administrative reforms so basically the great point of tecville what he was writing about is that really it was the kings of france who did all the preparatory groundwork for the revolution.

6:12Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum Sort of like the SAR arguably for... Yeah. Shiva Maharaj Kontinuum So why, in what sense did they do the preparatory groundwork? In the classical sense of, oh my God, they impoverish everybody or in some other sense? I think it's more interesting than that. So basically, what is one of original Takvil's ideas? So basically, usually when we talk about revolution, we kind of put it into a position to the old regime. So there was this ancient regime, kind of monarchist regime, then kaboom, and then republic takes its place. De Quil is suggesting something more interesting.

6:48So if before the republic there was ancient regime, then the old regime, then what was before the old regime? Because we don't really think that in the entire monarchic period, that's like from Middle Ages, from something like 1800s to the almost aid of esteem that France was governed exactly the same way. It's just impossible. So he's saying that when we say old regime, angxiang regime, we usually mean absolute monarchy. I'm the king, I decide everything. But it's not how it used to be in the Middle Ages. So before the absolute monarchy, before the extreme centralization of power, that really happened only very, very late in history, there used to be a very different medieval order.

7:33So absolute monarchy, it built itself upon the medieval order and its ruins. So how did it look like? So how was France governed, and like many Western European countries governed in fact, before the absolute monarchy? In Tocqueville's mind, he defines it as aristocracy with elements of democracy. So this may sound somewhat like bizarre and weird and logically contradictory, but that is primarily because the medieval order was indeed contradictory. So first of all, over most of the country, of course, the ultimate power belongs to nobles. So kind of noble landowners, aristocrats of high pedigree who control the land, who control peasants, and who basically execute all the power on the ground.

8:22Police, judicial, administration, politics, military, it all really belongs to the nobles. So even if in theory, France is governed by the king, in practice, in far off provinces and like far away from the royal power, you will not be real to do, you will not be ready to do anything against the will of the local aristocrats who really hold all the power on the ground. So they are like small gods in their provinces. And that is one of the most characteristic element of medieval order that basically all of us kind of know and we call it feudalism. But it was not all limited to feudalism. It was pretty interesting.

9:06So a part of countryside where mostly the ultimate power belonged to nobles. We had cities, we had towns. Some of these towns had overlords, like maybe bishops or dukes, but many of them and maybe actually most of them were republics. That is quite interesting. And again, maybe it sounds kind of unusual and unexpected in reference to... Republics in what sense of the term? Because you mean in specific sense. I think the best way to frame it is comparative with their polis, with the city-states of antiquity. Because when we think of city-states, we usually think of Sparta, of Corinthus, I don't know, of ancient Rome, of Carthagher.

9:55But in reality, in Middle Ages, cities and towns in Western Europe, they functioned very often in somewhat similar manner. So while the power of the king exists, in terms of everyday governance, it is more theoretical. And in practice, in practice, cities and towns, they had great degree of internal autonomy. How they are governed? Well, that's a different question. So some of them are more oligarchic. So in some, basically, local governments are controlled by rich merchants. In others, it's more democratic, with much greater saying of like working classes or urban classes. But basically everywhere, it's some sort of electoral democracy, but not quite in the middle, in modern sense.

10:41When they vote, and when the opinion of different classes and different guiles, different corporations, it weighs differently. And so, you know, this is actually similar in some ways, you know, the Chinese concept of the mountains are high and the emperor is far away, that the king would have formal authority, but the technology of the time limited the extent to which he could monitor all of these villages and towns and so on and so forth. So sort of an obligate sense in which power was decentralized because he couldn't monitor everything. He couldn't enforce everywhere. He didn't have cameras everywhere or communication, you know, telephones or whatever, everywhere.

11:20So many of these things sort of had to develop their own governance. And maybe the king could overrule it with his knights or what have you. But in practice, a lot of decisions had to be made and were made locally. Is that roughly correct? I think to a greater degree, I agree with you. So basically, indeed, and that is one difference, for example, the power of baron, it was usually much, much more real. So if a city is governed by a count, it is really governed by a count. But if it is governed by a king, it usually means it is not really governed by anyone. He's far away. Right. So that's interesting.

11:55So a federal, it's kind of like, you know, the concept of a union territory. In India, for example, there's some territories that are directly governed by the federal government and others that have state governments and local governments. And so interestingly, the one that's, quote, directly governed by the king is, in your view, the one that's not governed because the king doesn't have time to govern it. But the other ones, governed by a count or a baron, are actually governed because the baron or count has nothing else to do. Right? So it's roughly like almost the number of people that fold in to the person.

12:26Is that correct? I think this is one way to put it. But it's not only about the lack of capacity and capacity of enforcement. What else is it? It's also about constitution, about legal mechanisms. So basically all of these towns, they have their local laws. They have their own charters. So there is this bizarre legal world, which is not really uniform yet. So basically some territories, they are governed more, especially in the south of France, they are governed more according to Roman law, according to the written law, especially in In the north, it's more like some kind of like customary, more like Germanic systems of legislation.

13:05So basically territories and townships and villages that are located miles away, they could have completely different systems of governance and of law and of constitution that are not even like brought to some kind of uniform standard yet. That will happen like many centuries later.

13:25So, and third interesting institution, and which is especially important in the context of France, it is of that of Western European countries. France, it had an unusually important and unusually bloated significance of legal profession. So at some point, at some point, judiciary, and it is called local parliaments because in England parliament, it was kind of legislative, it was like kind of Congress. And in France, it referred to judicial bodies. They usurped a great degree not only of judicial, but also of legislative authority. So how it was, and I'll just give you an example because it shows, it well illustrates, I think, the bizarreness and weirdness of the old medieval order.

14:15So, for a royal decree to become a law, it must be registered in the Parliament of Paris, in its judicial body of Paris. So, King is sending order, and it often happens, it's completely normal, that Parliament doesn't want to register it and gives it objections. He sent another order, bless you, and the Parliament sends its objections, and this kind of fight can go on and on and on and on, with many objections by our Parliament. But finally, yeah, a king can put a stopper to it. If he comes personally to parliament, he can just order them to register it. And then it's the end of it. But, paradoxically enough, they can still give their remonstrances and they can still protest.

14:56It's not they can do anything. No, it will be registered. The royal will become the law. But they can still protest and say how it's bad and illegal and everything, and unjust. So while they could not... And in practice, what does that mean? It gives him hesitation because he knows that they're complying, but they're doing so against their will. And so therefore their compliance will be, you know, letter of the law rather than spirit of the law. Right. Because he's not going to get, you know, whatever he's ordering, he may get what he orders, but not beyond that. And it may be subtly sabotage.

15:34Is that kind of the thinking as to why he'd want their full consent without the remonstrance? I think this is one framing, and there's a lot of truth in that. And another part is that all of the judicial bodies, part of their power was that they were simply becoming focal of more general descent. Sometimes by township populaces, just by urban people, and sometimes by aristocracy. Because basically it was giving like other oppositional groups and fractions some sort of kind of centered group around. So, from the perspective of French monarchy, I would say these three were three primarily challenges to their power.

16:16So three primary internal security threats. And starting from somewhere like 16th century, but especially under the Sun King, under Louis XIV, the monarchy basically breaks the back of all three institutions, submitting them to its power. But it is an interesting and, again, somewhat bizarre process. So what could the king do? So I have great nobles, I have independent towns that are governed by their own elected governments and that may have their own opinion on politics, and three is judicial bodies. like theoretically, theoretically speaking, I could have abolished them, but it would be suboptimal.

17:07So basically, as Mukavelle put it, there is nothing more dangerous than replacing the old order and the old habits with the new. It's just probably not going to pass. So they, and by they I mean primarily the Sun King, Louis XIV, did something more interesting than that. So you have this traditional medieval constitution and traditional medieval institutions of France that governed the country till then, and you don't abolish them. They keep their power, they keep their prestige, they keep their glory. But you are building a parallel set of institutions, a parallel government that is not rooted in any tradition, that is not rooted in any custom law, and depends upon your will only, exclusively.

17:54You build a parallel government near the old one. So, let me give you an example. However, the French province was governed before. So here's a province. It is governed by, well, its governor. Governor is always a great noble. He's some kind of duke or count or baron. He usually governs the same province where he grew up in, where he holds his estates. He's connected by many familial and other links with the local nobility. And he just, by the virtue of his birth and of his family, he commands great respect and loyalty among the local population. And on top of that, he gets an official right to command by the name of the king.

18:42And realistically speaking, it just becomes, it is too much. It is too much because you're uncontrollable. So imagine you are Duke. you have like a small private army of yourself already and now you become a governor how to control you so imagine there is some kind of conflict between the king and the governor whom will the popular support truth is that very very often they'll support the governor because he's he's already there for the elite hmm and the locality of it yes and he's kind of rooted in all this noble worlds and he probably can like drag many of the nobles onto his side if he's alone that is not a big problem king is more powerful than any governor but imagine if he's not imagine if there is a group of governors now like theoretically they can replace king like in theory they can replace monarchy and that is indeed what could have happened in the early years of louis 14th because when young Louis XIV faced a coalition of nobles and it looked like they could have potentially toppled him.

19:50So basically he was a prisoner for a brief period of time. So when he became adult and decided to do something with it, he did not leave them of their office, he did not display them. So basically all these offices continued and usually it was still great nobles who were ruling them. but in parallel to that he built a separate hierarchy um so basically he was sending there he was sending the other guys and these guys were called intendants so who are these dance you have a royal council in paris this royal council it is never composed of nobles of nobles never it's always ignoble people of commoner origin usually who have some roots in bureaucracy in the administrative profession, but they're never rich.

20:42They never have any noble connections, and they compose a center of royal administration. So... Well, okay. So let me, first of all, this is very helpful. Let me ask you a few questions based on some of the other, just, this is actually very good color. So the relevance of your post the other day, just coming back to that post, the one on like revolutions are actually more like my paraphrase hostile takeovers that actually a revolution which can be conceptualized as a hostile takeover that installs a new harsh order is actually the better outcome relative to the multipolarity which is really just anarchy right like when no faction actually has the power to impose a revolution you get warlord era you get multipolarity you get anarchy that's actually even worse than a revolution.

21:36That is one interesting way to put it. You saw that is kind of - I think you said something like that. I've come to a similar conclusion. Go ahead. That is an interesting idea. And I think there's like lots of truth in that. You know, and that is indeed what our intuition kind of tells us. So basically, if there's some big boss, maybe good or bad boss, it's kind of better than when there is like a hundred bosses and they're fighting each other.

22:04So, and that kind of matches our intuition. So there is, for example, some kind of great empire, let's say Roman Empire, it breaks down into warlordism. And then, in theory, some other empire can be rebuilt again from this warlordism. I think it is partially true because indeed, probably experiences of most humans, they are worse at the times of breakdown of empires uh at the times when the order breaks down completely then when where is just another warlord and he like kind of assumes power but but you could look at a different way you could look not from individual human perspective but for example from the perspective of kind of long-term trends of history And then one could see that often it is a period of breakdown and often complete collapse, not only of political, but also of economic, logistical and cultural structures.

23:03It is often the times of complete breakdown that become, I would say, highly innovative and kind of give a sort of reset, a sort of recharge just to the general flow of civilization. Great example, European Middle Ages. So although, in fact, the collapse of Roman Empire probably worsened conditions of, I think, almost everyone who lived there, I think that's quite likely true. At the same time, I think that many of the innovations in agriculture, in cavalry again, then probably their sometime later in navigation, that I think the old and sort of stable order was kind of withholding, kind of freezing them on this level, I think they could just blow up, kind of have their chance when the power and the existing like economic and logistical structures break down.

24:08Maybe, maybe. Probably the people of Bronze Age would kill me for that. But I would even argue that the Bronze Age collapse, it played a similar role. There is this weird theory about the history of iron mining and kind of iron work, that basically why people in the ancient Mediterranean switched to iron is not because it was superior. Actually probably for quite a long time iron it was inferior to the bronze. but because the logistical structure they broke down so kind um it all worked based on the very long and very vulnerable supply chains so you bring this team somewhere from england from and when nothing works anymore then you have to work with whatever resources there and people just switch to iron i find this thought very provocative so very often these elements, very often these times of breakdown, they also become times of innovation.

25:11You can kind of deviate from old patterns to the good or to the bad. Right. Exactly. Because the old order goes away and everything that was restricting upward and downward deviation goes away. And you do get a lot of things that are worse off, but you also get the upward deviation, which is being constrained by the old system. um you know on that point by the way i thought you had another very insightful post recently uh it was like the art of not noticing things and um you know on the topic of sort of who's in power versus not you said the reds or the republicans will notice that if somebody says the word censorship they're probably a republican or republican sympathetic but blues won't use that word and why is that and the answer is because blues had been in power so long that they didn't call things by their name and reds were out of power and used to having power used against them so they call things by their name and this is even before trump and in some ways you know is trump in power now kind of you know um you know arguably much more so than he was certainly in the first term but even still habits die hard and i thought there's a very good insight a very good way of phrasing it, that the ones in power basically are like, oh, this is just the way things are.

26:30And the ones out of power assign, you know, they put a sharper label on things. Anyway, I wanted to just note that. I thought that was a very good post. Maybe you have some thoughts on that. I think, yeah, that is a sort of general pattern. And actually, I think that the art of not noticing things and not admitting that you have power, it's actually very good for those in power. So when, for example, like French kings, they in mid 18th century say something like, like the state is me and all the laws come from me and in me alone, like all the power and all the authority lays, that is not very smart.

27:10Like, even if it's really true, you shouldn't say that. And I'll give you an opposite example. When I was reading on Octavian Augustus, so kind as the person who is considered to be the first emperor, he didn't really show off. He didn't really show, he didn't really demonstrate how much power he has. So he walked around Rome in very simple clothes, all sewn by his own wife and daughters, with very simple stick, in very simple shoes, when in a theater, just some kind, some author, he deviated from the play, from the script, and just addressed Octavian, calling him a king. Octavian arose and showed his furious and just in indignation left the theater.

28:06So you should not, he did not allow even a thought that he aims to hold the monarchical power, even though in reality it was probably true. And I think it's interesting because basically this is something I think that perhaps the center right is smarter on this than the quote far right. Because the far right is actually enamored with vibes and, you know, explicit displays of power and all of that kind of stuff. right and you know once in a while maybe you do need an explicit display of power perhaps for a regime to stay in power but you definitely don't want to be doing it all the time because if you do have to do it all the time then you're maybe not in power you know and uh because you have to keep saying how powerful you are blah blah blah number one and number two is you give a target to put on your back and number three so there's a there's a sense also you know in crypto there's constant decentralization.

29:07And enlightened self-interest is in part splitting power so that there isn't one person to target. Of course, if you do that too much, then nobody can make a decision. There's a balance between the two, but there is a balance. And it's not simply that the optimal strategy is always, if there's only one person who can make all decisions, well, there's no robustness. You've got a single point of failure, you know, and you've mentioned this in the context of succession and so on and so forth. Maybe you have some thoughts on that. I agree with you, basically. And yes, it is pretty often that, for example, in regimes that we now retrospectively see as tyrannical or dysportic, they very often had to either work out some sort of internal constitution, some sort of objective rules.

29:56So we kind of rule by law, or at least pretend they have it. One remark, I have not written about it yet, but I wanted some future point. Stalin was never really accepting or showing within the Soviet elite that it's all his personal wimo caprice. He was kind of avoiding this. So when he wanted to give a decision, he wouldn't say, oh, it's my decision because I'm a boss, you may be me. No, no, no, no, he would never do that. He would approach a bookshelf, take a volume of Lenin, find a quote and say let's look what Vladimir Lenin told us about that. And kind of that was the decision. So the pretense was, so we have a constitution, it is something like 50 volumes of Lenin's works, and we obey them and we live by these rules.