Proclaim Republic!

In today’s edition of Swedish broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet, one of the editorial writers shows a sharp mind (N.B. irony!). We are supposed to fight the Act on Employment Security, rather than the monarchy, if we want to fight for freedom. Paulina Neuding’s arguments are contradictory at best, but a venomous critic would call it some kind of intellectual hara-kiri. She has obviously forgotten or is ignorant of the other two parts used in the motto of the French Revolution of 1789.

Today we celebrate the 220th Anniversary of the honorable French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille in 1789. It is also the National Day of France. It is only in Sweden (some of us) go on celebrating the revolutionary traitor, the Count of Pontecorvo’s descendants. The Revolution of 1789 meant that the republic was re-instigated on European soil and thereby the road towards political renewal lay reopened. Many of the things and practices we take for granted and identify with modernity today have their origin in the French Revolution. It is not thanks to monarchy that we have the society we have today; it is in spite of it!

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC.) explained in a pedagogic manner why monarchy is amongst the worst possible ways to rule human societies; simply because the selection process that lead to who should rule the state is inadequate. Breeding simply did not work in that respect and in the end monarchy will only produce a sample of degenerated morons. Aristotle himself preferred aristocratic rule, because it led a group of enlightened people to appoint the most appropriate to rule the state.

The Florentine diplomat and political scientist Niccoló Machiavelli (1469-1527) has wrongly been accused to promote tyranny, despotism and monarchy. Those who claim this usually have been reading The Prince (1531), in rather a superficial and ahistoric manner. Machiavelli wrote several other works, among them we find Discorsi (1531; The Discourses in English translation), which is an intellectual rehabilitation, since an Italian intellectual cannot reject a republican constitution and still keep his image as a genuine intellectual. Machiavelli claims that in all states, except those with the most chaotic, anarchic and despotic ruled, the republican rule is preferable to all other systems. The rule of a prince should only be used when the people is not yet ready for republican rule. The reason for this is that they are not yet ready to take on the responsibilities needed from republican citizens.

The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1803) wrote in his Perpetual Peace (1795) on how democratic rule was preferable, because all forms of absolutism and despotism only leads humanity into war and despair. He ought to have known, living in Prussia under an absolute monarchy. War would be terminated according to Kant if all countries turned democratic and followed the democratic principles. Within the democratic principles hereditary monarchy had and has no place.

The arguments described above are important parts of the intellectual heritage for promoting republican rule. There is also another type of arguments, which relates to the French Revolution and its motto: Liberty, equality, fraternity. According to these paroles we are in principle able to claim, if we exchange the last one with community, that every rule that contradicts these slogans, promotes some kind of overt or overt oppression. Nobody is foolish enough to claim that the republican rule is per se a perfect ruling system, but it is superior to monarchy. To claim that monarchy is incomprehensible with the slogans does not need any thorough argumentation, as the principles of monarchy suggest: Submission, inequality, privilege. The French Revolution creates the citizen and thereby replaces the subject, who is the image of how monarchs have gazed upon people throughout the ages.

The Swedish monarchy and its place in our history has been determined through a series of coup d’états, which has marginalized the other parts of society, so let us now get rid of monarchy while we still can, and throw it into the waste dump of history, where it belongs.


For these reasons I today celebrate the 220th Anniversary of the French Revolution and eagerly awaits the instigation of the Republic of Sweden.

Sources: Aristotle (1996) The Politics; Niccoló Machiavelli (1531) The Prince; Niccoló Machiavelli (1531) The Discources; Immanuel Kant (1795) The Perpetual Peace.