Yarvin on the Three Forms of Government

 Curtis Yarvin, AKA Mencius Moldbug, recently summarized power in the following way: 

There are three political forces: monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. Every regime is based on one and suppresses the other two.

Democracy is the strongest but least stable force; truly democratic regimes are rare. Oligarchy is the most stable force; it is especially good at suppressing democracy, because it is especially good at pretending to be democracy. The only threats to an oligarchy are either a foreign oligarchy, or a union of democracy and monarchy—in which democratic energy installs a monarch.

It is very easy to show that, when democratic energy is weak, monarchy is the only possible successor of oligarchy. In general and with only clearly limited exceptions, the first job of any new regime is to dismantle and replace the institutions of the old. Like any other serious task, only unity of command can solve this problem.

Gray Mirror

Yarvin basically understands that most democracy is illegitimate, a fact which Plato recognized in the era before Christ, and something that the American founding fathers more or less knew. 

Yarvin understands that Oligarchs manufacture consent via democratic institutions, which gives us an illusion of a mandate from heaven.

Mandates from heaven actually used to be honest: they were said to come from God! Of course, whether or not they did is up for debate, and we would probably insist that it's impossible that all these different mandates did come from God, but what is perhaps the key to this is the mandate of heaven vis a vis understanding that the heaven being referenced is the metaphysics that govern the cosmos. 

That way, we can abstract the principle enough to make it more universally palatable to different religions, and people who are atheists but recognize the power of immutable principles which govern human nature can likewise feel a certain loyalty to these regimes. 

Monarchy is the third form of government being referenced here. I think that we must interpret this as monarchy in the literal appeal to the mandate of heaven in an undemocratic fashion. In this sense, literal monarchy or more republicanized and fashed out forms of it can be scene as being in the same vein. 

Yarvin says another thing that is very interesting:

Therefore, “democratic energy installs a monarch” is a description of all revolutions—at least, all internal revolutions.

The nature of democratic energy is unstable. It is going to throw into power a Lenin or a Washington, and then it will generally begin to dissipate as the regime consolidates itself. 

The revolution dissipates, but the principles endure.