there’s also the matter that most of the time, you didn’t have to deal with noble strangers with horses expecting your loyalty (often, not the same nobles and horses as the last ones to come around). There may be the local lord but he had good cause to keep things consistent and open up the grain reserves whenever the winter was bad and crops failed.
But the keen thing that changed in the 20th century is we went from a desperate labor shortage to a labor surplus. There was just tons to do and no giant machines with which to do them. Death was right around the corner: A boar attack here, a bad influenza there, any kind of infection (no antibiotics), so people were dropping dead often enough that every last idiot, hunchback and bastard daughter were celebrated as a strong back that could churn butter or assemble barrels or pitch hay.
In fact, society was so fraught that clergy who knew the deal would look the other way when peasants were rutting like bunnies out of wedlock in springtime. (Stories are told and songs are sung of parish priests who were a bit strict on the sins, and how they had a tendency toward morbid mishap.)
We have crusades and territorial disbutes to thank for higher ranks getting into common business. The Third Crusade (King Richard v. Salah ad-Din) squeezed the peasants hard in England. Then Richard went cooky, disguised himself as a merchant, and was seized for ransom, and a king’s ransom was a lot. So the peasants were squeezed so hard it hurt the earls, and John of England (last of his name to this very day) was already a Trumpian / Neroesque asshole, and the economy was already tanked when Richard died in 1199, and at that point enough people were pissed off at unilateral monarchy they made John sign the Magna Carta at swordpoint. Several times.
And that was the beginning of the end of monarchy.
I have hope for a proletarian revolution, just not a big one. We are not taking the steps necessary to assure the new boss isnt Same As The Old Boss < Pete Townshend shriek >
But when enough people die or we are forced to face our own capitulation with death camps (mass graves will do) or even after a century of EU / China occupation and provisional government, we might want a system that has a truly fair election system and ironclad checks and balances, even an extra-broad distribution of executive power.
Maybe even institutionalized wealth redistribution. (When I was taking [capitalist] macroeconomics 101 in college circa 1985 it was well known how wealth disparity can undermine democratic features of government.)
Or the leopards will eat all our faces. Just all of them. Then the only working class remaining will be imprisoned and forced to work. All the experts will be long dead. And resource reserves will quickly become scant as the ownership class (Ayn Rand’s maker class) will get to experience the truth of Rand’s post-taker society.
And that’s when the paramilitary class will realize they don’t need the ownership class. (See Elysium 2013)
So, if we’re lucky, the revolution will be nonviolent and we’ll squeak by with enough reformation to work towards a multi-party system and get rid of the slave-state–favoring imbalances. It won’t stop the stupid (or the far-right — infused with billionaire cash) trying to demonize intelligentsia and academia, but it’ll allow us to move towards a capitalist state with socialized services and a propensity towards moderate ministers. (Great Britain went this direction and is now seeing deterioration of their system thanks to Tory meddling.)