In a previous post I listed some books on social change, indicating that I hoped to get around to reviewing them. They were
Neither Vertical nor Horizontal – theories of political organisation by Rodriguez Nunes (2021) who is interviewed here
Augmented Humanity – being and remaining agentic in a digitised world by Peter Bryant (2021). One of these annoying academic books which disfigures every second sentence with (bracketed) name references which require you to consult the end of each chapter. How AI is used is a fundamental issue which deserves better than this. John Naughton has just recommended this short paper on the risks of Artificial Intelligence which includes Geoff Hinton as one of the authors
World Protests – study of key protest issues in the 21st Century I Oriz et al (2022). A slim book which focuses on description. What I missed was any attempt to offer advice or theorise
If we Burn – the mass protest decade and the missing revolution by Vincent Bevins (2023) interviewed by Chris Hedges here and by DIG here . I have to confess that these interviews really put me off the book – with Bevins coming across a rather arrogant young man
End Times – elites, counterelites and the path of political disintegration by Peter Turchin 2023 with Turchin interviewed by Aaron Bastani. The most fascinating book not least because it uses Big Data to challenge our understanding of history. Tuchin graduated in zoology and biology but has grown out of these disciplines to venture in the last 2 decades into the field of history
I want to concentrate on “End Times” mainly because it is the more over-arching of the books, looking not at internal aspects of political organisation but rather on how various changes have come together to threaten the future of civlisation as we know it.
What, then, is this model? To put it somewhat wonkily, when a state, such as the United States, has
stagnating or declining real wages (wages in inflation-adjusted dollars),
a growing gap between rich and poor,
overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees,
declining public trust, and
exploding public debt,
these seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. In the United States, all of these factors started to take an ominous turn in the 1970s. The data pointed to the years around 2020 when the confluence of these trends was expected to trigger a spike in political instability. And here we are.
“I will look across human history for examples, but my primary goal is to speak to how we have slid into our current age of discord, with the United States as my empirical focus”.
Because the crisis has deep historical roots, we’ll need to travel back in time to the New Deal era, when an unwritten social contract became part of American political culture. This informal and implicit contract balanced the interests of workers, businesses, and the state in a way similar to the more formal, explicit tripartite agreements in Nordic countries. For two human generations, this implicit pact delivered unprecedented growth of broadly based well-being in America. At the same time, the “Great Compression” dramatically reduced economic inequality. Many people were left out of this implicit pact—Black Americans, in particular, a fact I will address in some detail. But overall, for roughly fifty years the interests of workers and the interests of owners were kept in balance in this country, such that overall income inequality remained remarkably low.
But the social pyramid has now grown top-heavy. We now have too many “elite aspirants” competing for a fixed number of positions in the upper echelons of politics and business. In our model, such conditions have a name: elite overproduction. Together with popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and the intraelite conflicts that it has engendered, has gradually undermined our civic cohesiveness, the sense of national cooperation without which states quickly rot from within. Growing social fragility has manifested itself in collapsing levels of trust in state institutions and unraveling social norms governing public discourse—and the functioning of democratic institutions.
This is, of course, a bare-bones summary. The meat of the book will unpack these ideas, relate them to the statistical trends for key economic and social indicators, and trace some archetypal human stories of people buffeted by these social forces. Although my focus here is primarily on America and Americans, the book will make forays into other parts of the world and into previous historical eras. Again, our crisis in America is not without precedent; we are in a position to learn from our past.
Interviews with Turchin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcrbz4EoTfw&ab_channel=INETOxford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R-AotyKPDU&ab_channel=UncertainThings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsbLZYDWLfQ&t=29s&ab_channel=TheRealignment
I don't think the US conforms with what is claimed. I think that since the 1970's, US living standards have improved considerably. The range of goods and services available to US households are incomparable to those of the 1970's, which look primitive by comparison. In fact, even some of the tech of Star Trek looks clunky compared to that available to the present day US citizen.
ReplyDeleteWhat is true is that the US economy, and US living standards have not risen as fast as those elsewhere in the world. It has suffered relative rather than absolute decline.
Growing inequality between rich and poor (vague terms) is a feature of capitalism, whether its in its dynamic or declining phase, in fact, more in its dynamic, rising phase than the latter. Overproduction of graduates compared to what? I suspect, it does not have enough as its economy becomes even more technological.
Declining public trust can be seen, but tends to move in cycles. I suspect there was little trust during the depression, but that changed in the boom years after WWII.
There is also exploding public debt, but that is largely due to the helicopter money dropped during lockdowns, and previous attempts to boost asset prices via tax cuts and so on. Moreover, its not the absolute level of debt that is significant - UK had huge levels equal to 250% of GDP at the start of the Industrial revolution, and after WWII - but the capacity to service it out of growth.
The problem in the US as elsewhere is that growth has been deliberately curtailed so as to hold down wages and interest rates, so as to boost asset prices. As that is reversed, growth - and so growth of revenues - will finance the debt, despite higher interest rates.