End Times
Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
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4.1 • 34 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Peter Turchin brings science to history. Some like it and some prefer their history plain. But everyone needs to pay attention to the well-informed, convincing and terrifying analysis in this book.” —Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit.
In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poverty at the bottom and cutthroat elitism at the top breed disaster, according to this scintillating theory of history. Complexity scientist Turchin (Ages of Discord) deploys "cliodynamics"—the study of historical change—to survey revolutions, civil wars, and other upheavals, and assess the likelihood of such unrest in the U.S. in coming decades. His scholarship involves datasets and mathematical models, but he boils it down to a few lucid principles centered around socioeconomic "wealth pumps" that shunt resources from the working class to the rich, resulting in "popular immiseration" and discontent, along with "elite overproduction" of privileged people squabbling over a finite pie of power and status. Turchin applies this framework to many historical settings, including 14th-century France, as well as contemporary American politics, where he explores the resentments of blue-collar white men with declining incomes; the frustration of swelling numbers of college grads who can't land jobs commensurate with their elite diplomas; and the opportunism of "counter-elite" political entrepreneurs like Donald Trump, who radicalize working-class populists from the right or degree-hoarding progressives from the left. Turchin's elegantly written treatment looks beneath partisan jousting to class interests that cycle over generations, but also yields timely policy insights. It's a stimulating analysis of antagonisms past and present, and the crack-up they may be leading to.
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