Peter Turchin on End Times
I have finished listening to End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin. Turchin comes out swinging on the first page asserting that history can be pursued scientifically. The first appendix digs a little more into why he thinks cliodynamics is the answer to the ancient question of whether history can be a science. I find it strange that Turchin cites two fictional examples—cliology from Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind, and Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory—but does not seriously engage with the significant literature in history, historiography, and philosophy of history that explicitly takes up this question.
In any case, Turchin argues that societies pass through integrative periods (marked by income compression) and disintegrative periods (marked by income disparity). Disintegrative periods are largely driven by popular immiseration and elite overproduction, the latter process largely driven by what he calls the “wealth pump,” which sluices most of a society’s wealth to the elites when these elites serve only their own interests exclusively instead of the interests of wider society. Getting the wealth pump under control is one of his policy prescriptions.
At several points in the book I was saying to myself, “But what about…?” and then he took up the objection I had in mind. For example, in his discussion of popular immiseration I was wondering about those who argue that things have never been better, and then he discussed exactly this objection. So, for that, I give him credit. On the other hand, his normie assumptions (he cites the ADL, the SPLC, and the NYT as though they are credible sources) blind him to certain developments in society. For example, he cites some elite financial publications as promoting “market fundamentalism” and discusses how injurious he believes this to be. And not too many years ago this was true, but all of the elite organs of opinion now follow the same ideological line, and it certainly isn’t market fundamentalism. (Are ESG scores and DIE mandates “market fundamentalism”?)
I have run into something like this on several occasions, and I always take the opportunity to throw it back in the face of anyone who utters something they think can be passed off as common knowledge and will not be challenged. The most glaring example of this, as far as I am concerned, is the common claim that the captains of the tech industry are “libertarian.” Again, some years ago this was the case, but now the technology industry is onboard with the same party line ideology as all other institutions. I recently pointed this out in a discussion, when someone brought up this talking point, so I said that the technology industry has produced the most elaborate censorship regime in human history, and my point was acknowledged. Turchin doesn’t make the libertarian tech bro claim, but the claim that elite organs of the financial industry are promoting “market fundamentalism” is comparable.
I have a lot of sympathy for elite theory, and have discussed it (for example, in newsletter 227), but I think it requires some tweaks to get it right. While Turchin does recognize the role of both the one percent (and, he often adds, the 0.10 percent) and the ten percent, which latter largely consists of aspirant elites, I think that elite theory could benefit from a greater focus on these classes and the differences between the two. The relation of the one percent, the true elites, and the ten percent, the aspirant elites, is like that in fiction between vampires and the human beings who serve them. Vampires possess the special power of their undead status, and the human beings who serve vampires have none of these powers, but are promised to gain these powers if they faithfully serve the vampires.
The existence of a class of aspirant elites who feel they are on track to ultimately join the elites, but only if they obey, creates a class of persons who are willing to do anything to please their masters. This is a promise that is held out, but is always vulnerable to being snatched away at any moment, whether by circumstance or by the whim of the vampire elite—as such, the ten percent constitute a different kind of precariat (a power precariant rather than an income precariat). Because of this tantalizing promise, seemingly within reach, but always potentially withdrawn, the aspirant elites who have been allowed into the charmed circle of power, even if they do not yet themselves wield power, may be more vicious and craven than the elites themselves. To take a real world example (not vampires and the supernatural), when dictators like Stalin or Kim Jong-Il hold absolute power of life and death over their subjects, these subjects vie with one another to prove their loyalty. No one wants to be seen as the first to cease clapping, and so the applause goes on and on.
The larger pool of aspirant elites consists both of those who are on track to real elite status, and those who have no realistic hope of “success” so defined. The further into the margin of potential power we trace the aspirant elites, the more desperate they are to prove their loyalty to the elites, and so it is we find that lower-level functionaries are the most brutal and unapologetic in their enforcement of the dictates of the elites; they are hanging on to their potential elite status by a mere thread. These contemptible actions of the aspirant elites in their quest to retain their grasp on potential power serve as a kind of self-hazing and self-blackmail, by which their perspective on the world is irredeemably damaged. They cannot understand that others despise them for the lies they tell, because they can no longer recognize them as lies. The aspirant elites, on the other hand, who have no possibility of ultimately joining the elites, have their perspective sharpened by the bitterness of the denial of their (potential) elite status. They can see all-too-clearly the transformation of their former fellows and take a certain pride in not having engaged in the same craven behavior of the aspirant elites who are confident in ultimately gaining power.
Where this touches on Turchin’s argument is that quite a larger pool of aspirant elites see themselves as viable candidates for elite status than would be apparent from their place on the fringes of the outer party. Turchin discusses the difference between two bumps in the income distribution of lawyers, noting that being a lawyer is not sufficient to be a viable aspirant elite, and that the two groups—viable and non-viable aspirants—are separated by their average income. But I think the important lesson to take away here is that even the lawyers in the lower income bump are not likely to break ranks with the lawyers in the upper income bump (any number of psychological and sociological arguments could be made to show this).
The power of the elites is largely maintained through the threat of what happens to those who break ranks with the elite’s preferred narrative (exemplary justice is meted out to those who break ranks), and this serves to corral all aspirant elites, and not only the viable aspirants. How far down does this extend through society? Morgoth recently wrote that, “The primary function of journalists in the modern West is to tell lies on behalf of Power and hold the weak and powerless to account.” Morgoth humorously compares narrative policing to a superorganism, and says that journalists are the lowest caste of the superorganism. That is how far down it extends. Marxists had a similar niche in their social ecology, which they called the Lumpenproletariat.
