End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration

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A brilliant big-picture explanation of our age of instability from the pioneering co-founder of Cliodynamics, the ground-breaking science of history Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting thinkers today, has infused the study of history with insights from other fields for over a quarter of a century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and to fall apart. The lessons of 10,000 years of world history are clear, Turchin argues- when the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of the elites, political instability is all but inevitable. Before the industrial era, the imbalance between labour and capital, signaled by growing economic inequality, was usually caused by excessive population growth. For the past 250 or so years, it has been laissez-faire government, technological innovation, globalization and immigration that have tended to disrupt the balance. Whatever the cause, when income inequality surges the common people suffer, and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites. This vicious cycle is the wealth pump - the mechanism that causes both the relative impoverishment of most people and the increasingly desperate competition among elites. The wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations in America and in many Western countries. In historical terms, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is already far along the path to violent political rupture. Time will tell whether Peter Turchin's warning is heeded.

Author Bio

Peter Turchin is Project Leader at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Research Associate at University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Connecticut. Trained as a theoretical biologist, he is now working in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call Cliodynamics. Currently his main research effort is directed at coordinating CrisisDB, a massive historical database of societies sliding into a crisis - and then emerging from it. His books include Ultrasociety and Ages of Discord.