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Good evening. This is
Radio Free Beszel.
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I am Alphonse. Tonight:
elite overproduction.
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You know, it's really
only recently
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that it has become
common opinion
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that the United States and
and the west in general
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are facing a real political
crisis. Not long ago,
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most Americans even on the
left believed that the
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United States was the best
country in the world.
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And most of the explanations
that people give
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involve accusing somebody.
It's always good
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to find someone to blame
and find a moral
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explanation for the problems
of the world.
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And I'm not going to say
those explanations are
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wrong. I'm not going to
say that the leaders or
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the politicians are good
people. But i am going
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to say that there may be
larger forces at work
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when you see a structural
pattern like this. A big change
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is not usually a simple
matter of a few
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bad apples. It's not
as if human beings
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have changed and become worse
in the past 10 or 20
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years. There's probably
something else happening.
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Mathematician turned historian
Peter Turchin
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has an explanation for this.
What he tries to do
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is analyze changes in society
over long periods
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of time and see why they
go through bad periods
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of disintegration and
good periods of
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relative peace and stability
and well-being.
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And in particular he's written
the book, Ages of
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Discord, about the situation
in the United States,
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although he has also in
other books looked at
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other civilizations and
societies around the
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world and throughout history.
And he identifies
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three factors that lead
to instability.
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The first of these is
the well-being of the
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working class or the commoners
or the peasants,
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which he basically proxies
by looking at relative
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wages - in other words of
the overall wealth of
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the society, how much goes
to the workers. As that
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declines, you're likely to
have more instability.
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The second is the fiscal
position of the
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state. Basically, is
there a lot of debt.
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And the third is elite
overproduction -
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in other words, are there
a lot of elites
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or are there a few. If
there are too many,
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then the elites are going
to be competing
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for a few rare politically
powerful or
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influential or wealthy positions
in government,
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private industry and other
institutions. Of
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these, he says elite
overproduction is the
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crucial one when there
have been revolutions
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in history. It's not usually
simply that the
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peasants or the workers
get fed up and rise
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up. They almost always
have elite leadership.
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What happens is when
there are too many
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elites and people trying
to enter the elites,
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a counter elite forms.
Because the elites are
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stratified. Within the elites
there's a huge range
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in wealth between those
at the top of the
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elite and those at the
bottom of the elite,
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and when there are too
many people for the
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positions available the
size of the bottom
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expands. These people want
to fight their way up.
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They want positions opened
up above them so that
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they have opportunity to
succeed. The dynamic that
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causes this to fail, that
causes a problem here,
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he describes, begins in
a period of relative
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well-being - a period
where most people are
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pretty well off - particularly,
the working class.
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But then the elites have
forgotten perhaps that in
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the past there's been
instability as a result of
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too much inequality, start
to take more for this
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themselves. As they do
this, of course, they
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become better off - but they
also grow in number.
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And as they grow in number
they compete with
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one another more and more.
Even more than that,
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it requires more wealth
to remain within the
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elites. The requirements
- whether it's buying
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big houses or private
planes, or getting
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good educations, or spending
on election
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campaigns to win a seat
in congress - the costs
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of being a member of the
elite goes up, and so
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there's more and more need
to take wealth from the
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working classes in order
to keep the game going.
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And so a crisis point
is reached where the
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elites, while taking
more wealth, instead
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of becoming better off
themselves become worse.
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But of course they're not
all becoming worse off:
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some of them are continuing
to do much better
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and better. As I say, the
elites are stratified,
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and they're likely to
break into different
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factions: an establishment
faction
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and one or more factions
that want to
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challenge the establishment
and replace it.
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Turchin says the United States
has experienced two
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"eras of good feelings":
the first in the 1820s,
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the second in the 1950s.
And he says that there's
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a 50-year cycle - roughly
two generations,
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fathers and sons - which
tends to map to a
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relatively stable period
followed by an unstable
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period. And the unstable
periods he identifies
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are the 1860s and 70s -
the 1860s of course are
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when the American Civil War
happened - the 1920s,
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the 1970s, and finally he
predicts he - predicted
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in 2010 - the 2020s. And
of course that means
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he says we're entering another
of these periods
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now. Tturchin makes his
case with graphs and
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math and statistics but to
me this resonates as a
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story that I've heard said
many times about what's
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happening today. I mean in
terms of his statistics
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he looks at things like
the number of lawyers,
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because law is a key entry
point into politics,
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and of course into being
wealthy, also the
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number of people trying
to get into medical
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school and the number of
doctors. Both of these
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have risen significantly
since the 1970s. The
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relative wage of the working
class has declined,
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and of course the United
States is in debt,
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but as far as elite
overproduction goes I checked
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it out. In 2014 30 of university
graduates were
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unable to find a job in their
field. In fact, in
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many colleges most graduates
even 10 years after
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graduation aren't making
as much as the average
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high school graduate, and
that amount is $25,000,
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so we have many students that
are getting into great debt,
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going through school,
coming out the other
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end thinking they did
all the right things,
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and they're not succeeding
because there's no
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spot for them. Now Turchin
says that typically
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in history what happens is
the counter elite - the
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elites on the bottom who
want to climb up - ally
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themselves with the miserable
working class or
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the peasantry and in fact
i think we've seen this,
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in 2011 and 2012 with
the occupy movement.
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The slogan of the movement
was the 99 percent
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against the one percent,
but in fact most of the
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people leading that movement
were young. They were
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university educated they,
were urban, they were
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less 99 than 10 percent or
20 percent themselves.
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But occupy fell apart and
occupy was shut down
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by the authorities. It
challenged the banks,
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it challenged the existing
centers of
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power and it wasn't allowed
to continue.
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Now I think we may be
seeing the second
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phase of this, where
basically the same
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group has taken on a
second cause, saying
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that they represent
the marginalized,
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and this is the basis for
social justice. But on
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a large scale it seems to
be targeting the same
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aim - which is to challenge
the existing elites.
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At least that's what they
think they're doing.
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Well, I happened to come
across even before I
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read Turchin another book
that had a worrying
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comparison, and that was
Götz Aly's book, Why
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the Germans? Why the Jews?,
which is a prehistory
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of the Holocaust in Weimar
Germany between
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the wars. Something very
similar happened.
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You see, the Weimar Republic
was liberal and they
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opened up access to education.
Many people - many
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families - who had not
been able to afford to
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send people to school before
now were able to
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send their sons to college
and to university.
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But what they found was
there was always
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already a group that was
extremely successful
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- and that was the Jews.
In the 19th century,
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the Jewish students in Germany
proved that they
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were far superior on average
to Ggerman students.
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In 1886, for example, in
Prussia, the largest
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of one of the largest
states in Germany,
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the population was only
one percent Jewish but
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10 percent of university
students were Jewish,
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and the result was
that they were
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taking the white-collar
jobs.
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Now Germany at this point
was a new country,
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it was newly modernizing.
These white-collar
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jobs were the new hot thing,
and in 1900 eleven
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percent of Jews with jobs
had white-collar jobs,
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compared with only three
percent of Christians.
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You can imagine how the students
felt about this,
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because they were facing
the same thing then
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that American students
are today. In 1931,
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32 percent of university
grads in Germany
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were unable to get jobs
in their field,
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and there were projections
the situation would get
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worse to the point that Germany
would need three
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times as many jobs as it
already had in order to
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absorb all the students going
through university.
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And who did they blame?
Well, one of
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the groups they blamed
was the Jews.
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It's not surprising that
university students
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were among the first to
jump on the Nazi Party
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to support it vigorously.
And the Nazi Party
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itself was made up of people
like this. In 1930,
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the average age of a party
member was 29 - much
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younger than the age of
members of the other
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parties. And these people
weren't people who
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felt they had fallen -
they weren't people in
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the middle classes who felt
that they were losing
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their privileges - no, these
were people who were
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among the first of their
families to be climbing
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up the pole, the first
to go to university,
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the first to go to college
- people from
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small towns and villages
who'd gone to school,
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gone to the city, and
hoped to get good
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jobs. That was the core
of the Nazi Party,
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and what these people
wanted, what the
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students wanted, and what
the Nazis wanted,
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one of the things they
they pursued was to
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free up spaces for them
and for people like
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them to enter the elites.
And the way they
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wanted to do that was
to kick the Jews out.
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Well it's a pretty dire
comparison, so let me
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give a little bit more
positive one one that
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showed up in Turchin's
book and I found quite
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unexpected: which was the
American Civil War.
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This kind of takes one of
the critiques of the
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American Civil War and and
partly flips it on as
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its head. One of the critiques
is that the union
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didn't enter the war to
free the slaves - and
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that's absolutely correct.
Lincoln said he was
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not aiming for abolition,
and most northerners
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were not abolitionists.
What they objected
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to wasn't so much slavery
as slave power.
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What they didn't like was
that the the planters in
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the South, with their huge
population of slaves,
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not only ruled the South
but had tremendous
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control in the United
States as a whole.
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They dominated Congress,
they dominated
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the Senate, they dominated
the economy.
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But new elites were rising
up, associated with industry
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and with high technology
- the high technology
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of the day being the railroads.
And they were
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looking for an opening
for themselves. They
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wanted to take down the
existing Southern elite
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and take their place. When
the civil war came up,
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they were able to jump on
a moral justification
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for what they wanted anyway,
which was the
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abolition of slavery.
So you can take this
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as a negative thing, saying
they weren't really
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doing it for the slaves,
or you can take it as a
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positive thing saying that
a historical force
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of elite competition and
elite overproduction
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led to an alliance and
a political cause that
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was worthy and eliminated
an evil institution.
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But I think the bigger-picture
point is when
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we look at the problems
that we have today,
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it's not simply a matter
of bad people doing
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bad things. I mean that
may well be true,
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but if we really want to
solve the problem we
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have to address the problem
of elite competition.
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We're putting a huge amount
of resources into
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education. A lot of the
people getting that
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education aren't using it,
so that's wasted money,
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that's wasted resources
for the whole society,
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it's particularly wasted
for them, and although
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i think that it's easy to
say that a small elite
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ruling society is not a
great thing - that's
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certainly how I feel - but
that at the same time
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a large elite maybe
even worse. This is
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Alphonse for Radio free
Beszel, www.beszel.ca.
12:48
Good night.
