Radio Free Beszel

Hitler's Students: Elite Overproduction Then and Now

Alphonse Season 1 Episode 4

When there are too many elites, chaos follows. In essence, this is historian Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction. Tracing the history of civilizations around the world, he finds that an oversupply of elites is one of the strongest predictors of social unrest.

As Götz Aly explains in his book, Why the Germans? Why the Jews?, this is a key part of the what happened in Germany between the wars. In the 1920s, the liberal Weimar government opened up access to universities. Many families sent their sons to study for the first time. By 1931, a third of graduates could not find jobs in their fields. Frustrated Christian students turned on their Jewish counterparts, whose representation in white-collar jobs was out of all proportion to their tiny share of the population.  The Nazis promised affirmative action for Christians and against Jews. Students were among Hitler's first and most fervent supporters.

Turchin argues that the situation is similar in the United States today. There are too many university graduates for too few professional jobs. Disappointed ambition and intense competition appears to be driving unrest today. This explosive combination of anger among young elites explains political upheaval from Occupy Wallstreet to identity politics and the social justice movement.

0:00
Good evening. This is
Radio Free Beszel.

0:03
I am Alphonse. Tonight:
elite overproduction.

0:09
You know, it's really
only recently

0:11
that it has become
common opinion

0:12
that the United States and
and the west in general

0:16
are facing a real political
crisis. Not long ago,

0:19
most Americans even on the
left believed that the

0:22
United States was the best
country in the world.

0:28
And most of the explanations
that people give

0:31
involve accusing somebody.
It's always good

0:33
to find someone to blame
and find a moral

0:35
explanation for the problems
of the world.

0:37
And I'm not going to say
those explanations are

0:40
wrong. I'm not going to
say that the leaders or

0:42
the politicians are good
people. But i am going

0:46
to say that there may be
larger forces at work

0:49
when you see a structural
pattern like this. A big change

0:53
is not usually a simple
matter of a few

0:55
bad apples. It's not
as if human beings

0:57
have changed and become worse
in the past 10 or 20

0:59
years. There's probably
something else happening.

1:04
Mathematician turned historian
Peter Turchin

1:07
has an explanation for this.
What he tries to do

1:10
is analyze changes in society
over long periods

1:13
of time and see why they
go through bad periods

1:16
of disintegration and
good periods of

1:18
relative peace and stability
and well-being.

1:22
And in particular he's written
the book, Ages of

1:25
Discord, about the situation
in the United States,

1:28
although he has also in
other books looked at

1:31
other civilizations and
societies around the

1:33
world and throughout history.
And he identifies

1:37
three factors that lead
to instability.

1:41
The first of these is
the well-being of the

1:43
working class or the commoners
or the peasants,

1:45
which he basically proxies
by looking at relative

1:48
wages - in other words of
the overall wealth of

1:51
the society, how much goes
to the workers. As that

1:54
declines, you're likely to
have more instability.

1:58
The second is the fiscal
position of the

2:00
state. Basically, is
there a lot of debt.

2:03
And the third is elite
overproduction -

2:06
in other words, are there
a lot of elites

2:09
or are there a few. If
there are too many,

2:12
then the elites are going
to be competing

2:14
for a few rare politically
powerful or

2:17
influential or wealthy positions
in government,

2:20
private industry and other
institutions. Of

2:23
these, he says elite
overproduction is the

2:26
crucial one when there
have been revolutions

2:28
in history. It's not usually
simply that the

2:31
peasants or the workers
get fed up and rise

2:33
up. They almost always
have elite leadership.

2:37
What happens is when
there are too many

2:39
elites and people trying
to enter the elites,

2:41
a counter elite forms.
Because the elites are

2:44
stratified. Within the elites
there's a huge range

2:47
in wealth between those
at the top of the

2:49
elite and those at the
bottom of the elite,

2:52
and when there are too
many people for the

2:54
positions available the
size of the bottom

2:56
expands. These people want
to fight their way up.

3:00
They want positions opened
up above them so that

3:03
they have opportunity to
succeed. The dynamic that

3:07
causes this to fail, that
causes a problem here,

3:11
he describes, begins in
a period of relative

3:14
well-being - a period
where most people are

3:16
pretty well off - particularly,
the working class.

3:20
But then the elites have
forgotten perhaps that in

3:23
the past there's been
instability as a result of

3:25
too much inequality, start
to take more for this

3:28
themselves. As they do
this, of course, they

3:31
become better off - but they
also grow in number.

3:35
And as they grow in number
they compete with

3:38
one another more and more.
Even more than that,

3:42
it requires more wealth
to remain within the

3:45
elites. The requirements
- whether it's buying

3:47
big houses or private
planes, or getting

3:51
good educations, or spending
on election

3:54
campaigns to win a seat
in congress - the costs

3:57
of being a member of the
elite goes up, and so

3:59
there's more and more need
to take wealth from the

4:02
working classes in order
to keep the game going.

4:06
And so a crisis point
is reached where the

4:08
elites, while taking
more wealth, instead

4:10
of becoming better off
themselves become worse.

4:13
But of course they're not
all becoming worse off:

4:16
some of them are continuing
to do much better

4:18
and better. As I say, the
elites are stratified,

4:21
and they're likely to
break into different

4:23
factions: an establishment
faction

4:25
and one or more factions
that want to

4:27
challenge the establishment
and replace it.

4:32
Turchin says the United States
has experienced two

4:35
"eras of good feelings":
the first in the 1820s,

4:38
the second in the 1950s.
And he says that there's

4:41
a 50-year cycle - roughly
two generations,

4:45
fathers and sons - which
tends to map to a

4:47
relatively stable period
followed by an unstable

4:51
period. And the unstable
periods he identifies

4:54
are the 1860s and 70s -
the 1860s of course are

4:57
when the American Civil War
happened - the 1920s,

5:02
the 1970s, and finally he
predicts he - predicted

5:06
in 2010 - the 2020s. And
of course that means

5:10
he says we're entering another
of these periods

5:15
now. Tturchin makes his
case with graphs and

5:18
math and statistics but to
me this resonates as a

5:22
story that I've heard said
many times about what's

5:25
happening today. I mean in
terms of his statistics

5:28
he looks at things like
the number of lawyers,

5:30
because law is a key entry
point into politics,

5:33
and of course into being
wealthy, also the

5:35
number of people trying
to get into medical

5:37
school and the number of
doctors. Both of these

5:41
have risen significantly
since the 1970s. The

5:44
relative wage of the working
class has declined,

5:47
and of course the United
States is in debt,

5:51
but as far as elite
overproduction goes I checked

5:55
it out. In 2014 30 of university
graduates were

5:58
unable to find a job in their
field. In fact, in

6:02
many colleges most graduates
even 10 years after

6:07
graduation aren't making
as much as the average

6:10
high school graduate, and
that amount is $25,000,

6:15
so we have many students that
are getting into great debt,

6:18
going through school,
coming out the other

6:20
end thinking they did
all the right things,

6:22
and they're not succeeding
because there's no

6:25
spot for them. Now Turchin
says that typically

6:28
in history what happens is
the counter elite - the

6:30
elites on the bottom who
want to climb up - ally

6:33
themselves with the miserable
working class or

6:36
the peasantry and in fact
i think we've seen this,

6:39
in 2011 and 2012 with
the occupy movement.

6:42
The slogan of the movement
was the 99 percent

6:46
against the one percent,
but in fact most of the

6:48
people leading that movement
were young. They were

6:50
university educated they,
were urban, they were

6:54
less 99 than 10 percent or
20 percent themselves.

6:59
But occupy fell apart and
occupy was shut down

7:02
by the authorities. It
challenged the banks,

7:05
it challenged the existing
centers of

7:07
power and it wasn't allowed
to continue.

7:10
Now I think we may be
seeing the second

7:12
phase of this, where
basically the same

7:14
group has taken on a
second cause, saying

7:16
that they represent
the marginalized,

7:19
and this is the basis for
social justice. But on

7:22
a large scale it seems to
be targeting the same

7:25
aim - which is to challenge
the existing elites.

7:27
At least that's what they
think they're doing.

7:32
Well, I happened to come
across even before I

7:35
read Turchin another book
that had a worrying

7:38
comparison, and that was
Götz Aly's book, Why

7:41
the Germans? Why the Jews?,
which is a prehistory

7:45
of the Holocaust in Weimar
Germany between

7:48
the wars. Something very
similar happened.

7:52
You see, the Weimar Republic
was liberal and they

7:54
opened up access to education.
Many people - many

7:57
families - who had not
been able to afford to

8:00
send people to school before
now were able to

8:02
send their sons to college
and to university.

8:05
But what they found was
there was always

8:08
already a group that was
extremely successful

8:11
- and that was the Jews.
In the 19th century,

8:14
the Jewish students in Germany
proved that they

8:17
were far superior on average
to Ggerman students.

8:21
In 1886, for example, in
Prussia, the largest

8:24
of one of the largest
states in Germany,

8:27
the population was only
one percent Jewish but

8:30
10 percent of university
students were Jewish,

8:34
and the result was
that they were

8:35
taking the white-collar
jobs.

8:38
Now Germany at this point
was a new country,

8:40
it was newly modernizing.
These white-collar

8:42
jobs were the new hot thing,
and in 1900 eleven

8:45
percent of Jews with jobs
had white-collar jobs,

8:49
compared with only three
percent of Christians.

8:51
You can imagine how the students
felt about this,

8:54
because they were facing
the same thing then

8:56
that American students
are today. In 1931,

8:59
32 percent of university
grads in Germany

9:02
were unable to get jobs
in their field,

9:05
and there were projections
the situation would get

9:07
worse to the point that Germany
would need three

9:09
times as many jobs as it
already had in order to

9:12
absorb all the students going
through university.

9:16
And who did they blame?
Well, one of

9:18
the groups they blamed
was the Jews.

9:21
It's not surprising that
university students

9:24
were among the first to
jump on the Nazi Party

9:27
to support it vigorously.
And the Nazi Party

9:31
itself was made up of people
like this. In 1930,

9:35
the average age of a party
member was 29 - much

9:38
younger than the age of
members of the other

9:40
parties. And these people
weren't people who

9:43
felt they had fallen -
they weren't people in

9:45
the middle classes who felt
that they were losing

9:48
their privileges - no, these
were people who were

9:50
among the first of their
families to be climbing

9:53
up the pole, the first
to go to university,

9:55
the first to go to college
- people from

9:58
small towns and villages
who'd gone to school,

10:00
gone to the city, and
hoped to get good

10:02
jobs. That was the core
of the Nazi Party,

10:06
and what these people
wanted, what the

10:08
students wanted, and what
the Nazis wanted,

10:10
one of the things they
they pursued was to

10:13
free up spaces for them
and for people like

10:15
them to enter the elites.
And the way they

10:18
wanted to do that was
to kick the Jews out.

10:22
Well it's a pretty dire
comparison, so let me

10:25
give a little bit more
positive one one that

10:27
showed up in Turchin's
book and I found quite

10:29
unexpected: which was the
American Civil War.

10:32
This kind of takes one of
the critiques of the

10:35
American Civil War and and
partly flips it on as

10:37
its head. One of the critiques
is that the union

10:40
didn't enter the war to
free the slaves - and

10:42
that's absolutely correct.
Lincoln said he was

10:45
not aiming for abolition,
and most northerners

10:48
were not abolitionists.
What they objected

10:51
to wasn't so much slavery
as slave power.

10:54
What they didn't like was
that the the planters in

10:58
the South, with their huge
population of slaves,

11:01
not only ruled the South
but had tremendous

11:04
control in the United
States as a whole.

11:06
They dominated Congress,
they dominated

11:08
the Senate, they dominated
the economy.

11:11
But new elites were rising
up, associated with industry

11:15
and with high technology
- the high technology

11:18
of the day being the railroads.
And they were

11:20
looking for an opening
for themselves. They

11:22
wanted to take down the
existing Southern elite

11:25
and take their place. When
the civil war came up,

11:29
they were able to jump on
a moral justification

11:33
for what they wanted anyway,
which was the

11:36
abolition of slavery.
So you can take this

11:38
as a negative thing, saying
they weren't really

11:41
doing it for the slaves,
or you can take it as a

11:43
positive thing saying that
a historical force

11:46
of elite competition and
elite overproduction

11:48
led to an alliance and
a political cause that

11:52
was worthy and eliminated
an evil institution.

11:57
But I think the bigger-picture
point is when

11:59
we look at the problems
that we have today,

12:02
it's not simply a matter
of bad people doing

12:05
bad things. I mean that
may well be true,

12:08
but if we really want to
solve the problem we

12:11
have to address the problem
of elite competition.

12:14
We're putting a huge amount
of resources into

12:16
education. A lot of the
people getting that

12:18
education aren't using it,
so that's wasted money,

12:21
that's wasted resources
for the whole society,

12:24
it's particularly wasted
for them, and although

12:26
i think that it's easy to
say that a small elite

12:29
ruling society is not a
great thing - that's

12:32
certainly how I feel - but
that at the same time

12:35
a large elite maybe
even worse. This is

12:40
Alphonse for Radio free
Beszel, www.beszel.ca.

12:48
Good night.