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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

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,

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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.

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 -

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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

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.

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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

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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,

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and when there are too
many people for the

2:54
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

3:47
big houses or private
planes, or getting

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good educations, or spending
on election

3:54
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

4:02
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

4:10
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

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

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high school graduate, and
that amount is $25,000,

6:15
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

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

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it challenged the existing
centers of

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

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Now I think we may be
seeing the second

7:12
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

7:45
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

8:00
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

8:08
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,

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

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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,

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

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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,

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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

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

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showed up in Turchin's
book and I found quite

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

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This kind of takes one of
the critiques of the

10:35
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

10:45
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

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

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They dominated Congress,
they dominated

11:08
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

11:33
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

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,

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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

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

12:18
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

12:29
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

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

12:48
Good night.