"7/10.

Tl;dr Identity precedes ideology; identity �� ideology.

Identity ('group-based') politics is older than you think, was once recognized as a dominant paradigm of voter behavior in the early 20th c. - and tons of empirical evidence from the last century backs that assertion up and shows the concrete impact of identity ('group-identification') on political behavior and the formation of ideology - and it's here to stay.

The authors also examine, deconstruct, and refute the 'folk theory of democracy' (and the famous spatial, i.e. left-right view, of voting), analyze the impact of random events on voter preferences, and demonstrate that other theories of democracy and voting taken from economics (e.g. ones assuming rational choice theory) fail in practice, namely retrospective voting, where the electorate is so myopic as to only count real income growth in the 2 quarters before an election (out of 16) in deciding whether to keep or replace the incumbent. Nevertheless, too great a neoliberal emphasis is placed on economics as driving voting and economic growth as the be-all, end-all for a hypothetical 'rational voter'.

They have a rather new analysis of the New Deal realignment which argues that the victories of FDR weren't actually approval of his policies, but were accounted for by real income growth in the months leading up to his reelections, delaying 'blind retrospection' - when the depression hit, countries with right wing governments threw them out in favor of leftists; states with left wing governments threw them out in favor of rightists.

The authors demonstrate that group identity and partisanship precede ideology and form ideology, instead of the other way around. They demonstrate thoroughgoing cognitive distortions and polarization according to group identification (identity) and ideology.

The authors examine the political salience of identity using examples like the Catholicism of JFK - identity issues which are no longer live in politics - while avoiding modern racial identity for the most part and giving very short shrift to nonpartisan ideology. (The authors' account argues that party identification gives rise to ideology instead of vice versa, which can't account for and leaves aside the entire group, albeit a minority, of people who have an ideology but are outside of the party system, like libertarians, integralists, Communists, ethnic nationalists, etc.)

The authors do not venture an explanation of why and how identity politics came about. Evolutionary theory does. Identity politics is the instantiation of ingroup altruism in representative democracy. Thus, for an evolutionary-theoretic account of how identity politics evolved, see Salter, 'On Genetic Interests'; as to examples of how it's practiced and why it's effective, see MacDonald, 'Separation and its Discontents'.

Might write a more detailed review. I have mixed feelings about this book and the authors skittered away from the implications of their data in a hurry. Many important parts are glossed over and minor parts given longwinded and repetitive exposition, but for raw data this book gets a partial pass on not following the argument and a higher rating for the data than for the analysis of it."

"I've been thinking a lot about Turchin's concept of "elite overproduction" since reading this book. This is the idea that societies on the verge of mass upheaval first produce a surplus of ambitious, often wealthy, always college-educated elites, and those strivers who do not find their respected place at the top of society - due to the excess production of such elites, there's only room for so many - become both a symptom of a society on the path of political disintegration and often the change agents (counter-elites) who launch assaults on that society. The most obvious example being the French Revolution and its counter-elite leaders such as the lawyer Robespierre and the journalist Marat.

The root of "the path of political disintegration" is, per Turchin's hypothesis, that population pressure causes increased warfare. That warfare can take many forms before the spilling of blood. But blood spilled, and societal breakdown, is where that path ends. And then it starts all over again. This is cyclical...

Elite overproduction occurs across all societies and throughout history. David Wineberg, in his excellent ŷ������ review, summarizes it well: (view spoiler)[

"Elite overproduction has taken many forms. In many cases, it was military. The rich sent their children to the armed forces, to serve as admirals and generals. In religious societies, they became cardinals and high priests. Under royalty, they became governors, given stipends and pensions for life. Today, they are CEOs and kingmakers, buying elections to get pliable officials who will increase their wealth. In China, Turchin says, for two thousand years it was the educated. They had to take difficult civil service exams to get into government. To fail the exam meant a peasant’s life. Today, the Communist Party of China still operates this same way. If the Chinese can’t get into the party and pass the tests, they are doomed to have zero power or respect.

And in all these cases, when there are more candidates than positions (Musical Chairs, Turchin calls it), there will be unrest among the elite. And it is the elites who will undermine the system before the 99% get organized. In Turchin’s terms: “The most important driver is intraelite competition and conflict, which is a reliable predictor of the looming crisis.�� Today’s clue is rich parents bribing school officials to get their (apparently unworthy) children into top universities."

(hide spoiler)]

The concept of elite overproduction is just one of many that Turchin juggles in this compelling and very readable book. The author has a lively and warm writing style, which helps make his complex topics easy to digest. He is perhaps most (in)famous for his successful 2010 prediction of the worldwide mayhem that occurred in 2020. Turchin comes to his conclusions via "cliodynamics" which, per Wikipedia, is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. This is an area of research that the author actually co-founded. Readers of classic science fiction should immediately recognize cliodynamics as reminiscent of Asimov's "psychohistory" from his Foundation series; Turchin explores this connection in one of the appendices.

Despite still doubting that the U.S. is on the brink of civil war (although I loved the movie lol), this book was illuminating and thought-provoking in many ways. Its analysis of class warfare throughout history was particularly compelling. End Times really fired up my brain synapses. 5 stars!

💥⚔️📢

Notes

- page 30: There are four structural drivers of instability: (1) popular immiseration (economic impoverishment), (2) elite overproduction resulting in intra-elite conflict, (3) failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state, and (4) various geopolitical factors e.g. climate, disease, the games of thrones occurring in other countries, all of which have impact on the country in question.

- page 40: Elites most often produce more elites; the more they reproduce, the more elites there are. In Islamic societies that allow polygamy, the increase of elite overproduction is therefore multiplied. And so the cycles between periods of stability and instability in these countries are shorter, due to the correspondingly faster creation of a surplus of elites.

- page 47: "Dynamic Entrainment" is when out of sync movements eventually become synchronized. This can be considered on a societal level as well, when a movement or wave of instability hits or triggers multiple societies at once. Perhaps the Arab Spring could be considered as such. But in the book, Turchin is speaking more about climate fluctuations and contagion; from page 50: "...societies approaching a crisis are very likely to be hit by an epidemic. But the causality also flows in the opposite direction. A major epidemic undermines societal stability. Because the poor suffer greater mortality than the elites, the social pyramids become top-heavy."

- page 95: Cliodynamics integrates all important forces of history: demographic, economic, social, cultural, ideological. This can be challenging for the social scientist when ideology has become weaponized by rival elite factions.

- page 124: It is obvious that America is a plutocracy. We are dominated by corporate, plutocratic entities and superstructures: the military-industrial complex, the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector, the energy sector, Silicon Valley, Big Food, Big Pharma, the medical-industrial complex, the education-industrial complex. "In 2021, twelve thousand lobbyists spent $3.7 billion influencing policy at the federal level."

- page 134: A continuing influx of immigrants allows for the depression of worker wages and an increase on elite returns on capital. Unrestricted immigration is an example of a "wealth pump" - a mechanism that transfers capital from the poor to the rich, resulting in an unequal distribution of resources; the rich use the wealth pump to enrich themselves through policy implementation.

- page 142: A potential rival to our system of plutocracy is the Nordic model, which involves tripartite cooperation between labor, business, and government working together for the common good. The U.S. attempted to walk this path via the New Deal and other reforms adopted during the Progressive Era. A key reason we diverged from this path is due to race. As any decent class/economics-centered progressive knows, racialized identity politics are a very successful tool to encourage divisions between the working class. Turchin's primary example here is the "Southern strategy" used by Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan.

- page 156: Wealthy liberals often undermine the pillars of society through such politically schizophrenic actions as, on the one hand, supporting politicians who run on lowering taxes, and on the other hand, funding radical-left causes that deepen societal polarization.

- page 175: The Soviet Union was basically a giant corporation in which the state owned the wealth-producing assets. After its collapse, in Russia the economic elites (the oligarchs) seized control, and so became a plutocracy. Under Putin, the administrative and military elites took control, and so modern Russia has returned to being an autocracy along the lines of Imperial Russia. This is a familiar pattern for this country. Turchin makes a point that "political culture tends to be resilient and usually reconstructs itself." This point also explains the differences in both Ukraine and Belarus to Russia. In the former, the economic elites turned on each other; in the latter, the administrative-military elites stayed strong. Another point, on page 180: "All complex societies are vulnerable to the disintegrative forces of elite overproduction, which is why they all experience periodic social breakdowns. But plutocracies... are particularly vulnerable."

- page 202: Turchin on the idea of a civil war (which he acknowledges may strike some as unrealistic): "...to bring the system to a positive equilibrium, the [wealth] pump must be shut down. We can model this by driving the relative wage up to the point where upward and downward rates of mobility between commoners and elites are balanced... [however,] Shutting down the pump reduces elite incomes, but it does not decrease their numbers. This is a recipe for converting a massive proportion of the elites into counter-elites, which most likely make the internal war even bloodier and more intense. However, after a painful and violent decade, the system will rapidly achieve equilibrium... the proportion of the population that is radicalized will fall, and the surplus elites will be eliminated... The end result will be a 'sharp short-term pain, long-term gain' outcome."

- It is well-known that in the U.S., wealth concentration is within 1% of our population. In contrast to that tiny percentage, in Germany, Austria, and France, wealth concentration is within 10% of their populations; in Denmark, it is 13%. We can look for no support from either major political party in addressing this disparity. Per page 237: "the Democratic Party, a party of the working class during the New Deal, became by 2000 the party of the credentialed 10 percent. The rival party, the Republican Party, primarily served the wealthy 1 percent, leaving the 90 percent out in the cold." I do wonder what Turchin makes of the current MAGA GOP and its army of populists. MAGA also includes a high number of counter-elites. Both groups having recently came out to play during the H-1B debate. 🤔 We do live in interesting times!

Turchin's ideas have received sharp criticism from some fellow social scientists. The center-left Yascha Mounk recently published a piece entitled "There Is No Surplus Elite in America". Similarly, the classical liberal Francis Fukuyama basically hand-waved Turchin aside in a dismissive review of this book for The New York Times. Both are writers that I admire; their thoughts on Turchin's pronouncements are well-worth seeking out. Keep in mind though that both gentlemen are decidedly elites - although within the credentialed 10% rather than the ultra-wealthy 1%. I'm just saying: they certainly have skin in this game!

💰💸🤑


original placeholder 'review':

seems apropos that I finished this excellent book on Election Day. maybe a bit on the nose though? anyway, review to come. time now to order some pizza, fix myself a whisky, turn on the tv, and actively make sure not to get hysterical or deranged. wish me luck LOL"