WE ARE ON THE WRONG TRACK Seventy percent of Americans (and counting) think so. The real wage of a US worker today is less than it was 40 years ago-but there are four times as many multimillionaires. As inequality grows, the politics become more poisonous. Every year, more and more Americans go on shooting sprees, killing strangers and passers-by-and now, increasingly, representatives of the state. Troubling trends of this kind are endlessly discussed by public intellectuals and social scientists. But mostly, they talk ...
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WE ARE ON THE WRONG TRACK Seventy percent of Americans (and counting) think so. The real wage of a US worker today is less than it was 40 years ago-but there are four times as many multimillionaires. As inequality grows, the politics become more poisonous. Every year, more and more Americans go on shooting sprees, killing strangers and passers-by-and now, increasingly, representatives of the state. Troubling trends of this kind are endlessly discussed by public intellectuals and social scientists. But mostly, they talk about only a small slice of the overall problem. After all, how on earth can yet another murderous rampage have anything to do with polarization in Congress? And is there really a connection between too many multimillionaires and government gridlock? Historical analysis shows that long spells of equitable prosperity and internal peace are succeeded by protracted periods of inequity, increasing misery, and political instability. These crisis periods-"Ages of Discord"-have recurred in societies throughout history. Modern Americans may be disconcerted to learn that the US right now has much in common with the Antebellum 1850s and, more surprisingly, with ancien r???gime France on the eve of the French Revolution. Can it really be true that there is nothing new about our troubled time, and that similar ages arise periodically for similar underlying reasons? Ages of Discord marshals Structural-Demograpic Theory and detailed historical data to show that this is, indeed, the case. The book takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through American history, from the Era of Good Feelings of the 1820s to our first Age of Discord, which culminated in the American Civil War, to post-WW2 prosperity and, finally, to our present, second Age of Discord.
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Turchin, Peter, 2016, Ages of Discord. A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History: Chaplin,
CT, Beresta Books, 274 p.
Readers are advised that this book is written at the graduate level. It contains numerous terms and concepts (i.e., integrative phases and disintegrative phases) and a variety of formula not familiar to the average public. Fortunately, most of the ideas are contained in 25 tables, bolstered by 74 figures [graphs, charts]. The book type is set in relatively small print. Concepts are often repeated.
The author, who was born in Russia in 1957, came to the U.S. in 1977. He introduces his subject by illustrating evolutionary history of Russia and France in a very general way and then proceeds to discuss the historical dynamics of the U.S. from 1780 to 2010. The author derives his basic data from a variety of published and Internet sources. This data includes immigration, height, wages, life expectancy, and age at marriage, all being bolstered by major events such as wars and depressions.
The book includes a short section on Native Americans for the period 1776 to 1860. This group was considered to be "fundamentally at odds" with whites. [The author does not discuss the long history of edgy contact in America between the Indians and the whites dating from the early 17th century].
The main concept of the book revolves around "waves of sociopolitical instability," i.e., "social moods." This concept is graphically illustrated on the front cover which contains a cyclic "well-being index" (blue line) and a cyclic "political stress index" (red line). The graph covers the period of 1780 to 2010. As an example, "Gilded Age I" ranges circa 1870 to about 1900 and "Gilded Age II" from about 1980 to 2000.
Much of the text concerns the "elites" (both bureaucratic, military, and economic) of which lawyer (JDs), business owners (MBAs), and medical professionals (MDs) predominate. Turchin notes that lawyers (mainly from Harvard, Yale& Princeton) typically control U.S. governmental institutions whose branches are split between polarized liberals, conservatives, and moderates.
At various places in the text, Turchin mentions "inequality" between the haves and the have-nots and refers to employers, wage earners, and to some extent to blacks. He barely mentions "women's rights" which began about the time of World War II when women occupied factories and which was a central focus of the 2016 election. Other key terms promoting instability include "radicals" (especially age group 20-29).
In the final chapter, the author mentions a possible trend towards another U.S. Civil War. [In the reviewer's opinion this trend may be sidetracked however by intercontinental missile warfare (2020), by global warming (2030), and by running out of oil (2040).
