Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History

by Peter Turchin

My explanation of the observed association is based on the Structural-Demographic Theory: (1) labor oversupply (proxied by immigration) leads to (2) elite overproduction (proxied by wealth inequality) and heightened intraelite competition that, in turn, results in (3) elite fragmentation (proxied by political polarization). Note that this explanation was not constructed post hoc, after observing the empirical associations between polarization, inequality, and immigration. Instead, each of these variables serves as a proxy for the movements of the structural forces postulated by the theory.

The divergence of economic interests and differences over the morality of slavery were not new issues on the eve of the Civil War; they divided the American elites from the establishment of the Republic. Traditional historiography does not provide a good answer to the question of why sectionalization of American politics greatly intensified after 1845 and resulted in armed conflict in 1861: “explanation of the uncontrolled growth of sectionalism during the 1850s has been one of the major problems of American historical scholarship” (Potter 1976: 30). The Structural-Demographic Theory provides the missing link. Explosive growth of economic elites after the 1820s, especially in the North, led to an expansion in the cohort of elite aspirants vying for political power. Intensifying intraelite competition after 1845 fractured the ruling class by reducing the willingness of the elites to seek compromise.

In transforming its admissions criteria as a response to the “Jewish problem”, Harvard exemplified a recurrent pattern in the history of elite college admissions: the particular definition of “merit” at a given moment reflects the ideals of the groups that hold power of cultural definition. In the case of the shift from intellect to character that took place in the 1920s at the Big Three, the redefinition of merit was a part of larger mobilization by old-stock Protestants to preserve their dominance by restricting both immigration and the educational and occupational opportunities available to recent immigrants and their children (Karabel 2005: 132).

There is a widely held belief among economists and other social scientists that the 1930s were the “defining moment” in the development of the American politico-economic system (Bordo et al. 1998). When we look at major structural-demographic variables, however, the decade of the 1930s does not appear to be a turning point. Structural-demographic trends that were established during the Progressive Era continued through the 1930s, although some of them accelerated (Figure 7.1 and Table 7.1). Most notably, all the wellbeing variables went through trend reversals before the Great Depression—between 1900 and 1920 (Figure 10.3). From roughly 1910 and to 1960 they all increased essentially monotonically, with only one or two minor fluctuations around the upward trend.

Despite real hardship resulting from massive unemployment, wellbeing indicators suggest that the human cost of the Great Depression of the 1930s did not match that of the “First Great Depression” of the 1890s (see also Grant 1983: 3-11 for a general discussion of the severity of the 1890s Depression). Furthermore, while the 1930s are remembered as a period of violent labor unrest, the intensity of class struggle was actually lower than during the 1890s Depression.

The 1930s Depression is probably remembered (or, rather, misremembered) as the worst economic slump in US history, simply because it was the last of the great depressions of the post-Civil War era. Generally speaking, collective memory transmitted through popular media is not as accurate as quantitative data. Such indirectly obtained beliefs are even less accurate than the recollections of the people who lived through the events themselves.

The mechanism postulated by the theory that leads to growing intraelite inequality works as follows. When conditions of labor oversupply create a favorable economic conjunction for the elites, upward social mobility into the elite strata begins to swell elite numbers. After a time lag, the elite numbers increase beyond the ability of society to support all of them. As a result, intraelite competition for the limited number of positions in business and government becomes very intense. The problem is exacerbated by rapidly increasing expectations of the income levels needed to maintain elite status (in part, resulting from conspicuous consumption, which is, in turn, fueled by intraelite competition).

In contemporary America, forces driving structural-demographic dynamics are much more complex. They include internal population growth, immigration, globalization, increased labor participation by women, and changing cultural attitudes (which I proxied by real minimum wage). The end result, however, was the same in all three cases—agrarian England, the industrializing United States, and post-industrial America. A growing gap between labor supply and labor demand led to falling relative wages. This was then followed by elite overproduction, intraelite competition and conflict, and increasing sociopolitical instability.