End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

by Peter Turchin

It takes time, but eventually the wealth pumped from the common people to the elites results in elite overproduction, intraelite conflict, and, if not checked in time, state collapse and social breakdown. The rich are perhaps even more vulnerable than common people during such periods of social and political turbulence, as outcomes of social revolutions suggest. Another non-obvious insight from cliodynamics is that the general worsening of the well-being of the working class creates powerful incentives for its members to escape into the credentialed class. Getting education is, of course, a standard remedy for the problems we’ve discussed in this chapter. In nineteenth-century America, the advice to the immiserated masses on the East Coast was “Go west, young man!” Today it is “Go to college or, better, get a professional degree.” And at the individual level, for those who want to escape precarity, this is good advice. But what happens at the collective level, when massive numbers of aspirants seek to enter the ranks of the elite?