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

by Peter Turchin

An even more worrying development is the transition in Western democracies from “class-based party systems” to “multi-elite party systems.” Earlier in the book (chapter 8), we discussed this transition in the United States, where 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. Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty studied hundreds of elections and found that political parties in other Western democracies also increasingly cater to only the well educated and the rich.[21] When political parties abandon the working classes, this amounts to a major shift in how social power is distributed within society. Ultimately, it is this balance of power that determines whether the selfish elites are allowed to turn on the wealth pump.