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

Turchin, Peter

9780241637791: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0241637791 ISBN 13 : 9780241637791

Editeur : Allen Lane, 2023

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Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting thinkers today, has infused the study of history with insights from other fields for over a quarter of a century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and to fall apart.

The lessons of 10,000 years of world history are clear, Turchin argues: when the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of the elites, political instability is all but inevitable. Before the industrial era, the imbalance between labour and capital, signaled by growing economic inequality, was usually caused by excessive population growth. For the past 250 or so years, it has been laissez-faire government, technological innovation, globalization and immigration that have tended to disrupt the balance. Whatever the cause, when income inequality surges the common people suffer, and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites.

This vicious cycle is the wealth pump - the mechanism that causes both the relative impoverishment of most people and the increasingly desperate competition among elites. The wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations in America and in many Western countries. In historical terms, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is already far along the path to violent political rupture. Time will tell whether Peter Turchin's warning is heeded.

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� propos de l?auteur

Peter Turchin is Project Leader at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Research Associate at University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Connecticut. Trained as a theoretical biologist, he is now working in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call Cliodynamics. Currently his main research effort is directed at coordinating CrisisDB, a massive historical database of societies sliding into a crisis - and then emerging from it. His books include Ultrasociety and Ages of Discord.

� propos de la quatri�me de couverture

What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? How do elites maintain their dominant position? And why do ruling classes sometimes suddenly lose their grip on power?

For decades, complexity scientist Peter Turchin has been studying world history like no-one else. Assembling vast databases mined from 10,000 years of human activity, and then developing new models, he has transformed the way we learn from the past. End Times is the result: a ground-breaking account of how society works.

The lessons, he argues, are clear. When the balance of power between the ruling class and the majority tips too far in favour of elites, income inequality surges. The rich get richer, the poor further impoverished. As more people try to join the elite, frustration with the establishment brims over, often with disastrous consequences. Elite overproduction led to state breakdown in imperial China, in medieval France, in the American Civil War - and it is happening now.

But while we are far along the path toward violent political rupture, Turchin's models also light the way to a brighter future. Drawing insight from those occasions in history where the balance was restored, End Times also points towards a different future: an escape from the patterns of the past.

Les informations fournies dans la section � A propos du livre � peuvent faire r�f�rence � une autre �dition de ce titre.