"Peter
Turchin brings science to history. Some like it and some prefer their
history plain. But everyone needs to pay attention to the well-informed,
convincing and terrifying analysis in this book." --Angus Deaton,
winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
From the pioneering co-founder of
cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of
history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its
possible endgames Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social
scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches
and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End
Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political
communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to
the current turmoil within the United States.
Back in 2010, when Nature
magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast,
Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of
social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political
order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and
more accurate, and End Times reveals why. The lessons of world history
are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites
and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability
is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows
disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people
suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more
frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it's a world of the
damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains
relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to
frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn
against the established order.
Turchin's models show that when this
state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's
very hard to exit. In America, the wealth pump has been operating full
blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle
of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path
to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and
the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.