By John Pickard
No matter how sombre or sobering it may appear, it is important for socialists to have a sense of perspective – an understanding of the direction in which society is heading, and at what pace. What is remarkable is that from time to time the spokespersons and representatives of capitalism come to the same conclusions as Marxists, although obviously from a different class standpoint.
An article in the Financial Times this week (May 31) discussed the growing dysfunctionality in US politics and the support that still exists for Donald Trump, despite his misogyny, a conviction for sexual abuse, his tax-dodging, his personal ignorance and boorishness and his all-round obnoxiousness. But the article quotes a conclusion from Pew – a well-known US polling company – that in fact it is the entire political system in the USA that is held in contempt by millions of voters.
Moreover, these voters do not even know themselves how to solve the problem. “Roughly three-quarters of the public”, Pew reports, “say they have little or no confidence in the wisdom of the American people in making political decisions, up from 62 per cent in 2021”
The Financial Times article then goes on to consider the ideas of a biologist and “complexity scientist”, Peter Turchin, who employs masses of date to analyse complex systems, like human societies. He has even given the discipline a name, “cliodynamics” after the Greek muse of History, Clio. Turchin uses masses of economic, social and political data from around the world – and claims to reach far back in history – to analyse political trends and developments.
“Popular immiseration” = mass cuts in living standards
As the Financial Times writer explains, his number-crunching led Turchin to the conclusion that “there is a fundamental pattern: an elite grabs power, then over time tries to protect that by grabbing more and more resources. That inevitably ends up leaving poor people even poorer (“popular immiseration”) and spawning an “over-production of the elite” — too many elites chasing too few roles — which, in turn, leads to extreme frustration, anxiety and in-fighting”.
“The result” Turchin found, “is usually a social explosion and political disintegration.” Reading this, any labour movement activist will wonder why it was necessary to invent a new ‘science’ to come to this conclusion. There are masses of data available, not to mention the daily experience of workers and their families, to show the growing impoverishment of workers in the USA – and elsewhere in the world. It is a well-established (and publicised) fact that wealth is increasingly being shunted ‘upwards’ from the less well-off to the already rich and the super-rich 1%.
Summarising Turchin’s latest book, The End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration, the Financial Times expresses what is already on the lips of millions of workers in the USA and elsewhere. “Decades of falling real wages have had an impact, he [Turchin] says, as shown by the declining life expectancy data of poor Americans. Meanwhile, elite overproduction is surging, as the number of graduates explodes and competition for jobs gets ever more intense, fuelling insecurity and resentment at the 1 per cent, even among the top tier”.
The Financial Times journalist then says – correctly – that the events of January 6, 2021, when the Capitol building in Washington was stormed, turn out to be just a “foreshock” of future events. Trumpism, he suggests, “is a symptom, rather than the cause” of the turmoil in US politics.
Limp conclusion…raise taxes for the rich
Turchin’s answer to the crisis in US politics is to return to the New Deal policies of the interwar years and the period immediately afterwards. “In the 1950s, for example, the top rates of federal income tax in the US jumped to 90 per cent, compared with 7 per cent in 1913 or 37 per cent today”. As even he says, such a jump in taxes, even if they were only restricted to the rich, would evoke a wave of opposition from those who would have to pay.
A few very rich individuals, like hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio, have called for higher taxes for the rich, on the grounds that he prefers higher taxes to “pitchforks”, but the majority of his class would fight tooth and nail against any serious encroachment on their power, prestige and wealth. What is required is not taxes on the rich, but the expropriation of the rich, and the reorganization of society on a completely different basis.
Like the Financial Times writer, we are entitled to be more than just a wee bit skeptical of ‘cliodynamics’. But such articles are interesting reminders that the disintegration of capitalist society is becoming increasingly and unavoidably visible, not only to labour and socialist activists, but to a fraction of the intelligentsia of capitalism.
When Left Horizons commented in an editorial on the events of January 2021, we wrote that the storming of Congress, “signals the beginning of a protracted period of economic, social and political convulsions in the Unites States; a period in which this outrage will be matched by other, perhaps worse events. It signals the death agony, playing out over years, of an economic system that offers nothing but hardship, insecurity and suffering to the majority of its population”.
We did not need “cliodynamics” to draw these conclusions, although they are essentially the same as Turchin’s. Nevertheless, I will probably look out for his book when it is published in the UK and if it adds anything new, perhaps there will be a review.
