In my book, Ages of Discord I talk about the Progressive Period... [the] 1920s especially. Remember... the original Red Scare was in the 1920s. So when we look at the existence of the Soviet Union, established in 1920 and collapsed in 1989, this is the period when... I grew up, by the way, in the Soviet Union, and I remember how the newspapers like Pravda were talking about the horrors of capitalism... There are multiple lines of evidence that show that the influence from the Soviet Union... By the way, also from Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Those were, in fact, important influences on the Roosevelt administration in... designing an equitable system. ...When the Soviet Union ... collapsed, it was misinterpreted as the triumph of neoliberal economics... and here we are essentially. ...This is an important factor. So the failure by the elites. It could be both due to internal challenges... and by the way, in the 1920s there were challenges... even earlier from [the] 1890s... from the Populist movement in the United States, and the Socialist movement in the United States. ...So those were internal. There were also external influences from competitors such as the Soviet Union.
Peter Turchin Connected to the Carolinas
Source
55:08
- work
- Human environment across time (2023)
- year
- 2023
Cite this record
“In my book, Ages of Discord I talk about the Progressive Per…” Peter Turchin. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-45D51393C5. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/45d51393c5
More from Peter Turchin
[T]he second condition... is absolutely much more predictive of immediate troubles to come, and that's intraelite competition which results... when elite numbers increase relative to the general population. As a result... we have too many elite aspirants vying for a limited number of positions... elite overproduction causes... intraelite competition, eventually conflict, and that... in our analysis of about 100... cases of past societies sliding into crisis and then out... That turns out to be the most universal and most important force.
[W]e need to translate the general theory into a specific computational model tailored to the focal state. Over the past four decades this has been accomplished for... historical case-studies, ranging from Ancient empires to Early Modern states and nineteenth century’s revolutions and civil wars.
Many of the wealth holders... aim to translate their economic power into political power... [A]nother measure is the cost of winning ...has been growing also, showing a greater demand for these positions and greater willingness to spend money...