Secular Cycles

There is a new science I have never heard of before. Cliodynamics. Interesting name though. It is about putting history on a mathematical basis. One of the practitioners of the art is Peter Turchin who along with S. A. Nefedov wrote a paper about Secular Cycles in history. It is about societies that are at least 50% agricultural. With 80% to 90% levels predominating.

As a result, at the same time that the majority are sliding into the absolute misery, a small percentage of thrifty, hardworking, or simply lucky peasants are able to concentrate increasing amounts of land in their hands. At some point, such successful peasants usually attempt to translate their wealth into higher social status. This demand for upward social mobility is an important contributing factor to elite overproduction that develops towards the end of a prolonged period of demographic expansion.

During the stagflation phase, thus, economic inequality increases within each social stratum—peasants, minor and middle-rank nobility, and the magnates. Growing inequality creates pressure for social mobility, both upward and downward. Increased social mobility generates friction and destabilizes society. The growing gap between the poor and rich also creates breeding grounds for mass movements espousing radical ideologies of social justice and economic redistribution.

Declining incomes of the majority of aristocrats have two important consequences: intensifying oppression of the peasants by the elites and increasing intraelite competition for scarce resources. The elites will attempt to increase the proportion of resource extracted from the producers by whatever means that are available to them, both economic and extra-economic (coercive). Their success will depend on the structural characteristics of the society: the relative military strength of the elites with respect to the producers and the state, legal and cultural limits on surplus extraction, etc. If successful, elites may not only deprive the commoners of the surplus, but also cut into the subsistence resource, resulting in a negative growth rate of the commoner population. “Thus the lord’s surplus extraction (rent) tended to confiscate not merely the peasant’s income above subsistence (and potentially even beyond) but at the same time to threaten the funds necessary to refurbish the peasant’s holding and to prevent the long-term decline of its productivity” (Brenner 1985a:31).

It sounds a lot like where we are at today.

Peter gave an interview to Gene Expression that is an overview of the topic along with some interesting digressions. Here is one of the ten questions.

6) In your models of the rise and fall of agricultural-based polities you seem to emphasize the importance of institutional religions in generating “meta-ethnic” identities. One of the historical quirks which scholars have noted is the rise of world religions between 600 BC and 600 AD, and the relative stability in number of religions after that period. Do you have any explanation for this pattern, or is there nothing to be explained?

In fact, this is one of the most striking patterns in history, and it fits very neatly with my theories. Rather than repeat myself, let me direct your readers to my recent artcile, a reprint of which is posted here:

cliodynamics.info/PDF/Steppe_JGH_reprint.pdf

See p. 201 for my explanation of the Axial Age. And then check out the section on the Middle East during the Axial Age (p. 209).

I especially like his concept of “elite overproduction”. What he means is that empowered parasites (elites) become too numerous, which in the proper circumstances can lead to mostly unfortunate results. We are now in the process of clearing out a lot of dead wood accumulated over the last 70 or 100 years. The good news? The replacements are a lot cheaper than the current batch of parasites. i.e. Computers. Some days I feel like an automation engineer in some Kurt Vonnegut novel. Then I put on my devil horns (or would that be angel halo?) and LMFAO.