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I finished reading Peter Turchin's new book, End Times this past week, which visits many elements of the culture war, including Trump, immigration, 99%ers, even Ukraine. I hadn't read his previous books, but apparently they included more of the data and graphs that he works with for his research. This one is branded more populist, from the name, bright red cover, and relegation of models and graphs to the final third of the book, which is all appendix. He comes across as a moderate Marxist, who's trying not to alienate American conservatives.
The basic argument is that a core part of nation ending turmoil is a cycle of what he calls the wealth pump and overproduction of elites. A society will start out an epoch with a more or less equitable share of power and money between the workers and the elites, but at some point, this is disrupted by the elites ovedrawing resources from the economy, often because they have too many children, or allow more upward mobility than downward. Then popular immiseration sets in, where the workers have decreased access to the kind of resources they need to thrive -- land, capital, opportunities -- and the elites have a "wealth pump," which seems to be his way of talking returns on capital outpacing returns on labor. Also, increased immigration to keep labor costs low, and benefit employers. The wealthy grow, the poor grow, and the middle class shrinks. Elite competition becomes more and more intense, both because there are more people competing for roughly the same number of positions, often simply because population growth outstrips the growth of important positions, and because the alternative of downward mobility looks worse and worse in comparison. So everyone with any money or influence tries extra hard to get their kids a good position at whatever their era's version of the ivy leagues are, so they can benefit from the growth of the top 10%, while desperately fearing falling into the precariat. There are a bunch of young intelligentsia without money or positions, but a lot of education and family investment, ready to become counter elites or revolutionaries. Often they wage wars until enough of them die to relieve the social pressure, and the cycle starts over.
Turchin's main prescription follows the outlines of the New Deal -- high tax rates for the rich, a growing minimum wage, labor unions, low immigration, perhaps public works projects, that kind of thing.
I found the prescription, especially, underwhelming. Turchin doesn't really go into the kinds of jobs workers do, or how that might influence things, and there's no real commentary about going from an agricultural labor base, to industrial manufacturing, to service, and the growth of a suspicion that it isn't just the aspiring elite jobs that are basically useless, but many of the "workers" are as well. A large component of the current malaise seems to be the impression not only that there are too many leaders, not enough followers, but that, increasingly, the followers are all simulated, automated, or passive consumers, not workers at all. It seems like any plan that could hope to stabilize society over the next hundred years would need to incorporate the possibility that most middle class jobs, especially, as well as a decent number of working class ones, will be automated, while higher level positions and things like garbage collection and construction continue to be necessary much longer. Sure, we could probably move to an economy where each person's job is to care for some other person's parent, child, or pet, but that doesn't seem like a great outcome. He does not mention this at all.
Marxism has been tried, over and over again. Always it produces shortages, usually it produces skulls. Why do we have to keep doing it?
The progress should "progress" somewhere, right. So what's more obvious way to progress than to make everything more fair? The urge to try something "fairer" is quite understandable i think. I do agree with you that it's not the right way, but it's hard to propose any actual alternative to that. "The universe is inherently unfair so no point trying" isn't convincing many. Stupid dysfunctional species cornered themselves into playing god and constantly failing, obviously.
"Fair" is just an applause light. Marxism doesn't result in "fair". It results in "poor". Try something else.
The urge of the majority of marxism supporters, at least the idealistic ones, is to make the reality more fair. That's why they're trying and trying and will keep trying. You don't need to convince me, but can't you really see how any random fact of perceived unfairness brings people towards trying to make things more "fair" the way the understand it?
As I said "fair" is just an applause light. Brought to the concrete level it just seems to mean they want more for them and theirs and (very important for many Marxists) less for not-them and theirs, which is a common desire but lacks the high-mindedness of "fair". There's always going to be perceived unfairness, and Marxism is always going to be one of the worst ways to attempt to alleviate it.
Sure, so there always will be the way to "progress" things towards. Look, you've asked a very simple question - "Why do we have to keep doing it?", i've explained why. Are you arguing because you think people keep trying marxism for other reasons? Or are you arguing because you think the reason i say is correct, you just don't agree with it?
It's not my fault that young people find marxism or any of it's many versions convincing enough to make the world a more fairer place. There's very little alternative ideas which can in simple words address that "fairness" urge directly. The others are mostly sidestepping the problem - oh, the unfairness is always and eternal, we're in hell and nothing you can do about it, be a good boy and clean your room(sure! thinks 15yo boy whos mother killing herself every day on the heavy job and he sees that, while watching western celebrities on TV), ah, the world is already perfectly fair and harmonious, don't you see? (yup! thinks the father whos son just returned without half of his head from a war over someones bank account) and so on.
Your explanation amounts to the Politician's Fallacy -- "We must do something (to alleviate unfairness). This (Marxism) is something. Therefore we must do it."
We don't have to take Marxism at its word that it makes the world more fair, not when the actual results have been demonstrated over and over again. Nor is it necessary to have an alternate solution in order to reject Marxism.
Arnold Kling has a saying, a sort of right wing spin on this, that, "Markets are unfair. Use markets."
It has the same He Giveth and He Taketh Away result.
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