An increasingly common object of discussion on this blog has been that of demographic-structural theory (DST) and secular cycles in general. Essentially, this theory is a variant of several historically relevant models which posit that large, agrarian pre-industrial states and empires were subject to periodic cycles of population growth and contraction, coupled with concomitant cycles in second-order effects such as wage growth/contraction, political stability, and the like. While the foundations for this theory go as far back as ibn Khaldun and Thomas Malthus, the modern expression of DST as the application of political demography to the history of revolutions in various historical states was made by Jack Goldstone. Expanding upon Goldstone’s theories, Peter Turchin and his coworkers have added the element of elite contribution to political instability during secular cycles.

A brief overview of DST from Turchin may be found here. Essentially, Turchin’s theory proposes that social elites play an enhanced role in affecting political stability during a cycle because of their outsized ability to appropriate state and private resources to themselves. As a result, the normal cyclical effects of increasing population leading to lowered wages, increased rents, and greater economic pressure on the lower classes is exacerbated by elite competition for resources as those resources become more relatively scarce (due to a relative increase in elite population). This intensified competition between elites leads to greater political and social instability, factionalism, and (sometimes successful) revolutionism. Turchin notes that DST (as with other cyclical demographic theories) is able to model structural pressures that generally affect states and societies over decades or even centuries; specific triggering events that may spark a release of social tension are unpredictable, but able to serve as that spark precisely because of the underlying buildup of structural instabilities.

Typically, DST and other theories have been applied to pre-industrial agrarian states, mainly because those polities are the most susceptible to population pressures caused by access to arable land (population growth is tied to the availability of excess food above the subsistence level) and wage/rent dynamics on cultivated land. Their application to industrial and post-industrial polities has been called into question. However, I believe that DST, in modified form, can be applied to other entities besides agrarian states. For instance, I would apply a form of it to the growth and contraction of religions, and see that it could also apply to so-called “world systems” involving multistate core-periphery arrangements that can bind together the fortunes of states at opposite ends of continents.

As such, there is not necessarily any structural reason why DST can’t apply to industrialised and urbanised states. These kinds of polities still face the dynamic of resource availability versus resource scarcity versus elite consumption; what has changed is the type of resources that are involved. Yes, modern industrial and post-industrial states are capable of providing more than enough food for their people (as the West’s obesity epidemic amply testifies), but they can and do face plenty versus scarcity cycles in other resources like jobs and access to fiscal resources given out by governments. After all, people in modern societies can riot over a lack of jobs or state-provided goodies just as much as medieval peasants can revolt over food and rent prices after a string of bad harvests.

One of the consistent observations about historical cycles from various authors has been that polities which are undergoing the integrative period of a cycle (growth—>stagnation) are usually characterized by a high level of asabiyah (a term used by ibn Khaldun that essentially means “social cohesion” when these authors are referring to agrarian states). In other words, during these periods, there is a high level of social trust, a willingness of the various castes to work together for the common good, and so forth. These periods generally tend to be characterized by relatively shallow economic inequality, high wages, more abundant resources available to the commons, and a relatively smaller elite fraction of the overall population. Conversely, during the disintegrative period of a cycle (collapse—>depression), a polity sees low social trust and high social fractiousness, class warfare, and so on, and are marked by ever-increasing economic inequality, lower wages, fewer resources for the commons, and an expanding elite class which continues to appropriate more and more socioeconomic resources for itself until the system ultimately breaks.

The United States was blessed for so long in that it displayed an abnormally long integrative cycle marked by consistently high social cohesion and stable administration. Even the most plausible counterexample to this – the Civil War – demonstrates this in that, while it was a sharp temporary rupture, once it was done, overall national cohesion was swiftly restored and there were no ongoing “aftershocks” of continuing violence and uprising. I would tend to say that America’s expansion phase continued all the way to around 1900 (thus, for around 130 years) and its stagnation phase continued from there until around the 1970s, which is when we really began to see widespread wage contraction and social disorder. Thus, the overall integrative cycle lasted for roughly 200 years, which is abnormally long (typically, you’ll see 100-150 years for these).

I would argue that much of this was due to the fact that because of its vast frontier, America had an outlet to which it could send its excess population and growing elites. Remember, as elite numbers increase relative to the total population, increased elite competition breeds factionalism and more instability. However, America could spread her excess elites out west so that their overall numbers remained low compared to the high population growth post-Civil War frontier dwellers. Turchin observes that the same sort of population mechanic (though under a different historical circumstance) helped to give the Roman Republican secular cycle an abnormally long integrative phase – so many of Rome’s elites died in their earlier wars (especially the Second Punic War) that the overall elite portion of the population remained comparatively low.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.

When you begin to look at the particulars of different historical cycles, you see other things that also track closely with cyclic phase and the measure of social cohesion, such as competence and the overall ability of elite leadership, the “virtuousness versus venality” of the elites, etc. Good times tend to go hand in hand with good leaders who provide quality management while bad times tend to be marked by leaders who display selfishness, corruption, and ineptitude. This, in turn, is directly related to social cohesion in that good times tend to be marked by unified elite purpose coupled with a sense of kinship with (or perhaps responsibility for) the commons, while bad times display often violent elite disunity and a societal disinclination toward the commons. As you have more and more aspirants obtaining elite status, you see rising elite competition and factionalism, as well as an increasing tendency to start bleeding the commons dry of what little it has once “official” sources of wealth and prestige available from the state are tapped out.

This is exactly where we’re at now. A combination of extended (if superficial) prosperity, an ever-expanding push to send more and more students to university to obtain advanced degrees, and the centralisation of political decision-making in Washington DC (with its attendant need for bureaucracy and “experts” of all sorts) has served to vastly expand the elite stratum in the USA. Similar trends have been occurring in other western nations, as well. And while these elites do not in any way, shape, or form approximate a genuinely aristocratic caste, they do nevertheless occupy the apex of wealth and power in our western nations. And they are increasingly competitive with each other to snap up what scraps of socioeconomic resources remain. Red Cathedral and Blue Cathedral, when not faced with populist challenges from outside their ranks, combat each other for political power and access to state resources (i.e. your tax dollars and the keys to the digital money-printing machines at the Treasury). This is, for example, why we see blacks and other minorities being used as pawns in intraelite competition by Blue Cathedral against white Heritage America and its putative Red Cathedral representatives, whom most members of America’s elite despise. This intensified intraelite competition is dividing American society even wider and bringing it to an eventual breaking point.

So, you might be asking after all of this, what does this jolly well have to do with the current COVID-19 outbreak?

Superficially, it wouldn’t seem that a random event like the appearance of a pandemic disease (or some other relatively unforeseeable crisis) would have much to do with these secular cycles, which tend to operate on macroscale, multidecadal timeframes. In a sense this is true. However, the intersection between the two comes in the responses which states at various stages within a cycle will make (or not make) to a crisis.

The combination of social cohesion and competence (or the lacking of these traits) will directly affect the ability of elite elements in a polity (both inside and outside of government) to respond to crises that arise. High social cohesion and elite capabilities allowed the Roman Senate to keep raising new armies over and over again even in the face of disastrous defeats at the hands of Hannibal. These allowed the Venetian oligarchy to put into place relatively successful efforts to stifle the periodic returns of the plague, even though these measures interfered with trade and economically harmed individual merchants at times. Low social cohesion and elite venality do the opposite: they destroy the ability of a peoples’ leadership to act in a concerted fashion, and the factionalism will run deep into the commons as well. Part of the reason why the Black Death was so bad, why Europe’s overall response to it was so poor, was because at least England and France (and probably much of the rest of Europe) were in disintegrative phases and thus were hampered from having uniform, broadly-applied policies for isolating the disease which would have been available even to the science of that day.

In high social cohesion states, the elites identify with their commons and take care of them. The opposite is true in low social cohesion states. Such is our case, as can be seen in the responses of various elements of our elites to the disease. Instead of reasonable middle course responses to COVID-19 that would actually help all people, we see the two extremes of either doing nothing (but blaming political opponents while grousing over the stock market) or over-the-top nonsense like blathering about nine-month long lockdowns. The results of this low social cohesion are predictable. Our society displays a broad social refusal to countenance legitimate epidemiological efforts to slow or halt the spread of COVID-19. Instead of trying to actually help working Americans being harmed economically by shutdowns, our venal elites have reached the crisis stage where they are actively and openly looting the Treasury for everything they can get while basically ripping off the middle and working classes. The Fed is pumping trillions into the stock market and other financial pathways so that ultrarich investors can stay afloat; at the same time Congress dickers over giving a pittance to regular Americans. Meanwhile, elements within our government are using the confusion to push a renewed effort to replace even more heritage American workers with visa clients from abroad who are beholden to the elites.

This last part also serves to highlight that in the cases of the United States and other western nations, the ill effects of our disintegrative phase are compounded by the presence (and continued importation) of ethnic minorities from grossly different societies which are nearly impossible to assimilate successfully. These foreigners generally serve as clients of various elite patron networks within both Red and Blue Cathedral, while driving the divide between regular Americans even deeper. Plus, they often directly serve as socially disruptive elements, in addition to their various second order pathologies. Predictably, we’re seeing that these parasitic foreign elements are actively opposed to public health measures being attempted by their host societies. Africans and Middle Easterners in many European countries are ignoring the quarantine strictures being put into place and using the disruptions as a cover for further looting and crime. In Australia, Chinese immigrants have been spitting on vegetables and licking doorknobs in an apparent effort to spread the virus, while appropriating huge chunks of Australian medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) and shipping it home to China.

As such, elites scrambling for the last scraps of remaining socioeconomic resources do not make for the best stewards of their societies. In the cases of our immigrant heavy societies in the West, this is made worse in that there’s really no “society” to steward. Without social cohesion, societies become disaggregated geographical bodies inhabited by masses of atomized individuals with no inherent affinity for one another. As such, very few in these situations can be trusted to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do (which requires a level of altruism capable of being broadly achieved only in high trust, high cohesion polities). This is why various government agencies have had to perpetuate the lie that “masks don’t work” with respect to COVID-19. Masks do work, but since there is only a limited supply of them, it is best for health care workers and first responders to have priority for receiving them. But, because the masses can’t be trusted to voluntarily refrain from panic buying and hoarding all the masks and other PPE, governments have to try to trick people into avoiding that behaviour. Of course, serious high social cohesion countries that had elites in and out of government who were concerned for their commons would be capable of manufacturing and stockpiling their own stores of basic health care supplies for a rainy day instead of outsourcing their manufacture to hostile foreign countries to make a quick buck.

Even after the coronavirus crisis ends (and it will, eventually, as all things must), the USA and the rest of the West are still going to be plagued by the ill effects of their ongoing secular disintegrative phases. Our lack of social cohesion will still continue to hamper any efforts to strengthen core social and economic functions in our societies such as bringing home manufacturing jobs and limiting (or ending) immigration. The Red and Blue Cathedrals will still use bad faith actors to stir up ideological countersignaling that sets regular Americans against each other across artificially created fault lines. We will still play host to ongoing efforts of the elites to transfer more and more economic scraps from the middle and working classes, which is something not only done by the Left, but also by the so-called “conservatives,” who are just as much agents of increasing social entropy as left-wingers are. I wish I could say there’s an easy fix to all of this, but there’s not. Even violent revolutions usually fail to achieve much, unless they manage to draw support from disaffected out-groups within the elite. Ultimately, the end of the cycle will be reached (usually with a lot of dislocation, violence, and upheaval taking place) and a new cycle with a winnowed elite begins again.

The thing for those of us in the Dissident Right to do is to prepare ourselves and our networks as best we can to ride out the Great Reset and be ready to guide the new order that arises from the ruins of this current cycle. Part of this involves the old neoreactionary adage of “Become worthy. Accept power. Rule.” However, for us to be able to do this, we also have to be organized and ready to provide structure at all levels that “steps into the vacuum” and provides the framework for restoration. This must be pursued to the greatest degree at the local level, since the end of a secular cycle typically involves a great deal of decentralization of power. Build social and political structures in communities and local regions that maintain right order and build social cohesion. From there, ascending levels of political hierarchy will inevitably begin to take shape. But in the meantime, buckle up and hang on, since secular cycles can be quite the ride.