End Times

Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

By: Peter Turchin

Narrated by: Robin McAlpine

Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

“Peter Turchin brings science to history. Some like it and some prefer their history plain. But everyone needs to pay attention to the well-informed, convincing and terrifying analysis in this book.” —Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames

Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.

Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.

The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit.

In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.

©2023 Peter Turchin (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“In End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, Mr. Turchin offers a lucid and elegant theory that is stable across time and place in the manner of natural laws and scientific findings.” —Wall Street Journal

“Peter Turchin brings science to history. Some like it and some prefer their history plain. But everyone needs to pay attention to the well-informed, convincing and terrifying analysis in this book.” —Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

“Scintillating . . . Turchin’s elegantly written treatment looks beneath partisan jousting to class interests that cycle over generations, but also yields timely policy insights. It’s a stimulating analysis of antagonisms past and present, and the crack-up they may be leading to.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

History Simulator v2.0

This approach to predicting the trajectory of societies - cliodynamics - strikes a middle path between the Great Man theory of history (which is erroneous), and theory-free big data analyses of history (which are prone to failure). Cliodynamics seeks first to create historically-informed mathematical models of organized groups, then employ big data to exercise said models to make predictions. As an aerospace engineer who has made mathematical models of various aircraft and missiles in order to run simulations, I recognize Turchin as a kindred spirit, and it's high-time someone has used math and complexity science in the employ of history. This is the method (the "v2.0" in my headline nods to Turchin's brief discussion of various antecedents to cliodynamics); what I've not discussed here are Turchin's results, which are fascinating in their own right. A powerful read for the methodology or results alone.

Please bring more of his books to Audible.

I do not agree with everything the author writes, but I find his methodological transparency refreshing and I find his method persuasive.

The narration was good, but sometimes the first sound of a sentence would get clipped, so it sounded like the first word was missing.

Gave me new perspective

Fascinating. Gave me a whole new perspective about social and political realities that resonates as true. I find myself talking to others about it and interpreting news stories through this lens.

Beyond excellent

This book is a beyond excellent synthesis and extension of Turchin's body of work. I discovered his research from references in the publications of the Santa Fe Institute and have read all of his books at this point, and his work has done a lot to shape my views of the world. I've been waiting for this book for a year and it doesn't dissappoint. It's data-backed, evidence-based, sophisticated, clear and compelling. It's cutting edge.

Great identification of causes of discord in society, but marred by the author’s Marxist ideologies.

The identification of some of the root causes of destabilization in society is spot on but the paradigm through which this information is viewed is highly Marxist, or relies on cheap liberal tropes. The idealization of an all encompassing administrative welfare state as the obvious solution to inequalities in wealth and opportunity is naive and completely belied by the most basic historic observations.

An interesting thesis left wanting economic depth.

I found this book frustrating. The opening chapters provide an interesting thesis, capturing the writers intentions well. Throughout the work, historical examples are provided, with scenarios both insightful and unnerving. I cannot however, help but feel the work here is unfinished.

This writer has a clear penchant for sociology. The majority of the premise based logic is structured clearly. Economic readers however, may find themselves howling, begging, pleading even, for the writer to explore some of the connections to historical economic events. Several economic statements within the text rely on argumentum ad populum, and other conclusions are drawn in complete absentia of economic premise. The book suffers many the same pitfalls of several 20th and early 21st century sociologist forays into socioeconomics, insofar as while the qualitative sociological logic builds an interesting case, the quantitative pillars to support economic aspects are left wanting. We are left with polling data from inopportune time periods, small sample sizes and even a bit of self coined terminology.

Economic insights are defined within a labor participation and labor wage myopia, eschewing the concepts of economic expansion or the implications of raising or lowering the cost of capital. In a scenario in the early stages of the book, one must only ask, ‘what if the aspirants build another chair?’ One might also consider limiting aspirants by increasing the cost of aspiring. Conversely, would decreasing the cost of aspiring, say over the course of 10 years, lead to more aspirants and thus decrease stability? This myopia is further compounded later in the book, when major monetary events, both in expansion and contraction correlating directly with periods of unrest go unmentioned. What remains is the concept of a ‘wealth pump’ that redistributes wealth within a fixed system, the primary variable being labor.

The sociology and perspectives in this book are engaging. The economic portion of the text could have been a knockout. But on the economic front, we are left with another Keynesian labor story that is grasping far an answer it already has.

Excellent work and incredibly insightful!

Few titles have the power to broaden your worldview, but this one pulls it off like no other. Putting our current political climate and world events in a clear perspective.

This Explains the Cause of Rebellions

An honest presentation of a theory to explain the causes of rebellion and the societal and economic forces involved. I liked the methods of analysis described. The attempt to compare different societies has floundered in the past, because of the shifting goals of the society. As an example, comparing a warrior culture to a bureaucratic culture directly is difficult because success and failure are measured differently. We also fail IMO if we try to overlay our present-day values onto the facts of the past as a gauge of societal stability.
This book provides a fresh approach to understanding the process of change within a society. The method presented inherently uses a relative scale of value to measure the success and failure of the classes within a continuum of wealth and power. It also is able to factor in the effects of environmental factors and historical precedent.

Worth the listen.

I was not disappointed by the book. Time to consider future scenarios from the data to alter the possibilities.

Required for long term human survival

Forest view of social dynamics, backed by science and history. This should be a required primary subject from junior high upwards through advanced degrees, with applicational theory to avoid the worst pitfalls of human social behavior and organization, giving civilization a chance to survive given the destructive powers that doom humankind without sufficient understanding.