Excellent summarisation. I recently read End Times myself and have been watching talks and interviews with Turchin. I have Ultrasociety and War and Peace and War on my shelf to read next, when I get around to it. The way I always interpreted the "wealth pump" (from a systems perspective) was that it was primarily driven by self-reinforcing positive feedback loops which cause the concentration of wealth and power to accelerate exponentially over time, thus resulting in instability. And as you point out at the end of your article, we need to find a way to maintain robust negative feedback loops in perpetuity (whether through taxation or whatever) that prevent this inequality spiral from periodically destabilising society. But that requires constant vigilance by the populace to guard against the concentration of wealth and prevent regulatory capture, and also maintain robust social institutions capable of retaining information and passing knowledge and experience down through the generations.
I'm a fan of Turchin, but his approach works at the macro general level (birds eye view explanation).
For instance, drawing from your interpretation and conclusion, in my opinion, there's an omission of small details in both the case of why the USA was able to avoid collapse during the Civil War and New Deal eras. Namely, national patriotic champions and limited power of foreign interference.
DJT is a grifter, his track record before politics is the inverse of virtue, involves keyfabe and most importantly, greed. If we were to get into the weeds of actual policies enacted thus far we'd find much of the same Republican Neoliberal stale economic recipes. And more importantly, DJT is supported by the new American aristocracy of the techbros (JDV is their man, courtesy of Thiel) and the Israeli lobby. The use of tariffs has also fizzled, in the sense tariffs can be a policy instrument to boost manufacturing and industrial growth, but only if crafted within a strategy foreseeing these core elements, which perhaps aside from computer chips, hasn't come to pass.
DJT definitely does represent a different faction of the elite, but personally I wouldn't go so far as to call it a counterelite. He's still nested within the overall American elite.
And referring back to Turchin, there's no evidence the wealth pump has been curtailed.
The other elephant in the room is the Israeli connection, which connects with the hangover from the Cold War of US foreign policy being run mostly by covert agencies (even USAID was a form of covert operations). Unfortunately the USA elites have merged with European elites and a patchwork of global elites. This transnational element throws another spanner in the works in terms of the possibilities of counterelites emerging within the institutions and seizing control of the steering wheel. In Europe we have the same problem, and the recent elections in Romania and Moldova highlight the single-minded policy direction of the establishment elites.
And all this is without coming to BRICS and Russia, Iran, China, etc.
Back in January when DJT was being sworn in, with a straight face Larry Ellison announced how citizens would be on their best behavior because of monitoring technologies. This line was repeated recently in an exchange with Blair and Starmer in the UK has brought out the intention of digital IDs. More broadly both the UK and Germany have lately been cracking down more severely on free speech. All this has been ongoing for a few years now. Taken together, we can see the broad contours of travel for "the West". It is what it is and highlights the lack of concern by the establishment elites to the accumulating tensions.
Lastly, and I'm not the first to say it, the next economic crisis will concern the to big to fail sovereign debts. The solution to this issue will be the final metamorphosis of the West. Indeed, the wealth pump combined with demographic analysis are good ideas and certainly do provide a good framework for analysis, but they don't consider the [messy] issue of power and it's corollaries, like hegemony, especially transnationally.
I read a good substack essay on the upcoming unholy alliance between climate fanatics, Palestinian supporters, islamists, the TQI gender crowd, socialists, etc, which will ignite the revolution. On the other side of the barricades will be the nationalists, the Zionists, Christians and Catholics. All these groupings will be controlled by the same elites. I think this is an important point to keep in mind. It is possible new groups emerge during upheaval, like anarchists or patriots, but perhaps not at first.
In terms of a new and better system, this requires those with the biggest stick to be enlightened in terms of sharing power. Historically this has never happened. Some have come close to doing interesting things, for instance, the city state of Venice or the federal empire of SE Asia, but unfortunately humans have demonstrated themselves to be unable to do so.
First, I think we agree on more than it might appear. Neither Turchin nor I claim that wealth concentration has decreased—quite the opposite. The entire framework rests on the wealth pump accelerating since the 1980s, with no evidence it's been meaningfully curtailed. Trump's election represents elite fragmentation, not the reversal of inequality trends.
Your skepticism about whether Trump represents genuine counterelites versus intra-elite competition is reasonable. This is exactly the kind of question structural demographic theory helps us examine empirically. The historical record shows that counterelite movements often come from within elite ranks—people who feel excluded from power despite their resources. Whether they succeed in actually changing wealth distribution is a separate question from whether they represent a fracturing of elite consensus. The New Deal coalition included plenty of elites who turned against their class interests, at least temporarily.
You're right that transnational elite networks complicate the picture. Turchin's framework was developed primarily for analyzing bounded political units, and global capital flows do create challenges for national-level reform. This is a genuine limitation of the theory when applied to our interconnected world.
However, your comment takes a turn I can't endorse when you write: "I read a good substack essay on the upcoming unholy alliance between climate fanatics, Palestinian supporters, islamists, the TQI gender crowd, socialists, etc, which will ignite the revolution. On the other side of the barricades will be the nationalists, the Zionists, Christians and Catholics. All these groupings will be controlled by the same elites."
This goes way too far. The claim that future revolutionary coalitions will be "controlled by the same elites" is unfalsifiable conspiracy thinking. It assumes a level of coordinated control that's both implausible and contradicts the very elite fragmentation we're discussing. Structural demographic theory describes how competing elite factions emerge and clash—not hidden puppet masters controlling all sides. If elites could coordinate that effectively, we wouldn't see the polarization and institutional breakdown we're currently experiencing.
I'm fine with heterodox analysis and contrarian perspectives, but I'll remove future comments that dive deeper into these conspiracy theory vibes. The whole point of structural demographic theory is that you don't need hidden cabals to explain societal dysfunction—just people following their incentives within specific institutional structures.
I agree with the wealth pump being switched on in the 80s, and more broadly believe we can find a series of questionable choices in the 70s.
I'm currently reading Turchin's End Times, so apologies if my understanding of all the nuances falls short. Using the terminology of your reply, DJT (to me) is neither intra-elite nor a counterelite, although I do see a fractioning of the elite, although if anything it's the same elite (the techbros angle is partly a new faction). Within his team, Rubio for instance, represents the old establishment from the Republican party (and could be interpreted as a representative of the Deep state or MIC, depending on how we look at it).
So using your terminology, on some level it might appear to be an elite fracturing, but upon closer inspection, for instance the Epstein saga, would indicate DJT is part of the same elite. And the continuity of the Neoliberal economic policies (tax cuts for the upper strata) as well as neocon foreign policy and blind support for Israel, there's a lot more continuity than change, regardless of the headlines.
Also the techbros elite is hand-in-glove with the same elite structure they'd be competing against if there were a competition: Ellison for instance founded Oracle decades ago, with links to the CIA I might add. Same with Thiel/Palantir. So. Beyond surface level it's hard to make a case for intra-elite competition and even fractioning, let alone inter-elite.
And perhaps this is part of the problem given all the disparate social movements and identities bubbling beneath the surface.
The wealth pump discussion is also more transnational than meets the eye. For instance, if done seriously, would need to include the offshore tax avoidance (the int. Committee of journalists in the previous decade have reported on various scandals, most famously the Panama papers), which would then force us to revisit decolonization in the 50s-60s, when the international tax system based on different jurisdictions took shape. If memory serves, from the reporting on the offshore scandals, diving deeper, we'd find that roughly 40% of global money laundering occurs within in UK dominion territories. This then links us to the world of MNCs, big finance, accounting, etc. Elites are no longer just the"kings" as it were, but include an entire professional managerial class in support.
I think Turchin's theoretical framework could get around this by amalgamating the West into a bloc, even though its single constituents kinda appear distinct. Two individuals who highlight why such an approach might be more useful are: Mark Carney who worked at Goldman Sachs, at the Central Bank of Canada, at the Bank of England and now is the Prime Minister of Canada, and Mario Draghi, Bank of Italy, Central Bank of the EU, Goldman Sachs, Prime Minister of Italy and now on the bench.
Moreover, much has been written off late on the decline of the West (there's an interesting YT channel and substack by a Chinese professor, who quotes Turchin, called predictive history, check it out; he called the Ukraine war as inevitable a year before it happened). Personally I'm a fan of this overarching view, so someone who straddles the US, EU and Asia.
My point is, at the risk of tasting the more conspiratorial pickings, which I understand your comment and concern, the theoretical framework needs to be able to account for the reality, which is more nuanced and gritty. And perhaps instead of seeing many separate entities (esp. countries), it's easier to see one overarching entity (the West) with a loose collection of sub entities.
In the same vein, it's difficult to see intra-elite competition. Perhaps I should have written a more nuanced comment (there may or may not be a puppet master, or masters, but this is actually a very complicated subject; human history contains a lot of weirdness; I actually agree there's no elite coordination, although occasionally we can see patterns indicating some transnational coordination (build back better was a policy pushed in several countries concurrently not too long ago)).
Maybe much also depends on what point of the hierarchy we're looking at. Personally I believe there are loose identity groups reconducible to financing both sides of various issues and the group representatives, and on the surface might seem contradictory, but then if we introduce eschatology, contradictory elements can be explained. A good example of this could be the financing of activities promoting color revolutions and mass migration into the USA and Europe, for instance from USAID and various NGOs, of most renown the Open society organization, which actually overlap somewhat with entities financing as more nationalist minded groups (in the US, AIPAC, ADL, and individuals like Ackman who have spearheaded anti pro-palestine actions in Universities, supporting pro-christian groups and leaning right of center). All these entities support Israel in some shape or form (and yes I'm aware of the antisemitism issue; it's like walking on eggshells; if you really want a head scratcher, research links between Tommy Robinson of UK EDL fame and the recent raise the flag campaign and the IDF/Israel). You wouldn't like the explanation, so I'm not going to write about it, but its undeniable mass immigration has happened and it's "illegal" classification would indicate it's not been sponsored by the government's of the receiving countries, who at most facilitate support for arrivals after entry. And it's understandable if this mass immigration, for cultural and identity reasons, is more antisemitic and culturally heterogeneous than their hosts. But in terms of elites, we're talking about the same elites promoting it and repressing the political forces complaining about this issue.
Perhaps this is why as much as we can discuss about elite competition, the world we're living in does not lend itself well to easily identifiable theoretical factions.
In general I'd also say at the moment we're witnessing changing allegiances of identity based groupings.
For instance, we're witnessing the reemergence of some quasi-nationalism, labelled as the far right (although no one seems to be able to define "far-right" anymore: these labels, like Nazi, racist, etc, are getting flung around so often so as to loose their meanings: the international press for instance labels Meloni here in Italy as far right, but she/they aren't, as that space is occupied by "casa pound" and they do publicly appear occasionally. But I mention this because again, Meloni to me represents a form intra-elite competition, although defacto it's part of the same elite, like DJT).
So yes, I would agree with you that structural demographics and theorizing about elite competition (fracturing, counter, Inter and intra) is helpful. But unfortunately the world is really complex and doesn't lend itself to theorizing.
On the other hand, if we do add some flexibility on conspiracies and wacky stuff like eschatology, contradictions can be explained. But I accept this is unacceptable for more academically oriented discussions, although perhaps this highlights more of a limitation of academia than anything else.
Power operates from the shadows. Machiavelli taught as much and it's worthwhile to keep in mind we can trace the West as it stands today all the way back to the original Roman empire. Off course, we wouldn't find continuity of empire, but we might be able to identify elites shifting around and merging and fractioning. But this is another discussion altogether.
Thanks for your reply, apologies for my meandering verbosity.
Excellent summarisation. I recently read End Times myself and have been watching talks and interviews with Turchin. I have Ultrasociety and War and Peace and War on my shelf to read next, when I get around to it. The way I always interpreted the "wealth pump" (from a systems perspective) was that it was primarily driven by self-reinforcing positive feedback loops which cause the concentration of wealth and power to accelerate exponentially over time, thus resulting in instability. And as you point out at the end of your article, we need to find a way to maintain robust negative feedback loops in perpetuity (whether through taxation or whatever) that prevent this inequality spiral from periodically destabilising society. But that requires constant vigilance by the populace to guard against the concentration of wealth and prevent regulatory capture, and also maintain robust social institutions capable of retaining information and passing knowledge and experience down through the generations.
Well, Turchin liked your essay, so it's a start.
I'm a fan of Turchin, but his approach works at the macro general level (birds eye view explanation).
For instance, drawing from your interpretation and conclusion, in my opinion, there's an omission of small details in both the case of why the USA was able to avoid collapse during the Civil War and New Deal eras. Namely, national patriotic champions and limited power of foreign interference.
DJT is a grifter, his track record before politics is the inverse of virtue, involves keyfabe and most importantly, greed. If we were to get into the weeds of actual policies enacted thus far we'd find much of the same Republican Neoliberal stale economic recipes. And more importantly, DJT is supported by the new American aristocracy of the techbros (JDV is their man, courtesy of Thiel) and the Israeli lobby. The use of tariffs has also fizzled, in the sense tariffs can be a policy instrument to boost manufacturing and industrial growth, but only if crafted within a strategy foreseeing these core elements, which perhaps aside from computer chips, hasn't come to pass.
DJT definitely does represent a different faction of the elite, but personally I wouldn't go so far as to call it a counterelite. He's still nested within the overall American elite.
And referring back to Turchin, there's no evidence the wealth pump has been curtailed.
The other elephant in the room is the Israeli connection, which connects with the hangover from the Cold War of US foreign policy being run mostly by covert agencies (even USAID was a form of covert operations). Unfortunately the USA elites have merged with European elites and a patchwork of global elites. This transnational element throws another spanner in the works in terms of the possibilities of counterelites emerging within the institutions and seizing control of the steering wheel. In Europe we have the same problem, and the recent elections in Romania and Moldova highlight the single-minded policy direction of the establishment elites.
And all this is without coming to BRICS and Russia, Iran, China, etc.
Back in January when DJT was being sworn in, with a straight face Larry Ellison announced how citizens would be on their best behavior because of monitoring technologies. This line was repeated recently in an exchange with Blair and Starmer in the UK has brought out the intention of digital IDs. More broadly both the UK and Germany have lately been cracking down more severely on free speech. All this has been ongoing for a few years now. Taken together, we can see the broad contours of travel for "the West". It is what it is and highlights the lack of concern by the establishment elites to the accumulating tensions.
Lastly, and I'm not the first to say it, the next economic crisis will concern the to big to fail sovereign debts. The solution to this issue will be the final metamorphosis of the West. Indeed, the wealth pump combined with demographic analysis are good ideas and certainly do provide a good framework for analysis, but they don't consider the [messy] issue of power and it's corollaries, like hegemony, especially transnationally.
I read a good substack essay on the upcoming unholy alliance between climate fanatics, Palestinian supporters, islamists, the TQI gender crowd, socialists, etc, which will ignite the revolution. On the other side of the barricades will be the nationalists, the Zionists, Christians and Catholics. All these groupings will be controlled by the same elites. I think this is an important point to keep in mind. It is possible new groups emerge during upheaval, like anarchists or patriots, but perhaps not at first.
In terms of a new and better system, this requires those with the biggest stick to be enlightened in terms of sharing power. Historically this has never happened. Some have come close to doing interesting things, for instance, the city state of Venice or the federal empire of SE Asia, but unfortunately humans have demonstrated themselves to be unable to do so.
Thanks for engaging with the essay.
First, I think we agree on more than it might appear. Neither Turchin nor I claim that wealth concentration has decreased—quite the opposite. The entire framework rests on the wealth pump accelerating since the 1980s, with no evidence it's been meaningfully curtailed. Trump's election represents elite fragmentation, not the reversal of inequality trends.
Your skepticism about whether Trump represents genuine counterelites versus intra-elite competition is reasonable. This is exactly the kind of question structural demographic theory helps us examine empirically. The historical record shows that counterelite movements often come from within elite ranks—people who feel excluded from power despite their resources. Whether they succeed in actually changing wealth distribution is a separate question from whether they represent a fracturing of elite consensus. The New Deal coalition included plenty of elites who turned against their class interests, at least temporarily.
You're right that transnational elite networks complicate the picture. Turchin's framework was developed primarily for analyzing bounded political units, and global capital flows do create challenges for national-level reform. This is a genuine limitation of the theory when applied to our interconnected world.
However, your comment takes a turn I can't endorse when you write: "I read a good substack essay on the upcoming unholy alliance between climate fanatics, Palestinian supporters, islamists, the TQI gender crowd, socialists, etc, which will ignite the revolution. On the other side of the barricades will be the nationalists, the Zionists, Christians and Catholics. All these groupings will be controlled by the same elites."
This goes way too far. The claim that future revolutionary coalitions will be "controlled by the same elites" is unfalsifiable conspiracy thinking. It assumes a level of coordinated control that's both implausible and contradicts the very elite fragmentation we're discussing. Structural demographic theory describes how competing elite factions emerge and clash—not hidden puppet masters controlling all sides. If elites could coordinate that effectively, we wouldn't see the polarization and institutional breakdown we're currently experiencing.
I'm fine with heterodox analysis and contrarian perspectives, but I'll remove future comments that dive deeper into these conspiracy theory vibes. The whole point of structural demographic theory is that you don't need hidden cabals to explain societal dysfunction—just people following their incentives within specific institutional structures.
Hi Florian, thanks for the reply.
I agree with the wealth pump being switched on in the 80s, and more broadly believe we can find a series of questionable choices in the 70s.
I'm currently reading Turchin's End Times, so apologies if my understanding of all the nuances falls short. Using the terminology of your reply, DJT (to me) is neither intra-elite nor a counterelite, although I do see a fractioning of the elite, although if anything it's the same elite (the techbros angle is partly a new faction). Within his team, Rubio for instance, represents the old establishment from the Republican party (and could be interpreted as a representative of the Deep state or MIC, depending on how we look at it).
So using your terminology, on some level it might appear to be an elite fracturing, but upon closer inspection, for instance the Epstein saga, would indicate DJT is part of the same elite. And the continuity of the Neoliberal economic policies (tax cuts for the upper strata) as well as neocon foreign policy and blind support for Israel, there's a lot more continuity than change, regardless of the headlines.
Also the techbros elite is hand-in-glove with the same elite structure they'd be competing against if there were a competition: Ellison for instance founded Oracle decades ago, with links to the CIA I might add. Same with Thiel/Palantir. So. Beyond surface level it's hard to make a case for intra-elite competition and even fractioning, let alone inter-elite.
And perhaps this is part of the problem given all the disparate social movements and identities bubbling beneath the surface.
The wealth pump discussion is also more transnational than meets the eye. For instance, if done seriously, would need to include the offshore tax avoidance (the int. Committee of journalists in the previous decade have reported on various scandals, most famously the Panama papers), which would then force us to revisit decolonization in the 50s-60s, when the international tax system based on different jurisdictions took shape. If memory serves, from the reporting on the offshore scandals, diving deeper, we'd find that roughly 40% of global money laundering occurs within in UK dominion territories. This then links us to the world of MNCs, big finance, accounting, etc. Elites are no longer just the"kings" as it were, but include an entire professional managerial class in support.
I think Turchin's theoretical framework could get around this by amalgamating the West into a bloc, even though its single constituents kinda appear distinct. Two individuals who highlight why such an approach might be more useful are: Mark Carney who worked at Goldman Sachs, at the Central Bank of Canada, at the Bank of England and now is the Prime Minister of Canada, and Mario Draghi, Bank of Italy, Central Bank of the EU, Goldman Sachs, Prime Minister of Italy and now on the bench.
Moreover, much has been written off late on the decline of the West (there's an interesting YT channel and substack by a Chinese professor, who quotes Turchin, called predictive history, check it out; he called the Ukraine war as inevitable a year before it happened). Personally I'm a fan of this overarching view, so someone who straddles the US, EU and Asia.
My point is, at the risk of tasting the more conspiratorial pickings, which I understand your comment and concern, the theoretical framework needs to be able to account for the reality, which is more nuanced and gritty. And perhaps instead of seeing many separate entities (esp. countries), it's easier to see one overarching entity (the West) with a loose collection of sub entities.
In the same vein, it's difficult to see intra-elite competition. Perhaps I should have written a more nuanced comment (there may or may not be a puppet master, or masters, but this is actually a very complicated subject; human history contains a lot of weirdness; I actually agree there's no elite coordination, although occasionally we can see patterns indicating some transnational coordination (build back better was a policy pushed in several countries concurrently not too long ago)).
Maybe much also depends on what point of the hierarchy we're looking at. Personally I believe there are loose identity groups reconducible to financing both sides of various issues and the group representatives, and on the surface might seem contradictory, but then if we introduce eschatology, contradictory elements can be explained. A good example of this could be the financing of activities promoting color revolutions and mass migration into the USA and Europe, for instance from USAID and various NGOs, of most renown the Open society organization, which actually overlap somewhat with entities financing as more nationalist minded groups (in the US, AIPAC, ADL, and individuals like Ackman who have spearheaded anti pro-palestine actions in Universities, supporting pro-christian groups and leaning right of center). All these entities support Israel in some shape or form (and yes I'm aware of the antisemitism issue; it's like walking on eggshells; if you really want a head scratcher, research links between Tommy Robinson of UK EDL fame and the recent raise the flag campaign and the IDF/Israel). You wouldn't like the explanation, so I'm not going to write about it, but its undeniable mass immigration has happened and it's "illegal" classification would indicate it's not been sponsored by the government's of the receiving countries, who at most facilitate support for arrivals after entry. And it's understandable if this mass immigration, for cultural and identity reasons, is more antisemitic and culturally heterogeneous than their hosts. But in terms of elites, we're talking about the same elites promoting it and repressing the political forces complaining about this issue.
Perhaps this is why as much as we can discuss about elite competition, the world we're living in does not lend itself well to easily identifiable theoretical factions.
In general I'd also say at the moment we're witnessing changing allegiances of identity based groupings.
For instance, we're witnessing the reemergence of some quasi-nationalism, labelled as the far right (although no one seems to be able to define "far-right" anymore: these labels, like Nazi, racist, etc, are getting flung around so often so as to loose their meanings: the international press for instance labels Meloni here in Italy as far right, but she/they aren't, as that space is occupied by "casa pound" and they do publicly appear occasionally. But I mention this because again, Meloni to me represents a form intra-elite competition, although defacto it's part of the same elite, like DJT).
So yes, I would agree with you that structural demographics and theorizing about elite competition (fracturing, counter, Inter and intra) is helpful. But unfortunately the world is really complex and doesn't lend itself to theorizing.
On the other hand, if we do add some flexibility on conspiracies and wacky stuff like eschatology, contradictions can be explained. But I accept this is unacceptable for more academically oriented discussions, although perhaps this highlights more of a limitation of academia than anything else.
Power operates from the shadows. Machiavelli taught as much and it's worthwhile to keep in mind we can trace the West as it stands today all the way back to the original Roman empire. Off course, we wouldn't find continuity of empire, but we might be able to identify elites shifting around and merging and fractioning. But this is another discussion altogether.
Thanks for your reply, apologies for my meandering verbosity.