End Times

Peter Turchin

The extent to which economic elites dominate government in the United States is very unusual compared to other Western democracies. Countries like Denmark and Austria have ruling classes that have been fairly responsive to the [needs] of their population. During the postwar period, these countries were ruled by strong center-left parties, such as social democrats and socialists. Center-left parties rotated in power with center-right parties, but a strong consensus for the welfare state was shared broadly by the ruling elites in Western European democracies. Countries such as Denmark and Austria usually occupy the top positions when UN countries are ranked for their ability to deliver a high quality of life for their citizens... On many indicators of quality of life—life expectancy, equality, education—the US is an outlier in the Western world. Why?

[After 1500s] the conditions of intense warfare [via gunpowder, perfected in Europe] favor[ed] larger, more cohesive states. Small principalities and city-states could no longer hide behind their walls, which were easily breached by cannons. Intense military competition between European states weeded out those that couldn’t raise large armies; produce muskets and artillery in quantity; and build expensive modern fortifications that could withstand cannon fire. The Military Revolution also triggered a revolution in governance and finance because successful states had to learn how to efficiently extract and use wealth from their populations... As a result, medieval militocracies gradually evolved into ruling classes that combined military and administrative functions.

Although most plutocracies rapidly went extinct, some lingered longer than others. The Republic of Venice, located on islands protected by its lagoon, lasted longer than the other Italian city-states... thanks to its protected position in the British Isles, once England conquered all of them, it could, and did, dispense with the standing army (at least within England itself). The squirearchy, which started as a military class, gradually lost its military character and became simply a class of landowners, from which members of the British Parliament were elected... Unlike the other European great powers, which had to direct most of their resources into land armies or be conquered, the British Empire poured its resources into its navy. As a result, the United Kingdom came to be ruled by an elite that combined economic and administrative functions.

The antebellum ruling class in the US was a direct offshoot of the English squirearchy. Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were settled by the Cavaliers, the faction of supporters of Charles I that lost the English Civil War. They brought with them their aristocratic ways and indentured servants. The latter were soon replaced by imported Africans, enslaved for life. After they won the Revolutionary War against the British Empire, the winners set about building their own state. Southern planters and Northern merchants largely copied the cultural forms of governance with which they were familiar. The early American Republic was an oligarchy modeled after the United Kingdom, although without a monarch (who, by that point, was on the way to becoming just a figurehead in the British Empire anyway). As a result, the United States inherited plutocracy as part of its 'cultural genotype'.