I have been looking into secular cycles, a cycle concept developed by Peter Turchin. My focus has been on inequality, which as people here know is very high and and which was much lower 40 years ago. Most, but perhaps not all know that before then inequality was as high as today. That is, inequality fell, a phenomenon known as the Great Compression. This fall and rise suggests a cycle. If you clicked on the secular cycles link you will see that cycles in equality reflect secular cycles. Turchin's secular cycle work to date has been on agrarian, pre-industrial societies and it is not clear how much the factors responsible for cycles in inequality in those societies apply to modern ones.

Here I propose an explanation for the modern cycle in inequality that is different from those for pre-industrial cycles. I posit that rising inequality made it increasingly hard for the mass market, which was the same as the mass of workers, to purchase all output. That is, economic output became increasingly limited by aggegate demand and not investment. This shows up as a reduction in the amount of output per person (customer) that could be generated per unit of capital, a quantity I call capital productivity. Capital productivity has run in the low 40's since 1871 (when measurements become possible) to the present with two exceptions: the 1907-41 period and the post-2006 period (see below).




The figures above show plots of capital productivity (right axis), profit margin (profit as a % of GDP) and return on capital or ROC (left axis). ROC is what a capitalist economy seeks to maximize. Its value at any time represents a good measure of how capitalism is working for its operators (capitalists). When this value is high or rising relative to recent history capitalist elites feel that things are working. When the opposite happens; they get worried.

The dashed lines show when capital productivity began to fall: during the Panic of 1907 and just before the Panic of 2008. As far as this parameter is concerned the current secular cycle is about 100 years long. I have been considering the idea that the secular cycle and the saeculum in post-Revolutionary America may be linked. Those who are interested, please review the figures, ask questions and speculate on what you think it means.

Here is a plot of US economic inequality over time showing secular cycles. The vertical lines denote the breakpoints between Americans different political eras or "republics" as Michael Lind terms them. The breakpoints selected are 1787, 1860 and 1932. Also shown are growth curves for the value of tobacco, cotton and coal&iron production per person, normalized by divided by per capital GDP (for the colonial period British per capita GDP is used to normalize the data). These are proxies for different kinds of elites, a colonial "tobacco elite", an antebellum "cotton elite" and a Gilded Age industrial capitalist elite (proxied by coal and iron). The last 4T saw an enormous growth in the size of the Federal government. Millions of people became Federal government employee and state and local government grew as well. All this new activity required managers and professionals which define an elite I call mandarins. I proxy the growth of the mandarin class by the total Federal spending for Research plus all government spending for higher education. Mandarins are different from previous elites in that they are not associated with an industry or collection of industries and their growth is not associated with rising inequality (they are not rich for the most part). Capitalist elites (modern versions of the industrial capitalists) continue to exist, unlike the cotton elites, they were no displaced by the mandarins, the category of elites expanded to accommodate the mandarins. Today through people like Scott Walker, capitalist elites are trying to reduce the power of mandarins through restrictions on public-sector unionization.

The struggles that bring about a new republic (or resolved a 4T) do not explictly involve a struggle between the elites defined in the figure. For example the Civil War was NOT a war between the northern industrialists (coal & iron) against the Southern plantation elite (cotton) about tariffs. It was a war about slavery, in which the industrialists took the "progressive" side ended up big winners. Similarly the Revolutionary war was NOT was war between Tory Southern plantation owners (Tobacco) against Rebel Northern Commercial interests (not shown in figure because of absence of good proxy). It was a colonial revolt taken for a complex variety of reasons, some economic some not, for which the Northern, commercial elites were the primary movers. Finally the 1932 event reflect a response to a cluster of economic (see previous post) and social problems, that resulted in the creating of a new class of elites (there was no internal war at all).



The first two dashed lines are associated with periods of internal war, the American Revolution for the first and the Civil War for the second. These are also associated with examples of state breakdown/collapse the is typical of transition periods between pre-industrial secular cycles (e.g. Norman invasion, Wars of the Roses, English CW+Glorious Rev). They are also associated with S&H 4Ts. In fact, for the US case the secular cycle defined by inequality in the figure above corresponds pretty closely to the S&H saeculum.

The figure shows that peaks in inequality tend to be close to republic/saeculum/secular cycle turning points. That is inequality peaks during the secular cycle crisis period and the saeculum crisis period (4T) meaning it starts to go down during the 4T. Supposedly this is going to happen real soon now if we be 4T.

Two of the dashed lines in the figure correspond to 4T critical elections, which feature the beginning of a period when one party controls the presidency for 3 or more consecutive terms. If Clinton wins in 2016 this would make 2008 a critical election and a good candidate for the next dashed line. The problem with this is inequality has continued to rise after 2008. People supposedly are unhappy, but there is little major unrest (nothing like 1919 or 1968) there is little interest in political activity amongst the young (in the past a key fact in internal unrest).

There are Millies here. Are you content? If not, why is there no evidence of this that I can see? If it is hard to see for the uninitiated, how is that going to be effective?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

... Two of the dashed lines in the figure correspond to 4T critical elections, which feature the beginning of a period when one party controls the presidency for 3 or more consecutive terms. If Clinton wins in 2016 this would make 2008 a critical election and a good candidate for the next dashed line. The problem with this is inequality has continued to rise after 2008. People supposedly are unhappy, but there is little major unrest (nothing like 1919 or 1968) there is little interest in political activity amongst the young (in the past a key fact in internal unrest).

There are Millies here. Are you content? If not, why is there no evidence of this that I can see? If it is hard to see for the uninitiated, how is that going to be effective?

This is pure speculation, but who should the Millies rally to support or oppose? They backed BHO solidly, and got nothing for it. Other than an old white guy from the backwoods, no one seems to be interested in fixing the problems, and, frankly, I doubt the Millies believe that Bernie's ideas have solid merit in any case.

Millies believe in technology and some variant of the brotherhood of man. Yet they are also cynical. How does this lead to anything productive?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

This is pure speculation, but who should the Millies rally to support or oppose? They backed BHO solidly, and got nothing for it. Other than an old white guy from the backwoods, no one seems to be interested in fixing the problems, and, frankly, I doubt the Millies believe that Bernie's ideas have solid merit in any case.

Millies believe in technology and some variant of the brotherhood of man. Yet they are also cynical. How does this lead to anything productive?

I don't think expecting at pre-existing option to appear of which they can approve or disapprove is going to suffice. Simply voting for BHO and expecting things to get better is naive. What is needed is cultural push. Those who want change need to inject cultural memes into the discourse of the day that push the zeitgeist in the desired direction.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I doubt the Millies believe that Bernie's ideas have solid merit in any case.

Like always, we're already there - and trying to get the over 50 group to follow along. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-...national-poll/

Clinton's advantage with Democratic voters under age 50 has evaporated, and she and Sanders are now even. However, Clinton still has a large lead with older voters.

PS: Democrats don't win elections by appealing to the over-50-demographic dominated by Republicans. But boomers are pretty damn conservative, even when they call themselves liberal.​

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Like always, we're already there - and trying to get the over 50 group to follow along. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-...national-poll/

PS: Democrats don't win elections by appealing to the over-50-demographic dominated by Republicans. But boomers are pretty damn conservative, even when they call themselves liberal.​

I see a lot of Millie Bernie supporters at the college where I teach. Not sure what M&L is seeing. And that's true about many Boomers--even "liberal"--being somewhat conservative. Some of it happens with age, I think, you just. get. tired.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

This is pure speculation, but who should the Millies rally to support or oppose? They backed BHO solidly, and got nothing for it. Other than an old white guy from the backwoods, no one seems to be interested in fixing the problems, and, frankly, I doubt the Millies believe that Bernie's ideas have solid merit in any case.

Millies believe in technology and some variant of the brotherhood of man. Yet they are also cynical. How does this lead to anything productive?

The millies didn't get anything productive from BHO because they didn't vote in midterms and congressional elections for a congress that would back him.

(I don't know how many times I have to say it).

You can't vote for a president and expect change. That's not how the system works. Millies need to become civics, and learn some civics.

If they vote for Sanders, even Sanders himself understands that they will also have to vote for a congress that backs him, or they will get nothing again.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I don't think expecting at pre-existing option to appear of which they can approve or disapprove is going to suffice. Simply voting for BHO and expecting things to get better is naive. What is needed is cultural push. Those who want change need to inject cultural memes into the discourse of the day that push the zeitgeist in the desired direction.

That wasn't enough either. They pushed memes on Wall Street. They "changed the national discussion." That means nothing without political follow-through. Our new civic generation did not understand that.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The millies didn't get anything productive from BHO because they didn't vote in midterms and congressional elections for a congress that would back him.

(I don't know how many times I have to say it).

You can't vote for a president and expect change. That's not how the system works. Millies need to become civics, and learn some civics.

If they vote for Sanders, even Sanders himself understands that they will also have to vote for a congress that backs him, or they will get nothing again.

Here's a crazy idea - maybe the prophets should learn some civics from the civics

Millennials gave Democrats a two year majority (included with a few months of supermajority) and what did the Democrats do with it? They obstructed their own president to get favorable terms for industry. Pushed through Cash for Clunkers instead of the public option Obama had used to differentiate himself from Hillary.

So what happened? The moderate and blue dog dems got largely voted out, just like they deserved to be. The problem is that the DNC keeps backing the candidates who fall in to that "moderate" but can't win demographic because they still haven't learned what the civics are trying to teach them: no level of marketing is going to push a crappy product. Enthusiastic campaigns for lukewarm candidates just devalues the future use of enthusiasm.

The Republicans have capitalized on the long-term trend of political polarization - they run to the right and their most enthusiastic supporters come out to help 'em. The Democrats run to the middle, but they're really chasing to the right and a shrinking group of less-committed voters.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Here's a crazy idea - maybe the prophets should learn some civics from the civics

Millennials gave Democrats a two year majority (included with a few months of supermajority) and what did the Democrats do with it? They obstructed their own president to get favorable terms for industry. Pushed through Cash for Clunkers instead of the public option Obama had used to differentiate himself from Hillary.

So what happened? The moderate and blue dog dems got largely voted out, just like they deserved to be. The problem is that the DNC keeps backing the candidates who fall in to that "moderate" but can't win demographic because they still haven't learned what the civics are trying to teach them: no level of marketing is going to push a crappy product. Enthusiastic campaigns for lukewarm candidates just devalues the future use of enthusiasm.

The Republicans have capitalized on the long-term trend of political polarization - they run to the right and their most enthusiastic supporters come out to help 'em. The Democrats run to the middle, but they're really chasing to the right and a shrinking group of less-committed voters.

IMO another issue is how OLD the Dem leadership is, and they are mentally stuck in in the 90s Triangulation mindset because of it. I suspect a big reason for this is that while right-wing Xers have become radicalized Tea-Partiers the left-wing Xers have tended to drop out of electoral politics. Left-wing Xers need to step up and help the Millennials clear out the Clintonian stagnation out of the party.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Here's a crazy idea - maybe the prophets should learn some civics from the civics

Millennials gave Democrats a two year majority (included with a few months of supermajority) and what did the Democrats do with it? They obstructed their own president to get favorable terms for industry. Pushed through Cash for Clunkers instead of the public option Obama had used to differentiate himself from Hillary.

Except it was mostly Silents that blocked the public option.

So what happened? The moderate and blue dog dems got largely voted out, just like they deserved to be. The problem is that the DNC keeps backing the candidates who fall in to that "moderate" but can't win demographic because they still haven't learned what the civics are trying to teach them: no level of marketing is going to push a crappy product. Enthusiastic campaigns for lukewarm candidates just devalues the future use of enthusiasm.

How does that explain millies' failure to vote for good Democratic candidates for congress?

The Republicans have capitalized on the long-term trend of political polarization - they run to the right and their most enthusiastic supporters come out to help 'em. The Democrats run to the middle, but they're really chasing to the right and a shrinking group of less-committed voters.

The politicians follow the people, and the money. Some more of the one than the other. But it's up to the people to vote and make their voices heard.

The civics need to learn from the prophets. You don't give up on a president you elect just because you don't get exactly what you want in one year, and then sulk, don't vote, and thus allow the representatives of corrupt power to take over congress and render the rest of his term useless. Sanders won't have any better luck with these demonic Republicans than Obama did.

Mikebert,
I apologize for not getting your message and reviewing this thread sooner. Have been very busy. Will look over the Turchin stuff when I get a chance. In the meantime, I would like to take issue with a side point you raised earlier. Preexisting options are very much a component of 4Ts for civics. We're supposed to be foot soldiers, not leaders here. As you mentioned in the other thread, the agenda for the crisis is supposed to be set by the formative experiences of the prophet generation.

PS speaking of that thread, there is a response waiting for you there.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I don't think expecting at pre-existing option to appear of which they can approve or disapprove is going to suffice. Simply voting for BHO and expecting things to get better is naive. What is needed is cultural push. Those who want change need to inject cultural memes into the discourse of the day that push the zeitgeist in the desired direction.

Sorry for the late reply, but life intervened.

I agree that there is no Easy Button^TM, so Millies are going to need a reality check before they're taken seriously. Voting once and expecting miracles only accelerated their flight to cynicism.

It's their lives at stake here, and they can't rely on their parents to make it right anymore. Eventually, that will sink in, though I haven't seen a lot of evidence of that happening yet.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Like always, we're already there - and trying to get the over 50 group to follow along. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-...national-poll/

I haven't seen much evidence that attitudes will translate into grass-roots efforts. GOTV requires a lot of worker-bees. Will the Millies be there?

Originally Posted by JohnMc82 ...

PS: Democrats don't win elections by appealing to the over-50-demographic dominated by Republicans. But boomers are pretty damn conservative, even when they call themselves liberal.​

Define 'liberal'. Social liberals are not needed at the moment. That war is mostly won. Economic liberals are needed now, and Boomers seem no more or less likely to hold those view than Millies. Let's be honest. After 40 years of libertarian marketing, the idea of a communitarian solution seems strange to most of the people not actively engaged in politics, but our parents (your grandparents) would have understood. Economic justice is not about paying lower taxes when you win the lottery, but that's not an atypical attitude.

Originally Posted by annla899

I see a lot of Millie Bernie supporters at the college where I teach. Not sure what M&L is seeing. And that's true about many Boomers--even "liberal"--being somewhat conservative. Some of it happens with age, I think, you just. get. tired.

Millies have an odd relationship with economics though. They've been raised on the Internet and the idea that anything on the Internet should be free, but they don't have a practical way to make that real. Intellectual property, like literature, music and films, is assumed to have no value because it's virtual. On the other side, there is a massive distrust of all power centers, so they have no allies to support or to support them, except each other. They value freedom, and ignore the commonweal.

How does that play out in the long run? A lot of Millies are TPers, because that fits their libertarian side, yet they fail to see how total freedom is also the freedom of the powerful to prey on the weak. It's a mindset that's only partially formed. I'm not sure how long it will take to rationalize it ... if that ever happens.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Here's a crazy idea - maybe the prophets should learn some civics from the civics

Millennials gave Democrats a two year majority (included with a few months of supermajority) and what did the Democrats do with it? They obstructed their own president to get favorable terms for industry. Pushed through Cash for Clunkers instead of the public option Obama had used to differentiate himself from Hillary.

So what happened? The moderate and blue dog dems got largely voted out, just like they deserved to be. The problem is that the DNC keeps backing the candidates who fall in to that "moderate" but can't win demographic because they still haven't learned what the civics are trying to teach them: no level of marketing is going to push a crappy product. Enthusiastic campaigns for lukewarm candidates just devalues the future use of enthusiasm.

The Republicans have capitalized on the long-term trend of political polarization - they run to the right and their most enthusiastic supporters come out to help 'em. The Democrats run to the middle, but they're really chasing to the right and a shrinking group of less-committed voters.

Politics is the art of the possible. First off, the two years the Dems had was really less, because Teddy Kennedy, the crucial 60th vote in the Senate, died in August of 2009. BHO and that Congress weren't even inaugurated until January, so 8 months, not two years. Second, government is complicated and every politician is there representing a different constituency. Not even the most authoritarian government can organize a unified policy juggernaut in a month or two. And you didn't like Cash for Clunkers? OK, how would you have preferred to deal with the #1 issue: the 2007-8 crash? Healthcare was on the back burner, if you remember. Add the not insignificant issues: BHO was never as liberal as you guys thought he was, and he was still in the process of learning the job - drinking from the proverbial firehose.

Like I noted in another post, there is a certain naiveté, but not surprising. 2008 was the first election where you actually had an impact. When things moved much slower than you thought they should, you got miffed, pouted and quit the game.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Sorry for the late reply, but life intervened.

I agree that there is no Easy Button^TM, so Millies are going to need a reality check before they're taken seriously. Voting once and expecting miracles only accelerated their flight to cynicism.

It's their lives at stake here, and they can't rely on their parents to make it right anymore. Eventually, that will sink in, though I haven't seen a lot of evidence of that happening yet.

I think one issue is that Xers made apolitical cynicism cool and a lot of Millies lapped it up.

Originally Posted by Odin

IMO another issue is how OLD the Dem leadership is, and they are mentally stuck in in the 90s Triangulation mindset because of it. I suspect a big reason for this is that while right-wing Xers have become radicalized Tea-Partiers the left-wing Xers have tended to drop out of electoral politics. Left-wing Xers need to step up and help the Millennials clear out the Clintonian stagnation out of the party.

I have to agree with this. Clinton did a lot of harm, and Hillary is unlikely to reverse it.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I haven't seen much evidence that attitudes will translate into grass-roots efforts. GOTV requires a lot of worker-bees. Will the Millies be there?



Define 'liberal'. Social liberals are not needed at the moment. That war is mostly won. Economic liberals are needed now, and Boomers seem no more or less likely to hold those view than Millies. Let's be honest. After 40 years of libertarian marketing, the idea of a communitarian solution seems strange to most of the people not actively engaged in politics, but our parents (your grandparents) would have understood. Economic justice is not about paying lower taxes when you win the lottery, but that's not an atypical attitude.

There seem to be a depressing number of "brogressive" Millies, white middle class Libertarians and Conservatives who think they are Liberal because they are against the Religious Right and like smoking pot. But bring up things like the movement for a $15/hr minimum wage or the Black Lives Matter movement and they show their true colors.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Mikebert,
I apologize for not getting your message and reviewing this thread sooner. Have been very busy. Will look over the Turchin stuff when I get a chance. In the meantime, I would like to take issue with a side point you raised earlier. Preexisting options are very much a component of 4Ts for civics. We're supposed to be foot soldiers, not leaders here. As you mentioned in the other thread, the agenda for the crisis is supposed to be set by the formative experiences of the prophet generation.

PS speaking of that thread, there is a response waiting for you there.

If you're arguing that we Boomers are remiss, you're exactly right. We're a generation divided, and a poor example to follow.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

If you're arguing that we Boomers are remiss, you're exactly right. We're a generation divided, and a poor example to follow.

I mean, there is ample precedent (even in the last 4T, which has been the subject of near hagiographic-coverage ever since) of division and seeming stasis lasting deep into a crisis. Of course, there is also no guarantee that there is a happy ending for most of us, either. Nobody is on top forever.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

I mean, there is ample precedent (even in the last 4T, which has been the subject of near hagiographic-coverage ever since) of division and seeming stasis lasting deep into a crisis.

In the Revolutionary 4T, internal war broke just two years after the 4T began. In the Civil War 4T war broke out in the following year. Even in the peaceful Depression 4T one of the two party won a landslide election and gained control of the Executive and Legislature for the next 12 years.

Assuming a 4T start in 2008, we have seen divided government at the federal level and essential stasis for 5 of the 7 years in the 4T so far. At the state level the country has moved decisively against the party that won a sweeping victory in 2008. Yet the Republicans, who have gone from strength to strength at the state level, are frequently seen to be a party in trouble, even in danger of collapse. The disorder itself is a sign of a 4T. Perhaps the state collapse and formation of a new state for this 4T will be about the party/electoral system. It is very confusing.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Mikebert,
I apologize for not getting your message and reviewing this thread sooner. Have been very busy. Will look over the Turchin stuff when I get a chance. In the meantime, I would like to take issue with a side point you raised earlier. Preexisting options are very much a component of 4Ts for civics. We're supposed to be foot soldiers, not leaders here. As you mentioned in the other thread, the agenda for the crisis is supposed to be set by the formative experiences of the prophet generation.

PS speaking of that thread, there is a response waiting for you there.

I made a reply to your post on the other thread but its not too good. Foreign policy issues are not a central interest. I was initially attracted to M&T for its leading sector concept which I used for my K-cycle stuff. I found their leadership cycle interesting also and summarized it in a spreadsheet. In order to get some sort of objective test in a reasonable time framework I had to interpret their empirical patterns pretty narrowly (e.g. naval share) and concluded that subsequent events did not play out in a way consistent with this narrow interpretation. If one widens the focus this is not so, but then the picture becomes too fuzzy to be of interest to me. So I don't really have anything more to say on hegemonic stuff.

My interest is really domestic. Using cycle concepts to gain some insight into where America is heading over the remaining decades I am likely to see. I am trying to put this stuff into some sort of framework using what Turchin calls first order models. A recent study on generational voting patterns shows that lifelong party preferences are strongly affected by events that occur over age 14-24. Some years ago I came up with what I call the paradigm model that assumes that one can identify a "political generation" from those who were age 23 during a "political moment". A political moment is defined exactly as S&H do the social moment except the word political replaces social. Political moments typically begin with realignment elections (e.g. 1800, 1828, 1860 etc). Thus the 1800 critical election creates a political generation that starts being born in 1777 (=1800-23). I define an age of leadership as the average of the mean ages of senators, congressmen+governors and Supreme Court Justices. This data is provided at this site. For the period around 1827-31 is was 52. If we add 52 to 1777 we see that the first wave of this political generation created by the election of 1800 came to power right about 1829, which was just at the the time of the next realignment election. And he pattern continues. The spacing between these political moments increases from ca. 28 in the early 19th century (when leaders were 52) to about 40 today (when leaders are about 64), reflecting increases in life expectancy.

The idea is the first order (i.e. generational) cycles in politics are what drives the secular cycle in the modern state and not demographics as in pre-industrial states. Thus episodes of state collapse (secular cycle turning points) correspond to political crisis periods (which roughly correspond to 4Ts) and the rise of what Michael Lind calls a "new republic".

In the Revolutionary 4T, internal war broke just two years after the 4T began. In the Civil War 4T war broke out in the following year. Even in the peaceful Depression 4T one of the two party won a landslide election and gained control of the Executive and Legislature for the next 12 years.

Assuming a 4T start in 2008, we have seen divided government at the federal level and essential stasis for 5 of the 7 years in the 4T so far. At the state level the country has moved decisively against the party that won a sweeping victory in 2008. Yet the Republicans, who have gone from strength to strength at the state level, are frequently seen to be a party in trouble, even in danger of collapse. The disorder itself is a sign of a 4T. Perhaps the state collapse and formation of a new state for this 4T will be about the party/electoral system. It is very confusing.

And yet the Glorious Revolution took place 13 years after the start of its 4T. Some people (myself included), start the Civil War 4T around 1850, leaving another long gap. Many of FDR's reforms stalled, under opposition from the conservative coalition, from the start of his second term until Pearl Harbor. It's not a completely unprecedented situation.

As for the domestic situation? It is kinda odd, I'll admit. The collapse of the Democrats at the state level, the hammering they've taken in the Senate and particularly the House since 2010, the age of their leadership (and the winnowing out of most of the up and comers on their side), all point to a Republican party resurgence. On the other hand, absent a Republican candidate capable of peeling off the white union vote in the Rust belt, they have a solid (not insurmountable, but very solid) advantage in the electoral college, a preponderance of the opinion forming institutions (schools, news media, entertainment, etc.), and demographics that point in their long term favor. With the "cleansing of the culture" being largely carried out from their end, and an unusual sweep in 2008, they look like they've got the whip hand for now. It's very strange. S & H did suggest that the beginning of the 4T would feature heightened, even frenzied competition between the existing factions before one of them won and ushered in the regeneracy.

But who knows? Maybe the problem is neither side is able to win completely on their own, and a catalyst is needed. Maybe the foreign situation we've been discussing in the other thread will tip the balance one way or another, the way WWI fatally weakened the Tsarist and Ottoman governments, and William of Orange displaced the Stuarts, resolving the previous decades of social conflict in favor of the rising class.

I know we've discussed this before, and you disapprove of this notion. On the other hand, there is little evidence of the sort of ideological and organizational prepwork of the sort that preceded previous revolutions.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

But who knows? Maybe the problem is neither side is able to win completely on their own, and a catalyst is needed. Maybe the foreign situation we've been discussing in the other thread will tip the balance one way or another, the way WWI fatally weakened the Tsarist and Ottoman governments, and William of Orange displaced the Stuarts, resolving the previous decades of social conflict in favor of the rising class.

This could be what happens. But if an external catalyst is required that sort of destroys the idea of a generationally-produced cycle. That is, a first order process involving an internal interaction between American generations that produces a cyclical outcome.

In my paradigm article I present a way to make this work using an unspecified mechanism. Basically the idea is a social (political) moment "creates" a generation in those coming of age (defined as age 23) during the moment. So for example if we used the Progression Era (1896-1916) as such a moment it creates a generation born over 1873-1893. If we ad 60 to the first date (that average age of leaders in ca. 1930) we get 1933. If we add 57 (the average age of leaders in ca. 1950) to the second date we get 1950. Hence the 1873-93 generation "comes into power" in 1933-1950 and creates a new social/political moment beginning in 1933 (with the New Deal). This moment then forms a new generation that starts being born in 1933-23 = 1910, which reaches age 58 (average age of leaders in late sixties) in 1968 implying the start of another such era and spawning another generation that starts being born in 1945 and so on. It more or less works out arithmetically, explaining the gradual lengthening of cycles from the 19th century to now. But there is no mechanism for just how the times "create" a generation or how when this generation comes of age it "produces" another moment.

So I am playing around with Awakenings generating crisis. This is standard S&H stuff, but trying to actual come up with a mechanism that works (the one they proposed does not).