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End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration · 7 of 12
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
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American Plutocracy and the Three Faces of Power

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration Peter Turchin
plutocracy power class-domination policy-planning-network racial-division american-exceptionalism

Problem This Solves

Why democratic institutions in the United States fail to represent average citizens, and why America specifically became -- and remains -- a plutocracy when most other Western democracies did not.

Key Principle

The US is a plutocracy: "a state dominated by economic elites." Gilens' empirical analysis of nearly 2,000 policy issues (1981-2002) shows that average voter preferences have zero effect on policy outcomes. "Issues on which the common people and the economic elites disagree are always -- always -- resolved in favor of the elites."

Elite power operates through three faces: (1) shaping policy outcomes on contested issues, (2) shaping which issues policymakers even consider, and (3) shaping the preferences of the public itself. Gilens' data only capture the first face -- the full extent of elite influence is even greater than the empirical record shows.

The corporate community maintains power through a policy-planning network of interlocking foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups -- initially funded by Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Brookings around 1920. This is not conspiracy theory but class-domination theory (Domhoff), meeting four scientific criteria: transparent motives, empirically verifiable mechanisms, no central leader or cabal, and publicly available data.

America became a plutocratic outlier through two structural factors: geographic insulation (two oceans eliminated external military threats, removing the need for a standing army that would have empowered a military or bureaucratic elite) and racial division ("divide et impera" -- the working class could be split along racial lines, preventing the cross-class solidarity that produced Denmark's Social Democratic model).

Four Sources of Social Power Applied to Ruling Classes

States can be classified by which source of power their ruling elites primarily control:

  1. Military power (Militocracy): Rule by force -- e.g., Egypt from Saladin to al-Sisi
  2. Administrative power (Bureaucracy): Rule by civil service -- e.g., China for two millennia, from mandarins to CPC
  3. Ideological power (Theocracy): Rule by religious authority -- e.g., Papal States, Islamic Republic of Iran
  4. Economic power (Plutocracy): Rule by wealth holders -- e.g., Venetian Republic, Dutch Republic, United States

Early states relied on naked force alone, but successful ones diversified across all four sources; "those elites who failed to diversify were overthrown." As Turchin puts it: "You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with just a gun."

Good Examples

  • The "death tax" meme: a think-tank invention that convinced ordinary people to oppose inheritance taxes affecting only the superrich -- a textbook demonstration of the "third face of power."
  • Andy and Clara, a fictional billionaire couple who fund political campaigns, support loose immigration policies (benefiting their labor needs), and advocate low taxes -- illustrating how plutocratic interests operate through both idealistic and materialistic motives.
  • The Great Merger Movement (1895-1904) was about concentrating political power, not just economic efficiency. As The Bankers' Magazine stated in 1901: "the government of a country where the productive forces are all mustered and drilled under the control of a few leaders, must become the mere tool of these forces."
  • FDR's "devil's bargain" with Southern elites excluded Black workers from the New Deal social contract. The later expansion of rights to Black Americans gave plutocrats an opening to use the "Southern strategy" to divide the working class along racial lines.
  • Denmark's Social Democratic Party (founded 1871) achieved power by 1924 and negotiated the Kanslergade Agreement establishing tripartite cooperation between labor, business, and government -- the path America's racial divisions prevented.
  • Egypt's persistent militocracy from Saladin through the Mamluks, Muhammad Ali dynasty, and post-1952 generals to al-Sisi -- demonstrating that political cultures reconstitute themselves even after revolutions.
  • The Progressive Era trend reversal: persistent political instability (violent labor conflicts, race riots, terrorism) alarmed elites into adopting reforms. Immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 shut down labor oversupply. The New Deal legalized collective bargaining, introduced minimum wage, and established Social Security. Top tax rates soared to 94% during WWII.

Bad Examples

  • Treating elite power analysis as conspiracy theory. Scientific analysis differs from conspiracy in four ways: motives are transparent (wealth holders want to keep wealth), mechanisms are verifiable (PACs, lobbyists, campaign contributions), structure is distributed across thousands (not a tiny cabal), and data are publicly available (OpenSecrets, whorulesamerica.net).
  • Assuming democratic elections ensure popular representation. Gilens proved "there was no -- zilch, nada -- effect of the average voter" on policy outcomes.
  • Blaming individual rich people as morally deficient. "The proportion of selfish people among elites is similar to the general population." The problem is structural incentives and institutional arrangements, not individual villainy.
  • Assuming the US can be compared directly to European democracies without accounting for its unique geographic insulation and racial heterogeneity.

Key Quotes

"Statistical analysis of this remarkable data set showed that the preferences of the poor had no effect on policy changes. This is not entirely unexpected. What is surprising is that there was no -- zilch, nada -- effect of the average voter."

"Issues on which the common people and the economic elites disagree are always -- always -- resolved in favor of the elites. That is plutocracy."

"All large-scale, complex human societies have ruling classes. It doesn't matter whether a state is governed as a democracy or as an autocracy; there is always a small proportion of the population with a disproportionate share of social power concentrated in their hands."

"And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man." -- Martin Luther King Jr., on how plutocrats used racial division to neutralize cross-racial class solidarity.

Key Data

  • In 2021, 12,000 lobbyists spent $3.7 billion influencing federal policy; top three industries were pharmaceuticals, electronics, and insurance.
  • American millionaires grew from 41 in 1860 to 545 in 1870, reflecting Northern capitalist enrichment during the Civil War.
  • The number of millionaires fell from 1,600 in 1925 to fewer than 900 by 1950 during the Great Compression.
  • The richest American's wealth relative to average wages dropped from 2.6 million annual wages (Rockefeller, 1912) to 93,000 annual wages (Ludwig, 1982).

Rules of Thumb

  • To understand any proposed policy, ask: whose preferences does it serve -- the median voter or the top 10 percent?
  • To predict how a country's crisis will resolve, identify its institutional framework and primary source of elite power (military, administrative, ideological, or economic). These frameworks show remarkable persistence.
  • When analyzing claims about elite power, apply the four-point scientific test: transparent motives, verifiable mechanisms, distributed structure, publicly available data.
  • Examine the network of interlocking corporate boards, think tanks, foundations, and policy-discussion groups to understand how elite collective action is coordinated without central command.
  • Recognize that immigration policy is fundamentally shaped by employer economic interests, not by majority citizen preferences.
  • Look beyond the "first face of power" (policy outcomes) to the second (agenda-setting) and third (preference-shaping) faces for the full picture of elite influence.
  • A ruling class can choose to act against its narrow self-interest to prevent catastrophic breakdown -- "better to do it by passing reforms from above than by revolution from below."

Related References