A Video Illustrating Ideas in "End Times"
"Peter Turchin's End Times Dissected" by Bernard Tannett
I had no working internet for most of the week and, as a result, my mid-week post is published with a delay (there will be a weekend post, as usual, inshallah).
Bernard Tannett, a retired lecturer whose hobby is to make films about books, made a video about End Times. Here’s the link:
Peter Turchin’s End Times Dissected
I really enjoyed watching the whole thing (something I do rarely, as I prefer to consume information as text, rather than as a video or audio). Bernard does a very good job faithfully reflecting on the main ideas of End Times. About the only (slight) disagreement I have with his narrative is that he gives too much credit to Marx as an influence on the structural demographic theory, while neglecting to mention Malthus, Weber, or Durkheim. On the other hand, he brings in Ibn Khaldun in a couple of places — a very good idea.
Overall, this is a lot of fun to watch and, as an author of the reviewed book, it was very interesting for me to see which parts and ideas in it Bernard found particularly important and how he presented them in his video.
I am not a particularly visual person, so I am really fascinated with how people attempt to visualize various, fairly abstract ideas that are the bread and meat of End Times. Here’s for example, how Bernard visualized Cliodynamics:
(The central figure is a depiction of Clio, the Muse of history, and the engine on the left symbolizes “dynamics” — looks like a dynamo. Not sure what the halo around Clio does.)
Another, central concept in the book is the wealth pump. Here’s a still image of it, but you will have to see it in motion to appreciate how it works:
And, finally, how the wealth pump drives elite overproduction (again, must be seen in motion):
(In motion, dollar bills are floating down, while “elites” are floating up.)
Overall, very well done!
PS. Actually, I think I get it: the nimbus around Clio is an electric discharge, produced by the dynamo — other thoughts?
Love how Bernard visualzed the wealth pump mechanism. The concept of 'elite overproduction' driven by concentratd wealth extracton always makes more sense when u can see it animated rather than just reading about structural demographic theory. I tried explaining this to a few colleagues recently and kept wishing we had visuals like these back then.
🔴☭ The Myth of the Russian “Virus” ☭🔴
It is ironic, of course, that the West still considers Communism something alien, foreign, and non-native—imported from somewhere in distant, dark Russia. Even though, ideologically, it was not conceived in the Siberian taiga at all, but in the very heart of civilized Europe: in London and Berlin.
Marx was not looking at Russia; he was looking at the West. It was the state of Western society that made him realize this idea would be in demand—that the Western working class was internally ready for it. The Russian Empire back then was merely history’s midwife.
Marx wrote Capital in the reading room of the British Museum, looking at Manchester factories, London slums, the London proletariat, and Parisian barricades—not at a Russian village. The West tries to frame Communism as an exotic virus, even though it is a purebred product of European rationalism and German philosophy. Capital is a diagnosis of Victorian-era European capitalism, not Russian folklore.
And the Western academic world never truly said goodbye to Marx. To them, he remained the “misunderstood genius.”
So, “baby Communist” was conceived in the West, born in the USSR, and spent his childhood and turbulent youth traveling through friendly communist countries. With all the falls, experiments, traumas, and scars.
And now, grown up, having gained experience and self-confidence, the kid is returning home—to the very place where he was once ideologically conceived. He walks into those same reading rooms of the British Museum where he was “conceived,” but now he does not sit modestly in a corner with manuscripts. He dictates the agenda, manages social media algorithms, and rewrites history textbooks.
And he is convinced that this time, he will finally succeed in building the most truly communist Communism of all Communisms past and present. Although, truth be told, the kid was always certain—in every country where he lingered—that this was the place where he would finally get Communism right! ☭