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.
đ´â The Myth of the Russian âVirusâ âđ´
It is ironic, of course, that the West still considers Communism something alien, foreign, and non-nativeâimported 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 demandâthat the Western working class was internally ready for it. The Russian Empire back then was merely historyâs midwife.
Marx wrote Capital in the reading room of the British Museum, looking at Manchester factories, London slums, the London proletariat, and Parisian barricadesânot 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 âmisunderstood genius.â
So, âbaby Communistâ 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 homeâto the very place where he was once ideologically conceived. He walks into those same reading rooms of the British Museum where he was âconceived,â 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 certainâin every country where he lingeredâthat this was the place where he would finally get Communism right! â
Turchin has some interesting concepts. âElite overproductionâ being the most significant one. The so called âwealth pumpâ (to extent it is not promoted and facilitated by an elite captured government) is the natural consequence of capitalism and growth. If you strangle capitalism as they did in the USSR you end up with a smaller âwealth pumpâ but less wealth overall and a lower standard of living for EVERYONE. As a middle-of-the road Socialist, Iâm guessing Turchin doesnât want to go that far.
is there data of addiction increased in the disintegrative period? Bruce K. Alexander's dislocation theory, rat park experiement says when connection is destroyed addiction occurs. yes, we can see now deaths of despair is incresing. bc of the structural pressure making allostatic loads. Peter Sterling see fertility rate and deaths of despair as view of Allostasis.
đ´Chaos in the Liberal House: The Intelligentsia as a Universal Solventđ´
Everything has become blurred in the liberal house. Who exactly was it that dismantled the USSR and finished it off ideologically in the late 1980s? It was not the Rightâcertainly not within Russia itself. While small right-wing groups existed, they were marginal, had almost no access to mass media, and failed to shape the public agenda. Their influence was strictly limited.
The Soviet Union was primarily brought down by Left-Liberalsâthe specific social stratum that later spoke on and listened to Echo of Moscow (Russiaâs premier liberal radio station). It was they who despised all the symbols of the USSR: the flag, the anthem, and the "bloody history" of the country. They campaigned against the "injustice of Communism" in favor of "fair Capitalism" and, crucially, freedom of speech for themselves. This liberal group held the real cultural weight and was ideologically charged to overthrow the Soviet state.
Politicians like Boris Yeltsin (the populist Russian leader who rose through the Communist ranks to dismantle the USSR from within and become its first president) or Leonid Kravchuk (the career Communist propaganda chief who became the first president of independent Ukraine) were not driven by ideology; they were driven by power. They simply took advantage of the situation, but they did not create the ideological wave themselves. The most ideologically charged forceâaside from the small right-wing groupsâwas the intelligentsia.
It was they who had access to television, newspapers, journals, and intellectual platforms. It was they who systematically saturated society with hatred for the USSR. They spoke loudly about the "bloody history" of the Soviet Union, fundamentally refused to sing the anthem, and marched in demonstrations with any flags imaginableâso long as it wasn't the red one with the hammer and sickle. For them, those symbols represented a monstrous Communist system that had to be razed. And raze it they didâcollapsing the country and plunging its former territories into chaos.
It is easy to assume, looking at the Soviet example, that this liberal intelligentsiaâtypified by figures like Andrei Sakharov (the Nobel-winning physicist turned iconic dissident)âwas fighting specifically for capitalism and freedom of speech.
But it is not that simple.
You only need to look at what is happening in America today to see who is dismantling it from within. Once again, it is not the nationalist Right. It is, once again, the liberals and the liberal-leaning intelligentsia. This is the exact same social stratum that dismantled Soviet Communism.
They exhibit the same disdain for the U.S. anthem and the American flag. At Democratic rallies, the American flag is a rare sightâreplaced by a multitude of other, diverse banners. They hate "bloody American history," capitalism itself, and its symbols with equal fervor. They refuse to carry the American flag because it symbolizes the very system they are fightingâjust as the liberals in the USSR refused to carry the red flag for the same reason.
In the USSR, liberals fought against Communism in favor of Capitalism. In America, they are fighting against Capitalism in favor of Communism (with a mandatory layover in Socialism). In the USSR, they fought for freedom of speech; today, they openly campaign against the freedom of speech of their opponents.
It is often forgotten, but President Trump, during his first term, was effectively banned from social media and significant portions of the press. This occurred to the thunderous applause of liberal Democrats and their voters. For them, "freedom of speech" only means their freedom of speech. Any speech that opposes them is deemed hostile, harmful, and subject to prohibition.
You could try to explain this by saying Soviet liberals were "Right-wing" and American liberals are "Left-wing." But this logic fails.
Was the Soviet liberal intelligentsia ever truly "Right-wing"? Was the liberal intelligentsia ever conservative? Was even Sakharov himself truly a man of the Right?
Absolutely not. He was the quintessential Bernie Sanders voter.
This is why the vast majority of Russian liberals currently in the U.S. support the Democratic Party and its ultra-left agenda, rather than Trumpâs platform. Furthermore, much like the American liberal intelligentsia, they view figures like the new mayor of New Yorkâwith his nearly Communist ideologyâquite favorably.
The Paradox: People with the exact same psychological and social profile first destroyed the Soviet order under the banners of freedom and the market, and are now in the U.S. destroying the capitalist order under the banners of justice, restrictions, and control. In the USSR, they used capitalist slogans to annihilate Communism; today, they use communist slogans to annihilate Capitalism.
The liberal intelligentsia is a class that feels most comfortable in the process of deconstruction. They are the "Universal Solvent" of state systems.
In the USSR, they used Capitalism as a sledgehammer against Communism.
In America, they use Socialism as a sledgehammer against Capitalism.
This is not a change of convictions. It is the same behavioral model: a struggle against any system they perceive as insufficiently "intellectual" or "moral," marching under the banner of whatever progressive concept is currently in fashion.
This guy is about half a century behind the times in thinking the liberal intelligentsia holds sway in the corridors of power. The Reagan Revolution ended all that, leaving liberals to argue about PC and pronouns while the right decimated the middle class, launched the greatest upward redistribution of wealth in history, and is now attempting to dismantle democracy in favor of a fascist dictatorship run by and for the benefit of oligarchs.
Every era gets the intelligentsia it deserves. You argue that the Right holds all the power and wealth, while liberals are left with nothing but pronouns. But you overlook that the 'Universal Solvent' doesn't need to control the banks to destroy the building.
It is a self-sustaining ecosystem: the academic world acts as a training ground, radicalizing new generations and breeding future foot soldiers for the Left. These graduates then carry those ideas into newsrooms, film studios, and corporate boardrooms.
This is a direct mirror of the late USSR. Back then, the creative elite and academic intelligentsia used Capitalist ideals to dissolve the internal legitimacy of Communism. Today, this modern Western intelligentsia uses Socialist slogans to dissolve Capitalism. Their power is not in the redistribution of capital, but in the monopoly on meaning. It is the same psychological profile, the same solvent, just applied to a different surface.
Solvent schmolvent. I'm an economist dealing in the hard realities of politics based on wealth and power, which for the past four decades has been dominated by hard-right oligarchs for their benefit. The evidence is the unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a few achieved during that interval, with the accompanying immiseration of the middle and lower classes.
The right wing has its own intelligentsia of fascists actively dissolving the internal legitimacy of democracy (have you heard of Project 2025?) and promoting unbridled capitalism.
Meanwhile you are 5 decades behind the times, postulating "self-sustaining ecosystems" grounded in the faculty lounge as grooming good little communists intent on dissolving capitalism. (lower case by the way) How's that working out?
Has it escaped your notice that newsrooms, corporate boardrooms, universities, law firms, and the entire apparatus of government are bending the knee to a billionaire fascist for whom the restraints of the Constitution are mere suggestions. (Mussolini, the original fascist, described fascism as the "merger of corporate and state entities," with government as the senior partner. Sound familiar?)
Try governing with "the monopoly of meaning."
Your equivalence of the dissolution of the USSR with the present U.S. deconstruction of the liberal rules-based order is not apt. Get it?
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.
đ´â The Myth of the Russian âVirusâ âđ´
It is ironic, of course, that the West still considers Communism something alien, foreign, and non-nativeâimported 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 demandâthat the Western working class was internally ready for it. The Russian Empire back then was merely historyâs midwife.
Marx wrote Capital in the reading room of the British Museum, looking at Manchester factories, London slums, the London proletariat, and Parisian barricadesânot 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 âmisunderstood genius.â
So, âbaby Communistâ 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 homeâto the very place where he was once ideologically conceived. He walks into those same reading rooms of the British Museum where he was âconceived,â 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 certainâin every country where he lingeredâthat this was the place where he would finally get Communism right! â
He was an accurate diagnostician, but the Rx disbursed was worse than the disease, the antidote came with serious adverse effects
Turchin has some interesting concepts. âElite overproductionâ being the most significant one. The so called âwealth pumpâ (to extent it is not promoted and facilitated by an elite captured government) is the natural consequence of capitalism and growth. If you strangle capitalism as they did in the USSR you end up with a smaller âwealth pumpâ but less wealth overall and a lower standard of living for EVERYONE. As a middle-of-the road Socialist, Iâm guessing Turchin doesnât want to go that far.
is there data of addiction increased in the disintegrative period? Bruce K. Alexander's dislocation theory, rat park experiement says when connection is destroyed addiction occurs. yes, we can see now deaths of despair is incresing. bc of the structural pressure making allostatic loads. Peter Sterling see fertility rate and deaths of despair as view of Allostasis.
đ´Chaos in the Liberal House: The Intelligentsia as a Universal Solventđ´
Everything has become blurred in the liberal house. Who exactly was it that dismantled the USSR and finished it off ideologically in the late 1980s? It was not the Rightâcertainly not within Russia itself. While small right-wing groups existed, they were marginal, had almost no access to mass media, and failed to shape the public agenda. Their influence was strictly limited.
The Soviet Union was primarily brought down by Left-Liberalsâthe specific social stratum that later spoke on and listened to Echo of Moscow (Russiaâs premier liberal radio station). It was they who despised all the symbols of the USSR: the flag, the anthem, and the "bloody history" of the country. They campaigned against the "injustice of Communism" in favor of "fair Capitalism" and, crucially, freedom of speech for themselves. This liberal group held the real cultural weight and was ideologically charged to overthrow the Soviet state.
Politicians like Boris Yeltsin (the populist Russian leader who rose through the Communist ranks to dismantle the USSR from within and become its first president) or Leonid Kravchuk (the career Communist propaganda chief who became the first president of independent Ukraine) were not driven by ideology; they were driven by power. They simply took advantage of the situation, but they did not create the ideological wave themselves. The most ideologically charged forceâaside from the small right-wing groupsâwas the intelligentsia.
It was they who had access to television, newspapers, journals, and intellectual platforms. It was they who systematically saturated society with hatred for the USSR. They spoke loudly about the "bloody history" of the Soviet Union, fundamentally refused to sing the anthem, and marched in demonstrations with any flags imaginableâso long as it wasn't the red one with the hammer and sickle. For them, those symbols represented a monstrous Communist system that had to be razed. And raze it they didâcollapsing the country and plunging its former territories into chaos.
It is easy to assume, looking at the Soviet example, that this liberal intelligentsiaâtypified by figures like Andrei Sakharov (the Nobel-winning physicist turned iconic dissident)âwas fighting specifically for capitalism and freedom of speech.
But it is not that simple.
You only need to look at what is happening in America today to see who is dismantling it from within. Once again, it is not the nationalist Right. It is, once again, the liberals and the liberal-leaning intelligentsia. This is the exact same social stratum that dismantled Soviet Communism.
They exhibit the same disdain for the U.S. anthem and the American flag. At Democratic rallies, the American flag is a rare sightâreplaced by a multitude of other, diverse banners. They hate "bloody American history," capitalism itself, and its symbols with equal fervor. They refuse to carry the American flag because it symbolizes the very system they are fightingâjust as the liberals in the USSR refused to carry the red flag for the same reason.
In the USSR, liberals fought against Communism in favor of Capitalism. In America, they are fighting against Capitalism in favor of Communism (with a mandatory layover in Socialism). In the USSR, they fought for freedom of speech; today, they openly campaign against the freedom of speech of their opponents.
It is often forgotten, but President Trump, during his first term, was effectively banned from social media and significant portions of the press. This occurred to the thunderous applause of liberal Democrats and their voters. For them, "freedom of speech" only means their freedom of speech. Any speech that opposes them is deemed hostile, harmful, and subject to prohibition.
You could try to explain this by saying Soviet liberals were "Right-wing" and American liberals are "Left-wing." But this logic fails.
Was the Soviet liberal intelligentsia ever truly "Right-wing"? Was the liberal intelligentsia ever conservative? Was even Sakharov himself truly a man of the Right?
Absolutely not. He was the quintessential Bernie Sanders voter.
This is why the vast majority of Russian liberals currently in the U.S. support the Democratic Party and its ultra-left agenda, rather than Trumpâs platform. Furthermore, much like the American liberal intelligentsia, they view figures like the new mayor of New Yorkâwith his nearly Communist ideologyâquite favorably.
The Paradox: People with the exact same psychological and social profile first destroyed the Soviet order under the banners of freedom and the market, and are now in the U.S. destroying the capitalist order under the banners of justice, restrictions, and control. In the USSR, they used capitalist slogans to annihilate Communism; today, they use communist slogans to annihilate Capitalism.
The liberal intelligentsia is a class that feels most comfortable in the process of deconstruction. They are the "Universal Solvent" of state systems.
In the USSR, they used Capitalism as a sledgehammer against Communism.
In America, they use Socialism as a sledgehammer against Capitalism.
This is not a change of convictions. It is the same behavioral model: a struggle against any system they perceive as insufficiently "intellectual" or "moral," marching under the banner of whatever progressive concept is currently in fashion.
This guy is about half a century behind the times in thinking the liberal intelligentsia holds sway in the corridors of power. The Reagan Revolution ended all that, leaving liberals to argue about PC and pronouns while the right decimated the middle class, launched the greatest upward redistribution of wealth in history, and is now attempting to dismantle democracy in favor of a fascist dictatorship run by and for the benefit of oligarchs.
Every era gets the intelligentsia it deserves. You argue that the Right holds all the power and wealth, while liberals are left with nothing but pronouns. But you overlook that the 'Universal Solvent' doesn't need to control the banks to destroy the building.
It is a self-sustaining ecosystem: the academic world acts as a training ground, radicalizing new generations and breeding future foot soldiers for the Left. These graduates then carry those ideas into newsrooms, film studios, and corporate boardrooms.
This is a direct mirror of the late USSR. Back then, the creative elite and academic intelligentsia used Capitalist ideals to dissolve the internal legitimacy of Communism. Today, this modern Western intelligentsia uses Socialist slogans to dissolve Capitalism. Their power is not in the redistribution of capital, but in the monopoly on meaning. It is the same psychological profile, the same solvent, just applied to a different surface.
Solvent schmolvent. I'm an economist dealing in the hard realities of politics based on wealth and power, which for the past four decades has been dominated by hard-right oligarchs for their benefit. The evidence is the unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a few achieved during that interval, with the accompanying immiseration of the middle and lower classes.
The right wing has its own intelligentsia of fascists actively dissolving the internal legitimacy of democracy (have you heard of Project 2025?) and promoting unbridled capitalism.
Meanwhile you are 5 decades behind the times, postulating "self-sustaining ecosystems" grounded in the faculty lounge as grooming good little communists intent on dissolving capitalism. (lower case by the way) How's that working out?
Has it escaped your notice that newsrooms, corporate boardrooms, universities, law firms, and the entire apparatus of government are bending the knee to a billionaire fascist for whom the restraints of the Constitution are mere suggestions. (Mussolini, the original fascist, described fascism as the "merger of corporate and state entities," with government as the senior partner. Sound familiar?)
Try governing with "the monopoly of meaning."
Your equivalence of the dissolution of the USSR with the present U.S. deconstruction of the liberal rules-based order is not apt. Get it?