Revenge of the nerdy surplus elites

It’s a dangerous thing for a country to fail to manage the expectations of its citizens

Photo by Jessica Kantak Bailey on Unsplash

When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favour of elites, political instability is all but inevitable
Peter Turchin, Russian-American ‘complexity scientist’

Back when I was “down with the kids” – because I was one – in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I noticed something strange going on. Many people who were culturally middle class – in the sense they were destined to enrol in university, were currently enrolled in university, or had graduated from university – were somewhat outside the mainstream but not overtly political.

While their parents or even older siblings might have been caught up in the high drama of the turbulent and transformative Whitlam years (many of those very same youthful Whitlamites now spend their days championing more favourable treatment for self-funded retirees, shareholders and landlords, but that’s a whole separate article), progressive politics held little appeal to a lot of my peers. Some of whom were part of, or on the edges of, a youth subculture.

The ravers were the most apolitical subculturalists, in the sense they just wanted to take drugs, dance all night and possibly hook up with another Dionysian reveller. The goths and the fans of what was then called ‘indie’ (independent) or ‘alternative’ music, were a little more bohemian and ‘outsiderish’, and typically had progressive social views, but they weren’t agitating for political change. The only middle-class subculture that was overtly political was the ‘ferals’. (The ferals were a relatively small group of deep green neo-hippies who were rumoured to live off welfare and spend much of their time involved in anti-logging protests. They were an Antipodean equivalent of the UK’s ‘travellers’.)

The rise of the surplus elites
I didn’t know the term then, but the tertiary educated and at least nominally middle-class individuals attracted to the goth, indie music and feral subcultures were “surplus elite” types. That is, while they had usually had a uni degree or were in the process of getting one, they had already discovered, or vaguely sensed, that a university degree was no longer a guarantee of a relaxed and comfortable, middle-class existence.

They may have existed, but I never came across any ferals, goths or indie music superfans who had, for instance, medical degrees or law degrees from top-tier universities. The subculturalists I came in contact with typically had some sort of Mickey Mouse degree from a second-tier university. And they understood, or were coming to realise, that while they were (usually) better educated than their parents, they were unlikely to do better than them materially.

Fittingly enough, the goth subculture appears to be immortal. As far as I’m aware, the other middle-class subcultures of my youth have faded away. I presume that’s at least partly because youngish surplus elite types now embrace hard left ‘woke’ politics or (in Western Europe) hard right anti-migrant politics in the same way they once hero worshipped the likes of Kurt Cobain and Robert Smith.

Is this the end times?
Men seem to inevitably reach a life stage when they conclude everything is going to hell in a handbasket. So, I’m not sure if it’s the case that I’ve merely hit an age where everything appears pre-apocalyptic or whether I’m right in fearing that Western Civilisation’s inevitable collapse is well underway.

Peter Turchin’s recently released End Times: Elites, Counter Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration hasn’t given me much cause for optimism. Full disclosure: while I’m familiar with Turchin’s core ideas and have heard him interviewed about his latest tome on podcasts, I’m yet to read End Times. I’d encourage you to read his work for yourself, but I think I’m familiar enough with his arguments to summarise his most important insights below.    

The tl;dr version of Turchin’s ‘cycles of history’ theory is that well-functioning societies have a small elite. This elite will inevitably feather its own nest to some degree – all elites feather their nests; if there were no opportunity to do this there would be little incentive to put in the effort required to attain and maintain elite status. But this elite also allows the masses to get a piece of the action, as our American friends say.

In a well-functioning society, the masses aren’t overly concerned about not being part of the elite because (a) they are living a lifestyle that meets their expectations, (b) the gap between lifestyles led by elites and non-elites is significant but not vast and (c) non-elite individuals believe elite individuals have somehow legitimately earned their greater privileges. If you want real-world examples of well-functioning societies, think of any Anglosphere or Western Europe nation from circa 1945-1975.       

Turchin argues a range of developments can destabilise a society, but the two most dangerous ones are ‘elite overproduction’ and ‘popular immiseration’.

Elite overproduction
Sadly, there are only ever so many genuinely elite positions to go around in any society. Nations have only one ruler at a time, companies one CEO, newspapers one editor, faculties one head of department and so on.

Even if you broaden the scope of what constitutes an elite position by, for instance, classifying everyone with a C-suite position, rather than just CEOs, as part of the elite, there still aren’t that many prestigious positions to go around. This isn’t too much of an issue when the number of what might be called “elite aspirants” is roughly in balance with the number of available elite positions.

But let’s imagine a world where governments spend decades encouraging ever more people to attend university. Instead of just the ‘talented tenth’ of the population undertaking tertiary education, something like half the population is. When they graduate, weighed down with student debt (if you’re going to have a large chunk of the population attending university, a move to a user-pays system is almost inevitable), many young people discover they’ve been sold a pup.

They’ve done what they were told to do – studied hard and “got an education” but it hasn’t done them much good. Many of these individuals will end up working in modestly remunerated pink-collar or low-level white-collar jobs – and they are definitely jobs rather than careers. Few of these overeducated, underemployed individuals can buy a home or accumulate significant wealth. If they are male, they are likely to struggle to find a female partner who considers them partner material.

The more talented and ambitious an individual who has been left to wither on the vine is, the more the yawning chasm between their imagined life and “lived experience” rankles, and the more likely they are to embrace radical political positions.

The counter-elite threat
As I gather Turchin explores in his book, many of those who can’t break into the elite (or, more rarely, freely choose not to break into it) become counter elites.

Robespierre, Lenin and Mao were all counter elites until they became incumbent elites in post-revolutionary France, Russia and China. Donald Trump is a counter elite. Peter Turchin’s father, Soviet dissident Valentin Turchin, was a counter elite who got exiled to the US. (Interestingly, Turchin Snr was one of the pioneers of AI, a technology that seems certain to swell the ranks of the surplus elites throughout the 2020s.) I’m not sure whether Turchin would agree with me, but I’d argue game-changing reformers, such as Clement Atlee, Margaret Thatcher, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Reagan and the aforementioned Whitlam, were all counter elites of a sort.

Counter elites come in all different shapes and sizes, but they all argue that the status quo is intolerable and radical change – a draining of the swamp, so to speak – is required. And if draining the swamp generates a lot of good jobs for counter elites, then that is merely a happy side effect of long overdue and desperately required social change.             

Popular immiseration
Now imagine a society where the elite has decided to go all in on shamelessly feathering its own nest and forgotten about giving the masses a chance to prosper (modestly). Maybe the society’s political elite spends decades lowering tax rates on high-earning individuals. Maybe this political elite also makes it clear to both plutocrats and the multinational corporations they are heavily invested in that they are welcome to game the system and need not even pay the tax they are technically obliged to pay.

Maybe soft bribery becomes the norm and business elites capture political elites. Maybe those business elites don’t have the interests of the masses in mind and are happy to see wages for low-income and middle-income earners stagnate for close to half a century. Maybe political elites also allow business elites to ship the nation’s industrial base to China, leaving millions of retrenched manufacturing workers to their grim fate. (And China well-positioned to supplant the US as the global hegemon but, hey, as the Chairman was fond of saying, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.)

Maybe the political elite facilitates the emasculation of the union movement on behalf of their business-elite donors, thereby all but guaranteeing C-suiters and shareholders will benefit from productivity gains, but average employees won’t. And maybe the kneecapping of organised labour allows workplaces to become increasingly surveilled and Dickensian. To the point where some warehouse workers are reduced to pissing in empty Gatorade bottles because they don’t have time for a toilet break while their boss is building US$500 million superyachts.

Elite overproduction + popular immiseration = interesting times
Those who haven’t studied history often focus on the popular immiseration rather than the elite overproduction. Laypeople imagine that when the peasants are hungry or oppressed enough they grab their pitchforks and start massing at the castle gates. That does happen, but most historians agree that while popular immiseration may lead to a riot, uprising, insurrection or widespread rebellion, it’s unlikely to lead to a successful revolution. For a revolution, you need both the angry mobs and (previously sidelined) counter elites to channel the mob’s energy productively.

As I’ve been pointing out in these pages for over a year and a half now, the US is so far along the path of popular immiseration and elite overproduction that it’s hard to imagine how things don’t end in tears, probably sooner rather than later.

The situation isn’t so dire in other Anglosphere or Western European nations. Still, they’ve also got plenty of problems arising from working-class people of all ages and middle-class youngsters feeling like they’ve been gypped. Gypped by elites they no longer respect or trust.

Are incumbent elites about to get ‘circulated’?
All large societies have elites – they wouldn’t be able to function without them. But elites can and do turn over. Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto died almost a century ago to the day. Nowadays, he’s best known for the Pareto Principle, aka the 80-20 rule. But like Turchin, he came up with a theory about the cycles of history. Pareto argued that when relations sour between the “governing elite” and the “non-governing” masses, the table is set for a “circulation of elites”.

This changing of the guard doesn’t necessarily make much difference to the non-governing masses. (For example, it’s not clear that the Russian peasants and factory workers were better off under Lenin and Stalin than they had been under the Tsars.) But it is usually bad news for the incumbent elites and encouraging news for the counter elite.

If you’re taking the time to read this type of content, you’re disproportionately likely to be a member of the elite or the counter elite. Either way, you should be prepared for an interesting few years ahead.