Class Struggles

In the “Determinants of How the Perpetual Motion Machine Works ” chapter from my book “Principles for Dealing with The Changing World Order ,” I laid out a number of dynamics that repeatedly drove changes behind the rises and declines of empires and explained that I would embellish on some of them in subsequent posts as they pertain to what is now happening in the world.?The first one that I am passing along to you here is about class struggles.

Class Struggles

For as long as there has been recorded history, in almost all societies a very small percentage of the population (the “ruling classes” or “the elites”) have controlled most of the wealth and power (though those percentages have varied).[1] Naturally those who benefit from and control the system by and large like the system and seek to maintain it. Because those with wealth can influence those with power and because those with power can influence those with wealth, these ruling classes or elites have alliances among themselves and want to maintain the existing order with everyone following its dictums and laws, even as the system increases the gaps between those with power and wealth and those without them. As a result, all internal orders are run by certain classes of people who have wealth and power and who operate in symbiotic relationships with each other to maintain the order. Though aligned not to disrupt the order that benefits them, throughout time these elites have struggled with each other over wealth and power and have also struggled with non-elites who want wealth and power. When times are good and most people prosper, the struggles are smaller; when times are bad, the struggles are worse. And when things are very bad for a large percentage of the people—e.g., there is an unresolvable debt crisis, a very bad economy, a very bad act of nature—the resulting suffering, stress, and struggles typically lead to revolutions and/or civil wars.

As Aristotle said a long time ago: “The poor and the rich quarrel with one another, and whichever side gets the better, instead of establishing a just or popular government, regards political supremacy as the prize of victory.”

Classically, the Big Cycle transpires with periods of peace and productivity that increase wealth in a disproportionate way, which leads to a very small percentage of the population gaining and controlling exceptionally large percentages of the wealth and power, then becoming overextended, which leads to encountering bad times that hurt those who are the least wealthy and powerful the hardest, which then leads to conflicts that produce revolutions and/or civil wars, which then lead to the creation of a new order and the cycle beginning again.

Throughout time and in all countries the people who have the wealth are the people who own the means of wealth production and, in order to maintain it, they work with the people who have the power to set and enforce the rules. While that has always been the case, the exact form of it has evolved and will continue to evolve.

For example, as explained in Chapter 1, for most of the 13th through 19th centuries, the prominent internal order all around the world consisted of the ruling classes or elites being 1) the monarchy, which ruled in conjunction with 2) the nobility, which controlled the means of production (at the time that capital was agricultural land), and/or 3) the military. Workers were viewed as part of the means of production and had essentially no say in how the order was run.

Even societies that had little or no contact with each other developed in similar ways because they had similar situations to deal with and because the nature of their decision making was similar.[2] Across countries there always were, and still are, different levels of governance at the country level, the state/province level, the municipality level, etc., and there are timeless and universal ways that they operate and interact with each other that have been pretty consistent across the world. The monarchs needed people to manage the day-to-day operations for them. The top people were ministers, who oversaw the bureaucracies of people who did the various jobs that needed to be done for government to work. What exists today is simply the result of the natural evolutions of these timeless and universal ways of interacting, with different countries’ own cultural flavors thrown in. For example, the roles of the ministers who helped the monarchs evolved into the roles of prime ministers and other ministers that now exist in almost all countries (though in the United States they are called “secretaries”).

Over time, these systems have evolved in varied but logical ways as a result of struggles for wealth and power. For example, in England around 1200 there was a wealth and power struggle that evolved gradually at first and then abruptly into a civil war, which is how these shifts tend to evolve, between the nobility and the monarchy. Like most of these struggles, the fight was over money and the power to determine who got how much money. The monarchy under King John wanted to get more tax money and the nobles wanted to give less tax money. They disagreed over how much say the nobles should have on the matter, so they had a civil war. The nobles won and gained more power to set the rules, which led to what they first called a “council,” which soon became the first Parliament, which evolved into what exists in England today. The peace treaty that formalized this deal into law in 1215 is called the Magna Carta. Like most laws, this one didn’t matter much relative to power so another civil war broke out in which the nobles and the monarchy again fought over wealth and power. In 1225 they wrote up a new Magna Carta under Henry III (King John’s son), which those with power got to interpret and enforce. A few decades later, the fighting picked up again. In that war, the nobles cut off tax payments to the monarchy, which forced Henry III to give in to the nobles’ demands. These struggles went on constantly, leading the orders to evolve.

Fast forward to the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries and one can see that there were big changes in the sources of wealth, at first because of global exploration and colonialism (starting with the Portuguese and the Spanish) and later because of the invention of capitalism (stocks and bonds) and labor-saving machines that fueled the Industrial Revolutions (particularly helping the Dutch and then the British), which made those who profited from these sources of wealth more powerful—i.e., the shifts in wealth and power over these centuries were from a) land- owning nobles (who then had the wealth) and monarchies (who then had the political power) to b) capitalists (who in the later period had the wealth) and elected representatives or autocratic government leaders (who in the later period had the political power). Almost all countries made these shifts—some peacefully but most painfully.

For example, in France for most of the 17th and 18th centuries, the king ruled in a balance of power arrangement with three other classes: 1)?the clergy, 2) the nobility, and 3) the commoners. There were representatives of these groups who voted. The first two classes, who accounted for only 2 percent of the population, had more votes than—or eventually the same number of votes as—the commoners, who made up 98 percent of the population. They called this internal order based on three classes the ancien régime (which means “old order”). Then practically overnight it changed in a revolutionary way via the French Revolution, which began on May 5, 1789, when the third class—the commoners—had enough of that system, overthrew the others, and took the power for itself. In most countries around the world at the time, the same basic ruling order prevailed—i.e., the monarchy and nobles, who accounted for a very small percentage of the population and had most of the wealth, ruled until all of a sudden there was a civil war/revolution that led the old order to be replaced with a very different new ruling order.

Though the internal orders for managing these class struggles were and are different in different countries, they evolved similarly across countries. For example, they evolved both gradually (through reforms) and abruptly (through civil wars/revolutions) and they evolved into those orders that now exist in all countries. I expect they will continue to evolve gradually and abruptly to produce new domestic orders. While the classes who have the wealth and political power change, the processes that produce these changes have remained pretty much the same through time right up to today. These changes have occurred through struggles that have led to both a) peaceful reforms through negotiations and b) violent reforms via civil wars and revolutions. The peaceful reforms tend to come earlier in the cycle and the violent civil wars and revolutionary reforms tend to come later in the cycle for logical reasons that we will delve into later.

I cannot overstate the importance of class struggles relative to individual struggles. We, especially those of us in the United States, which is thought of as a “melting pot,” tend to focus more on individual struggles and not give adequate attention to class struggles. I didn’t fully realize the importance of class struggles until I did my extensive study of history, which led me to this principle:

In all countries throughout time (though in varying degrees) people find themselves within “classes” either because they choose to be with people like them or because others stereotype them as part of certain groups. Power is usually shared among three or four classes.

Who and what people feel most connected with, are around most, and are most like will determine which class or classes they are in; how people are classed determines who their friends or allies are and who their enemies are. While rich and poor and right (i.e., capitalist) and left (i.e., socialist) are the most common big class distinctions, there are many other important distinctions, such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, lifestyle (e.g., liberal or conservative), and location (e.g., urban versus suburban versus rural). Generally speaking, people tend to cluster in these classes, and when times are good early in the cycle there is more harmony among these classes and when things are bad there is more fighting among them.

While I love that the United States is the country where these class distinctions matter least, people’s classes still matter in the US and they matter a lot more during stressful times when class conflicts intensify.

To help you get the picture in a more intimate way, let’s do a simple exercise. Assume that most people who don’t know you well look at you as being in a member of one or several classes, because that’s a good assumption. Now, to imagine how you are perceived, look at the following list and ask yourself which classes you fall into. After you answer that, ask yourself which classes you feel an affinity for and expect to be your allies. Which classes do you not like or view as your enemies? Which ones are the ruling classes, and which ones are the revolutionary classes who want to topple them? Which ones are on the ascent, and which ones are on the decline? You might consider writing these down and thinking about them because during periods of greater conflict the classes you are in or are assumed to be in will become more important in determining who you will be with and against, what you will do, and where you will end up.

1.?Rich or poor?

2. Right, left, or moderate?

3.?Race?

4.?Ethnicity?

5.?Religion?

6.?Gender?

7.?Lifestyle (e.g., liberal or conservative)?

8.?Location (e.g., urban, suburban, or rural)?

Still today only a small percentage of the population, which comes from only a few of these classes, has most of the wealth and power and rules as “the elites.” To me it is clear that the capitalist class now has the most financial power in most countries and political power in democracies lies in the hands of all the people who choose to vote, while in autocracies it lies in the hands of the limited number of people selected by whatever process they have to make selections.[3] So, for the most part today, those are the “ruling classes” and “the elites” who oversee the current domestic orders, though they are now under at- tack, so this is probably shifting. For example, there is now a big movement in the United States to be much more inclusive of members of different classes in both the capitalist money-making world and in the political world. These shifts can be good or bad depending on whether they are handled peacefully or violently and smartly or stupidly. One timeless and universal truth that I saw go back as far as I studied history, since before Confucius who lived around 500 BCE, is that those societies that draw on the widest range of people and give them responsibilities based on their merits rather than privileges are the most sustainably successful because 1) they find the best talent to do their jobs well, 2) they have diversity of perspectives, and 3) they are perceived as the fairest, which fosters social stability.

I presume that the current internal orders of countries, like those of the past, will continue evolving to become something different through the struggles of different classes with each other over how to divide wealth and political power. Because this wealth and power dynamic is very important, it is worth watching closely to discern which classes are gaining and which ones are losing wealth and power (e.g., AI and information technology developers are now evolving to gain it at the expense of those who are being replaced by such technologies) and also to discern the reactions to these shifts that lead the cycles to change.

So, as I see it, everything is changing in classic ways driven by a tried-and-true perpetual-motion machine. This machine has produced, and is producing, different systems, such as communism, fascism, autocracies, democracies, and evolutionary descendants and hybrids of these, such as “state capitalism” in China. It will produce new forms of internal orders to divide wealth and allocate political power that will affect our lives greatly, all based on how people choose to be with each other and how human nature enters into how they make their choices.

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[1] For example, in the last century, the wealth share of the top 1 percent in the US ranged from close to 50 percent in the 1920s to a bit over 20 percent in the late 1970s; in the UK, it ranged from over 70 percent in 1900 to around 15 percent in the 1980s and is currently around 35 percent (figures from World Inequality Database). These shifts in inequality can be seen at least as far back as the Roman Republic, as Walter Scheidel describes in The Great Leveler.

[2] For example, for much of history Europe, China, and most countries had monarchs and nobles as the ruling classes, yet they were a bit different. In Europe, the church was also part of the ruling mix. In Japan, the monarchy (the emperor and his ministers), the military, and the business community (the merchants and artisans) were the ruling elites.

[3] That doesn’t mean that those who run autocracies don’t ultimately report to the people because the people could overthrow the government.