The Age of Discord: Turchin's Analysis of Contemporary America

Series: Cliodynamics | Part: 4 of 10

In 2010, Peter Turchin published a brief commentary in Nature predicting that the 2020s would be a period of severe political instability in the United States. He wasn't guessing. He was reading the structural-demographic indicators the same way a seismologist reads strain accumulation before an earthquake.

Real wages had been declining for decades. Inequality had reached Gilded Age levels. Elite numbers had exploded through credential inflation and wealth concentration. State debt was climbing. Polarization was accelerating. Every variable in the model pointed the same direction: toward disintegration.

The prediction wasn't magic. It was measurement. And anyone who dismissed it as historical determinism wasn't paying attention to what cliodynamics actually measures: the pressure building in a system. You can't predict the specific trigger—the 2020 pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the January 6th assault—but you can predict that when pressure reaches critical threshold, something will break.

Turchin's 2016 book Ages of Discord provides the full analysis: a structural-demographic dissection of American history showing two complete secular cycles, with the current disintegrative phase beginning around 1980 and intensifying through the 2010s. We're living through what the data predicted we'd be living through.

This isn't retrospective pattern-matching. The mechanisms are specific, the indicators are quantified, and the trajectory is clear. Understanding where we are in the cycle doesn't tell us how it ends, but it tells us what forces are operating and what kinds of interventions might matter.

The Two American Cycles: 1780-1920 and 1920-Present

Turchin identifies two complete secular cycles in American history, each following the characteristic four-phase pattern: integration, stagflation, crisis, and depression/intercycle.

First Cycle: 1780-1920

Integration (1780-1850): Post-Revolutionary settlement through Jacksonian democracy. Population low relative to available land (especially with westward expansion). Real wages high. Elite numbers small (politics dominated by a relatively small planter and merchant class). State capacity building. Inequality moderate. Social cohesion relatively high despite regional tensions.

Stagflation (1850-1860): Territorial expansion slows. Northern industrialization creates new elite class. Southern plantation economy generates its own elite overproduction. Real wage growth slows. Political competition intensifies—Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott. Elite consensus fractures along sectional lines.

Crisis (1860-1870): Civil War. Classic disintegrative crisis: intra-elite conflict (North vs. South), state fiscal collapse and reconstruction, massive violence, institutional breakdown and rebuilding. The crisis resolves through military victory and constitutional transformation, but at enormous cost.

Depression/Intercycle (1870-1900): Reconstruction and Gilded Age. The South is destroyed, its elite class broken. Northern industrial elites consolidate power. Real wages volatile but trending upward in North. Westward expansion continues absorbing population and elite aspirants. Labor conflict (1877 railroad strike, Haymarket, Pullman) signals ongoing tension but doesn't destabilize the system. New integrative phase begins.

Second Cycle: 1920-Present

Integration (1920-1960): Post-WWI through the New Deal and post-WWII boom. After the depression of the 1930s cleared elite overproduction and reduced inequality, the integrative phase accelerates. Real wages rise dramatically. Inequality declines. Elite numbers are relatively constrained. State capacity expands (New Deal, WWII mobilization, interstate highway system, space program). Social cohesion peaks in the 1950s-60s. The system is working for most people.

Stagflation (1960-1980): Growth slows. Real wage growth stalls in the 1970s. Inequality bottoms out around 1978 and begins climbing. Elite numbers start expanding—more college graduates, more professional credentials, more people competing for positions. Social unrest (Civil Rights movement, Vietnam protests, urban riots) signals rising pressure. State fiscal stress begins (stagflation, oil shocks). Political polarization starts increasing.

Crisis (1980-Present): This is where we are. Turchin marks the transition to the disintegrative phase around 1980, though the crisis intensifies gradually. Real wages for median workers stagnate or decline. Inequality soars—by 2010 reaching levels not seen since 1930. Elite overproduction accelerates through credential inflation and wealth concentration. State debt explodes. Political polarization intensifies into paralysis. Norm breakdown accelerates. Violence increases (both state and anti-state).

We haven't exited this phase. We're deeper into it now than when Turchin published his analysis in 2016.

The Indicators: What the Data Actually Shows

Turchin doesn't rely on qualitative assessment or vibes. He tracks specific quantifiable indicators. Here's what they show for contemporary America:

Real Wages and Wellbeing
Median real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—peaked in the early 1970s and have been essentially flat or declining since for production and nonsupervisory workers. GDP grows, productivity increases, but the median worker doesn't capture the gains. This is immiseration in the structural-demographic sense: declining wellbeing relative to expectations and relative to elite prosperity.

This isn't absolute poverty (though that exists too). It's the squeeze: housing costs rising faster than wages, healthcare unaffordable, education requiring debt, retirement insecure. The modal American works harder than their parents for less security.

Inequality
The Gini coefficient, top 1% income share, and wealth concentration all tell the same story: inequality declined from the 1930s through the late 1970s (the integrative phase), then reversed sharply. By 2010, the top 1% captured roughly 20% of total income, levels not seen since 1928.

This isn't just a wealth gap. It's a life gap. The distance between elite and non-elite experience—in health, longevity, security, opportunity, treatment by institutions—has become a chasm. This gap makes elite positions worth fighting for, which intensifies elite competition.

Elite Overproduction
Multiple proxies show explosive elite expansion:

• Credential inflation: Bachelor's degrees went from 10% of population in 1970 to 30%+ by 2010. Law degrees, MBAs, PhDs all increased dramatically.
• Wealth concentration: The number of billionaires increased from zero in 1982 to 600+ by 2020.
• Lawyer population: From 300,000 in 1970 to 1.3+ million by 2020—far exceeding actual demand.
• Academic overproduction: PhD production far exceeds tenure-track positions, creating a permanent adjunct underclass of credentialed elites.

The system produces more people with elite credentials and elite wealth than it has elite positions. These people don't disappear. They compete.

State Fiscal Stress
Federal debt as percentage of GDP was around 30% in 1980. By 2020 it exceeded 100%. State capacity remains robust in some domains (military) but has degraded in others (infrastructure, public health, education). The state's ability to respond to crises (financial crash, pandemic) increasingly relies on deficit spending that mortgages future capacity.

Political Polarization
Multiple measures show accelerating polarization since 1980:

• Congressional voting patterns show increasing party-line voting and decreasing cross-party cooperation
• Affective polarization (dislike of the other party) has intensified dramatically
• Political violence (attacks on government, mass shootings with political motives, January 6th) has increased
• Norm breakdown visible in Senate procedure, judicial appointments, acceptance of election results

Social Cohesion Breakdown
Trust in institutions (government, media, science, religion) has declined across the board. Social capital—participation in civic organizations, community ties—has eroded. The shared narratives that held the system together have fragmented into competing, incommensurable stories about what America is and should be.

Every indicator points toward disintegration. Not one or two—all of them, simultaneously, persistently, for forty years.

The 2020s: Peak Pressure

Turchin's 2010 prediction targeted the 2020s specifically because that's when the structural-demographic variables would reach critical threshold. He was right.

The pandemic revealed state incapacity: political paralysis, public health failure, inability to coordinate response. The George Floyd protests revealed the depth of popular rage and the state's reliance on force rather than legitimacy. The 2020 election revealed norm breakdown so severe that a sitting president refused to concede and significant portions of the elite class supported him. January 6th revealed that political violence is back on the table.

These aren't aberrations. They're symptoms of a system under critical structural stress. The specific triggers matter less than the underlying pressure. If it hadn't been COVID and Floyd, it would have been something else. The system is brittle. Any shock propagates catastrophically.

The 2020s are predicted to be the peak of the crisis phase because:

• Elite overproduction is at maximum—cohorts born in the 1980s-1990s entering competition
• Inequality is at maximum sustainable levels
• State fiscal stress is approaching crisis
• Political polarization has paralyzed governance
• Social cohesion is fragmenting

The combination creates a tinderbox. The question isn't whether there will be shocks. The question is whether the system can absorb them without collapsing.

Counter-Elite Mobilization: Left and Right

One of the clearest signs of elite overproduction in the current cycle is the emergence of counter-elite movements on both political flanks.

Right-Wing Counter-Elites
The MAGA movement represents a counter-elite coalition of:

• Regional elites (Southern, Midwestern) who resent coastal elite dominance
• Wealthy individuals (real estate, oil, finance) who have resources but not proportional political power
• Media entrepreneurs (talk radio, Fox News, podcasts, Substack) building alternative information ecosystems
• Failed or blocked elite aspirants who see the existing system as rigged

These counter-elites mobilize populist resentment against "the establishment," but the leadership isn't working-class. It's elite individuals competing for power by attacking incumbent elites as corrupt, globalist, or out of touch.

Left-Wing Counter-Elites
The progressive movement represents a different counter-elite coalition:

• Credentialed academics and journalists whose institutions have lost funding and status
• Young professionals with elite credentials who can't access elite positions (student debt, gig economy)
• Tech workers and knowledge workers who see themselves as creating value captured by ownership class
• Activists and organizers building alternative power structures

These counter-elites mobilize progressive discontent against "the system," framing incumbent elites as capitalist, racist, or patriarchal. But again, the leadership is educated and credentialed—elite aspirants who can't advance through normal channels.

Both movements are driven by the same structural problem: too many people competing for too few positions. The ideological framing differs, but the mechanism is identical. And both movements destabilize the political system by rejecting the norms that enable elite cooperation.

What Happens Next: Scenarios and Uncertainties

Cliodynamics doesn't predict specific outcomes. It predicts that systems under structural stress will destabilize, but how that instability resolves depends on contingency, agency, and choice.

Scenario 1: Continued Muddling
The system remains in crisis but doesn't collapse. Polarization continues, governance remains paralyzed, norms continue eroding, violence remains sporadic. This is the worst of both worlds: ongoing dysfunction without resolution. It's sustainable in the short term but not indefinitely.

Scenario 2: Authoritarian Stabilization
One faction wins decisively, consolidates power, and imposes order through institutional capture and force. This resolves the crisis but at the cost of democratic norms. Historical precedent: late Roman Principate transitioning to Dominate, various post-revolutionary dictatorships.

Scenario 3: Disintegration and Reconstruction
The federal system fragments—not necessarily territorial secession, but functional breakdown of national governance with power devolving to states or regions. Eventually, a new equilibrium emerges, possibly with radically different constitutional structure. Historical precedent: post-Civil War reconstruction.

Scenario 4: Managed Transition
Elites recognize the structural problem and implement policies that reduce pressure: progressive taxation to reduce inequality, credentialing reform, expansion of meaningful positions through economic transformation, cultural shifts that reduce elite competition. This is the optimal scenario but requires elite cooperation precisely when elite competition is maximum. Historical precedent: New Deal (though that followed crisis, it prevented further disintegration).

Scenario 5: External Shock
War, climate catastrophe, pandemic, economic collapse—any major external crisis could either accelerate disintegration or create conditions for new integration. The direction depends on the response.

Turchin's model doesn't tell us which scenario we'll get. It tells us we're in a disintegrative phase and the forces driving it are structural, not contingent. The choices we make matter, but the constraints we're operating under are real.

Can We Exit the Crisis Without Collapse?

The historical record is not encouraging. Most societies in disintegrative phases complete the cycle through violence and population reduction. Elite overproduction typically resolves through elite culling—war, revolution, purge, or downward mobility forced by economic collapse.

But history isn't deterministic. We have advantages previous societies lacked:

• We can see it coming. Turchin's analysis was published years before the crisis intensified. Policymakers could act on this information.
• We have historical precedent. We know what interventions have worked (progressive taxation, institutional reform, expansion of opportunity).
• We have technological capacity. Economic transformation could create new elite positions if we build the infrastructure for it.

The problem is political will. Reducing elite overproduction requires elites to act against their short-term interests: accept higher taxation, reduce their children's advantages, expand competition. Counter-elites resist because they want to become incumbent elites, not reduce elite positions. The masses are mobilized but fragmented into competing coalitions.

The window for managed transition is narrow and closing. The longer the crisis persists, the more norms erode, the harder cooperation becomes. At some point, the only resolution will be through the traditional mechanism: violence.

We're not there yet. But the trajectory is clear.

This is Part 4 of the Cliodynamics series, exploring Peter Turchin's mathematical history through AToM coherence geometry.

Previous: Elite Overproduction
Next: Curvature at Civilization Scale

Further Reading

• Turchin, P. (2016). Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History. Beresta Books.
• Turchin, P. (2010). "Political Instability May Be a Contributor in the Coming Decade." Nature 463(7281): 608.
• Turchin, P., et al. (2018). "Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers a Single Dimension of Complexity that Structures Global Variation in Human Social Organization." PNAS 115(2): E144-E151.
• Goldstone, J. A. (2014). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World: Population Change and State Breakdown in England, France, Turkey, and China, 1600-1850. Routledge.