05-19-2016, 01:02 AM
(05-17-2016, 10:04 AM)Mikebert Wrote: Good observation. Turchin has one secular cycle over 1780-1930, which would make the Civil War 4T a integrative trend conflict. integrative conflicts tend to be milder and less consequential than disintegrative conflicts (e.g. the WoR is greater than either of the Baron's wars, the English Civil Ear is greater than the mid-Tudor crisis.) The Civil War is the biggest of American internal conflicts. It also saw the outright collapse of the Confederate state. If you are familiar with Lind's three republics[1], one can describe the Civil War 4T as the rise of the 2nd republic in the North while thje 1st republic continued on in the South. In the war the new republic defeated the old.
That is, politically, the Civil War serves as a secular cycle "state collapse" and reformation, starting a new secular cycle. Most sources do not show a serious decrease in inequality coming from the civil war. This is because they do not consider slaves. About one fifth of white southerners owned one or more slaves. Slaves were valuable, about $145,000 in todays money for a prime slave. Slaves made up close to 60% of the wealth of slaveowners. When slaves were freed Southern elites lost the greater part of their wealth. At the same time the status of black people increased. They gained the right to keep money they earned (some slaves had paid jobs, their wages would go to their masters--now their earnings were their own). This means a portion of American wealth holders lost a goodly chunk of wealth while at the same time one eight of the country gained some wealth. The measure of inequality I chose captures this idea. Measures that just look at white folks do not.
Inequality in the North was unaffected, and with industrialization would rapidly rise over the next few decades. Hence the decrease in inequality was localized and fairly rapidly reversed by events in the North. Because of this it is hard to make the case that Turchin's first secular cycle is actually two cycles. The reason I favor this view is because inequality is now as high as it has been at the ends of former secular cycles and so it looks like the end game of the secular cycle that began with the new Deal. This secular cycle spans one saeculum. If I consider the Civil War as another secular cycle ending event, then we get a one-to-one match with secular cycles and the saeculum for the modern 80-yr saeculum. This is not the case for the older 107-yr saecula since the Armada is a 4T, but not a secular cycle crisis.
1. https://nomocracyinpolitics.com/2013/12/...l-history/
I now wonder if the anomaly was in the Great Power Saeculum rather than the Civil War Saeculum; inequality started raising sooner and and instability spiked in the 3T but not in the 4T. On the other hand instability has peaked every 50 year other than when it peaked about 1830-1835 rather than 1820 as the pattern would predict.