Is Violent Societal Unrest Now Inevitable? | Peter Turchin

**Peter Turchin** (0:00)
None of those trends that made me so worried back in 2010, none of them have been reversed. So all the pressures for crisis continue to increase. The immiseration is increasing, editorial production is increasing, and obviously state fiscal fragility is increasing. So and until we see the trend reversals, there is no, we are going to get into more and more trouble. And I hope very much that this trouble will be relatively bloodless, continue to be a relatively bloodless revolution. But unfortunately, when countries are in such fragile situations, outbreak of serious violence is quite likely, if not necessarily determined.

**Adam Taggart** (0:59)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. On this channel, we spend most of our time talking about the economy, markets and money, which are all very important, no doubt, but they exist in service to society. If society itself reaches a point where it starts unraveling, then our portfolios start to matter a lot less when compared to safety and survival. Today's guest expert is Peter Turchin, project leader at Social Complexity and Collapse, Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. Dr. Turchin has written a number of best-selling books on the current precarious state of Western society, including End Times, Elites, Counter Elites, and The Path to Political Disintegration, War and Peace, and Peace and War, The Rise and Fall of Empires, Ages of Discord, and most recently, The Great Holocene Transformation. What Complexity Science Tells us about the evolution of complex societies. So what does he see is mostly likely ahead for us? Well, we'll ask the man himself. Peter, thank you so much for joining us today.

**Peter Turchin** (2:05)
Glad to be here.

**Adam Taggart** (2:07)
Thank you, Peter. It's a real honor to have you on. I know you have a busy schedule, but I very much appreciate you taking time out of it to talk to me and our audience here at Thoughtful Money. I've got a number of questions for you based on your work, but if I can just start with a really broad one, if you don't mind.

**Peter Turchin** (2:21)
Of course.

**Adam Taggart** (2:22)
What is your current assessment of our social fabric, and where does America sit on the timeline of empire in your estimation?

**Peter Turchin** (2:32)
Well, in my book End Times, which was published two years ago, I suggested that United States has entered a period of a revolutionary situation, when a revolution was quite possible to happen within the next short period of time. Well, since inauguration, since the beginning of the second term of President Donald Trump, I argue that the United States is now in a true revolution. Fortunately, it's not as violent as the types of revolutions we think about, such as the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution. Yes, people are not getting guillotined. Instead, they are fired from government jobs. So why do I think that the United States is in revolution? Well, there are two types of revolutions. First of all, those are revolutions of the elites. That's when a new country elite, and I can explain what I mean by country elite. When a new country elite comes to power and attempts to replace the previously established elites by taking over various power positions. So that is a revolution of elites, and that's one type of revolution. But many of such revolutions are also could be transformative revolutions, when the new power holders attempt to change the cultural makeup of the society.
By that definition, what is happening right now in the United States also, to me, counts like a transformative revolution. At least it's an attempt. We don't know yet how it will all play out, because revolutions typically take many years to remake societies. But we are in the process of such a remake, I would argue.

**Adam Taggart** (4:55)
Okay. So it seems like, watching from the cheap seats here, not a political analyst, the new administration is definitely engaging in the former type of revolution, which is the new party comes into power and it really tries to disassemble, not just the prior party, but the establishment and one might call this even the deep state. But basically, the Trump administration is definitely cleaning house a lot, but they are dismantling Department of Education. I mean, other programs like that, they welcomed in DOGE, TBD to see how much that's really going to impact, it's going to have, it seems to have had a lot less than they initially thought it might. But still, there really was a sense of like, look, we are trying to get rid of what we see as accreted bureaucracy that's not useful and try to replace it with something else. That seems more like the first one. When you talk about trying to, on the transformation side, change the cultural makeup of society, can you give me some examples of elements of that that you think are underway?