“In the United States, the discontent of the working classes has been accumulating for thirty years”

Fifteen years ago, he already warned: the United States would undoubtedly go through strong political turbulence in the 2020s. He was right. Anthropologist and professor at the University of Connecticut (United States), Peter Turchin has accumulated data on ten thousand years of history and 700 societies, from ancient Egypt to today's America, in order to build a model making it possible to identify the constants observed in the prosperity then the collapse of political regimes and States.

In the work The Chaos that comes. Elites, counter-elites, and the path to political disintegration (Le Cherche Midi, 448 pages, 23 euros), it shows that major crises occur when several dynamics come together: the excessive enrichment of the wealthiest, the impoverishment of the working classes and the appearance of a supernumerary elite tearing itself apart. for power. So many forces at work in the United States since the 1970s, and, to a lesser extent, in Europe.

Donald Trump won the presidential election on November 5, 2024 thanks to the discontent of a large part of Americans. What is the origin of the crisis facing the United States?

It has deep historical roots, linked to what I call the “wealth pump”. In the 1920s, the United States was in crisis. This was resolved by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. [élu en 1932]which established an implicit social contract balancing the interest of businesses and workers. The latter were able to unionize and organize to defend their rights. The numerous reforms of the time, including high taxation of high incomes, also allowed the country to experience a period of falling inequalities and unprecedented prosperity, particularly after the Second World War.

However, this social contract deteriorated at the end of the 1970s, when a new generation of elites, who had not known the 1920s, came to power with the Reagan administration. This repressed worker movements and reduced taxes on the wealthiest. Wages began to decline in relation to growth, while the share of income captured by the wealthiest increased: the “wealth pump” was put in place. The number of super-rich, holding at least $10 million [9,6 millions d’euros, au cours actuel]thus increased from 66,000 in 1983 to 693,000 in 2019. Inequalities have increased and, with them, discontent.

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