@Peter_Turchin
Pinned post
Pretty funny to see everyone blame this (rightly condemned, to be clear) on whatever their political bogeyman is: I've just seen people say that this is because of, take your pick, "communism," "Islamism," "third worldism," "Russia," and "China".View quoted post on X
As if France needed any outside help to riot... Maybe some people need to brush up on our history, or read Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables"...
This isn't to romanticize the rioters in the least. A reminder that in Les Misérables there's the figure of Thénardier, a horrendous scoundrel who exploits the chaos around him, robbing corpses and fleecing anyone he can.
Every chaotic moment in French history has its share of Thénardiers, and this one is no exception.
It's just too easy, and actually useful to those in power, to blame this on outside forces. At the end of the day, this anger was made in France, is happening in France, and can only be solved in France.
And, as painful as it is to hear, if one studies history, this is pretty much exactly what's expected at the stage France is at.
People have studied this. Whether you take Ray Dalio’s six-stage cycle theory, Peter Turchin’s "elite overproduction" thesis or the Chinese dynastic cycle framework, they all come to the same conclusion: when debt piles up, public services crumble and those in power become incapable, the streets eventually explode.
In fact it's almost eerie how France ticks almost every box of most cycle theories:
- Fiscal distress (debt is 119% of GDP and we now pay more to borrow than Italy or Greece),
- Crumbling public services: a reminder that these protests (now turning into riots) started with high school students protesting over the state of education
- Political paralysis and a legitimacy crisis (Macron has an insane 82% disapproval rate, he's definitely lost the Mandate of Heaven...)
- Popular immiseration with a record poverty rate at 15.4% and a median wage at only €2,190 net per month for a full-time private sector employee (you can't even afford to rent a decent flat in any major French city with this)
"Third worldism" or "Islamism" isn't the cause of any of this: French governments didn't borrow like there's no tomorrow (the last balanced budget dates back to 1974!) because the "Muslim Brotherhood" told them to, and it wasn’t Putin or Xi who left French classrooms without teachers...
Sadly the reactions - scapegoating - are ALSO typical of this stage of the cycle: Dalio lists among the classic markers of Stage 5 the emergence of "scapegoat classes who are commonly believed to be the source of the problems" (linkedin.com/pulse/delving-…), alongside a "loss of truth in the public domain," with people more interested in hunting for culprits than looking for solutions.
So what is the solution? Well, the way the Chinese dealt with it was basically a reset - regime-changing themselves with a new dynasty claiming the Mandate of Heaven, usually after decades of rebellion and war. Not exactly a hopeful prospect...
There is also the exception where a dynasty managed what the Chinese call a 中兴 (zhōngxīng, "restoration"): profound reform from within before the whole house came down. It succeeded a few times (e.g. the Tongzhi restoration during the Qing dynasty) but usually could only buy a few more decades, rarely more.
In 1945, the writer Huang Yanpei famously asked Mao how to break free of the cycle (cn.vlex.com/vid/constituti…), framing it in those terms: "People are careful and hard-working at first, for bold measures are the only possible ways to break through difficult conditions. But when things gradually get better, people begin slacking off: laziness may spread through a long history and is impossible to be corrected when it becomes a common practice. Gradually expanded territory requires corresponding increases in talent, but when the latter is insufficient, the central control will become weak. In a word, no one can escape the 'vicious cycle' of dynastic rise and collapse."
Mao replied that democracy was the answer, because "as long as the people can supervise the government, the government dare not slacken." And Xi later added a "second answer" (chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/256…): a system capable of "resolute self-reform".
The jury is still out on whether China has broken the cycle, but if France has any hope of escaping it, it will need both answers at once: a government that truly answers to its people, and very resolute self-reform.
One thing the answer definitely isn’t: turning on each other. In all these cycle theories, division and scapegoating appear on the way down, never on the way back up.
