One of the most popular metrics, often used to predict the influence of changes in governments’ political orientation on global markets, is the division on ‘Liberals’ / ‘Conservatives’ and pro / against ‘big government’ which presents itself one of the last remnants of the personified, monarchs-centric politics of pre-war Europe.
In this short essay I propose to replace those two axises by the Reforms / Reaction on the vertical and Aggressive / Passive on the horizontal. I also intend to briefly review the past 100 years of World’s history based on this new analytical approach.
To get free ourselves from hypocritical concepts of the past it must be, first, understood that the history is driven not by the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ types of humans, who depends on their ‘ideological convictions’ to make ‘historical decisions’ but by the close-tight power groups where the leadership is carefully staged and orchestrated in order to be then passed from one generation to another.
Despite their social homogeneity the preceding generation always tries to push the older one out of power and because of that adapt the policy, which is 180 degrees opposite to that of their fathers.
That is, basically, how we have ‘generational waves’ during which one type of economic strategy is usually changed to an opposite one. It happens because of the tough logic of power struggle — not of ideological dogmas.
Basically, what usually happens is that the privileged by birth group of younger, more desperate and power-hungry individuals uses the latest technological innovation to take power from affluent and wealthy but grossly underperformed older bureaucrats.
One generation usually stays in power for about 30 years. That calculus takes into account an ‘average’ life-span of a ‘politicised human’, with its five main periods of maturity: 20 for growing up and education; 20 for business; 30 for politics; and the rest 10 / 20 years for retirement.
Those active 30 years have two distinct periods in it: first 10 years — ‘Reforms’, when the new generation of politicians are trying to oust out from power the preceding one; and the next 20 — ‘Reaction’, during which it rules almost non-challenged by actively suppressing the younger opposition.
Certainly, that schematics is highly simplified and doesn’t take into consideration local geographies specifics but my main premises is that as our global society becomes more and more centralised all processes synchronise.
From this point of view the main political events of the past and current centuries might be summarised as the series of six ‘Reforms and Reaction’ Cycles.
1900–1910 (Reforms — Active): ‘Reactionaries’ were entering into their active mid-life period trying to stabilize the world by falsifying political reforms and pacifying the opposition as economic and geopolitical controversies continued to mount as a result of the rapid expansion of industrial technologies.
1910–1930 (Reaction — Active): Ageing ‘reactionaries’ tried to tighten their grip on sovereign, dynastic power and unlimited privileges against the aggressive attacks of new generation of reformists by political subversion, bureaucratic boycott, police force and then by involving their nations into a series of destructive international conflicts.
1930–1940 (Reforms): Pre-war generation of politicians in their late 40th — 50th entertained the attempt to change the arc of history by parting with traditional values and conservative politics of containment and applied the latest technological inventions to rapid industrialisation, global conquests accompanied by brutal suppression of individuals freedoms.
1940–1960 (Reaction): The aggressive part of the pre-War ‘reformist’ Generation climbed on top of the power pyramid in their countries and launched the global strategy, which goal is to establish the new world order, which is based on the total government’s supremacy over the population.
1960–1970 (Reforms — Active): Young ‘reactionaries’ used direct actions (coup d’etats) and psychological subversions to come to power acting against reformists attempting to induce liberal constitutional changes (partially successful).
1970–1990 (Reaction — Active): Two national groups of social conservatives representing the Golden generation had built the bipolar world dominated by the ideological divide between two major nuclear powers USA and USSR.
1990–2000 (Reforms): dynamic Baby Boomers in their early 50th rushed to power actively pushing the remnants of the stagnant and ideologically driven Golden generation out of major political offices around the world. It opened the way for the globalist agenda aimed at centralizing the world under the soft rule of the Western elite supported by super-rich heads of major national corporations orientated on global business expansion gaining privileges trough their large networks of political connections in the ‘developing part’ of the world.
2000–2020 (Reaction): Baby Boomers hold strong to the high political offices and their personal privileges trying to establish the legal regime of universal adherence to utilitarian principles narrowly using new technologies to undermine personal liberties.
2020–2030 (Reforms — Active): Baby Boomers now in their 70–80th try to deliberately slow down the ‘dangerous’ technological progress. This is accompanied by the change of the world’s political paradigm, which departs from the reformist agenda and shifts to the reactionary politics based on the closed borders, an aggressive economic competition for the natural resources and global spying added by aggressive policing of the local population. In response multiple, small, decentralised, mutually ideologically exclusive groups of resistance, avoiding legal politics and preferring direct, violent actions, are formed all across the globe. It is paralleled by the internal political disintegration within the ruling elite. The further expansion of the cross-border communications technologies leads to insurgence of the new, ‘remote’ businesses and the rapid expansion of digital assets classes. As a result of the massive social disturbances and local wars the great majority of world’s governments become highly centralised and are fully dominated by the large bureaucratic apparatuses, helped by intrusive technologies, imposing a direct control over all groups of populations.
2030–2040 (Reaction — Active): Ageing Gen X ‘reactionaries’ will be pushing Boomers out from the political offices implementing more ‘impartial’ and ‘fair’ machine-based, algorithmic processes gradually replacing traditionally corrupt ‘human’ bureaucracies.
2040–2050 (Reforms — Passive): Millennials will lead the hacker reformists revolt against bureaucratic algorithms trying to decentralised the world and return to horizontal democracy based on ‘harmonious relations’ between humans and AI. UBI introduced.
2050–2070 (Reaction — Passive): Millennials will come to power and start to resist Gen Z attempts to centralise the Earth governance under the unified AI taking the control out of human’s hands completely.