HISTORY REPEATS OR WHAT THE VICTORIANS, FASCISTS, AND THE NEW DEAL HAVE IN COMMON

History does repeat itself.  Not in a fatalistic cycle.  Each of us is a master of his own destiny.  But there is a spirit of the times that over the course of decades yields to a new spirit, which in turn yields to yet another spirit, and so on until this cycling of zeitgeists repeats itself.  This spirit is a widely shared attitude towards the political, religious, and cultural institutions that embody the core values of a society as expressed through changing fashion, style, customs, and manners in all aspects of human endeavor, especially among the elites.  Over time the form of the spirit acquires substance as it is institutionalized by reformation of the organs of society, thus sparking a new spirit among people.

William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of “Generations”, have, I believe, correctly identified the engine of this cycle (if not its application to American history) on the smallest scale of the passing of one 20- to 25-year-long generation to the next.  Because of the familial and social intimacy of generations – e.g., grandfather to father to son, teacher to student, pastor to parish – there is not a revolution every couple of decades.  There is nevertheless a generational shift in attitudes that is cumulative to the point of provoking substantive changes in institutions upon the completion of one of Strauss and Howe’s four-generation cycles, about every 85 years.  This would be why the turning points of American history have occurred at 85-year intervals:  The colonization of the eastern seaboard circa 1605, the Glorious Revolution in 1690, the American Revolution in 1775, the U.S. Civil War in 1860, and the civil rights revolution beginning in 1945.

Each of these 85-year periods of shifting generational spirits has its own “meta-spirit” and a complete cycling of these zeitgeists every four periods.  This is what I mean by history repeating itself.  Every three and a half centuries Western Civilization (maybe Indian and Chinese civilizations too, but I haven’t studied them enough to form an opinion) undergoes a changing of spirit from revolution to normalcy to dissent to polarization.  I think this four-phase shift in attitude is the product of nothing more remarkable than the fact that after 85-years all living memory of the impetus for a given zeitgeist is extinguished.  Yet, human nature remains the same, so the long-term the yielding of one zeitgeist to another also remains the same.

So, let’s take a little closer look at this grand cycle of history.  It begins with revolution:  Commitment to the institutions of society is severed making possible their radical reform, abandonment, or even destruction.  In the examination of our own era, we can see that the Enlightenment marks a period of revolution, 1690 to 1775.  The West is exhausted by religious wars, and pragmatism dictates a modus vivendi of tolerance.  The Enlightenment enshrines this tolerance, even equality, of citizens of differing religious beliefs.  The forces for political liberty are unleashed.  At the western extreme of the European civilization, constitutionalism prevailed.  The Glorious Revolution opens this era, and the American Revolution closes it.  The revolutionary ideals of the Enlightenment were so powerful that even the tyrants at the eastern extreme of European civilization, the Russian rulers from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great, strived to be enlightened despots.  Similarly, the enthusiasm for slavery in America and serfdom in Russia was at an ebb.

Revolution then yields to normalcy.  The institutionalization of the revolutionary ideals takes place.  Peace and prosperity often reign.  This is a period marked by a spirit of renaissance.  There is a shift of focus from public spiritedness to personal improvement.  The Industrial Revolution from 1775 to 1860 is an example of this period of normalcy.  In the U.S. the forging of the Constitution preserved the ideals of the Declaration of Independence while quenching the fires of revolution.  The subsequent ascendancy of the Hamiltonian commercial republic illustrates this.  The last conflicts of the revolutionary period are resolved in 1815 with the end of the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812.  Peace and prosperity follow as great wealth begins to be generated in Great Britain, the U.S., and elsewhere through manufacturing.  However, the focus is not exclusively material.  A second Great Awakening convulses the U.S. and Great Britain and the Vatican, released from Napoleon’s yoke, begins the long process of reconciling the Enlightenment with Catholicism. 

In time dissent against this normalcy gains sufficient momentum to effect change.  This dissent is not a wholesale rejection of the ideals of the revolution.  Instead it is opposition to either the excesses of the revolution or the failure of the revolution to go further.  A good example of this is the misunderstood totalitarian reaction to the Enlightenment from 1860 to 1945.  Rooted in Malthusianism, Victorians deformed the ideal of Enlightenment religious tolerance into an idolatry of Reason, which fed an enthusiasm for a wide variety of rationalistic reductions of the human condition to one big idea.  This incipient totalitarian dissent was intellectually propelled by Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche.  This provided the cultural moment to displace the Church, still at a nadir from the assault upon it by the proto-fascist Napoleon, with the State as the primary object of the ordinary person’s loyalty – as evidenced by the anti-clericalism of the era, including Bismarck’s Kulturkampf.  Thus, millions of young men dutifully submitted, in the name of king and country, to the carnage of World War I.  In the wake of the destruction of that brutal conflict, fascist regimes came to power in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe, in Russia (in its Marxian variant, of course), and even in faraway China and Japan.  Thus, the stage was set for World War II which closed this most recent period of dissent in unprecedented bloodshed and violence.

To understand the period of polarization that follows, we should look to home.  The U.S. was not immune to the totalitarian reaction to the Enlightenment, especially its fascist manifestations, if we recall a few things:  The surrender of a free-market control of the U.S. money supply to the “scientific” management of the Federal Reserve system, the respectability we gave to eugenics and the pseudo-science of race, and the deference we accorded to our own “maximum leader” FDR as he extra-legally amended the Constitution with the New Deal.  So totalitarian dissent from the Enlightenment was pervasive, and it was not eradicated with the destruction of the Nietzschean regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan in 1945.  The Marxist and Darwinist strains remain virulent, obviously in the form of communism in the East and secularization in the West.  Indeed, even fascism found new life with the Arab nationalists and has been buttressed by the totalitarian Islamists.  After World War II, the totalitarian dissenters in the West harnessed themselves, when not acting as apologists for Communist tyrants, to newly respectable causes, such as the campaign against racial segregation, political and legal equality for woman, and conservation.  This is why multiculturalism, feminism, and environmentalism bear the hallmarks of totalitarianism and there is an increasing polarization between the left and the right in the U.S., as all the blue state/red state punditry reflects.

So, using the periods of the current cycle as an example, that’s the gist of how history repeats itself in a pattern of revolution, normalcy, dissent, and polarization.  A cursory survey of the history of Western Civilization reveals this pattern going back to the seventh century B.C. if we follow the path of the geographic center of the West as it moved from Greece to Rome to Byzantium to central Europe to Great Britain and, finally, to the U.S.  If nothing else, the following provides an objective periodization of history to facilitate an understanding of it:

Peloponnesian Era (690-350 B.C.):  Rise of the Philosophers(revolution), Athens-Spartan Hegemony (normalcy), Persian Challenge (dissent), Peloponnesian Wars (polarization).

Hellenic Era (350-10 B.C.):  Alexandrian Revolution, Hellenic Renaissance, Roman Eclipse, Fall of the Republic.

Roman Era (10 B.C.-A.D. 330):  Augustan Revolution, Pax Romana, Militaristic Anarchy, Division of the Empire.

Byzantine Era (330-670):  Constantinian Revolution, Eastern Restoration, Byzantine Retreat, the Islamic Threat.

Early Medieval Era (670-1010):  Rise of the West, Carolingian Renaissance, Feudal Reaction, Norman Conflict.

Late Medieval Era (1010-1350):  Medieval Reformation, the Universal Church, Academic Reaction, Via Moderna.

Early Western Era (1350-1690):  Rise of Modernity, the Renaissance, Protestant Revolt, Wars of Religion.

Late Western Era (1690-present):  The Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, Fascist Reaction, Eastern Conflict.

Comments

[jason]

what you say is an appealing way to look at history but is it real? can you make any predictions with it.

[Bill]

Hi, Jason.

The cycle is a repeating cause-and-effect that explains the rise and falls of political and cultural institutions in Western Civilization. If I am correct, it is certainly real in that sense.

As far as using it to forecast the future, I am dubious of that, as I am of most prognostication. This cycle can provide insight into the origin and direction of existing trends and their impact upon our institutions.

However, I think it will always be difficult to make specific predictions beyond the short-term. That's because we all have free will and none of us are chained to a wheel of destiny.

Regards, Bill