Summary of Peter Turchin & Sergey A. Nefedov's Secular Cycles

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The modern science of population dynamics began with the publication of An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798. Malthus pointed out that when population increases beyond the means of subsistence, food prices increase, real wages decline, and per capita consumption drops.

#2 The Malthusian-Ricardian theory was first put forward by historians such as Michael Postan and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. It explained the long-term price trends of food better than the monetarist theory.

#3 The Malthusian model, which was the basis of Postan and Le Roy Ladurie’s theories, was flawed because it ignored the social structure. It attempted to explain long-term trends in economic growth and income distribution, but it was doomed from the start because it ignored the most important part of the equation: the surplus-extraction relationship between the direct producers and the ruling class.

#4 The Malthusian model neglects an important explanatory variable: the state. States are not simply created and manipulated by dominant classes, but they also compete with the elites in appropriating resources from the economy.

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