Case: The Wave Theory of American History
Question: Is history simply a
series a random events or are there predictable patterns in history? In small-scale societies? In the rise and fall of the Great
Powers? In the ebb and flow of American
social movements?
Researchers: Paul Kennedy,
Jerry Brown
Human Rights and Property Rights - The Wave Theory of social
movements explains the cyclical alternation of human-rights and property-rights
eras throughout American history.
Anthropology teaches us that radical swings in political moods may
simply represent the periodic oscillations of a stable social system exhibiting
“dynamic equilibrium.” Throughout
American political history, progressive social movements, which marched to the
“cry for justice,” have been followed by conservative reactions, which
reasserted the “law of capital.” These
pendulum swings between eras of social militancy and economic retrenchment stem
from an inherent tension between two sets of values: the human rights of
Enlightenment politics versus the property rights of laissez-faire
economics.
There is no irreconcilable antagonism between these
two pillars of American thought.
Capitalism and democracy were the twin foundations of the new order that
overthrew the European feudal aristocracy.
Both are committed to individual liberty and the rule of law. Both values are fundamental to the American
ethos. And, both have been in conflict
throughout American history.
Wave Theory and Social Movements – The affirmation of human
rights has periodically produced mass social movements, which have waxed and
waned in approximately 30 year intervals since the Civil War. The cyclical clash between property rights
and human rights is a fundamental theme in modern American history.
During the decades of the Civil War (1860s), the
Progressive Era (1890s), the New Deal (1930s) and the Great Society (1960s),
liberal ideals of social justice and economic equality were articulate in to
national movements.
However, within two decades (15 – 20 years), each of
these human-rights eras was followed by a period of reaction and
retrenchment. The abolitionist victory
after the Civil War was muted by the growth of the sharecropper system and the
rise of the Ku Klux Klan during reconstruction (1880s). The gains of the muckrakers and
trust-busters of the Progressive Era were undermined by the laissez-faire
policy of Republican Normalcy (1920s), while President Coolidge declared that
“the business of America is business.”
The labor movement’s legal right to organize,
established by legislation during the New Deal, was circumscribed by the
Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, passed during the
Cold War years (1950s). Historic gains
made by the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s, as well a many New Deal and
Great Society social programs, were dismantled by Reganomic budget cuts under
the New Federalism (1980s).
The Generational Factor – What drives the waxing
and waning of these waves? The answer
lies in the generational factor. Just
as history produces generations, so do generations produce history.
The roots of cyclical self-sufficiency are traced
deep in the natural life of humanity – in organic nature (tides, seasons, day
and night). There is sort of “political
entropy” at work, so that after cycles are born and come to the fore, they are
consolidated and legitimized, and eventually dissipated and displaced. Echoing Pareto, the historian Schlesinger
notes that each cyclical phase breeds its own contradictions and, in time,
“public action, passion, idealism and reform recede.”
The “generation experience,” which fluctuates in 15
year oscillations, serves as the regulator of the political cycle and deserves
special attention. Each generation
spends its first 15 years after “coming of political age” in challenging the
generation already entrenched in power.
Then, during the second 15 years, this new generation comes to power
itself, after which it is challenged and succeeded by the next generation.
As American history shows, issues that are not
completely resolved during one era are often revisited, with renewed vigor, by
a future generations during a later cycle.
For example, many legal rights were denied to Afro-Americans during the
reactionary period following the Civil War.
Nearly a century (or “three cycles”) later, the 1960s civil rights
movement eliminated segregation and achieved full legal citizenship for
Afro-Americans.
The wave theory does not attempt to predict specific
historical dates or elections results.
Rather, it gives us the framework for predicting historical trends and
better understanding shifts in the national political agenda.
Recommended resources:
Jerry Brown, “The Wave Theory of American Social
Movements,” City & Society
Paul Kennedy, The
Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
E. R. Leach, Political
Systems of Highland Burma.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History.
William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America’s Future.