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We stand on the cusp of the 5th major industrial revolution. Each of these revolutions (“phase shifts” in the technostructure of capitalism) has produced a radical revamping of the American political party system. A thread 1/11
The coming of the mills and the growing split between urban and rural in the 1820s led to the collapse of the Era of Good Feelings and the rise of the "Second Party System" setting off the Whigs against Andrew Jackson's Democratic-Republican Party. 2/11
The coming of railroads & major factories in the North led to growing sectional conflict, the collapse of the Whig Party & the rise of the GOP. Post-Civil War in the 1860s a new party system arose opposing (unreconstructed) Democrats & Republicans (waving the bloody shirt). 3/11
The e20c rise of electricity, internal combustion & Taylorist/Fordist mass production unleashed a new wave of productivity (and strife). It took the Great Depression to midwife a new model of governance, whose political manifestation was the New Deal coalition in the 1930s. 4/11
The next great transformation of capitalism's technostructure, driven by computing in the 1970s/80s, was also accompanied by the reconfiguration of the party system: the emergence in 1980 of Ronald Reagan's new GOP coalition, which busted up the FDR's New Deal coalition. 5/11
(The outlines here are clear: the two parties switched sides on civil rights, and the GOP aggressively rolled back labor power. The relationship between the two parties stabilized in the 1990s as Snarling Neoliberalism Party vs. the Neoliberalism with a Human Face Party.) 6/11
And so it went right up until the GFC, which revealed the end of the Neoliberal era. Despite glum views about capitalism, signs of its techno-renewal are not hard to see: NBIC, renewables, quantum, etc. 7/11
Right on schedule (with 😡 as the catalyst), the relationship between the two parties is also undergoing the same sort of radical boundary redrawing that has accompanied previous phase shifts in the technostructure of capitalism. 8/11
In a nutshell, it appears that the two parties are settling into pretty clear positions (ones I believe will long outlast 😡): one will be the party of Reactionary (White) Nationalism, and the other will be the Party of Social Redress. 9/11
Whether that's a good configuration for ensuring that the US can make the most of the coming technological revolution remains to be seen. A lot depends on which one of these becomes the overall dominant one. 10/11
Analytic side note: each of these transitions has been marked by high levels of contestation over the legitimacy of SCOTUS, which (because of appointment cycles) has often thwarted (or at least slowed) the ambitions of the party that emerged on top in the new configuration. 11/11
