Last modified: 2016-06-11
Abstract
In the context of his sociological theory of elites, Vilfredo Pareto wrote about the existence of the rhythmic movement of a sentiment, which we can observe in ethics, religion and politics like a wave similar to the business cycle. In addition, roughly in the middle of XX century the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin concluded that there is no any stable tendency of the social and political development to the growing democracy, or vice versa. Besides, in his opinion, a human society is always politically, socially and economically stratified, but every society always deals with the struggle between forces of political alignment and forces of stratification. Actually, Sorokin proved the existence of the specific cyclical process in the formation and changes of both the socio-political stratification and political systems type. Furthermore, on the basis of Sorokin’s studies we can conclude that the excessively homogeneous system as well as the excessively heterogeneous one are characterized by instability.
Combining the ideas of Pareto and Sorokin, we can suggest and outline the kind of the life cycle of a political economic system (ideology or an institution), which is based on a certain ideology, or, in other words, the Pareto sentiment. The various phases of this cycle are characterised by a different level of ideological stratification (heterogeneity). In the paper, the duration of these phases is supposed to be connected with the change of generations insofar as each generation keeps certain information (historical memory) and transmits it to the next one, but gradually this information loses its original quality and, consequently, the force of its influence. If the phase of nucleation of such a cycle is associated with a definite generation t, the expiration of this cycle is associated with a gradual exit from the historical scene of a t-generation, which also keeps the memory about the previous political-economic regime. So the length of this cycle is about 70 years, that is equal to the difference between average life expectancy (approximately 70-80 years old) and the minimum-conscious age of population (approximately 5-7 years old).
As an example of the Pareto sentiment we can apply the communist ideology and, thus, the life cycle of the former Soviet Union. Another curious example is the life cycle of the economic institutions, connected with the New Deal of Roosevelt. So the Great Depression of 1929-1933 and the Great Recession of 2007-2008 must be regarded as crucial points of such a cycle. This Pareto sentiment cycle is also can be associated with Kondratieff long cycles, the average duration of which is near 50-60 years, and the mechanism of which is far beyond the purely economic phenomena.