Professor Jiang said something interesting in one of his lectures, he said the overall system (communism, capitalism, democracy etc) is less important than social mobility. Social mobility is when people are rewarded for hard work with advancement up into a higher class. More wealth, more respect, better jobs. He pointed out this can occur in different systems but over time social mobility tends to dry up because all the ‘elite’ positions (anyone upper middle class and above) in that society are filled, and when people die they rig the system so their own kids will get the new positions rather than these opening up naturally to competition from anyone below.
His point was about how revolutions and civil wars are always about the breakdown of social mobility. The poor stay poor and are used to being poor, but the rich begin competing within themselves because there are not enough spaces anymore for being rich. The game has become rigged and people in the lower rich (those who have some) align themselves with the poor (those who have nothing) to revolt against the upper rich (those who have a lot). This is a strategy the lower rich use to gain social mobility for themselves and become more rich.
The point is that revolutions and civil wars do not start from the poor. They start from the lower rich, and they use the poor as an excuse. They get the poor on their side by promising them certain things to better their conditions, namely to remediate what has happened in society to cause the breakdown of social mobility:
Cancellation of their debts
Land to own
An end to their economic slavery
With these three promises, the poor side with the lower rich figures who are leading the revolution or civil war. Marx and Engels are an example, they were both upper middle class yet got the poor on their side against the very rich.
Bottom line: what really matters is social mobility. What this means in practice: if you work hard you can raise your position in society. As long as this is the case generally across the society, things will be stable regardless of what economic or political system is in place. People will work harder to better themselves and get a better life for their families. Everyone will know that success is fairly rewarded based on hard work. People who do not work hard will tend not to advance, and this too will be seen as fair. No inner social conflict. Everything falls into place more or less naturally.
But when social mobility ends and we can no longer better our positions in society through hard work, the chasm between the lower rich (middle class) and the upper rich (top 1%) will get so large and impassable that someone or a group of people from the lower rich will figure out a way to get the masses of poor on their side to lead a campaign of revolution against the upper rich. War, social breakdown, political revolution, etc. And funny enough, in war social mobility returns, albeit in a context where the larger risk is that you will be killed. But if you are not killed you can once again better your position in society through hard work by rising up the ranks to better positions.
