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“The Goldilocks formula is basically the biggest challenge in creating modern societies,” Fareed Zakaria told Hollywood on the Potomac in an interview on his latest book Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, “to have a state that is powerful enough to control all society, but not so powerful that it becomes a tyranny. This is something that James Madison expressed very well. In one of The Federalist papers, he says, ‘The two great tasks of government are to get the government to control the governed and the second is to get it to control itself. In other words, not become too powerful.”
In his latest book, he delves into the profound revolutions that have shaped human history, drawing striking parallels with the tumultuous present. Against historical backdrops, he analyzes today’s transformative forces: globalization, technology, identity and geopolitics. With unparalleled insight, he re-frames our chaotic age, offering profound insights into its nature and uncertain future. Fareed is perhaps best known as the host on GPS on CNN Sundays.
Q: “Since the book is about revolutions, give me your definition of revolutions. Are there good revolutions, bad ones, and if so, what defines the good and what defines the bad?
A: “A revolution for my purposes – and of course there are many definitions – I think is the one that is useful to help us understand the world we’re living in, which is why I wrote the book. The Revolutions as I define them are almost kind of complete transformations of the social, economic and political basis of society in there was a kind of big transformation that takes place in the world that you’re living in. And those transformations happen because of deep changes that are coursing through the system. There are good revolutions and bad revolutions, and my argument in the book is that the good revolutions – the ones that help us move forward – are revolutions which are sort of bottom up -where there are changes, modernizations that take place in economics, in technology, in our social relations, the opening up of opportunities for women and minorities and things like that. Those transformations start at the bottom, but then eventually the politics adjust to accommodate them and to shape them.”
“The bad revolutions are ones like the French Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, where it’s a top down change by a bunch of political elites who decide they want to create what they regard as a perfect society. And in doing that, they make huge changes to societies that are largely the product of ideology and kind of elite thinking. And those changes can be hugely disruptive, can do enormous damage as they did in the French Revolution, the Iranian revolution, the Russian Revolution. And so it’s a cautionary tale for political elites to try to move with the grain of society rather than imposing change wholly from on top.”
Q: I was struck by your chapter on The Netherlands. Either I wasn’t taught much about the Dutch in history class or I wasn’t listening. What effect did the Dutch have on democracy?
A: “In a sense, the Dutch have kind of invented modern politics and economics and most people find that a strange thing. But it really is true. If you look at human society, just from the point of view of something simple like average income for thousands of years, human beings all over the world, it basically was the same. It never moved. It was about two to $300 per capita, GDP. And the first society in modern history that begins to move out of that stagnation is the Netherlands, because they turn out to be the most inventive plucky society that with given no agricultural land living on these marsh lands at the southwestern edge of Europe, they find a way to reclaim land. They find a way to manage water. They find a way to invent tall ships and navigation. And so they get out probably partly because there wasn’t much there.”
“And all these things make them innovate financially. For example, they created the first joint stock company in the world, which becomes the largest company in the world – the Dutch East India company. They create the first stock market in the world and they become the richest country in the world by the end of the 17th century. I would call it the first merchant republic where power is divided among a whole bunch of essentially kind of mayors and city council. They didn’t really even have something that we would today call a president or a prime minister.”
“There was no single focus of authority. It was all divided and cut up. So in a very strange way, they ended up helping us understand what it means to be a modern nation and to give them credit. You are absolutely right now, you don’t think about them a lot. Holland, since the 1650s has been basically one of the 10 richest countries in the world, that’s a pretty impressive run to be able to have gone from then to now. I give you one fascinating statistic. The United States is the world’s largest exporter of agricultural products. The second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world is the tiny Netherlands with 17 million people. It exports more than Russia and China, then India in agricultural products.”
And I just thought they grew Tulips.
Q: “You said that Tocqueville said that Americans are (not?) in a state of democracy. They were born equal without having to become equal. So what exactly does that mean?
A: “Yeah, it’s a great line, but it does require unpacking. So what he was trying to explain is that for most of the world, the normal state of affairs that took place after the agricultural revolution, after the nomads settled down and started creating farming societies, which happened pretty much all over the world, was you ended up with a kind of feudal system where there were lords and manners who ran huge estates. And on those estates, the people who lived were very unequal. They were second or third class citizens. And it was in a sense, the way Europe was organized, it’s the way China was organized. His point is that in order to create modern societies almost everywhere, you had to go through a social revolution that broke the power of the land owning class that created, that gave the surfs or the slaves or the peasants some kind of rights.”
“And in that social revolution, societies became more equal. But America, because it had come into being after all that had happened in Europe, and most of the people who came from northern Europe, that revolution largely taken place. And most of the people, particularly in the north of America, were sort of on the same level, not economically, but socially. And that’s one of the things people had always noticed about America, not just Tocqueville, that Americans thought of themselves as socially on the same level, but that’s very different from much of most of the world and most of history where all societies are marked by enormous class hierarchies. And one always has to say that’s true in America with the one exception of course, of slavery. But America, in a way, found it easier to adopt democracy because it had already embraced social equality. Whereas in Europe, you may have had democracy in Britain, but you still had the Lords, the knights, the peasants. There was a kind of ranking of hierarchy within society, which in some way doesn’t fit as well with democracy as the idea that all men are created equal.”
Q: “Are we headed for a revolution in The United States, and if so, what kind of a revolution?
A: “I think we’re going through a backlash against all the change that has taken place over the last 30 or 40 years. And a lot of that change has been economic and technological. Think of the massive expansion of globalization, the massive expansion of information technology, which has totally upended the old economy, but a lot is cultural. A lot of it is a reaction to the extraordinary progress that’s been made with women’s rights, with minority rights. And so we’re going through this backlash and where we come out I think will depend on how we navigate through these changes. So take one piece that you mentioned, which I think is absolutely true, there is a great problem of inequality in this country, but it’s important to remember we’re the richest country in the history of the world. We could eliminate poverty in America tomorrow if we wanted to. But we have not. I’ll give you one simple example of this. When Biden enacted the child tax credit, you reduced childhood poverty in America by half within two months. And then when it was repealed by the House of Republicans, when it was led to lapse by the House of Republicans, we’re back to in a weird way, choosing a society to live with levels of inequality that we do not have to. And I hope we come to recognize that, that there’s absolutely no reason for it.. I think people think about poverty in two moralistic terms. A lot of people who were poor just have had bad luck. I don’t think they’re bad people, but children had nothing to do with it whatever. Children are born into a situation where they could have no control. So why not just make the children’s lives better? And we choose not to, which is a terrible moral failing I think.”
Q: “I’m going to end with this since you mentioned about going backwards. When things seem bad, everybody says the good old days, you want to go back to the good old days. I was doing a research project at the Library of Congress and came across daily headlines from decades ago that said things like ‘Joe’s head was found floating down the river. We haven’t found his body yet.’ And I thought, wow. Those are the good old days? What do you have to say about ‘the good ‘ol days?”
A: “The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory.”
This interview has been heavily edited for brevity purposes and there is tons more, but we want you to read the book. Go for it.
