Before I move on to look at Stage 6, I want to distinguish between revolutions and civil wars and put them in the
right buckets.
What Is the Difference between a Civil War and a Revolution?
A revolution is the process of bringing about revolutionary changes in how the system works. Revolutions
needn’t be violent, though they typically are. They can occur within the system/order without breaking the system,
or they can occur after disposing of the old order and starting a new one. Civil wars, on the other hand, are
violent fights for controlling wealth and political power or fights over ideologies that people feel are even
more important than themselves. They produce a lot of injury and death15 and the breakdown of basic
protections for people and basic services including healthcare, education, and normal economic activities. They are
attempts to end the old order and replace it with a new order. The difference between civil wars and revolutions
can be confusing—e.g., were the French and Russian revolutions really civil wars, and was Franklin Roosevelt’s
big move to the left a peaceful revolution? How does one distinguish between successful and unsuccessful civil
wars and revolutions—e.g., should the US Civil War not be counted as a civil war since it was unsuccessful in
changing the system? I will explain how I chose to categorize them.
In categorizing civil wars and revolutions I decided to distinguish those that occurred within a system/order from
those that were attempts or successes to break the order and start a new one. In other words, revolutions can
happen as a way of addressing the challenges of Stage 5 before a nation progresses to civil war (i.e., Stage 6).
These revolutionary changes can occur within the system even if there is brutal arguing, as long as there is not lots
of killing (civil wars) and/or changes in systems/orders (which fall into the next category and section). Examples
of revolutionary changes within the existing orders include Roosevelt’s revolutionary shifts to the left in the early
1930s and Reagan’s and Thatcher’s revolutionary shifts to the right in the early 1980s. They were reflected in
radically different wealth distribution policies that were exemplified by the radically different top income tax rates.
For example, the top marginal tax rate in the US and UK since 1900, the changes in which are shown in the
following charts, went from 0% to over 90% in 30 years and almost all wealth was redistributed in the 30 years
between 1914 and 1944. This is just one of a number of measures we use to show the revolutionary changes that
took place within the system.
History shows us that revolutionary changes that take place within a system/order can be as large as those that
come from civil wars. For example, the Big Cycle revolutionary changes that took place within the US system in