Civilization and Beyond by Scott Nearing
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Scott Nearing >> Civilization and Beyond
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1. NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY. Up to 1750 human beings had the energy of
the human body plus the energy of domestic animals. They used wind to
turn mills and sail ships and water to turn crude wheels. They also
burned various things, particularly vegetable fibres, to produce heat.
During the revolution they have learned to use steam, electricity and
chemical explosives. Recently they have learned to use the energy in the
atom, to use water power extensively and, to a slight extent, the energy
of the sun and the tides.
2. The revolution has taught people who previously feared CHANGE,
to welcome change and take full advantage of discoveries and inventions
that modified nature and profoundly altered human society.
3. Among the INVENTIONS were the extensive use of the wheel for
movement on land, the use of steam engines and electric motors for
moving, manufacturing and transportation and the use of electricity for
communication.
4. INCREASED HUMAN MOBILITY on land and water, and, more recently,
in the air and, still more recently, in outer space. Easy and rapid
movement, and almost instantaneous communication brought people together
in towns and cities, built up trade in goods and services, increased
speed of communications and enabled people living at a distance from one
another to keep in close touch, bringing human enterprises and human
beings into continuing contact. Human life, thought and action were
coordinated. Increased mobility UNIFIED HUMAN SOCIETY.
5. RESEARCH is now an accepted aspect of all phases of human life
and activity. Research is a recognized occupation. Research teams solve
problems, map the paths of enterprise. We are learning first to think,
then, only after careful study, decide on courses of action and follow
them through.
6. The field of inquiry and research covered the entire range of human
experience. Information, resulting from research, provided the subject
matter of new sciences. In the new fields new skills were developed and
new professions built up. The members of this new TECHNOLOGICAL
INTELLIGENTSIA, added to the learned professions, created a large
group who expected and enjoyed affluent living conditions.
7. SPREADING AFFLUENCE increased the number of families that
enjoyed abundance of goods and services, comforts and luxuries mass
produced and offered in a mass market, lifting people out of scarcity by
growing abundance. Scarcity ceased to restrain. Instead, people learned
the values of RESTRAINT, ECONOMY, FRUGALITY, SIMPLICITY.
8. Increase in size and complexity called into being a new profession.
MANAGEMENT with the necessary PLANNING, BUDGETING, COST
KEEPING.
9. Large numbers of well-fed, housed, educated and aware human beings
created the possibility of arousing, mobilizing and utilizing
people--especially young people--to take part in voluntary group
projects, co-operate and create. Such experiences developed SOCIAL
AWARENESS and led to LARGE SCALE MASS ACTION.
10. People growing up in affluence, living above the rigors of poverty,
asked questions about themselves, their society and the universe in
which they lived. They learned that they and their fellows had not only
the five accepted "senses," but additional senses with corresponding
experiences. This opened their eyes to the possibility of additional or
extra senses, opening the immense field of "EXTRA SENSORY PERCEPTION,"
E.S.P.
These ten areas, opening up largely during the years of the great
revolution are "new wine" which cannot be contained in the old wine
skins. They raise questions and open up vistas which transcend the
narrower confines of civilization. They are among the materials and
facilities out of which a new world is coming into existence.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MOVING TOWARD WORLD FEDERATION
One of man's earliest collective experiences is summed up in the saying:
United we stand; divided we fall.
United we survive and prosper. Divided we quarrel, fight and sooner or
later break up into smaller sovereign competing groups. If human beings
wish to utilize nature or to enjoy the advantages of collective action
and group life they must get together and stay together.
This necessity for collective action has appeared and reappeared all
through written history. It is one of the most important lessons of
present-day human experience. It holds for families, neighborhoods,
villages, cities, nations, for mankind as a whole. It is joint action
for the general welfare.
The principle of collective action has been recognized and put into
practice during the ten centuries that span the rise of western
civilization--put into practice up to a certain point--the nation or the
empire. Beyond that point, collective action has taken two forms:
competition and conflict, including war, and coordination or cooperation
under agreement, contract or treaty.
Among the outstanding results of the great revolution, improvement in
communication and transportation have brought humans into contact with
one another on an increasingly extensive scale, reaching its high water
mark in planet-wide networks of trade, travel, migration and diplomacy,
leading up to the One World which was so much in the foreground of
public discussions between the two general wars of 1914 and 1939.
Much has been written on the subject. I contributed by two bits in _The
Next Step_, a book published in 1922 and _United World_, published in
1945. Perhaps the most critical failure of western civilization was its
inability or unwillingness to take that next step during the decisive
years that followed the Hague Conference of 1899.
In listing the Ten Building Blocks for a New World (Chapter 13 of this
book) I began with world federation because in terms of the public life
of the earth around 1900, the planet was divided into two alliances of
nations and empires--the Allies, headed by Great Britain and the Central
Powers, headed by Germany.
Instead of cooperating to gain their declared objectives of peace,
prosperity and progress these two power blocs engaged in an armament
race from 1903 to 1914, leading up to general war in 1914, with a second
general war between the rivals in 1939.
When I was organizing Part II of this study (A Social Analysis of
Civilization) I had to decide whether to begin with economics or
politics. As an economist I was inclined to put economics first, but
since the study centered on civilization, and since all known
civilizations were not groupings of economic subdivisions but aggregates
of nations, empires and their dependencies, and since the expansion of
civilization has consisted in enlarging the geographical area of the
civilization in question, I decided to begin with politics. As the study
has progressed I have seen no reason for reversing the choice.
On the contrary, since I began collecting data for this study at the
time of the first general war, I have watched the unfolding political
struggle for economic and cultural objectives with the increasing
conviction that politics is the primary focus, with economic forces
always in play, but usually in the background, leaving the center of the
stage to politics.
This is another way of saying that the present-day world is divided
primarily into political nation states rather than into areas of
economic function. Always, economics is important. But, at least
superficially, political considerations are in the foreground to clinch
decisions. A time may come when economists or sociologists occupy the
central offices where primary decisions are made. That time has not yet
arrived. In so far as the present generation is concerned, politics is
in the foreground. The politicians make the crucial announcements and
sign the key documents.
Therefore our survey of the Steps Beyond Civilization begins with
politics. Our attention centers on the political aspects of World
Federation with economic considerations present and always operating,
but not dominating the crucial decisions.
For better or worse, in 1975 and the years immediately succeeding, we
will be living on a planet divided into some 140 politically sovereign
states. In view of the widespread pressure toward self-determination,
the number of sovereign states has increased considerably, especially
since war's end in 1945.
Presumably the principal "united we stand" applies to those 140
sovereign states.
Sovereignty includes the right of self determination--putting the
interests of one particular state above the interests of the entire
family of nations--the part before the whole. Here is a contradiction
and a possible conflict of interest. Britain's Prime Minister Heath,
like many another spokesman in his position, summed up the issue in the
pithy phrase: "British interests come first."
If the French, Italian, Japanese and other prime ministers take a
similar stand, implied by the principle of sovereignty, situations are
bound to arise in which the interests of two or more nations clash,
opening the way for conflicts at many levels: differences of
interpretation, negotiations in the course of which concessions may be
made by both parties. The differences may be settled by diplomats
sitting around conference tables or by armies on the battlefield.
With 140 sovereign states on the planet, the probability of conflict
would seem to be overwhelming. As a matter of daily experience such
confrontations and conflicts do occur. Most of them are handled by
negotiation. A few lead to armed struggle.
Since 140 sovereign states exist on one earth, means must be found that
will enable them to co-exist, if possible, without conflict, and
certainly without military conflict. The means generally relied upon
today for dealing with such problems is negotiation between
representatives of all parties at interest. At the national level this
would mean negotiations between representatives of the involved
governments.
Negotiations between representatives of various governments are always
going on--dealing with political, economic and cultural issues. Within
each nation such negotiations are conducted between spokesmen for
various government departments. Internationally they are conducted by
representatives of various governments working through their diplomatic
or consular services. Within each nation and between nations
confrontations may be settled by negotiation. At each level they may
result in armed conflict.
Governments exist to deal with conflicts and, where possible, to resolve
them before they reach the shooting stage. This is notably true in
domestic affairs because there are usually public officials charged with
the duty of dealing with problems. Internationally, unless there is an
international agency such as the Universal Postal Union of the
Organization of American States, the issue must be settled by special
representatives of the parties.
The argument for a world government begins with the assumption that
means should exist to deal with international issues before they reach
an acute stage. Such means exist within each local government. Similar
arrangements should exist at the international level to deal with issues
that arise between governments.
The political core of a social stage beyond civilization will be a
planet-wide, international, regional and local network of institutions,
integrated, coordinated and administered on the federal principle: local
affairs controlled locally; regional affairs controlled regionally;
international affairs controlled by a planet-wide political authority.
Such a relationship would imply states rights for the local authority;
regional rights for the regional authority, and full awareness in the
central authority of the possibility, at this juncture, of establishing
order, justice and mercy on the planetary level--in our present
terminology, a "world government."
Basic to this federal structure would be the Jeffersonian assumption:
"That government governs best which governs least", with an amendment:
"provided that the authority in question governs sufficiently to
establish and maintain physical health, social decency, order, justice
and mercy in reasonable proportions throughout the area subject to its
jurisdiction".
At each level, local, national, regional and planetary, there will be
committees, councils or other authorities with full responsibility for
the conduct of public administration at the local, the national, the
regional and the planetary or international level.
Currently the federal principle is widely established at local and
national levels. Attempts are being made in various regions to
effectuate stable authorities at the regional level, such as the United
States of North America or the United States of Mexico. There has been
much talk of planet-wide government established by one wealthy and
militarily powerful nation over its peers, or by a voluntary association
with its peers. Institutions established thus far: League of Nations,
The United Nations, The World Court, the Universal Postal Union, have
fallen far short of stable, planet-wide, all inclusive political
authority.
At the moment there are 122 states which are members of the United
Nations. There are perhaps an additional score of nations which have
applied for membership or which might be accepted if they made an
application. Accept this rounded figure, and we have perhaps 140 nations
or potential nations on the planet. Some are long established and
stable. Other nations are new-born, with small populations, few
resources and minimal means of defense or offense. By and large this is
the family of nations which might be coordinated into an effective world
authority which would be responsible for order, decency and peace in a
federally coordinated world.
World authority, to be effective and reasonably stable, must be equipped
with sufficient delegated powers to maintain orderly and decent
relations between its members, establish peace, and carry out policies
necessary to provide and promote ecological and sociological welfare. To
achieve such results it must have a built-in balance between central
authority and local-regional self-determination. It must also enjoy
sufficient elbow-room to provide for social change and for consistent
social improvement.
The goal of world government, as of any political enterprise that
pretends to represent human needs, will be social stability, security,
efficiency of service, and enlarged opportunities for citizens to speak
and act for themselves, directly or through their representatives, at
all levels. Politics is the theory and practice of the possible in any
given situation. Executives and administrators in Los Angeles, London
and Tokyo or in the United States, Britain and Japan will deal with
public transportation, public education and public law and order in
terms of general principles such as those stated in the opening
sentences of this paragraph. They will also face specific situations
arising out of climate, access to raw materials, custom, habit and other
ecological and cultural factors which differ profoundly from continent
to continent, nation to nation, city to city and district to district in
the same nation.
Human communities have sought and found different means of dealing with
the problems of community administration. At one extreme of social
administration are various types of arbitrary, personal dictatorships.
The Greeks called them tyrannies--arbitrary rule by individuals or small
groups subject only to their own decisions.
At the other extreme are social groups that arrive at decisions as the
outcome of discussion in which all group members may take part. Group
decisions may require unanimity or they may be the outcome of voting,
with a majority or plurality vote carrying with it the right and duty to
put decisions into effect as part of the public life of the community.
Various forms of government have been established locally and
regionally. At the level of a civilization, the government has been
established almost universally as the outcome of armed struggle and
military conquest, and has been exercised through the use of armed force
in the hands of armed minorities.
A century without general war, 1815 to 1914, led to a widespread
balance-of-power assumption that planet-wide peace and prosperity could
be established and maintained by preserving a balance between the armed
forces of individual nations or alliances. Hence there need be no more
general wars fought for survival or supremacy.
The bitter struggle for markets, raw materials and colonies that
followed the French-German War of 1870 developed into an armament race
after 1899. From the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 to the outbreak of
general war in 1914, desperate efforts were made to maintain the
power-balance and avert a general war. The failure of these efforts
proved the ineffectiveness of the balance-of-power formula.
Today it is generally taken for granted that a balance of power between
armed nations is no guarantee of peace and order. It is also taken for
granted that frivolous talk like that of an "American Century" after
1945 has no justification in the light of present-day history. As
matters now stand neither a balance between rival armed powers, nor the
domination of the planet by any one power can be relied upon to maintain
world order and keep world peace.
Forms of self-government and representative government developed during
the bourgeois revolution and advocated and partially applied during the
proletarian up-surge, are being continued or are reappearing during the
current struggle for power and prestige at the planetary level. As the
planet approaches one world technologically, there is an increasing
possibility of a planetary political federation, directed by a world
governmental apparatus.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
INTEGRATING A WORLD ECONOMY
Repeated efforts have been made to establish large-scale, widely ranging
economies. This was the case during Egyptian and Phoenician
civilizations. It was certainly true of the economy of the Roman Empire
and of Roman civilization.
Such efforts faced drastic limitations. The most formidable was the
narrow margin of surplus produced by hand labor in the forests, on the
fields and in the workshops, operated, in the main, with hand tools,
with minor inputs of energy supplied by domestic animals and with the
small amounts derived from wind and moving water.
Two further limitations existed. First, as each civilization matured its
leaders and policy makers ceased to labor on the land or in the
workshops, preferring to keep their hands and clothes clean, to free
themselves from irksome demanding toil and devote themselves to tasks
more befitting "gentlefolk." This was notably true of landlords as a
class. It was also true of the richer traders, merchants and
moneylenders, particularly of the third and fourth generations.
Expansion of empires and the civilizations which they developed entailed
military operations. Military operations, in their turn, produced
war-captives, who must earn their keep and, if possible, something more.
Sold in the market to the highest bidder, war captives and their
descendants became chattel slaves. As civilizations were expanded by
conquest and matured by struggle, they developed some type of forced
labor to balance the increased parasitism of the masters and the
growing numbers who were called upon to produce "services" rather than
material goods.
Certain areas of civilized economies were taken over by the public
authorities. Planning and building of cities and their ports, of
highways, including bridges, of viaducts, aqueducts, of drainages for
the cities, of public buildings. The construction of defenses, including
city walls, were partly or wholly public enterprises. Temples and tombs
for the mighty were often in the same category.
Maintenance of large elaborate households by political leaders, and in
later periods of empire building, by the successful merchants and
technicians, led to the employment of many servants, including
subordinate members and relatives of the elite.
Much necessary labor was performed by members of each household. The
resulting economy was therefore fragmented at the household level with
virtually all of the energy supplied by human beings and domestic
animals.
As each civilization developed its pattern of forced labor, including
the labor of war captives, it launched the deadly competition between
freemen and slaves which almost inevitably ended in favor of the slaves,
who were housed and fed by the masters and who could operate at overhead
costs lower than those involved in the hiring of wage or salaried
workers.
Land ownership tended to center in the political-military leaders, the
temples and, as each civilization matured, in the hands of its
bourgeoisie.
Integrating such economies proved to be a difficult, arduous task, well
beyond the powers of the average political, military or hereditary
leader. In a very real sense, the problems of management were extremely
personal and correspondingly concentrated in the hands of skillful
acquisitors. Nowhere was the impact of the 1750-1970 revolution more far
reaching than in the area of management.
Economic activities, in the course of the great revolution, had less and
less connection with the homestead, and except for a tiny minority of
the personnel, had no connection with the family of the owner-operator.
The seat of the family--the home--continued to exist, but on a far more
restricted basis. Arts and crafts moved from the household into the
workshop, where they expanded both in extent and in complexity. Domestic
tasks were associated with hand labor and simple tools. The great
revolution filled the workshop with the ancestors of present day
machinery, but with a prodigious difference. In the early step from home
workshop to factory, hand tools in plenty were being used in the
workshops. As "modernization" progressed, hand tools were replaced by
specialized machines.
The implements of specialization--the machine building tools and the
machine tools themselves--were housed in forests of associated
workshops. The mechanics of specialization sprawled over acres and
square miles of factory floor space. Nowhere were the results of the
great revolution more in evidence than in the vast difference between
the workshop attached to the house of the early industrialist and the
forest of chimneys and stacks, and the acres and square miles of
floorspace in present-day industrial establishments, with their
personnel numbered in thousands and the capital invested in plant and
equipment running into the millions or billions of dollars.
Two centuries of the great revolution have given present-day industrial
society a capital plant the like of which has never existed on the
planet in any historical period. After two hundred years of meteoric
development, it exists today on a planet-wide scale and at a level of
all-pervasive dominance undreamed of even up to the middle of the last
century.
Modern industry "plants"--steel plants, cement plants, open pit mines,
textile plants, machine tool plants, auto plants, rubber factories, oil
refineries--not only occupy extensive acreage per plant, but the same
interests and corporate managements operate dozens of plants in widely
separated geographical areas and produce a great variety of goods and
services. An experienced observer feels entirely at home in any
industrial center, on any continent. In Detroit, in Dusseldorf, in
Osaka, in Shanghai, in Bombay, the architecture of the plants is
essentially the same, the machines in the widely separated plants bear
a striking resemblance to one another, and the problems of management
are similar.
Unit plants and their coordinated managements in the aggregate compose
the present-day world economy. They are the essence of its being. They
occupy the skyline and dominate the economic life of modern industrial
society. They are the units which make up the sum-total of modern
industry which, in its turn, is the bony structure around which have
grown the sinews and muscle of present-day planetary economy.
Modern state structure goes back through the half dozen centuries during
which it has been developing. Its ancestors may be met with in the
history of previous civilizations.
Modern industrial structure on the other hand is something essentially
new under the sun--newly imagined, designed, constructed, productive. It
has no ancestry before 1750 because its essential building unit--the
modern machine--did not exist previous to that date.
In the last chapter we dealt with the growth of states into empires and
the aggregation of empires into civilizations with the possibility that
the existing states could be welded into a world federation. One of the
chief obstacles to such a development is the centuries of conflict
during which modern nations have been built up and the strong bonds of
nationalism have been established as a means of holding divergent groups
of people in line by particular oligarchies operating in particular
civilizations.
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