Civilization and Beyond by Scott Nearing

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Relationship between nucleus and periphery are the normal outcome of the
expansion of a nucleus into an empire. Each growing urban center reaches
out for an extension of its territory; for the food and raw materials
required by a growing population; for markets that can absorb the goods
and services exported by the urban center to pay for its necessary
imports of food and raw materials.

Politically speaking, the essential problem is to maintain a
relationship that will keep the imports coming in and keep the exports
going out. Imports may take the form of plunder seized by the strong in
contacts and conflicts with weaker neighbors; tribute paid by the weak
to the strong at the insistence of the strong, or trade in which each
side gains something. Empire building involves all three methods.

In virtually all instances the nucleus is richer and stronger; the
periphery is poorer and weaker. In virtually all instances these
relative positions have been the outcome of military operations in which
each party has tried to impose its will upon its rivals. In each case
the spoils went to the victor, who forced defeated rivals to cede
territory, to pay tribute, to give hostages or in some other fashion to
agree upon a settlement that left the victor richer and stronger and the
vanquished poorer and weaker.

Politically speaking, the relation of nucleus to periphery was that of
superior to inferior. Where the discrepancy was very great it resulted
in a relation of master and vassal or even master and slave.

An empire or a civilization, consisting of a wealth-power center and a
periphery of associated and dependent territories and peoples, led to a
living-standard differential in favor of the center. It also involved
the establishment of a political apparatus strong enough to perpetuate
the relationship by collecting tribute and taxes from the weak and
depositing them in the treasure chests of the strong. The outcome was a
civil bureaucracy backed by a military or police strong enough to defend
and perpetuate an unpalatable superior-inferior position.

Once established, both the civilian bureaucracy and the military
apparatus tended to maintain themselves, to extend their privileges and
strengthen their positions. Since controversial issues, domestic and
foreign, are generally decided by force or the threat of force, the
military became the strong right arm of authority.

These confrontations and contradictions created three sets of political
problems: centralism versus localism; established central authority
versus provincial rights and self-determination; the concentration or
centralization of authority in the hands of a select few civilian and/or
military leaders, responsible to the central authority, who made on the
spot decisions and took action.

Under the institutions and practices of civilized society, the select
few were in a position to call in the military which was organized for
emergency action and was constantly standing-by. The military was
trained, disciplined and held a monopoly of weapons.

Civilizations frequently begin as commonwealths or federations forged in
the course of survival struggle. In any such struggle the military will
of necessity play a major role. As the competitive survival struggle
develops, one of the contending parties establishes its superiority by
winning military victory. In the course of this struggle the
commonwealth, a cluster of equals, yields place to the pattern of
empire--a center of wealth and authority with its associates,
subordinates and dependencies.

The strong right arm of politics includes man-power, money and weapons.
The politics of civilization faces a simple mandate: establish,
stabilize and perpetuate a nucleus of wealth and authority; build around
the nucleus a periphery of associates and dependencies.

Historically, the process was a long one extending through generations
and probably centuries. Throughout the struggle individuals must have
the necessities of daily life. Community activities must be housed,
equipped, staffed, supported.

Pastoral and village life were based on a use economy. People produced
what they needed and consumed their own products. Each tribe, family,
village was a more or less self-sufficient unit. When they were
threatened or invaded people defended themselves as best they could. At
worst they abandoned their homes to the invaders and fled into the
forests, mountains or deserts.

Towns and cities, with their industries, trade, commerce, their
permanent housing and capital equipment faced a radically different
situation. Since they could not carry their wealth on their backs they
must stay put and defend themselves or face irreparable losses. Defense
required careful, extensive, expensive preparations: walls, equipment,
stored food, personnel. Unless the city was sacked and burned during
survival struggles it remained as a vantage point to be held at all
costs. If surrendered and occupied by assailants, it was equally
valuable to invaders who were prepared to settle down, take advantage of
the site, the capital equipment and exploit the available manpower.

Whether occupied by friend or enemy, towns and cities were centers of
actual or potential wealth and power. They were also consumers of goods
and services many of which could not be home-produced. Food must come
from herdsmen or farmers. Building materials must come from forests or
mines. Such raw materials, the essentials of daily life, must be brought
into urban centers when and as wanted.

Food and raw materials could be secured occasionally by plunder. A
regular supply depended on trade and commerce, or on tribute levied and
collected periodically from associated or dependent peoples. In the long
run trade and commerce proved to be more reliable and more productive
than plunder.

As urban centers grew and developed, they established regular channels
of trade and communication, by land and water. Along these channels
needed imports moved into the urban centers and exports in exchange
moved from the urban centers into the back country or the provinces. At
every stage in the process care must be taken to prevent intervention by
thieves, robbers or envious rivals. Two devices were used to meet this
situation: money to facilitate exchange and a defense organization to
deal with intruders.

Money and its uses developed money changers, money lenders and banks.
Bankers and banks exchanged currency at a profit and extended credit.

Weapons in the hands of trained personnel evolved into locally employed
police and centrally organized armed services, performing police
functions and fighting wars, domestic and foreign.

Politics, local, regional or national, developed with the growth of
population, the profits of expanding urban life, production, technology.
As its scope broadened geographically city survival depended
increasingly on wealth and power (money and weapons).

During periods of peace and stability the civil authorities controlled
public affairs. In emergencies, such as natural disasters, invasion,
civil or international wars, the military authorities took command.

Military authority is an institutional feature of every civilization. In
periods of public danger it enjoys complete ascendancy. Like civil
authority, the military is a permanent and frequently the dominant
feature of each civilization. It is assured of ample income and
entrusted with the installations and implements of war making. Both in
income and in prestige the military holds a preferred position.

Since military functions center about destroying the person and
property of the "enemy"--domestic or foreign--public funds are made
available or are pre-empted by the military during periods of martial
law. As a civilization becomes more complex and extensive, the funds at
the disposal of the military tend to increase. The same factors of
extent and complexity lead to larger and larger numbers of
confrontations and conflicts in which the military is called upon to
play the leading role. Increasingly, therefore, the military is at the
center of policy making. Finally a point is reached at which war, civil,
colonial or international is always in progress somewhere within the
territories occupied by the civilization. At such periods civil law
slumbers and military authority is more or less dominant and permanent.

Under the slogan "defense of civilization," military necessity and
military adventurism shape public policy, empty the public treasury,
bankrupt and eventually destroy the superstructure of a civilization.

The nucleus which lies at the heart of an empire or a civilization has a
political life cycle that runs from the unstructured or little
structured aggregation of confederation or self-determining local groups
to a highly centralized political absolutism holding and exercising its
authority by the use of the military. The steps in this process have
been clearly marked in earlier civilizations. They are playing a
decisive role in the day-to-day life of western civilization. They
extend from early forms of government under leaders selected or elected
by popular acclaim or at least by popular consent, to more or less
permanent leadership enjoying many political privileges, including the
selection of its successors.

Under the pressure of social emergency, engendered within the social
group or imposed from outside the group by migration, intrusion or
invasion, leadership takes the measures which it considers necessary to
preserve and/or extend its authority. Each emergency offers leadership
an opportunity or an excuse to by-pass custom and/or law, overlook
whatever public opinion may exist and proceed to the measures needed to
meet the emergency. In each organized social group the exercise of
authority has provided the leadership with a near-monopoly of money and
weapons in the hands of a permanent military elite. The use of this
elite to deal with the emergency is accepted by civil authority as a
matter of course.

When social division of function has produced and armed a military
elite, leadership turns to this elite in any emergency arising from
natural disaster or social crisis. The outcome is a community directed
by a military arm seeking to perpetuate and enlarge its own role in the
determination and exercise of public authority, using any means which
seems likely to produce the desired results.

Politically, therefore, any expanding empire or civilization reaches a
point at which absolute monarchy, exercising unquestioned authority,
makes and enforces public policy by the use of the military or with its
help.

Many commentators write as though the essence of civilization was its
art galleries, concert halls, its universities and its libraries. Such
agencies are the trappings, decorations and fringes of a civilization.
There is no justification for such a selective approach. The strong
right-arm of every civilization has been its wealth (money) and its
martial equipment (its guns).

Success in politics has been described as the art of selecting the
possible and bringing it to fruition. Every community is more or less
fragmented by deviations, contradictions, confrontations and conflicts.
These fragmentations begin in the personality and extend through the
entire social structure--from the individual, through the family, such
voluntary associations as the sports club, the trade union, the
merchants' association, the educational system, the political party, the
municipal or the national government.

Unrestrained and undirected social fragmentation leads to conflict,
destruction, perhaps to chaos. Success in politics rests on an
understanding of the chaos and its causes and an integration of
conflicting forces behind specific programs and around charismatic
personalities.

One aspect of the problem is especially disturbing and baffling to the
uninitiated. Compared with the brief adulthood of an individual the life
span of communities is immensely long. The individual is at his or her
best for a few years or decades. Communities and their institutions
endure for hundreds and in some cases for thousands of years. Under the
most favorable conditions an individual can hope to play a part in
community affairs for a decade or two. Before he comes on the stage of
public affairs and after he leaves it, social life stretches
indefinitely.

Politics is one aspect of that more or less extensive social experience.
Its immediate objective is to bring order out of chaos and replace
randomness by purpose and if possible by plan.

In the wake of the bourgeois revolution, which was directed particularly
against monarchy and generally against absolutism, the most obvious and
attractive social pattern was a republic, ruled by the citizens in a
manner which in their opinion was best calculated to promote their
safety and happiness.

Under a republican government public affairs would be openly and freely
discussed by the citizens at a time or place of their choice by word of
mouth, through a free press or in public gatherings. At stated intervals
elections would be held at which all citizens of proper age would select
representatives and a legislature or parliament where questions of
public concern could be debated and appropriate measures adopted.
Implementation or execution of these measures would be placed in the
hands of executive officers responsible to the parliament. As a
safeguard against any miscarriage of the public will, the right of
petition was guaranteed. In some instances the right of referendum and
recall was provided. To obviate any miscarriage of justice, provision
was made for courts, responsible to the citizenry, as an independent arm
of government competent to protect and assert popular rights.

Overall, citizens of the republic, through duly elected representatives,
would draw up and proclaim a constitution containing a general plan of
the governmental machinery. When adopted by the legislature or
parliament this constitution became the law of the land. Governmental
activities were carried out and laws were enacted in conformity with
constitutional provisions. In practice the citizens of the freest
republic were face to face with one of the oldest political dilemmas
confronting mankind: the question of leadership and followership.

In almost any social situation, from trivial to grave and critical, some
one woman or man volunteers advice and often initiates action. If no one
approves, the initiative falls flat. If there is a chorus of approval,
the crowd follows the lead of its spokesman. If some approve while
others disapprove or remain silent, a show of hands is in order. If
there are real differences in the group, some taking one side, some
another side with no chance of common action, the group may divide into
several factions, some remaining in the assemblage, others departing,
with their spokesmen leading the way.

In such confrontations there are many determining factors, the
experience and wisdom of the leadership; the urgency of the subject
under discussion; the depth of the separation between opposing factions;
the experience of the citizenry and their willingness to compromise on
divisive issues; the willingness of the factionalists to abide by a
majority decision.

Experienced leadership, which has enjoyed a period of public approval
long enough to build up not only a group of devoted followers, but a
group of place-men and office-holders who owe their positions to the
leader, can assemble a bureaucratic or political machine, adopt measures
and take the steps necessary to keep its chosen leader in a life job,
with the possibility of naming a successor.

Republics have adopted various measures to prevent the establishment of
a self-perpetuating dynasty, by limiting public office-holding to a
stated number of years; by providing that the office holder may not
succeed himself. Political leaders may avoid such provisions by staying
in the background, having their closest associates elected to office,
and when their term is ended, secure the selection of other associates
upon whose personal fidelity they can rely.

All such measures require that the leader keep the favor of a
considerable number of his constituents. To avoid this often difficult
or disagreeable task the leader and his close associates may persuade
their constituency to by-pass both constitution and parliament, enlist
the support of the military, seize power and establish an arbitrary
dictatorship of admirals and generals or establish a committee of
military leaders who will pick out civilian office holders willing to
follow the political line laid down by the military leaders.

As republics gain in wealth, increase their power and broaden their
geographical base by bringing outside peoples under their sway, their
dependence upon military means of resolving public controversies becomes
greater. This is particularly true where outsiders brought under the
republic's authority have mature political institutions including their
own leaders and their own ways of dealing with public relations.

Given such a situation, the control by the republic over the
policy-making apparatus of dependencies is likely to have been
established by force of arms. In such a case it is only a matter of time
and occasion when the dependency will demand the right of
self-determination and be prepared to fight for independence of "foreign
tyrants, oppressors and exploiters."

Minor inexpensive military operations for the suppression of colonial
revolt which are quickly and successfully ended may add to the stature
of empire-building leaders. But major operations, long continued,
expensive and inconclusive, will undermine the prestige and weaken the
position of the most firmly seated imperialist. The Boer War against the
British and the wars waged by the Koreans and the Vietnamese against a
series of occupiers and exploiters are excellent examples of the
operation of this principle.

As empire building proceeds under its inescapable expansionist drive, a
point will be reached at which the overhead costs of maintaining the
empire will exceed the income. As that point is approached in one after
another of the empires comprising the civilization, the central
authority will be successfully challenged by the dependent, colonial
periphery. Ordinarily, such challenges will coincide with the
inter-imperial wars which have periodically disrupted every civilization
known to history. When such a coincidence does occur, as it did in
western civilization from 1914 to 1945, the bell is likely to toll
loudly for the civilization in question.

Measures usually adopted to prevent such a catastrophe--martial law,
military dictatorship, self-perpetuating monarchy, divine authority, are
more than likely to heap fuel on the flames of rebellion and lead into a
social revolution.

An unstructured social group operating under the competitive principle
"Let him take who has the power" tends to develop into absolutism. At
any stage in the history of a civilization this development can take
place.

Civilization, therefore, comes into being with this built-in
contradiction: the strong and predatory exploit the weak, but at a
certain point protect the weak and nurture the defenseless. Exploitation
by the rich and powerful is recognized and accepted as a prerogative
enjoyed by the rich and powerful. At the same time limitations are
placed on the character and intensity of the exploitation.

This dichotomy is perpetuated by agreements, laws and constitutions
which guarantee the property rights and social privileges by which the
rich and powerful safeguard and increase their wealth and power. Under
the same agreements, laws and constitutions, the privileges and rights
of the defenseless and weak, are specified.

Political institutions in every civilization, including that of the
West, have accepted and adopted a regulatory structure under which
limits are imposed on profiteering. The domestic life of a civilization
consists of an establishment within which exploitation can continue in a
manner which the constitution makers and legislators consider to be as
efficient as possible and as fair as possible to all of the parties
concerned.

As a civilization matures, wealth and power (the means of exploitation)
are increased in volume and concentrated in fewer hands. The resulting
absolutism with its immense structure of wealth production and its
well-organized military arm, imposes conformity to its decrees,
servility, peonage and even slavery on the working masses. The masses,
in their turn, organize, agitate, demonstrate, strike, sabotage, and
periodically take up, arms in defense of their lives and their
livelihood.

We are describing certain political aspects of a process of social
selection which has dominated one civilization after another. At the
present moment it has reached a critical stage in the West. We apply the
term "social selection" to the result of this process because there is a
parallel between the natural selection of the biologists and the social
selection which sociologists observe in the rapid and extensive changes
presently taking place in the centers of western civilization.

Natural selection is a process in the course of which many compete and
contend while only a few survive and mature.

Social selection is a similar knock-down and drag-out struggle in which
peoples, nations, empires and civilizations take part. Many enter the
contest but only a few live to write their story in the long and complex
history of civilizations.

At the outset of such a contest, the European-Asian-African cradle of
the coming western culture contained numerous political
fragments--kingdoms, principalities, cities, city states, inert peasant
masses, migrating tribes--struggling locally and regionally for a place
in the sun, or for additional territory and extended authority. These
struggles reached the military level in local wars, regional wars,
general wars. In the course of this survival struggle, the weakest and
least effective contestants were defeated, dismembered and gobbled up by
their stronger and more efficient opponents.

Local struggles--in the Near and Middle East, in North Africa, in
eastern, central and western Europe--were trial heats in the course of
which many contestants were eliminated, while the survivors continued
the process of city, nation and empire building at higher and broader
levels. It was only after five hundred years of such conflicts that the
outlines of western civilization took definite political form:--a group
of battle-hardened contestants, centered in Europe, heavily armed and
equipped, intent on protecting and enlarging their home territory and
extending their authority over dependencies and colonies in various
parts of the planet.

This survival struggle continued for another three hundred years, down
to the beginning of the present century, reaching its highest level of
intensity between 1914 and 1945, with contestants from all of the
continents taking an active part. In this present round the contestants
are nations and empires, organized in ever-changing alliances. Some of
the contestants are old, scarred and battle weary. Others are young and
vigorous, recent entrants in the planet-wide contest for pelf,
possessions and power.

During the later years of the struggle, after war's end in 1945,
erstwhile dependencies and colonies of the disintegrating European
empires declared their independence, joined the United Nations as
sovereign states and played active parts in the battle for survival.

African development typifies the process during the later phases of
western civilization. When voyaging and discovery became a leading
activity of European nations around 1450 A.D. northern Africa was
directly involved, but the bulk of the continent--Equatorial
Africa--remained almost entirely untouched. After 1870 the pattern was
dramatically altered as British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and
Italian forces moved inland, staking out their claims.

Division of Africa among the great powers reached its culmination when
this process was completed, about 1910, when the whole vast continent of
Africa excepting Ethiopia, Egypt and South Africa had been parcelled out
among the rival European empires. In terms of geography and population,
Africa was still African. Politically it was pre-empted, occupied,
dominated and exploited by European empire builders, who used the over,
all trade name of western civilization.

Excessive costs of empire building, including the disastrous losses of
military struggle from 1914 to 1945, impoverished and weakened the
European overlords to such an extent that they could no longer maintain
their footholds in Africa. At the same time African minorities in
various parts of the continent launched independence movements under the
slogan of self-determination, drove out the European occupiers,
organized political states and declared that Africa must be governed by
and for Africans.

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