Civilization and Beyond by Scott Nearing
S >>
Scott Nearing >> Civilization and Beyond
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21
Another overhead cost which plays havoc with civilized nations and
peoples is the support of a bureaucracy. Increased extent and complexity
exhaust the community capacity for voluntary service and lead into an
era where the volunteers who carried on the limited public activities of
a village are supplemented and eventually replaced by a constantly
growing body of public servants. Growing extent and complexity plus the
need for finding safe places for those who are useful to the rich and
powerful, widens and deepens the public crib. In large enterprises,
private as well as public, paper work employs a small army, which must
be fed and housed at a level worthy of "a great nation." Business
machines reduce the personnel necessary for a given social enterprise,
but their high capital and operational costs increase overhead.
Another aspect of overhead costs is the multiplication of parasitic
professions. In simple villages, there are few body servants, no
able-bodied individuals who fetch and carry at the word of command, or
who only stand and wait for the moment when some whim, fancy or real
need may call for their services.
Village life, with its limited area and still more limited resources,
has little economic surplus upon which parasitism can feed. There is
landlordism, of course, but the margin of surplus is small. The city,
the province, the nation, the empire present a different picture.
Parasitic professions abound and proliferate: money changers, money
lenders, realtors, confidence men, gamblers, fortune tellers, priests,
entertainers, artists, thieves, robbers, and prostitutes abound, consume
more than their share of the community income, without making an
equivalent return in production or service. Their support adds to the
social overhead.
Another source of social overhead are the numerous followers of the
"something for nothing" cult who receive unearned income--an income
derived from civilization in its mature and its final stages.
Broadly there are two types of income--earned income and unearned
income. Earned income is something for something--or return for goods
provided or service rendered. Unearned income is something for
nothing--an income derived from some monopoly, privilege, sinecure or
form of property ownership.
Property in persons or things has been a characteristic feature of all
civilizations. Property owners, receiving rents, interest, dividends, in
proportion to the amount of property which they own are not called upon
to make equivalent return in exchange for their property--based income.
This personal parasitism of property owners is aggravated by provisions
of property law under which the owners of property can give, sell or
bequeath these sources of unearned income to family members, friends,
associates.
Eventually, unearned income, handed on through generations, creates a
class or even a caste of citizens who live without rendering an
equivalent of services, on the labor of their fellows, adding a
significant amount to the total of overhead costs.
Wealth ownership, the exercise of power, living in luxury on unearned
income, add to overhead costs, but are accepted as respectable in
civilized communities. Another and far less respectable form of social
parasitism is the manipulation of social forces in a way that will bring
the operator more than a fair share of social income with no equivalent
in service. Such is "politics" or "politicising." "Politics" as a
source of livelihood takes many forms, some less legitimate than others.
The most usual source of office-holding is the humble work of the clerk,
handyman or messenger, responsible for carrying out the nagging routine
of government. Beyond this common labor of public service are public
servants skilled in their several professions. Beyond and above them are
department heads and still higher are the appointed or elected officials
responsible for the success or failure of a given public policy.
Who are the occupants of town, city, state, and national positions of
authority and responsibility? Preferably they are elected or appointed
because of their popularity or are the successful product of civil
service examinations. At worst they are appointed as a return for favors
or else because they are relatives or friends of successful politicians
or their backers.
Whatever its source and however efficient or inefficient its
performance, the body of paid public servants increases with the
expanding life of locality, region, province, state, nation and empire.
With its growth goes corresponding accommodations in wages and salaries,
office space and equipment and other routine outlays. Frequently the
increase of the emoluments of bureaucrats, especially at the higher
levels of authority and responsibility, creates sinecures which are
filled by parasites or by individuals who are engaged in shoring up the
bureaucracy rather than rendering a public service. The outlays
necessary to finance such a top-heavy bureaucratic fabric grow in direct
proportion to the age and rigidity of the bureaucracy, draining off
public funds into private coffers and adding uncompensated elements to
overhead costs. If inflation is a problem, at or beyond the apex of an
imperial epoch or cycle of civilization, financial costs rise
correspondingly.
The chief overhead cost in every civilization is and has been war.
Examine the budget of the United States or any other leading civilized
power. From two-thirds to three-quarters of central government outlays
are for war in the past and preparation for war in the future.
The net result of rising overhead costs appears in the history of all
previous civilizations. They are eating out the vitals of western
civilization while we write and read these words.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SOCIOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION
Sociology is the science and art of association.
Human associations range from kinship groups like the family, tribe and
clan to larger more complex groups like villages, towns, cities,
nations, empires, to still more inclusive leagues, federations and
civilizations.
In a broad view, sociology includes politics, economics and ideology.
For the purposes of our social analysis, we have divided the field into
four separate categories, beginning with politics, continuing through
economics and drawing our study together under the general headings of
sociology and ideology.
No civilization that we have studied can be regarded as an intentional
or projected or planned enterprise. On the contrary, civilizations have
developed and matured in true pragmatic fashion, taking one step after
another because their predecessors had followed this course or because,
given the human urges and the available natural and social
opportunities, the next step seemed to be determined by previous steps
plus the momentum of the enterprise. In the course of this development
an ideology was built up and modified in such a way as to justify and
strengthen the entire project.
When William Penn received a grant of land from the English Crown, he
was already committed, ideologically, by the Quaker faith to Quaker
methods. Without ever seeing his proposed home across the Atlantic he
drew up a plan for his City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia), and for
the organization and conduct of his enterprise. The entire project was
formulated in Penn's mind and put on paper. This is a good example of an
intentional community.
No civilization so far as I know, has followed such a sequence.
Certainly in the civilizations with which we are most familiar,
political and economic forces, the principles of necessity and
availability have led to the formulation of an ideology that would
justify and promote the interests of the social group which was
controlling and directing the community or communities in which the
civilization was maturing.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that each of the component
elements making up the expanding civilization--each people, city, state,
nation, empire--developed its own total culture pattern, subject to the
pressures mutually exerted by neighboring communities. The aggregate of
these culture patterns, separately and often antagonistically matured,
comprised a lesser totality called an empire and a larger totality
called a civilization. It is with this larger totality that we are
concerned.
We propose to analyse the sociology of civilization under the following
headings: (1) the structure or anatomy; (2) the function, physiology, or
process; (3) motive forces in civilization; (4) contradictions and
conflicts, with a final section on the life cycle of civilization.
The structure of human society consists of specialized economic,
political, administrative and cultural groupings assembled and
maintained in relationships that supply necessities, conveniences,
comforts, luxuries for the individuals, together with capital goods and
services for the social groups composing the civilization.
In terms of social history the growth of structure has proceeded from
the horde, tribe and clan to the family, village, city, city-state,
nation, empire, civilization. These steps are not necessarily
sequential. Under varying social conditions they have been determined
and modified by particular historical situations. The smallest and most
intimate building block of human society has been the family. The
largest and most inclusive has been the civilization. The family as a
social group has existed for long periods, over wide areas, in immense
numbers. Civilizations have been few and often far between. They have
arisen out of particular historical situations, played distinctive
roles, written their own histories and made varying contributions to the
sum total of human culture. In the long time intervals and the wide
geographical distances that have separated civilizations human beings
have lived within more local and less complex social structures.
Civilized human society is distinctive in structure. While it varies in
detail from one civilization to another, its broad outline is
unmistakable. Each civilization has been built, defended and perpetuated
in and around cities.
Between civilizations, in time and space, most human communities have
been self-sufficient. Whether as food gatherers, pastoral people or
cultivators of the soil they have produced and consumed the food,
shelter, clothing, implements and weaponry required for their survival.
The city, whether a political capital or a center of trade and commerce,
was sharply separated from the self-sufficient countryside. The city, by
its very nature, could not be self-sufficient. Food, building supplies
and raw materials were not produced inside the city limits, but must be
produced in the hinterland from which they were transported to the
cities. City dwellers devised means of paying for the production,
transportation and marketing of these necessary imports. The countryside
can and does exist independently of the city because it can provide the
goods and services on which its existence depends. The city, on the
contrary, cannot exist without the supplies produced in the hinterland
and transported to the city.
Urban centers of civilization have for their background a pastoral and
agricultural source of food supplemented by fabrication, merchandising
and financing. Instead of the occupational uniformity of the
countryside, the city offers a wide range of occupations, increased
productivity, quick and substantial profits resulting in a build-up of
capital on one side and enlarged consumer spending on the other.
Consequently the successful competitor in the race for supremacy
develops productivity, accumulates wealth, expands capital spending,
enlarges the scope of the arts, thereby augmenting the city's
attractiveness to business enterprise and migrants from the hinterland.
As the capital city grows in wealth and opportunity it requires larger
imports of food, raw materials, building supplies, manpower. Growing
internal need leads to greater external expansion. Economic, political,
administrative and cultural needs not only increase the demands of the
city on its existing hinterland, but they lead to a demand for a more
widely extended hinterland.
The countryside is the goose that lays the golden eggs. The city
gathers, guards and eventually consumes the eggs or converts them into
capital forms and lives in part on this unearned income.
The city is the mecca which attracts by its wide ranging opportunities.
It is also the center in which policies are made and offered to the
countryside as normal facts of life. The countryside accepts city
leadership including a higher wealth-power per capita ratio for the
city.
Cities, with their accumulations of population and wealth, are walled or
otherwise defended. When danger threatens, countrymen often move inside
the walls until the danger abates.
Cities and city life increase and expand with the growth and expansion
of civilization. Cities are the centers from which civilization grows
and expands. Historically, a number of cities or city-states have
competed for survival and supremacy. One by one they have dropped out of
the race or have been out-classed, defeated and/or absorbed by the
victors in the competitive struggle. One location proved to be more
advantageous than others. The inhabitants of one locality were more
skillful, more far sighted than those of rival localities. Many
competed. Eventually one survived the final round of struggle, emerging
as the nucleus of an expanding empire and a maturing civilization. A
protracted conflict raging first in Italy and later in the entire
Mediterranean basin, resulted in the Roman Empire and eventually in
Roman civilization. A similar series of struggles, this time
planet-wide, gave the British a taste of planetary supremacy in the
nineteenth century and opened the door wide enough to give the United
States oligarchy a glimpse of an American Twentieth century, which never
eventuated.
Occupational differences within the city led to a differentiated class
structure. As the trading city developed, businessmen eventually played
a dominant role because they were able to command larger incomes,
accumulate more wealth and offer more aggressive leadership.
Nuclei of both empire and civilization were associated with a cluster of
allies, client states, dependencies and colonies related to the center
by economic interests and by diplomatic bargains or political controls.
They paid tribute or taxes as the price of living within the defense
perimeter of the ruling elite, conforming to the chief aspects of its
culture and in emergencies taking refuge inside the city defenses.
The city center made and implemented policy and provided local
leadership in emergencies. Inhabitants of the city enjoyed a superior
status and had a higher standard of consumer-living than most of those
who inhabited the countryside and the hinterland.
A structured society based on division of labor and/or function enjoys a
competitive superiority over a classless community. The structured city
was not only richer than the countryside, but it was in a position to
provide leadership, to plan and implement policy and act more
effectively.
A civilization consists of a cluster of associated allies, clients,
dependencies, and colonies bound together by economic, political and
cultural ties. Since armed force has been the chief instrument for
bringing these elements together, the agency responsible for exercising
armed force enjoys priority in a listing of the structural institutions
of civilization.
Land owners, often acting as military chieftains, dominated the
hinterland of a civilization. The city was dominated by businessmen. The
unification of city and hinterland and the complex of cities and
hinterlands composing a civilization established a governmental
apparatus in which all ruling elements were represented. In the earlier
stages of a civilization there may have been assemblies or parliaments
composed of representatives of various interests. As the civilization
was unified by war, representation was replaced by some form of monarchy
in which one supreme commander, emperor or pharoah was the final judge
and arbiter. The monarch set up a network of public authority, regional
as well as universal, provincial as well as central, and garrisoned it
with professional soldiers and sailors paid by the monarch and
responsible to him.
Corresponding with this political structure was an economic structure
consisting of a central treasury, a uniform system of weights, measures
and values, a system of spending priorities, decided by the central
authority, a source of income: taxes, tribute, booty, sufficient to
cover expenditures.
A civilization which ran a chronic deficit--over-spending its
income--moved year by year, through debt, inflation, currency
degradation, and repudiation toward its own disintegration and ultimate
bankruptcy. The historical record is very clear on this point,
especially in Roman civilization and in western civilization after 1870.
Most civilizations have had a body of religious institutions staffed by
a priestcraft, which has shared power with the economic overlords.
During certain periods in the long history of Egyptian civilization the
priestcraft held the balance of power. So great was its ascendancy that
the spoils of war and the gains of peace were shared by the temple
treasury and the royal treasury. In some cases the temple treasuries had
priority.
All civilizations for at least five thousand years have had a
professional military of sufficient consequence to play a leading role
in policy making and to claim a lion's share of the spoils of military
victory. In some cases civil and military authority were merged in one
supreme commander--emperor, pharoah. At other times, notably in Rome,
after the fall of the Republic, the Pretorian Guard nominated and
appointed its emperors.
Well up toward the summit of each known civilization, four groups have
shared authority and competed for supremacy: land-lords, wealth-lords,
war-lords and priests. Where these four major shapers of public policy
and directors of public administration were of like mind, they shared
wealth and power. When they differed, one or another enjoyed priority
and exercised some measure of control over the other three.
Less personal, but of major concern among the institutions of
civilization were the channels of communication and transportation that
have played so decisive a role in the life of every civilization. Top
ranking among the means of communication were common language, spoken
and written on metal, papyrus, paper; a unified system of accounting and
cost keeping; permanent records. Among the means of transport were
waterways, including canals, viaducts, roads, bridges skillfully built
and kept in good repair.
Another significant institution of civilization is the idea of
ownership, the division of property into public property and private
property and the right of the private property owner to do what he will
with his property, subject always to the over-riding principle of
eminent domain: the right of the community to expropriate private
property for public uses, with or without compensation.
Another institution of civilization is the provision of public services
in addition to means of communication and transportation. These public
services include a water supply; the disposal of waste; public defense
of life and property; food and diversion (bread and circuses) for the
needy; fire prevention and fire fighting apparatus; educational
facilities, including libraries and reading rooms; outside recreational
facilities such as parks and play-grounds. All of these facilities could
be provided by the rich and powerful for themselves and members of their
families. They could be supplied more effectively and apportioned more
justly when they were public services open to all.
The countryside lacks the financial and the administrative means of
providing a wide range of public services. Indeed, countryside dwellers
pride themselves on being able to provide necessary services on a
family, household or village basis. City dwellers learn to regard such
public services as a matter of public right. Their existence is a magnet
which draws a steady stream of migrants from the countryside into the
cities.
Civilizations are dominated by business interests. It is for them to
provide facilities for the transaction of business, cash money, credit
instruments, installment buying, means for changing money, insurance,
discounting facilities. As a civilization grows in wealth and population
the political apparatus becomes a major employer, a major producer of
goods and services, a major purchaser of producer and consumer goods, a
major agency for borrowing, lending, insuring, in short a major factor
in the multitudinous activities of a commercial, industrial community.
Classes, class interests and class lines are a part and parcel of all
civilizations. They are less rigid and more flexible than similar lines
existing in an agrarian community where land ownership plays so large a
role in determining social forms and social functions. In a static
agrarian community dominated by landlords, war-lords and the clergy,
rigid class lines help to hold the community together. In a community
dominated by business interests, both labor power and purchasing power
must be free to respond to demand and supply. This is as true in a
planned public economy as it is in a private enterprise economy. In
accordance with the same principle, facilities are provided for the
movement of individuals back and forth across class lines.
The specialized, interdependent structure of civilization with its city
control of the hinterland, its products and inhabitants, enabled the
city-centered oligarchy to accumulate and concentrate wealth and
monopolize power, to skim the cream from the available milk, monopolize
the cream, distribute the skimmed milk judiciously and thus perpetuate
its ascendancy through generations and centuries. During periods of
expansion civilized communities develop a dynamism which maintains their
ascendancy. In subsequent periods of contraction form takes over,
imposing conformity on the status quo.
During their periods of expansion civilizations are dynamic. Their
history records growth at home, expansion abroad, exploitation,
domestic and foreign under the pressure of effective motivating forces.
The resulting dynamism leads to the contradictions, confrontations and
conflicts which have studded the internal and external life story of
every civilization.
Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the dynamic functioning of
civilization is its growth in magnitude. It might be more accurate to
describe the process as an explosive expansion--explosive because rapid
and spectacular.
Form limits function. At the same time function modifies and ultimately
determines form. The two factors are omnipresent and complementary.
Except for purposes of analysis they are two inseparable aspects of
every human society. Where form predominates, social status results.
Where function predominates fluidity, flexibility and dynamism are the
outcome. Rapid change occurs on the home front at the same time that it
is taking place abroad.
Growth at home takes place in two fields. The first is the extension of
the homeland frontiers, broadening the geographical area of the nucleus
around which the civilization is being built. The second aspect of
growth involves an increase in multiplicity, variety and complexity and
perhaps also a higher level of quality. Increase in quality is an
optional feature of growth and expansion. Toward the end of a cycle of
civilization quality declines.
For the record we list fourteen aspects of the domestic growth of
civilization: (1) population; (2) production of goods and services; (3)
trade, commerce, finance; (4)wealth, capital, income, capital
construction; (5) the defense establishment; (6) growth in numbers and
in variety of consumer goods and services; (7) specialization; (8)
formal education, literacy, learning; (9) advances in science and
technology; (10) growth in the arts; (11) rising standards of luxury for
the oligarchy and growth in the volume of the professional and technical
middle class and their living standards; (12) growth of the state
bureaucratic apparatus in its complexity and in the number of its
personnel; (13) growth of the sources of unearned income and especially
in the number of persons living on unearned income; (14) growth of
dependents, delinquents, criminals and other outlaws. This list is not
exhaustive, but it is indicative of the wide area in which domestic
growth takes place.
Paralleling their domestic expansion, civilizations expand
geographically up to the point of diminishing returns, determined by the
growth of overhead costs. This process has taken the civilization, its
personnel, its institutions and practices into territory not heretofore
occupied, sometimes with the consent of the "foreigners", but more often
in the teeth of their determined and long-continued opposition.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21