Several thousand years ago humankind began experimenting with the life style which we are now calling civilization. Presumably it was not thought out and blueprinted in advance but worked out by trial and error, episode by episode, step by step—perhaps, also, leap by leap.
Historical and contemporary experiments with this lifestyle supply a fund of valuable information, some of which has been covered in the earlier chapters of this book. Our next task is to analyze and classify this information under four headings: the politics, the economics, the sociology and the ideology of civilization. (When the information is properly arranged, we can do something with it and about it.)
Politics is the part of social science and engineering which is concerned with the organization, direction and administration of human communities. We use the word to cover the conduct of public affairs in any social group more extensive than a family. Hence we refer to village politics, town politics, national politics, international politics and, in the present instance, to the politics of civilization as a way of life.
Each sample, referred to in our examination of typical civilizations, was built around a center, nucleus or homeland consisting of one or more cities with their adjacent hinterlands. The nucleus of the developing civilization was also the nucleus of an empire. Each nucleus was a center of planned production; accumulating wealth, growing population and expanding authority. Certain locations are better suited than others to provide the essentials of a civilization nucleus.
The first requirement for a nucleus is a tolerable climate, primarily a satisfactory balance between heat and cold. Before the general use of fire as a source of warmth human populations were concentrated at or near the tropics. With the increasing use of artificial heating and lighting human beings were able to cluster farther and farther away from concentrated equatorial sunlight.
The second requirement of such a location is a strategic position in a crossroads, in a network of transportation and communication.
The third requirement is a readily available source of the food and building materials necessary to feed, house, and clothe a community and provide it with some of the niceties of daily living.
The fourth requirement is the presence of sufficient man-power to operate the nucleus and provide a surplus for defense and for its extension and expansion.
The fifth requirement is defensibility against aggression or invasion.
The sixth essential is the availability of sufficient raw materials to meet the requirements of the nucleus, provide the exports needed to maintain a favorable trade balance for the nucleus and permit of its expansion, advancement and enrichment.
Seventh, and in some ways, the most important requirement for the establishing of an empire or a civilization nucleus, is the presence of a will to live, a will to grow, a will to advance, competence in management, and a dogged persistence that will remain constant through generations or centuries of adversity, and still more demanding, through long periods of security, comfort and affluence.
Eighth, and by no means least important, is the capacity to fight and win the aggressive trade and military wars incidental to the defense and expansion of the nucleus, of the empire, and eventually of the civilization.
The ninth requirement is tolerance, receptivity to new ideas and practices, the capacity to adapt and to assimilate the outside elements which are constantly incorporated into the growing, expanding empire or the civilization.
Finally, as we read the history and observe the development of nuclei, empires and civilizations, we are impressed by the role of outstanding individuals who occupy positions of responsibility over sufficiently long periods or with sufficient intensity to leave a lasting impression on the ideas, practices and institutions of their times. This requirement covers the practice of effective leadership.
Our concern, at this point, lies primarily with the first eight of these requirements for survival and success in building up empires and civilizations.
Empires and civilizations are established during periods of social expansion when the up-building and out-going urges are widely felt. The surge produces not a single center of growth and expansion but dozens or scores of competitors, each aiming to win and keep a position well in advance of its rivals. The resulting up-surge and free-for-all, which usually lasts for centuries, is a characteristic and recurring feature in the political life of every civilization.
This statement is less a requirement for success in organizing the nucleus of a civilization, than a generalization about the natural and social milieu out of which competing nuclei arise. Success of one among the many competitors is a characteristic feature of the struggle for nuclear survival, development and perhaps for eventual supremacy.
From earliest times waterways have provided the readiest means of getting about. All that was needed was a hollow log, a raft, a primitive canoe. Movement by land was impeded by mountains, deserts, forests, swamps, water courses. Movement by water was a natural.
More and bigger boats required shelter against storms and protection against destruction by enemies. A good harbor with an adjacent walled town or city was the answer to this need.
Good harbors and navigable waterways are notably absent along the west coast of South America and notably present in the Eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, the South American West Coast line is sparsely settled to this day, while the Eastern Mediterranean has been crowded with peoples, teemed with trade and commerce, carried largely by sea, between cities that occupied the best access to waterways.
Safe harbors and navigable waterways made trade and transport easy and cheap. As each wave of human advance turned from animal husbandry and agriculture to bourgeois practices of industry, commerce and finance, locations at strategic points along trade routes were first occupied by occasional markets and fairs and eventually by trading towns and cities. Geography was a decisive factor.
Fertility was equally important. In the early stages of social development transportation was difficult, dangerous and expensive. Sources of food and building materials were found within a short distance of the growing trade center. Again geography played a decisive role. A deep, sheltered harbor backed by a desert could not attract and support a thriving trade center. Food and raw materials are indispensable to concentrations of human beings.
The Nile Valley, like that of the Ganges and the Yellow River, provided the fertility and transport, the food and raw materials that have sustained concentrated human populations for many thousands of years, forming part of the base for Egyptian, Indian and Chinese civilizations. Animal husbandry and grain farming, coupled with fishing and forestry, made possible the growth of cities and laid the foundations for the nuclei of these civilizations.
Temples, tombs and other public constructs provided the centers around which Egyptian civilization was built. The stone, wood and other raw materials used in the building of these unique examples of human handiwork were floated up and down the Nile from their sources of origin. Annual Nile floods provided silt deposits necessary to fertilize farms and gardens. Nile water, impounded during floods, irrigated the land during the long dry seasons. Banked by deserts, the Nile was a ribbon of fertility running through a largely uninhabited wilderness. The upper reaches of the Nile lay in the mountains of Central Africa. The Nile delta, built up through ages by silt deposits, provided a meeting place where African, European and Asian traders could exchange their wares and lay the foundations for the civilization of lower Egypt. The Nile also provided the means of communication which connected Lower Egypt with Upper Egypt and led, finally, to the unification of the two areas in a long enduring and prestigious Egyptian civilization. Once again geography was laying down the guide lines within which civilizations have been built up and liquidated.
Thus far we have noted the role of physiographic factors that have led to building the nuclei of empires and civilizations. They have been parallelled by social factors as men took advantage of natural opportunities to concentrate, feed and house ever larger human aggregates.
Empires and civilizations have been built up by comparatively large numbers of human beings concentrated in relatively small spaces. Wandering food gatherers and herdsmen ranged widely in search of game and grass. Cultivators settled in villages from which they could work the land. If crops were scanty, population was sparse. Only abundant crops, dependable, season after season, provided the basis for large settled populations.
Large, settled populations, adequately supplied with the essentials of life, enabled human beings to organize social centers in which a comparatively few people, tending their animals and working the land, could release a comparatively large part of the population to devote its time and energy to trade and commerce, to industry and transport, to the arts and sciences and to the organization, direction and administration of large scale enterprises such as government, the military, construction and the mobilization of sufficient labor power to carry on and enlarge their enterprises. In its simplest essence this was politics.
Egyptian government, in its broad sense, rested on a class structured society: the aristocracy, the priesthood, officialdom, businessmen, highly trained scientists and engineers, skilled craftsmen and an immense proletariat consisting of tenant farmers, peons, slaves and war captives.
At the top of the political structure was an absolute monarch who wielded power that was limited only by the ambition, tolerance and loyalty of his associates—nobles, priests, soldiers, businessmen and political advisers, and by the willingness of the rural and urban masses to work and fight for their overlords. A number of the monarchs (Pharaohs) ruled for long periods—up to sixty years. It was during these long reigns that the Egyptian Kingdom was organized, strengthened and unified, the rule of the monarch was safeguarded; ambitious nobles were placated or destroyed; and the leadership succession was determined and assured.
The nucleus of the Egyptian Empire was a dictatorship by a self-perpetuated elite, headed by lords spiritual and temporal. Both groups held land, accumulated wealth and exercised authority. It was a government combining the theory of absolutism with the practice of public responsibility. It was sufficiently arbitrary to get things done. It was sufficiently inclusive to recognize and utilize special ability. It was sufficiently structured to carry on from dynasty to dynasty. It was sufficiently flexible to consolidate scattered communities into the Old Kingdom, to unite Lower and Upper Egypt, to extend its authority into Central Africa, the Near and Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe, thus laying the foundations for history's most extensive and long-lasting civilization during the period 3500 to 500 B.C.
I have used the Egyptian example of nucleus organization because of the phenomenal successes achieved by the Egyptians in maintaining an empire for at least 3,000 years. For a considerable part of those thirty centuries Egypt was top dog in the strategic area where Africa joins Eurasia.
The nucleus is the hub from which the spokes of empire and of civilization radiate. The radius of authority and the vast stretches of occupied, exploited territory constitute the circumference of the wheel. The nucleus is the center of wealth and power surrounded by a cluster of associates and dependencies. The control, direction and administration of the nucleus is parallelled by the control, direction and administration of the total complex—the empire and/or the civilization.
The development from nucleus to empire and from empire to civilization creates three sets of political problems: those arising from the administration of the nucleus; those arising out of contacts between the nucleus and the circumference, between the associates and dependencies and the nucleus, and those arising out of the determination of the associates and dependencies to sever their connections with the nucleus, win their independence, and take part in the unceasing efforts to establish new nuclei, win the unending power struggle and shift the power center.
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.
Much of Africa, at the time, was organized along tribal lines, which cut across the boundaries drawn by the European imperialists between their colonial territories. The resulting chaos temporarily removed Africa from any meaningful role in the planet-wide contest for pelf and power. Africans are politically sovereign. Economically and culturally they remain dependent on their former European masters.
Politically, western civilization is in a state of flux. Its European homeland is basically divided by potent fears, ambitions, feuds and conflicts, and separated geographically from North America and Asia. Despite several attempts to unify the continent politically, Europe was disrupted, fragmented and weakened by two general wars in a single generation. The European empires were politically and economically upset by widespread colonial revolt in Asia and Africa. Spectacular achievements of socialism-communism, particularly in East Europe and Asia, added to the previous fragmentation a new line of division between capitalist West Europe and socialist East Europe. This process of fragmentation is giving separatist forces ascendancy over the forces of integration and unification.
In Roman and Egyptian civilizations, the period of survival conflict led to the centralization of wealth and authority. After five centuries of suicidal competitive struggle, the European homeland of western civilization is criss-crossed by sharp lines of division. Furthermore, the shift of production and military power from Europe to North America and Asia reduces the probability of speedy European integration.
In the more important centers of western civilization the chief item of public expenditure is preparation for a war of air, water and land machines that may extend technologically into a nuclear war. While we have no precedent that would enable us to gauge the consequences of an extensive nuclear war it seems reasonable to assume that it would further fragment an already fragmented European continent.
The heavy burdens of militarism which western civilization is presently carrying, have unbalanced budgets, which lead to inflation and to onerous burdens of debt and taxes. It seems unlikely that a group of warfare states like the top western European powers can escape the economic contraction which presently threatens them and regain solvency and stability through fiscal reforms or readjustments in tariffs and trade.
Our analysis of the politics of civilization may be summarized in four general statements:
1. Each civilization has consisted of a cluster of empires, nations and peoples which at some previous period have enjoyed independence and sovereignty.
2. Relations between these erstwhile sovereign units have been determined by a shifting mixture of diplomacy and armed force, with war playing a determining role in the process.
3. In the course of survival struggle, political leadership within the civilization has shifted back and forth as one group has succeeded in establishing and maintaining its authority over the entire civilization.
4. A general axiom of the politics of civilization might read:
At the conclusion of each war among civilized peoples the victors are entitled to make the following declaration: We operate under the Law of the Jungle: "Let him take who has the power and let him keep who can." We have the power. We have grabbed the real and personal property of our neighbors and we propose to keep it. Our friends are welcome to attend our Feast of Victory. Let our enemies beware.
Politics involves the exercise of authority—the policy making, planning, control, direction and administration of a community. Economic forces provide the wealth, income and livelihood—the wherewithal upon which a community depends for its physical existence, its survival, its geographical extension, the continuance of its life cycle.
There is no sharp line separating economics from politics. While the two fields are different in character and scope, they are so interrelated and interwoven that any successful attempt to separate them would leave the inquirer with two segments of a lifeless social cadaver. In the course of this exposition it will become increasingly evident, as the political and economic lines cross and re-cross, that the two fields are inseparable parts of a total body social.
One civilization after another has begun with a predominantly rural economy that has become increasingly urban as it matured. Food gathering, pastoral life and small scale agriculture were rural. Trade, commerce, manufacturing and finance, concentrated populations, increased division of labor, specialization, inter-communication and interdependence produced the trade center, the commercial metropolis and the general purpose city.
Herdsmen and land workers, dependent on grass and rainfall, lived close to the subsistence margin and were at the mercy of forces they could not control. Traders and money changers, with an eye for business in a growing marketplace made a more ample living. At the same time the more successful among them accumulated capital which they loaned or invested in stocks of goods, shops, warehouses, caravans, ships. By hiring labor-power they multiplied their own limited physical capacities. By investing in varied enterprises they assured themselves against possible loss in any one of them. They also multiplied the possibilities of profit.
Trade, finance and commerce, by producing a regular flow of abundant income, brought into existence a new field of occupations and a new class—business and the businessmen. Herdsmen and farmers depended for their livelihood on nature, her niggardliness or generosity. The businessmen required only the presence of a group large enough to purchase goods and services, pay rent and interest, work for wages and leave the profits to the enterpriser. Each profit beyond the subsistence level enabled the businessmen to expand, buying more goods, hiring more labor, making still greater profits.
Communities of businessmen pooled their profits, extended their markets, built fleets, enlarged cities. Through joint action they engaged in plundering expeditions and collected tribute from their victims. Organized fabrication turned out the goods and services which were marketed for profits. The resulting wealth enabled the successful businessmen to build houses, stock them with consumer goods and art treasures, hire servants, live sumptuously. Productivity, wealth, prosperity filled their honey pot to overflowing.
Honey pots provide the "good things" of life for their owners. They also tempt outsiders. Honey-pot owners fear pilfering by their servants; fear sponging by their relatives, friends, neighbors; fear robbers and kidnappers; fear migrating hordes on the lookout for plunder. Defense is a necessary aspect of each rich household, neighborhood, city, nation, empire, civilization.
The sequence from productivity, through prosperity, wealth accumulation, abundance and the measures needed to defend and safeguard the accumulations, leads to an affluent community or society. It also calls into being new and distinctive class forces.
I. The business class (hucksters and profiteers), a self-seeking, aggressive group of adventurers, promoters and organizers of bourgeois society to whomprofitcomes first. At one or another stage in the life cycle of every civilization aggressive bourgeois greed for wealth and power makes itself felt. Their role in western civilization has been outstanding. The business class through its control of the productive apparatus and the sources of credit has been able to surround itself with subordinates, scientists and other experts, apologists, strong-arm squads (police and military), spies and assassins.
II. A middle class, made up of business class subordinates plus self employed tradesmen, professionals, independent farmers and craftsmen.
III. A class of blue collared and white collared producers of goods and services who hold their jobs during good behavior. When not needed or wanted they are pushed into the ranks of the partially or wholly unemployed. Most civilizations have added to the working force serfs, peons and/or chattel slaves.
IV. A class of hangers on—economic parasites—who consume more than they produce. The payment of unearned income to property holders and the creation of monopolies enables this class to live on rent, interest and profit in proportion to their ownership. As parasitism increases and multiplies it proves to be a dead weight which eventually drags down any economy that tolerates it.
V. A class of dependents, defectives and delinquents, supported by society but contributing little or nothing to its maintenance or its advancement.
Every civilization has maintained a greater or lesser degree of mobility between the classes. Mobility makes it possible for those with greater ability and energy to leave the countryside, settle near the market-place and climb the ladder of success. It has also made it possible for policy makers to dump those whose services are no longer needed or wanted by the ruling oligarchy.
Among the driving economic forces in a civilization are hunger, fear, greed, ambition. In practice these forces have proved far more effective than whips and clubs in the hand of slave drivers. They animate the rat-race for pelf, power, "success", which attracts idealism, energy, ability and throws out the carcases of those no longer able to make a contribution to the wealth and power of the oligarchy and its establishment.
Hunters, herdsmen, cultivators, craftsmen, mariners, miners perform services that maintain the solvency of any economy in which they play a leading role. Fast talkers, adventurers, promoters, manipulators, gamblers add little or nothing to the income of the communities in which they operate. Often, however, as gargantuan consumers, they play an important role in building up the deficits which finally wreck an economy.
Accumulations of wealth in market centers tempts the ambitious and the adventurous to enter the rat-race and grab more than their pro-rata share of the honey. The most obvious way to do this is to secure possession of the honey pot.
Far away, in the tribal past of a civilization, lay a period of scarcity in which the members of the community shared the scarce income or starved. As the tribal wealth increased, the leaders, their families and retainers got more than a fair share of the available goods, services, preferment, privileges. At a very early stage the "ants" stored away what they could spare, while the "grasshoppers" had a "good time". Investing their stored wealth in land or productive enterprises the "ants" added unearned income to their normal earnings from productive labor.
Because the "ants" held the wealth of the community they were able to exercise authority and determine community policy. One result of their decisions was the creation of titles to land and stored wealth. A second result was the institution of property-custom and later of property-law under which those who owned property enjoyed special privileges which gave them still larger shares of the community wealth and income.
Wealth ownership and the exercise of authority, concentrated in one person or family, created a basic division in the community between those whose livelihood depended on their labor and those whose income was determined by their ownership of property and their exercise of authority. In the course of time this development divided the community into a property-owning, governing minority which was wealthy, and a property-poor majority whose livelihood depended upon the willingness of the property holding minority to use their land and productive implements in operations that turned out goods and services.
Property ownership and income were protected by law. Labor income depended on the bargaining power of the property-less majority. Property income yielded wealth to the property owners. Labor income, under the pressure of competition in the labor market, yielded only subsistence. Thus the community was divided into owners and workers. The owners controlled and spent or invested the income. The workers were provided with the necessaries and a few crumbs of comfort.
Private property and property law supported by state power institutionalized a basic division in every civilization. One segment of a civilized community enjoyed wealth and power; other segments produced goods and performed services. The owners were rich; the producers were poor. Riches side by side with poverty are characteristic features of a civilized society.
Exploitation has been the economic backbone of every civilization from earliest times to the present day. Each civilization has exploited and used up its natural resources. In every civilization individuals, groups, classes and sometimes castes have exploited or used up fellow humans and fellow creatures to suit their own purposes and advance their own interests.
Abraham Lincoln gave a classical definition of human exploitation in a simple sentence: "It is the principal that says you work and toil and earn bread and I will eat it."
Exploitation of nature and of fellow beings by man began long before written history. During periods of civilization, and notably in present-day civilization, exploitation has determined social relationships. It has also become one of the pillars of every civilized community.
Civilized peoples use up natural resources as a matter of course. The more advanced technically have stripped their environments of replaceable and irreplaceable resources. They have also perfected techniques for using the productive power of their fellow creatures. One way to do this is by owning the body. Another way is ownership of land, capital and consumer goods which enable the owner to live without labor on the products resulting from the labor of others.
Owners of property and wealth receive an income because they are owners. They may be very young or very old, able-bodied or helpless. Their livelihood comes to them not because of anything they do, but because of the property titles which they own.
The owner of land may collect rent. The owner of capital may collect interest. The owner of an enterprise may collect profits. Each lives by owning.
Workers produce goods and services. They are paid an income proportioned to their production.
Owners of land, capital and consumer goods are paid incomes proportioned to their ownership.
Workers work for a living. Owners live by ownership, chiefly of land and the implements of production.
Owners of property frequently are rich. Workers, by comparison, are poor. The line separating owners from workers also separates riches from poverty.
Income from services rendered, from work, is earned income. Income from property ownership, by contrast, is unearned income.
The relation between earned and unearned income is not confined to one generation. Under laws passed by the owners and their retainers the owners of private property may give or bequeath this property to their descendants. In the course of time a community is divided between workers who are poor and owners who are rich. Since the rich need not work in order to live, they and those associated with them may live on the unearned income derived from property ownership. In a word, they may become parasitic.
Parasitism may lead to social decay. Generation after generation, the owners and their dependants may live in comfort or even in luxury while those who work and their dependents may lack simple necessities. This is the confrontation of riches and poverty which has played so large a role in every civilization.
Through the ages, in one civilization after another, the glaring contrast between riches and poverty has appeared, dividing the community and laying the foundation for class struggle and class war, both of which decrease social efficiency, intensify class antagonism.
In the early stages of any culture cycle, barter is replaced by a money economy. Money is a medium of exchange, usually issued by a public authority and used in daily transactions, to pay tribute or taxes and to meet other general expenses. In its earlier forms it is made of relatively scarce materials that are in general demand, limited in supply and easily divisible into smaller units. Gold, silver and other metals meet these requirements and have been used as money through the ages.
Cash money and promises to pay speed up wholesale and retail exchanges in the market place. They fill the bill in normal times. But there are emergencies and other exceptions. One of the commonest of the emergencies is war.
In a previous chapter we pointed out that war is a characteristic feature of a civilization that has passed the top-point of its expansion and begun to decline. Then the chickens come home to roost. Civil war, colonial wars and wars between imperial rivals follow each other, creating emergencies in which demand for certain strategic goods and services rises steeply, with no corresponding increase in supply. Prices increase. The common defense requires immediate purchase of supplies. The public treasury is exhausted. The government borrows from money lenders (bankers). It also prints paper money and puts it in circulation.
If the credit of the government is good, if the emergency is of short duration, matters right themselves and the economy survives without serious derangements. But war-emergency disrupts and sometimes destroys an economy. This outcome often results from military defeat.
Another exception to normal economic transactions is buying on credit—buying today and paying tomorrow. The temporary gap between purchase and payment is filled by credit—a promise of the purchaser to pay later and the confidence of the seller that the bill will be paid. Such credit transactions are covered by notes, bonds and mortgages made out by the buyer and accepted by the seller. Until the debt is settled, the borrower pays the seller interest at an agreed rate. Bankers enter the picture, providing capital and collecting interest on their loans.
Where credit is abundant and relatively cheap, borrowers spend beyond their incomes, hoping to pay later when the loan falls due. Borrowing and over-spending are among human frailties. They are also forms of risk-taking or gambling. Who knows whether the banker who promises to pay on demand will be alive and doing business next week when his promise to pay is presented for settlement? When the promise to pay is issued by a government which decides the value of currency, and accepted by that government as payment for taxes and other obligations, it is more readily acceptable than paper issued and guaranteed by an individual money lender or banker.
Each civilization has had a background of simple use economy—food gathering, animal husbandry, agriculture—in which most of the people produced what they needed and consumed what they produced. Such an economy employs money rarely.
In a money economy those who have cash use it to pay their bills or settle their accounts.
Those who buy on credit pay interest to money lenders. The money lenders, later the bankers, make their profits by helping others to spend beyond their own means. The money-lender also accepted loans from others, promising to pay them back at a later date, and giving the lender a piece of paper, specifying the amount of the loan. The paper promise to pay became a bank-note, passed from hand to hand. It had no intrinsic value, but as the money lender promised to pay cash for the note on demand, it was accepted in payment of debts or for the purchase of commodities.
When a shirt-maker turns out a product and exchanges it for a pair of shoes made by a shoemaker there are no overhead costs. Each producer adds to his wardrobe an item that makes his life more satisfactory.
Examples of simple barter are seldom found in market economies. Civilized society assembles quantities and varieties of goods and services in the market place, invites consumers to choose among the wares and provides money to make transactions quick and easy. Civilized society supplements money with credit on the principle: buy and use today; pay tomorrow. Civilization goes beyond these bare essentials of merchandizing by furnishing transportation and communication, making long term loans at interest, writing insurance, developing the techniques of accounting and management. Customers who visit the market have basic human needs—the necessities of life. Beyond these necessaries, there are conveniences, comforts, luxuries. The markets of civilization cover the entire range of human needs and human wants from necessaries to luxuries.
Civilized merchandizers take two other steps aimed to activate consumption. They develop new lines of merchandise that will have more customer appeal, leading to new wants. They also advertise new wares that will create new wants, bring back old customers and attract new ones.
For the foot-weary customer who has shopped away his energy and enthusiasm for buying more and more, a civilized marketplace furnishes food and shelter, recreation, entertainment and culture—beer, libraries, concert halls and circuses as well as food, clothing and shelter.
These multiple functions of a civilized economy are part and parcel of the changes which have converted the simple barter deal of exchanging a pair of shoes for a shirt into a specialized, civilized market place. They also cause civilized economies to devote far more time and money to marketing goods and services than they spend in their manufacture. In a broad sense, these supplementary costs are "overhead."
Shirt makers and shoemakers convert raw materials and partly finished goods into shirts and shoes. Operating costs of manufacture are minimal in a civilized economy. The major items that go into the final price of the product are overhead costs.
Current accounting practices include in overhead: taxes, interest, insurance and general items. Actually the price of goods and services in a civilized economy includes minimal charges for raw materials and labor and maximum charges for overhead.
There is another phase of overhead which pyramids with each advance in the extent and complexity of a civilization—taxes to cover the costs of government. As the civilization expands and specializes, governmental services multiply. The number of government workers grows in proportion and often out of proportion to the total production costs. Expenses of government rise and with them the corresponding need to increase taxes.
Overhead costs in the village or small town are low. Much of the "public service" is done by citizens who volunteer their time and energy. In the centers of civilization public service is a profession, often well paid and usually quite permanent.
Expansion is a basic feature in the life of every civilization. Expansion increases overhead costs. When American Indians made their silent way through the forests or roamed the plains there was no overhead. Each provided his own means of locomotion. With roads came bridges. With roads and bridges came capital costs. As dirt roads gave way to macadam and macadam to asphalt and concrete, as country roads, winding over hill and through dale were replaced by graded superhighways cut straight through or built over all obstacles, the cost per mile rose fantastically. All of these added costs appeared somewhere in the tax bills which citizens were required to pay.
In any enterprise overhead costs rise in direct proportion to the extent and complexity of the social order. As they rise, they increase the prices of the goods and services which citizens (or consumers) must pay for their livelihood. A good illustration of this principle is the price of an identical acre of land: in the remote countryside; on an improved highway; in the suburbs of a growing city and at the city center.
Increasing wealth brings greater risks. Wealthy cities like wealthy individuals and families must pay for their protection against robbery and piracy; against extortion and expropriation. Among important business enterprises insurance ranks high. The costs and profits of insurance are suggested by elaborate insurance company buildings and the high salaries paid to their officials.
Insurance, usually a private overhead, comes high. Public insurance: maintenance of law and order, crime and punishment, the secret and open police, the armed forces, (land and sea and air) are vastly more expensive. If, to these limited costs of overhead are added the costs of militarism as a public enterprise and the ruinous costs of military adventurism and its inevitable wars, the mounting costs lead to insolvency and eventual economic and social ruin.
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.