-Caveat Lector-
Attached is an excerpt from Prof Carol Quigley's- The evolution of
civilisation
He is better known for his Tragedy and hope in which he outlines the role of
finance capitalism in the present world set up.
Prof Quigley was also Pres Clinton's mentor. It is interesting to speculate
the reasons for say america's open border policy. Is it to push the country
to stage 7. Or is it meant to be creating the scene for a universal empire
or to renew the america?
Prof Carol Quigley's work is used extensively in Prof S Hutchinsons (CFR) "
the clash of culture's" (but he doesnt mention Tragedy and hope). Also it
can seen that Rees-Mogg's books owe an unacknowledged debt to Prof Quigley
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5 Historical Change in Civilizations
It is clear that every civilization undergoes a process of historical
change. We can see that a civilization comes into existence, passes through
a long experience, and eventually goes out of existence. We know, for
example, that Mesopotamian civilization did not exist about 10,000 B.C.; it
did exist about 3000 B.C.; it had ceased to exist by A.D.1000.
Similarly, it is clear that Classical civilization did not exist about 1500
B.C.; it clearly did exist about 500 B.C.; and it had obviously passed out
of existence by A.D. 1000. And, finally, it is clear that Western
civilization did not exist about A.D. 500; it did exist in full flower about
A.D. 1500; and it will surely pass out of existence at some time in the
future, perhaps before A.D. 2500.
Now, while everyone will probably agree with all this, it would be
difficult to obtain agreement on any specific dates on which these events
occurred. This difficulty arises from the fact that civilizations come into
existence, rise and flourish, and go out of exist-ence by a slow process
which covers decades or even centuries, and historians are unable to agree
on any precise dates for these events. This is perfectly proper: if
Classical civilization came into existence by a slow process and went out of
existence by a slow process, it would give a false appearance of rigidity to
fix its dates, say at 1184 B.C.-A.D. 476, as has sometimes been done. In the
following discus-sion it should be remembered that the dates given for his.
torical periods are only approximate.
Beyond recognizing that civilizations begin and end, historians are
fairly well agreed that, after they begin, they flourish and grow for a
while, that eventually they reach a peak of power and prosperity, and that
they weaken and decay before their final end.
This process of evolution of civilizations can only be studied in an
effective fashion if we divide it into a number of consecutive periods. We
might divide it into two periods, such as "rise" and "decline"; we might
divide it into three periods, such as "youth," "maturity," and "old age"; or
we might divide it into five or fifty periods. The process of change in the
history of any civilization is a continuum and, accordingly, the periods
into which we may divide it are arbitrary and imaginary. Thus, it might be
argued that one system of periodization is as good as another and,
accordingly, we are free to divide it in any way that seems to fit our
purpose at the moment. To some extent this is true, as long as we are aware
that our periods are subjective, but necessary, divisions.
However, it is not completely true that one periodization is as good
as another, although any system of periodization may well be useful for some
specific purpose. Obviously, periodization must depend on changes in the
society's culture. And, equally obviously, changes in a culture must de-pend
on the causes of these changes. Accordingly, the periodization should,
ideally, depend on the causes of the culture changes. This rule has been
consistently neglected in all discussion of this subject. Writers tell us
that a civilization rises and falls; they divide this process into periods,
and they sometimes try to explain why it rises and falls; but they rarely
relate their periods of the process of change to their explanation of the
causes of the change.
The most popular explanation of the causes of historical change and
especially of the rise and fall of civilizations has been by means of some
biological analogy in which a people, once young and vigorous, were softened
and weakened by rising standards of living, or by a loss of the ideology of
hard work and self-sacrifice that had made their rise possible. In most
cases little or no effort has been made to correlate this process of change
with the various stages through which the civilization was said to have
passed. In some cases this "softening of fiber" theory has been presented in
a more nai've form by a simple biological analogy in which civilizations,
like man himself, were felt to pass through a simple sequence of youth,
maturity, and old age. In many cases no real explanation of the process of
change has been given at all, the theorists in question being satisfied with
attaching names to the various stages of historical change. Giovanni
Battista Vito, for example, saw the history of each people as a process by
which barbarian vigor slowly developed into rationalism, the period of
greatest success being merely the middle period when the two qualities of
vigor and rationality were in a fruitful, precarious, and temporary balance,
while the decline was due to the final triumph of rationalism over energy.
In the late nineteenth century, as biological sciences became more
influential, these basic ideas were reserved with varying quantities of
biological sauces. The Russian thinker Nikolai Danilevsky attributed the
earlier period of vigor to biologic mixture of peoples, and attributed the
intermediate ages of greatest achievement to the rise of a state
organization that could direct such energies into more productive channels.
The final stage of decay is not clearly
explained but seems to be attributed to some process of political
institutionalization not too remote from the explana-tion offered here.
At the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the
influences of Darwinian thinking became dominant in theories of civilization
dynamics. W. M. Flinders Petrie in 19 11 offered a Darwinian version of the
theories of earlier writers such as Danilevsky: an earlier period of
struggle, based on the vigorous energy of barbarian intruders, was gradually
weakened by the enjoyment of rising standards of living which weakened
"strife." Enunciating the general rule, "There is no advance without
strife," Petrie pictured each cycle as an accelerating decay resulting from
a decrease in "strife." This point of view, generally accepted by many of
the earlier theorists on this subject, saw the later stages of any
civilization as a period of decreasing strife or violence, a conclusion
which seems to be sharply at variance with thefacts.
To Oswald Spengler, one of the most famous of modern writers on this
subject, a similar pattern was evident. He discerned in each people an
earlier stage of vigorous creativity that he called "culture" and a later
stage of weakening moral fiber and devotion to selfish physical comforts
that he called "civilization." As is usual among writers on this subject, no
real explanation was provided for this loss of motion, although the pattern
was applied to ten different "cultures."
The most famous of recent writers on this subject, Arnold J. Toynbee, has
produced the most voluminous and, in spite of its sprawling organization,
most satisfactory theory of these processes. He is still strongly influenced
by Darwinian biology, and attributes rise and fall of civilizations to the
"challenge and response" to "the struggle for existence." In spite of his
many improvements over earlier writers, espe-cially in regard to the units
to which this pattern applies and the stages through which the pattern takes
each unit, Toynbee's theories have several of the prevalent inadequacies of
earlier writers, especially in his failure to correlate the stages of change
with the process of change and, above all, in his failure to explain why a
civilization which has been "responding" to "challenges" successfully for
centuries gradually ceases to do so, and decays.
Most of the earlier writers derived their patterns from the study of
a relatively few units, and generally based their interpretations very
largely on the Greco-Roman experience in Classical antiquity. This reliance
on the culture that most of us know best is, of course, to be expected, but
has been unfortunate, since the pattern of rise and fall in Classical
an-tiquity is not completely typical, as can be seen from the difficulty
most writers have had in deciding whether the Greeks and Romans should be
treated separately or together.
Vito derived his pattern from only two examples, Roman and Christian
cultures, but most later writers had information, however vague, on a much
greater number of cases. Many had no clear idea of the unit we call
"civilization," and they confused peoples, political units, societies, and
even religions in an indiscriminate fashion, greatly increasing the
difficulty of finding patterns of change. Danilevsky spoke of ten historical
"types," to which he added Russia as an eleventh in the future. In general
his units were linguistic groupings, so that the Greeks and Romans were
treated as separate units. Spengler also spoke of ten, but his units were
different from Danilevsky's and were made very ambiguous in some cases by
being based on spirituai outlooks, such as his famous conceptions of
Apollonian (Classical), Faustian (Western), and Magian (post-Classical Near
Eastern) cultures. Toynbee saw about two dozen civilizations, not much
different from those accepted in this present book.
The pattern of change in civilizations presented here consists of
seven stages resulting from the fact that each civilization has an
instrument of expansion that becomes an institution. The civilization rises
while this organization is an instrument and declines as this organization
becomes an institution.
By the term "instrument of expansion" we mean that the society must
be organized in such fashion that three things are true:
( 1) the society must be organized in such a way that it has an incentive
to invent new ways of doing things;
(2) it must be organized in such a way that somewhere in ' the society there
is accumulation of surplus-that is, some persons in the society control more
wealth than they wish to consume immediately; and
(3) it must be organized in such a way that the surplus which is being
accumulated is being used to pay for or to utilize the new inventions. All
three of these things are essential to any civilization. Taken
together, we call them an instrument of expansion. If a producing society
has such an organization (an instrument of expansion), we call it a
civilization, and it passes through the process we are about to describe.
Before we describe this process, however, we should be certain we understand
the nature of an instrument of expansion.
The three essential parts of an instrument of expansion are
incentive to invent, accumulation of surplus, and application of this
surplus to the new inventions. Economists might call these three
"invention," "saving," and "investment," but the terms used by economists
are generally so ambiguous to non economists that we hesitate to use them.
"Incentive to invent" is sometimes difficult for students to grasp
because they assume that all societies are equally inventive, or that
"necessity is the mother of invention," or that invention is somehow related
to innate, hereditary bio-logical talent (so that there are "inventive
races" and "non-inventive races"). None of these things is true. Some
societies, like Mesopotamian civilization or our own Western civilization,
are very inventive. Others, like many primitive tribes, or civilizations
like the Egyptian, are very uninventive. Nor does "necessity" have much to
do with inventiveness. If it did, those peoples who are pressed down upon
the subsistence level, or even below it, in their standards of living, like
some of the Indian tribes of the Matto Grosso, would be very inventive,
which they are not. Or, if invention were in any way related to necessity,
the poverty-stricken fellahin of Egypt or Trans-Jordan or the equally
hard-pressed coolies of China or the peasants of India would have devised
some new and helpful methods for exploiting their available resources. This
is far from being the case.
Or, again, if biologically inherited talent had anything to do with
inventiveness we would not have seen the great de-crease in invention by the
Chinese in the last thousand Years, or the decrease in inventiveness among
Anglo-Saxon Americans in the last hundred years, or the sudden ap-pearance
of inventiveness among noninventive peoples of eastern European stock when
they migrated to America.
Inventiveness depends very largely on the way a society is
organized. Some societies have powerful incentives to invent, because they
are organized in such a way that innova-tion is encouraged and rewarded.
This was true of Mesopotamian civilization before 2700 B.C., of Chinese
civilizations before A.D. 1200, and of Western civilization during much of
its history. On the other hand, many societies are organized so that they
have very weak incentives to invent. Suppose that a primitive tribe believes
that its social organization was established by a deity who went away
leaving strict instructions that nothing be changed, Such a society would
invent very little. Egyptian civilization was something like this. Or any
society that had ancestor worship would probably have weak incentives to
invent. Or a society whose productive system was based on slavery would
probably be uninventive, because the slaves, who knew the productive process
most intimately, would have little incentive to devise new methods since
these would be unlikely to benefit themselves, while the slaveowners would
have only a distant acquaintance with the productive proc-esses and would be
reluctant to invent any new methods that might well require the ending of
slavery for their successful exploitation. For these reasons, slave
societies, such as Classical civilization or the Southern states of the
United States in the period before 1860, have been notoriously uninventive.
No major inventions in the field of production came from either of these
cultures. The significance of this can be realized when we recall that at
the very time that the South was inventing so little, the North, and
especially the people of the Connecticut River Valley, were passing through
one of the greatest periods of invention in history (cotton gin, mass
production and interchangeable parts, steamboat, screw propeller, revolver,
electric motor, vulcanizing rubber, sewing machine, anesthesia, and so
forth).
"Accumulation of surplus" means that some persons or organizations
in the society have more wealth passing through their control than they wish
to use immediately or Historical Change in in the "short run."
This is so necessary to expansion that it means that some persons
must have more than they need, even if others must have less than they need.
If a society containing 100 persons is producing 100 square meals a day, it
would, perhaps, be "just" for each person to obtain one meal a day, but such
a distribution would never allow the society to increase its production of
meals except by temporary and accidental increases called "windfalls." If,
however, the distribution of square meals in that society is organized so
that fifty persons get only half a meal a day, twenty-five persons get one
meal a day each, and twenty-five persons get two meals a day each, it might
be possible for the society to increase its production of square meals. This
could be done if someone invented a better way of produc-ing square meals
and if the twenty-five persons who get two meals each a day, consumed only
one and a half meals each day and gave the surplus of twelve and a half
meals each day to twenty-five of the fifty persons who had only half a meal
each in return for their efforts in making the new, more productive,
invention. This redistribution of meals to obtain the use of a new invention
is what we mean by "investment," the third essential element in any
instrument of expansion.
We thus have three possible ways in which the 100 meals produced by
this society could be distributed. They could be written as follows:
TYPE A
100personsat 1 meal each
TYPE B
50 persons at l/2 meal each
25personsat 1 meal each
25personsat 2 meals each
100personstotal
100meals
25 meals
25meals 50meals
100meals
With Type A distribution there can be no increase in output even if
someone thinks of a new invention, since no one would have leisure to make
it. With Type B distribution there may be an increase in output but only if
someone thinks of a new invention and if the surplus of meals con-trolled by
the twenty-five richest persons is redistributed to the poorer persons as
payment for these poorer ones making the new invention. This would give a
third type of income distribution if the surplus was invested in the way
mentioned. Thus :
TYPE C
25 persons at .5 meal each
50personsat 1 mea1 each
25personsat 1.5 meals each
100personstotal
. 12.5 meals
50.0meals
37.5meals
100 meals
Every kind of material progress and many kinds of non-material
progress depend upon the three factors we have mentioned. This is as true of
parasitic societies as it is of productive societies. Let us imagine a
solitary savage who lives by hunting and who, by throwing rocks at game from
dawn to dusk, averages one rabbit a day. Let us further imagine that this
diet of one rabbit a day is just enough to keep him alive until the next
day. In such a situation this lonely hunter could not make a bow and arrow,
even if he could invent it in his mind, because to make a bow and arrow
would take, let us say, ten days' work. Thus this savage has an incentive to
invent, even has the necessary invention, but he has no surplus and cannot
improve his position. Then let us assume that he throws a rock one day and
kills a deer large enough to keep him alive for twelve days. He now has both
invention (in his mind) and surplus (the deer). He may live from the deer
for twelve days in idleness, or he may use his leisure from hunting to make
the bow and arrow he has conceived. In the former case he will be no better
off, and may be worse off because of loss of skill in rock throwing as a
result of such leisure. In the latter case, on the contrary, his surplus
(the deer) is trans-formed into a bow and arrow by investment, and at the
end of ten days he has a new weapon that raises his ability to kill rabbits
from an average of one a day to, say, an average of three a day. Of these
three he can consume one a day himself, as previously, and support two other
savages with the two other rabbits he kills each day. In return for such
support, these two could be required to build a hut, to cure rabbit skins,
to make additional arrows, and so forth. In this way the new capital
equipment, the bow and arrow, has made it possible to raise the standards of
living of all three.
It is by some such process as this, but much more elaborate and
complex, that civilizations grow, thrive, and expand. Every civilization
must be organized in such a way that it has invention, capital accumulation,
and investment.
Loosely speaking, the term "instrument of expansion" might be applied to the
organization for capital accumulation alone, although, strictly speaking,
this organization should be called the surplus-creating instrument. This
surplus-cre-ating instrument is the essential element in any civilization,
although, of course, there will be no expansion unless the two other
elements (invention and investment) are also present. However, the
surplus-creating instrument, by con-trolling the surplus and thus the
disposition of it, will also control investment and will, thus, have at
least an indirect influence on the incentive to invent. This
surplus-creating instrument does not have to be an economic one.
-
In fact, it can be any kind of organization, military, political,
social, religious, and so forth. In Mesopotamian civilization it was a
religious organization, the Sumerian priesthood to which all members of the
society paid tribute. In Egyptian, Andean and, probably, Minoan
civilizations it was a political organization, a state that created
surpluses by a process of taxation or tribute collection. In Classical
civilization it was a kind of social organization, slavery, that allowed one
class of society, the slaveowners, to claim most of the production of
another class in society, the slaves. In the early part of Western
civilization it was a military organization, feudalism, that allowed a small
portion of the society, the fighting men or lords, to collect economic goods
from the majority of society, the serfs, as a kind of payment for providing
political protection for these serfs. In the later period of Western
civilization the surplus-creating instru-ment was an economic organization
(the price-profit system, or capitalism, if you wish) that permitted
entrepreneurs who organized the factors of production to obtain from
so-ciety in return for the goods produced by this organization a surplus
(called profit) beyond what these factors of pro-duction had cost these
entrepreneurs.
Like all instruments, an instrument of expansion in the course of
time becomes an institution and the rate of expan-sion slows down. This
process is the same as the institution-alization of any instrument, but
appears specifically as a breakdown of one of the three necessary elements
of expansion. The one that usually breaks down is the third-application of
surplus to new ways of doing things. In modern terms we say that the rate of
investment decreases. If this decrease is not made up by reform or
circumvention, the two other elements (invention and accumulation of
surplus) also begin to break down. This decrease in the rate of investment
occurs for many reasons, of which the chief one is that the social group
controlling the surplus ceases to apply it to new ways of doing things
because they have a vested interest in the old ways of doing things. They
have no desire to change a society in which they are the supreme group.
Moreover, by a natural and unconscious self-indulgence, they begin to apply
the surplus they control to nonproductive but ego-satisfying purposes such
as ostentatious display, competition for social honors or prestige,
construction of elaborate residences, monuments, or , other structures, and
other expenditures which may distribute the surpluses to consumption but do
not provide more effective methods of production.
When the instrument of expansion in a civilization becomes an
institution, tension increases. In this case we call this "tension of
evolution." The society as a whole has become adapted to expansion; the mass
of the population expect and desire it. A society that has an instrument of
expansion expands for generations, even for centuries.
People's minds become adjusted to expansion. If they are not "better off"
each year than they were the previous year, or if they cannot give their
children more than they them-selves started with, they became disappointed,
restless, and perhaps bitter. At the same time the society itself, after
generations of expansion, is organized for expansion and undergoes acute
stresses if expansion slows up.
The nature of these organizational stresses and tensions arising
from a decrease in the rate of a society's expansion can be seen most
clearly in contemporary Western civilization. In this society the economic
system produces three kinds of goods:
(a) consumers' goods and services,
(b) capital goods, which cannot be consumed but which can b, used to make
consumers' goods, and
(c)government goods and services, including armaments.
In producing each kind of goods, the factors of production, such as land,
labor, materials, capital, managerial skills, entrepreneurial enterprise
legal fees, distribution costs, and so forth, must be used ani paid for.
These costs, including profits for entrepreneurs have a ,double aspect. On
the one side they represent thd costs of producing the goods, and thus
determine the final selling price of the goods; this must be sufficiently
high to cover these costs. But, on the other hand, these costs repre-sent
the incomes of those who receive them and thus repre-sent the purchasing
power available to buy the goods offered for sale. If we look, for a moment,
only at the flow of con-sumers' goods, we see that this flow of goods is
offered for sale at a price that, by just covering the costs of the goods,
is just equivalent to the purchasing power distributed to the economic
community as incomes available for buying these goods. But, of course, some
incomes are saved. These sav-ings reduce the flow of purchasing power below
the level of the flow of consumers' goods at prices sufficient to cover
costs of these goods. Thus there is not sufficient purchasing power
available to buy the goods being offered at the price being asked, and
either goods must go unsold or prices must fall, unless the money which was
held back as savings ap-pears in the market as purchasing power for
consumers' goods. Traditionally, this reappearance of savings as pur-chasing
power in the market occurred through investment-that is, as expenditures for
the factors of production to be used to make capital goods. This process
provided the purchasing power needed to permit the flow of consumers' goods
to go to consumers because investment distributed rent, salaries,wages,
interest, profits, and such to the community to form incomes and thus
available purchasing power but did notdemand purchasing power from the
economic community because the producers' goods created by these
expenditures were not offered for sale to consumers, as consumers goods
were,but, if sold at all, were merely exchanged for the savings of
investors. This whole relation-
ship means that our modern economic system cannot pro-duce and consume what
it produces unless it also invests(that is, expands).
After centuries of expansion our society is now organized so that it
cannot subsist; it must expand or it will collapse. This relationship might
be expressed in the rule that, unless savings are invested in producers'
goods, there will not be sufficient purchasing power to buy the consumers'
goods that are being produced. Of course, as this problem has become
increasingly acute in the contemporary period, a third factor has
intervened: government spending. Such government spending provides
purchasing power just as investment does. When the factors of production are
mobilized at government cost to make a nuclear submarine, the community
obtains incomes available as purchasing power, and no subsequent claim on
this purchasing power is made by government action, since the submarine is
not offered for sale. Of course, insofar as this government spending is
covered by taxes levied on consumers' purchasing power there is no net
increase in such purchasing power; but a considerable part of government
spending is covered by taxes on savings (and thus operates like investment)
or is not covered by taxes at all (and thus represents a net increase in
purchasing power, an inflationary increase when savings are being invested
fully).
This rather complicated example of how an expanding' society can
become so organized for expansion that it enters upon an acute crisis if the
expansion rate decreases is worth 'analyzing, because somewhat similar
crises occur in all civilizations when the rate of expansion decreases. And
such decrease is the chief result of the institutionalization of the
instrument of expansion, something that occurs in every
civilization. We shall see many examples of this and of the varied ways this
process occurs when we make a more de-tailed analysis of the evolution of
various civilizations.
Our tentative definition of a civilization was "a producing society
that has writing and city life." This definition is im-perfect because it is
descriptive rather than analytical; it is also imperfect because it is not
completely true. Western civilization about A.D. 970 had almost no city
life, but still was a stage in a civilization. And Andean civilization, even
under the Inca Empire, had no writing, but clearly was a civilization. It is
now possible to offer a better, if not perfect, definition of a
civilization: "a producing society with an instrument of expansion."
Before we go on to examine the consequences when an instrument of
expansion becomes an institution, we might point out that the
surplus-creating organization that is such an essential part of any
instrument of expansion does not need to be the only surplus-creating
organization in the
society. In all societies there are other, less significant,
surplus-creating organizations than the one we have considered part of the
instrument of expansion. In Mesopotamian civil Historical Change in
Civilizations the significant surpluses were accumulated by the Sumerian
priesthood from tithes and its own profits, but there can be no doubt that
private persons were accumulating surpluses from profits of private
enterprise or from the earnings of privately owned slaves or even from
voluntary restrictions on their own consumption.
These kinds of surplus accumulation may be found in any civilization no
matter what preponderance may exist for its "own" instrument of expansion.
In 1850, when Western civilization was most completely organized on the
basis of private profit, surplus was undoubtedly being accumulated, and
invested, from government taxes or from private slavery. And we would not be
surprised if the most socialistic civilizations, like the Andean under the
Incas or the Russian under the Soviets, had a certain amount of private
accumulation from profits.
These variant and incidental types of surplus accumulation are
usually of little significance in a civilization, not only for their
relatively small volume of savings but even more because they are not
usually expended in productive investment but rather are likely to end up in
luxury ex-penditures and are, thus, little more than postponed or
trans-ferred consumption. In theory, however, it must be admitted that our
statement that "every civilization has an instrument of expansion"
could well be understood to mean that a Civilization has at least one such
instrument. Except for one dubious case, we do not know of any civilization,
in its prime of life, that has had more than one significant
surplus-creat-ing organization.
We have said that an instrument of expansion, like all instruments,
becomes an institution and that as a result the rate of expansion begins to
decline. This institutionalizatio\ of the organization of expansion, which
usually takes the form of a decreasing rate of investment (rather than of a
decrease in either invention or in accumulation of surplus) leads to a
crisis. This crisis, which we have called increasing tension of evolution,
arises from the clash between the decreasing rate of expansion, on one hand,
and the fact that people's minds and the organization of the society are '
arranged for expansion, on the other hand. Reserving until later our
detailed examination of the forms this crisis takes we might point out here
that it usually gives rise to conflict; between the vested-interest groups
that control the unin-vested accumulations of surplus (because they control
the surplus-creating organization in the society) and are suf-ficiently
satisfied with the existing social organization to desire no change and the
great mass of the population who are discontented at the dwindling prospects
of expansion.
The growing tension of evolution and the clashes it en-genders can
result in one of the three possible outcomes to the crisis. These are
(1) reform,
(2) circumvention, or
(3)reaction.
We speak of reform when the organization of expansion is rearranged so that
it ceases to be an institution and becomes an instrument once more. We speak
of circumvention when the vested-interest groups are left with much of their
privileges intact and when a new instrument of expansion (especially a new
surplus-accumulating instrument) grows up alongside the older institution
and takes over the latter's expansive functions. We speak of reaction when
the privileged vested-interest groups are able to prevent either reform or
circumvention and, in consequence, the rate of expansion continues to
decrease. If the outcome is
or circumvention, the civilization once again has an instrument of expansion
and the rate of expansion increases once again.
If the outcome is reaction, the decline becomes chronic. There have
been several cases where a civilization has succeeded in obtaining reform or
circumvention of its institution of expansion, as we shall see in our
detailed exami-nation of the process of evolution in individual
civilizations. The clearest case to be found is the evolution of our Western
civilization, where both circumvention and reform have occurred. As a result
Western civilization has had three periods of expansion,
the first about 970-1270
, the second about 1420-1650, and
the third about 1725-1929.
The instrument of expansion in the first was feudalism, which became
institutionalized into chivalry. This was circum-vented by a new instrument
of expansion that we might call commercial capitalism.
When this organization became institutionalized into mercantilism, it was
reformed into industrial capitalism, which became the instrument of
ex-pansion of the third age of expansion in the history of Western
civilization. By 1930 this organization had become institutionalized into
monopoly capitalism, and the society was, for the third time, in a major era
of crisis. A detailed analysis of these changes will be provided later.
The process that we have described, which we shall call the
institutionalization of an instrument of expansion, will help us to
understand why civilizations rise and fall. By a close examination of this
process, it becomes possible to divide the history of any civilization into
successive stages. We have said that these divisions are largely arbitrary
and subjective and could be made in any convenient number of stages. We
shall divide the process into seven stages, since this permits us to relate
our divisions conveniently to a
pro1cess of rise and fall. These seven stages we shall name a following.
1. Mixture
2. Gestation
3. Expansion
4. Age of Conflict
5. Universal Empire
6. Decay
7. Invasion
Every civilization, indeed every society, begins with a mixture of
two or more cultures. Such mixture of cultures is very common; in fact, it
occurs at the boundaries of all cultures to some extent. But such casual
cultural mixture is of little significance unless there comes into existence
in the zone of mixture a new culture, arising from the mixture but different
from the constituent parts. The process is a little like the way in which a
mixture of chemicals some-times produces a new compound different from the
mixing
chemicals. In the case we are discussing, the new compound is a new society
with a new culture. The contributing socie-ties may be civilizations or
merely producing societies (agri-cultural or pastoral) or merely parasitic
societies (with hunting or fishing). Of the millions of cases of such
cultural mixture that are occurring all the time, only rarely does there
appear a new society. And even more rarely does this new society become
organized in such a way that it is a producing society with an instrument of
expansion. In the rare case where this occurs, we have the first stage of a
new civilization. The fact that there have been no more than two dozen
civilizations in almost ten thousand years of cultural mixture of producing
societies will indicate how rare this occurrence is.
Since cultural mixture occurs on the borders of societies,
civilizations rarely succeed one another in the same geo-graphic area, but
undergo a displacement in space. The process may be described somewhat as
follows. Within a society, people have little choice as to the ways in which
they will satisfy basic needs (or fulfill their potentialities). If they are
hungry, they eat the food their associates eat, prepared in the fashion
customarily used in their society. If they wish companionship, or a picture
of their relationship to the universe or a relationship to God or security
or shelter or sex or children or whatever they may wish, they obtain these
desires largely in the ways and forms provided by their own society. But on
the borders of societies there is a considerable mutual interpenetration of
social customs, and there arise, accordingly, alternative ways of satisfying
hu-man needs. This is, obviously, particularly true where inter-marriage
occurs, and where decisions must be taken and choices made as to which
customs will be followed. Such choices are imperative in regard to bringing
up the children of mixed marriages. When this occurs far enough inside the
border of a society for there to be a social majority and consensus, there
is no real choice, and, if any effort is made to make a choice, the children
themselves will preempt for the local consensus. But in an area of fairly
equal mixture, or in an area of unequal mixture where the majority culture
is declining and decreasing in prestige, a very real need to make choices
arises. These choices in themselves are not very significant in forming a
new culture, but two other considerations are important. In the first place,
the many choices being made must be morphologically compatible a order to
give rise to the necessary amount of integration to permit a body of social
custom to arise. And, in the second place, a certain number of families in
the same locality must make the same or similar choices. In this way a new
society may arise. If this society is productive and if it becomes organized
so that it has an instrument of expansion, a new civilization will be born.
As a consequence of these conditions, civilizations have generally
arisen on the periphery of earlier civilizations. Canaanite, Hittite, and
Minoan civilizations arose on the edges of Mesopotamian civilization.
Classical civilization was born on the shores of the Aegean Sea, especially
the eastern shore, on what was the periphery of Minoan civilization. Western
civilization arose in western Europe, espe-cially in France, which was a
periphery of Classical civilization. And on other peripheries of Classical
civilization were born Russian civilization and Islamic civilization.
If the new society born from such mixture is a civilization, it has
an instrument of expansion. This means that inventions begin to be made,
surplus begins to be accumulated, and this surplus begins to beg used to
utilize new inventions.
Eventually, as a result of these actions, expansion will begin. The interval
before such expansion becomes evident, but after the most obvious mixture
has ceased, may cover gen-erations of time. This period will be called the
Stage of Gestation. It is Stage 2 of any civilization. In general, it is a
period in which the society seems to be changing very little, and most
people seem to have fairly stable status situations in the social structure.
But, under the surface, much of importance is taking place and, above all,
the process of investment and invention that will make possible the
following period of expansion is taking place.
The Stage of Expansion is marked by four kinds of expansion:
(a)increased production of goods, eventually reflected in rising standards
of living;
(b)increase in pop-lation of the society, generally because of a declining
death rate;
(c) an increase in the geographic extent of the civilization, for this is a
period of exploration and colonization; and
(d) an increase in knowledge.
There are intimate interrelationships among these four. Increase in
production is aided by expanding knowledge; the growth of population helps
to increase production as well as to extend the geographic area of the
society; the exploration and colonization associated with this extension of
the society's geographic area is made possible by the growth of production
and the growth of population, both of which permit people to be released for
what are, at the beginning at least, nonproductive activities such as
exploration; the same factors allow people to be released to seek knowledge
of various kinds or to engage in nonmaterial activities such as artistic or
philosophic activities, while the geographic expansion in itself leads to
substantial increases in knowledge. This period of expansion is frequently a
period of democracy, of scientific advance, and of revolutionary political
change (as the various levels of society become adapted to an expanding mode
of life from the more static mode of life prevalent in Stage 2). As a result
of the geographic expansion of the society, it comes to be divided into two
areas: the core area, which the civili-zation occupied at the end of Stage
2, and the peripheral area into which it expanded during Stage 3. The core
area of Mesopotamian civilization was the lower valley of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers; the peripheral area was the highlands surrounding this
valley and more remote areas like Iran,
Syria, and Anatolia. The core area of Minoan civilization was the island of
Crete; its peripheral area included the Aegean Islands and the Balkan coast.
The core area of Classical civilization was the shores of the Aegean Sea;
its peripheral areas were the whole Mediterranean seacoast and ultimately
Spain, North Africa, and Gaul. The core area of Western civilization covered
northern Italy, most of France, the Low Countries, England, and extreme
western
Germany; its peripheral areas included the rest of Europe to eastern
Poland, North and South America, and Australia.
When expansion begins to slow up in the core areas, as a result of
the instrument of expansion becoming institutionalized, and the core area
becomes increasingly static and legalistic, the peripheral areas continue to
expand (by what is essentially a process of geographic circumvention) and
frequently shortcut many of the developments experienced by the core area.
As a result, by the latter half of Stage 3, the peripheral areas are tending
to become wealthier and more powerful than the core areas. Another way of
saying this is that the core area tends to pass from Stage 3 to Stage 4
earlier than do the peripheral areas. In time the instrument of expansion
becomes an institution throughout the society, investment begins to
decrease, and the rate of expansion (although not expansion itself) begins
to decline.
As soon as the rate of expansion in a civilization begins to decline
noticeably, it enters Stage 4, the Age of Conflict. This is probably the
most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the seven stages.
It is marked by four chief characteristics: (a) it is a period of declining
rate of
expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tension of evolution and increasing
class conflicts, especially in the core area; (c) it is a period of
increasingly frequent and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) it
is a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and other
worldliness. The declining rate of expansion is caused by the
institutionalization of the instrument of expansion.
The growing class conflicts arise from the increasing tension of evolution,
from the obvious conflict of interests between a society adapted to
expansion and the vested interests con-trolling the uninvested surpluses of
the institution of expan-sion who fear social change more than anything
else. Usually there is a majority of the frustrated struggling against the
minority of vested interests, although usually neither side has any clear
idea of the real issues at stake or what would give a workable solution to
the crisis. All programs for shar-ing the surplus of the few among the
discontented many are worse than useless, since expansion can be resumed
only if the three necessary elements of an instrument of expan-sion are
provided, and the dissipation of surpluses among a large mass of consumers
will not provide any one of these three necessary elements. On the contrary
most revolution-ary programs, aroused by the failure of the third element
(investment), will merely make the crisis more acute by destroying the
second element (accumulation of surplus). The only sensible or workable
solution to the crisis of the civilization would be to reform or circumvent
the old institu-tion of expansion by establishing again the three basic
ele-ments of any instrument of expansion. Since the disgruntled masses know
nothing about such things, and since the vested interests do not know much
more and are usually concen-trating their energies on an effort to defend
their vested interests, a new instrument of expansion, if it appears,
usually does so by accident and through the path of circum-vention rather
than by reform. If a new instrument of ex-pansion does come into existence,
the civilization begins to expand again, the tension of evolution and the
crisis subside, and the civilization is once again in Stage 3.
The Age of Conflict (Stage 4) is a period of imperialist wars and of
irrationality supported for reasons that are usually different in the
different social classes. The masse of the people (who have no vested
interest in the existing institution of expansion) engage in imperialist
wars becaw it seems the only way to overcome the slowing down of expansion.
Unable to get ahead by other means (such a economic means), they seek to get
ahead by political action, above all by taking wealth from their political
neighbors. At the same time they turn to irrationality to compensate for the
growing insecurity of life, for the chronic economic depression, for the
growing bitterness and dangers of class struggles, for the growing social
disruption and insecurity from imperialist wars. This is generally a period
of gambling, use of narcotics or intoxicants, obsession with sex (frequently
as perversion), increasing crime, growing numbers of neurotics and
psychotics, growing obsession with death and with the Hereafter.
The vested interests encourage the growth of imperialist wars and
irrationality because both serve to divert the discontent of the masses away
from their vested interests (the uninvested surplus). Accordingly, some of
the de-fenders of vested interests divert a certain part of their sur-plus
to create instruments of class oppression, instruments of imperialist wars,
and instruments of irrationa1it.y. Once these instruments are created and
begin to become institutions of class oppression, of imperialist wars, and
of irrationality, the chances of the institution of expansion being reformed
into an instrument of expansion become almost nil. These three new vested
interests in combination with the older vested institution of expansion are
in a position to prevent all reform. The last of these three, the old
institution of expansion, now begins to lose its privileges and advantages
to the three institutions it has financed. Of these three, the institution
of class oppression controls much of the political power of the society;
the institution of imperialist wars controls much of the military power of
the society; and the institution of irrationality controls much of the
intellectual life of the society. These three (which may be combined into
only two or one) become dominant, and the group that formerly controlled the
institution of expansion falls back into a secondary role, its surpluses
largely ab-sorbed by its own creations. In this way, in Mesopotamian
civilization, the Sumerian priesthood, which had been the original
instrument of expansion, fell into a secondary role behind the secular kings
it had set up to command its armies in the imperialist wars of its Age of
Conflict. In the same way in Classical civilization the slaveowning
landlords who had been the original instrument of expansion were largely
eclipsed by the mercenary army that had been created to carry on the
imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict but took on life and purposes of its
own and came to dominate Classical civilization completely. So too the Nazi
party, which had been financed by some of the German monopoly capitalists as
an instrument of class oppression, of imperialist war, and of irrationality,
took on purposes of its own and began to dominate the monopoly capitalists
for its own ends.
As a result of the imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict, the
number of political units in the civilization is reduced. Eventually one
unit emerges triumphant. When this occurs we are in Stage 5, the Stage of
Universal Empire. Just as the core area passes from Stage 3 to Stage 4
earlier than the peripheral area does, so the core area comes to be
conquered by a single state before the whole civilization is conquered by
the universal empire. In Mesopotamia the core area was conquered by
Babylonia as early as 1700 B.C., but the whole civilization was not
conquered by a universal empire until Assyria about 725 B.C. (replaced by
Persia about 525 B.C.).
In Classical civilization the core area was conquered by Macedonia about 330
B.C.; the whole civilization was con-quered by Rome about 146 B.C. Western
civilization has gone from Stage 3 to Stage 4 three different times. The
three Ages of Conflict are: (a) the period of the Hundred Years' War, say
1300-1430; (b) the period of the Second Hundred Years' War, say 1650-l 8 15;
and (c) the period of war crisis that began about 1900 and still continues.
In each case the core was conquered by an imperialist state: by England
under Henry V about 1420, by France under Na-poleon about 1810, and by
Germany under Hitler about 1942. In the first two cases the old institution
of expansion (chivalry and mercantilism) was circumvented by a new
instrument of expansion (commercial capitalism and indus-trial capitalism),
and a new period of expansion commenced. In the third case it is too early
to see what has happened. We may be getting a new instrument of expan-sion
that will circumvent monopoly capitalism and bring our civilization once
again into a period of expansion. Or we may continue in the Age of Conflict
until the whole of our civilization comes to be dominated by a single state
(prob-ably the United States).
In the imperialist wars of Stage 4 of a civilization the more
peripheral states are consistently victorious over less peripheral states.
In Mesopotamian civilization the core states like Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur,
and Lagash were con-quered by more peripheral states like Agade and Babylon.
These in turn were conquered by peripheral Assyria, and the whole of western
Asia was ultimately conquered by fully peripheral Persia. In Minoan
civilization the core area of Crete itself seems to have been conquered by
peripheral Mycenae. In Classical civilization the core area Ionian states
led by Athens were conquered by the semiperipheral Dorian states Sparta and
Thebes, and the whole Greek-speaking world was then conquered by more
peripheral Macedonia. Ultimately the whole of Classical civilization was
conquered by fully peripheral Rome. In the New World the two iso-lated maize
civilizations seem to provide a similar pattern. In Mesoamerica the core
Mayan cities of Yucatan and Guatemala seem to have been overcome by the
semiperiph era1 Toltecs and these, in turn, by the fully peripheral Aztecs
of highland Mexico. In the Andes region the core area seems to have been
along the coast and in the northern highlands of Peru. These cultures were
submerged by a number of more peripheral cultures of which the most
successful was the Tiahuanaco from the southern highlands of Peru. And
finally, at a late date, not a century before Pizarro, the whole Andean
civilization was conquered by the fully peripheral Incas from the forbidding
central highlands.
In the Far East and Middle East the same sequence can be discerned.
The core area of Sinic civilization was in the Huang Ho Valley. This area
was conquered by Chou about 1000 B.C. and by semiperipheral Chin from the
mountains of Shensi eight centuries later (221 B.C.). The whole of Sinic
society was then brought into a single universal empire by the Han dynasty
from its southern periphery (202 B.C.-A.D. 220). The Sinic civilization was
destroyed by Hunnish nomad invaders before A.D. 400, and a new civilization,
which we call Chinese, began to rise from the wreckage along its southern
frontier. The core of this society seems to have been south of the Yangtze
River. This core came under a single political rule as early as 700 under
the T'ang dynasty. Wider areas were added- by successive dynasties which the
Yuan or Mongols were so remote that they can be regarded neither as
peripheral nor even as Chinese (1260-1368); the Ming (1368-1644) were of
southern Chinese (and thus peripheral) origin; and the final universal
empire of the Manchu ( 1644- 19 12) was from the peripheral north,
Manchuria, with its original seat of power at Mukden.
The history of the Middle East provides similar evidence, we cannot
speak with any assurance about the Indic civilization, but it seems likely
that its earliest origins were in the lower valley (Sind) and are to be seen
in the excavations at Chandu-Daro, while later it moved northward into the
Punjab (upper valley) and found its universal empire in the originally
peripheral Harappa area. After the destruction of this culture by the Aryan
invaders from the northwest, the successor Hindu civilization began to arise
(late second millennium B.C.) in the Ganges Valley. The core area of this
new civilization fell under the political control of the local Maurya (ca.
540-184 B.C.) and Gupta (ca. 320-535) dynasties. Then, as Hindu culture
spread over the whole Indian subcontinent, political dominance shifted to
periph-eral powers such as the Gurjara-Prathihara dynasty (ca. 740-1036))
originating from Central Asiatic pastoral invaders, and a series of Moslem
dynasties, mostly Turkish, at Delhi (after 1266)) culminating in the
universal empire of the Moguls (1526-1857).
In the Islamic civilization a similar pattern seems to have
occurred. The core area of this civilization is to be found in western
Arabia. As its culture spread over most of western Asia and northern Africa,
political domination fell to in-creasingly peripheral dynasties: the Ommiad
Caliphate, of Arabic origin, ruled from Damascus during much of period
(661-750), while its successor, the Abbaside Cali-
phate, ruled from Bagdad (750-ca. 930). The Seljuk Turks ruled briefly (
1050-l 110) from Persia and were ultimately succeeded by the universal
empire of the Ottoman Turks with its center in Anatolia (1300-1922).
The victory of more peripheral states over less peripheral states
during Stage 4 of any civilization seems so well es-tablished that it is
worthwhile to seek the reasons for it. A number of these can be mentioned.
In the first place, as a general rule, material culture diffuses more easily
than non-material culture, so that peripheral areas tend to become more
materialistic than less peripheral areas; while the latter spend much of
their time, wealth, energy, and attention on religion, philosophy, art, or
literature, the former spend a much greater proportion of these resources on
military, political, and economic matters. Therefore, peripheral areas are
more likely to win victories. This contrast is quite clear between, let us
say, Sumerians and Assyrians, between Ionians and Dorians, between Greeks
and Latins, between Mayas and Aztecs, or even between Europeans and
Americans.
A second reason for the victories of more peripheral states arises
from the fact that the process of evolution is slightly earlier in more
central areas than in peripheral ones. Thus the central areas have already
passed on to Stage 4 and may even have achieved a premature dress rehearsal
of Stage 5 (with the achievement of a single core empire) while peripheral
areas are still in a relatively vigorous Stage 3.
Generally speaking, military victory is more likely to go to an area or
state in Stage 3 than to one in any later stage, because the later stages
(and by class conflicts the more central areas) are more harassed
and are more paralyzed by the inertia and obstruction of institutions. Core
areas generally have been ravaged for a longer period of imperialist wars.
The combination of these obstacles gives the inhabitants of a core area a
kind of world-weariness (sometimes called a "failure of nerve") that is in
sharp contrast to their own earlier attitudes or to those of their more
peripheral rivals. Accordingly, the task of creating a universal empire is
likely to be left to such rivals.
It should be noted that in some cases, such as Egypt, Crete, or
Russia, a single political unit has ruled over the civilization from its
early history. This generally arises in civilizations whose instrument of
expansion is a socialist state. In such a case imperialist wars are not so
prevalent a characteristic of Stage 4, and the achievement of a single
political unit (universal empire) is not one of the chief characteristics of
that stage. As a result the stage may last a shorter time and cannot be so
easily demarcated from earlier and later stages as can be done in
civilizations where imperialist war and achievement of a universal empire
are two of the most prominent marks of the stage. Absence of these items
does not indicate absence of the stage, which is marked by its other, less
easily observed, characteristics, such as decreasing rate of expansion,
growing class conflicts, declining democracy, dying science, decreasing
inventive-
ness, and growing irrationality.
These characteristics and the commonly observed achievement of
political domination by a single (peripheral) state bring the civilization
to Stage 5, the Stage of Universal Empire.
When a universal empire is established in a civilization, the
society enters upon a "golden age." At least this is what it seems to the
periods that follow it. Such a golden age is a Period of peace and of
relative prosperity. Peace arises from the absence of any competing
political units within the area of the civilization itself, and from the
remoteness or even absence of struggles with other societies outside.
Prosperity arises from the ending of internal belligerent destruction, the
reduction of internal trade barriers, the establishment of a common system
of weights, measures, and coinage, and from the extensive government
spending associated with the establishment of a universal empire. But this
appearance of prosperity is deceptive. Little real economic expansion is
possible because no real instrument of expansion exists. New inventions are
rare, and real economic investment is lacking. The vested interests have
triumphed and are living off their capital, building unproductive and
blatant monuments like the Pyramids, the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon,"
the Colosseum, or (as premature examples) Hitler's Chancel-lery and the
Victor Emmanuel Memorial. The masses of the people in such an empire live
from the waste of these non-productive expenditures. The golden age is
really the glow of overripeness, and soon decline begins. When it becomes
evident, we pass from Stage 5 (Universal Empire) to Stage 6 (Decay).
The Stage of Decay is a period of acute economic depression,
declining standards of living, civil wars between the various vested
interests, and growing illiteracy. The society grows weaker and weaker. Vain
efforts are made to stop the wastage by legislation. But the decline
continues. The religious, intellectual, social, and political levels of the
society begin to lose the allegiance of the masses of the People on a large
scale. New religious movements begin to sweep over the society. There is a
growing reluctance to fight for the society or even to support it by paying
taxes.
This period of decay may last for a long time, but eventually; the
civilization can no longer defend itself, as Mesopotamia? could not after
400 B.C., as Egypt could not about the same time, as Crete could not after
1400 B.C., as Rome could not after A.D. 350, as the Incas and Aztecs could
not after 1500, as India could not after 1700, as China could not after
1830, and as Islam could not after 1850.
Stage 7 is the Stage of Invasion, when the civilization, no longer
able to defend itself because it is no longer willing to defend itself, lies
wide open to "barbarian invaders," These invaders are "barbarians" only in
the sense that they are "outsiders." Frequently these outsiders are another,
younger, and more powerful civilization. The following list of universal
empires shows the barbarian invader that de-stroyed the civilization in
question:
CIVILIZATION
UNIVERSAL EMPIRE INVADER DATE
Mesopotamian
Persian Greeks 334-300 B.C.
Egyptian Egyptian Greeks
334-300 B.C.
Cretan Minoan Greek
Tribes
1400-1100 B.C.
Canaanite Punic Romans
264-146 B.C.
Classical Roman Germanic
Tribes
350-550
Andean Inca Spaniards
1534-1550
Mesoamerican Aztec Spaniards
1519-1550
Chinese Manchu Europeans
1800-1930
Hindu Mogul Europeans
1500-1945
Islamic Ottoman Europeans 1770-1920
As a result of these invasions by an outside society, the
civilization is destroyed and ceases to exist. This Stage of Invasion is
aiso a period of mixture. As such, it may be, but does not need to be, Stage
1 of a new civilization. This condition was true of several of the invasions
listed above. The invasions of the Greek tribes, which ended Minoan
civilization, marked Stage 1 of Classical civilization; the invasions of the
Germanic tribes, which ended Classical civilization, marked Stage 1 of
Western civilization.
The seven stages are merely a convenient way of dividing a complex
historical process. This process is not relentlessly deterministic at all
points but merely at some points, in the sense that men have power and free
will but their actions have consequences nevertheless. In general, if
cultural mix-ture produces a new producing society with an instrument of
expansion we have Stage 1 of a civilization. Stages 2, 3, and 4 will follow
inevitably. This means that, if a producing society has an instrument of
expansion, saving and investment will lead to expansion, and this expansion
will eventually slow up as the instrument becomes an institution. At this
point, in the early part of Stage 4 there is considerable freedom since the
institutionalized instrument of expansion may be reformed or circumvented.
If it is, expansion will be resumed, and the civilization will again be in
Stage 3. If it is not reformed or circumvented, reaction will triumph, and
the crisis will become worse. The choice between reform and reaction is not,
however, a rigid one. The last part of Stage 3 may be a continual series of
minor reforms and circumventions to the point where the creation of new
instruments just about balances the institutionalization of old instruments
and expansion continues at a fair rate for a considerable time.
Circumvention, especially geographic circumvention, may force institutions
that would not other-wise have reformed to do so in order to compete. Thus,
for example, as the textile industry of New England became
institutionalized, new, more modern plants grew up in the South; the
existence of these southern plants (a case of geographic circumvention)
forced the textile mills of New England either to modernize or to perish. On
a more dramatic scale the whole industrial system of England, in recent
times, has been in an institutionalized condition and has been faced with
the choice of reforming, thus creating new economic activities and new
economic organizations, or perishing from the competition of peripheral
areas, like the United States, or semiperipheral areas, like Germany (or
even other civilizations, like Japan or India).
Because of such conditions as these, the whole first part of the Age
of Conflict (Stage 4) is a period of crisis and of hope. Only when the
vested interests create new instruments of class oppression, of imperialist
wars, and of irrationality, and when these new instruments, in turn, begin
to become
institutions, does hope fade. Crisis becomes endemic in the civilization,
and continues until the universal empire with its golden age is established.
In those civilizations that had a single political unit from an earlier
stage, like Egyptian, Minoan, or Orthodox civilization, the Age of Conflict
is frequently of briefer duration because imperialist wars are of limited
extent. The fact that these one-state civilizations frequently have a
socialist state as their instrument of expansion also serves to obscure the
duration of the Age of Conflict because such a civilization has weak
incentives to invent in its Age of Expansion and less dramatic class
conflicts in its Age of Conflict, thus serving to obscure the tran-sition
from one of these stages to the other.
In theory there is nothing rigid about Stage 5. So far as
observations of past civilizations indicate, every civilization passes from
the Age of Conflict to the Age of Universal Empire. That means that one
state, probably a peripheral one, emerges triumphant over the whole area of
the civilization. But in theory it is at least conceivable that the
com-peting states of Stage 4 might just fight each other down and down to
lower and lower levels of prosperity and public order without one emerging
triumphant over all the others. In such a case, Stage 5 might be omitted,
and the civilization would pass directly from Stage 4 to Stage 6 (Conflict
to Decay) without achieving any universal empire. Something like this may
have been true of Mesoamerican civilization. In a similar way, it is
conceivable, in theory, that a civilization could continue for a very long
time in the Stage of Decay without passing on to Stage 7. For there can be
no invasion to end the civilization unless there are invaders to come in.
Egypt, for example, was so well protected by seas and deserts against
invaders that its Stage of Decay lasted for more than a thousand years. It
is also, in theory, conceiv-able that some universal empire some day might
cover the whole globe, leaving no external "barbarians" to serve as
invaders.
This point leads to one final consideration, namely, the
relationship of outside societies to any civilization. In theory again, it
would seem that an outside society that was stronger than a given
civilization might at any time come in and smash it. In practice, however,
it seems that civilizations are in little danger of such an experience
except early or late in their careers. In general, a civilization is in no
danger from any society except another civilization from Stage 2 to Stage 6.
In Stage 6, however, it is in danger from any society, even a parasitic one,
as is clear from the destruction of Cretan, Classical, Hittite, and Sinic
civilizations by non-civilized invaders. When two civilizations collide we
may use the tentative rule that the victory will go to the one that is
closer to Stage 3 (Expansion) but that neither one will be
destroyed unless it is in Stage 6. In 492-479 B.C. Classical civilization,
in Stage 3, and Mesopotamian civilization, in the last part of Stage 5,
collided, and the former won; in 336-323 they collided again, with Classical
in Stage 4 and Mesopotamian in Stage 6, and the latter was destroyed.
In 264-146 B.C. Classical civilization in Stage 4 met Canaanite
civilization in Stage 6, and destroyed it. In 7 11-S 14 West-ern
civilization in Stage 2 was able to preserve itself against Islamic
civilization in Stage 3; three hundred years later, in what we call the
Crusades, Western civilization in Stage 3 returned the visit to Islamic
civilization, then in Stage 4, but could not destroy it. However, in
1850-1920, Western civilization, just reaching the end of Stage 3, again
collided with Islamic civilization, now in Stage 6, and destroyed its
uni-versal empire, the Ottoman Empire, and probably liquidated the whole
civilization, a process that is still going on. This was only one of several
civilizations that were in a similar stage and that have met, or appear to
be now meeting, a similar fate. The other universal empires in Stage 6 that
have been destroyed by Western civilization while in Stage 3 are the Inca,
the Aztec, the Manchu, the Mogul (in India), and perhaps the Tokugawa (in
Japan). At the present time India seems to be in Stage 2 of a new civiliza-
tion; China may be in Stage 1 of a new civilization; while the situation in
Japan and in the Near East is still too chaotic to make any judgments about
what is happening. Russian civilization, which began about A.D. 500 and had
its period of expansion about 1500-1900, had the state as its instru-ment of
expansion and was just entering upon Stage 4 in 19 17 when the reform of
this institution gave it a new instru-ment of expansion. As a result,
Russian civilization has been in Stage 3 for the second time in recent
years, but it remains a relatively weak civilization because of its weak
incentive to invention. A collision between this civilization, which early
in Stage 3, and Western civilization, which has just begun Stage 4, would
probably be indecisive in its outcome If Western civilization reforms and
again passes into Stae 3, it will be far too powerful to be defeated by
Russian civilzation; if Western civilization does not reform, but continue
through the Stage of Conflict into the Stage of Universl Empire, the threat
from Russian civilization will be mud greater. However, by that time the new
Indian civilization or the new Chinese civilization may be in Stage 3 and wk
present greater threats to both Western and Russian civilizations than
either of these will present to the other possible, but by no means
inevitable, relationships of the% four civilizations in terms of the
relevant stages can be seen from the following chart.
CIVILIZATION
PRESENT TIME FUTURE REMOTE FUTURE
Western Stage 4 Stage 5
Stage 6
Russian Stage 3 Stage 4
Stage 5
Indian II Stage 2 Stage 3
Chinese II Stage 1 or 2 Stage 3
This chart is purely guesswork, because if Western civilization
reforms in the Present Time (as appears highly likely), or if any
revolutionary new technological discovery (such as the conquest of
photosynthesis) is made in the near future, this whole relationship will be
modified.
Returning from the unknown future to the partially known past, we
can conclude this chapter by a chart that gives, in a rough fashion, the
chronology of the seven stages for the civilizations with which we shall be
most concerned.
The Matrix of Early Civilizations
We have already said that civilizations are like crystals, which are
frequently distorted by efforts to share the same crystalline material. They
are also distorted by the noncrystalline material or "matrix" in which
they are em bedded. The matrix source from which diamonds are derived is
great cylindrical pipes of friable blue clay that rise vertically from the
remote depths of the earth to just below the surface. In this clay the
diamonds are found embedded like currants in a fruitcake. Of course the
diamonds in a "pipe" of blue clay are much less frequent than the currants
in any acceptable piece of cake. In this they are like civilizations, which
are very infrequent occurrences in a matrix of time, space, and noncivilized
cultures.
The matrix in which civilizations occur is five-dimensional just as
culture is. These include the same three dimensions of space, the fourth
dimension of time, and the fifth dimen-sion of abstraction. Before we make
any serious attempt to apply the seven stages of civilization, we should
have a somewhat clearer idea of this matrix in order to understand the
distorting influences it may exercise on the seven stages of normal
evolution in a civilization.........................................
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