In terms of social history the growth of structure has proceeded from

the horde, tribe and clan to the family, village, city, city-state,

nation, empire, civilization. These steps are not necessarily

sequential. Under varying social conditions they have been determined

and modified by particular historical situations. The smallest and most

intimate building block of human society has been the family. The

largest and most inclusive has been the civilization. The family as a

social group has existed for long periods, over wide areas, in immense

numbers. Civilizations have been few and often far between. They have

arisen out of particular historical situations, played distinctive

roles, written their own histories and made varying contributions to the

sum total of human culture. In the long time intervals and the wide

geographical distances that have separated civilizations human beings

have lived within more local and less complex social structures.

Civilized human society is distinctive in structure. While it varies in

detail from one civilization to another, its broad outline is

unmistakable. Each civilization has been built, defended and perpetuated

in and around cities.

Between civilizations, in time and space, most human communities have

been self-sufficient. Whether as food gatherers, pastoral people or

cultivators of the soil they have produced and consumed the food,

shelter, clothing, implements and weaponry required for their survival.

The city, whether a political capital or a center of trade and commerce,

was sharply separated from the self-sufficient countryside. The city, by

its very nature, could not be self-sufficient. Food, building supplies

and raw materials were not produced inside the city limits, but must be

produced in the hinterland from which they were transported to the

cities. City dwellers devised means of paying for the production,

transportation and marketing of these necessary imports. The countryside

can and does exist independently of the city because it can provide the

goods and services on which its existence depends. The city, on the

contrary, cannot exist without the supplies produced in the hinterland

and transported to the city.

Urban centers of civilization have for their background a pastoral and

agricultural source of food supplemented by fabrication, merchandising

and financing. Instead of the occupational uniformity of the

countryside, the city offers a wide range of occupations, increased

productivity, quick and substantial profits resulting in a build-up of

capital on one side and enlarged consumer spending on the other.

Consequently the successful competitor in the race for supremacy

develops productivity, accumulates wealth, expands capital spending,

enlarges the scope of the arts, thereby augmenting the city's

attractiveness to business enterprise and migrants from the hinterland.

As the capital city grows in wealth and opportunity it requires larger

imports of food, raw materials, building supplies, manpower. Growing

internal need leads to greater external expansion. Economic, political,

administrative and cultural needs not only increase the demands of the

city on its existing hinterland, but they lead to a demand for a more

widely extended hinterland.

The countryside is the goose that lays the golden eggs. The city

gathers, guards and eventually consumes the eggs or converts them into

capital forms and lives in part on this unearned income.

The city is the mecca which attracts by its wide ranging opportunities.

It is also the center in which policies are made and offered to the

countryside as normal facts of life. The countryside accepts city

leadership including a higher wealth-power per capita ratio for the

city.

Cities, with their accumulations of population and wealth, are walled or

otherwise defended. When danger threatens, countrymen often move inside

the walls until the danger abates.

Cities and city life increase and expand with the growth and expansion

of civilization. Cities are the centers from which civilization grows

and expands. Historically, a number of cities or city-states have

competed for survival and supremacy. One by one they have dropped out of

the race or have been out-classed, defeated and/or absorbed by the

victors in the competitive struggle. One location proved to be more

advantageous than others. The inhabitants of one locality were more

skillful, more far sighted than those of rival localities. Many

competed. Eventually one survived the final round of struggle, emerging

as the nucleus of an expanding empire and a maturing civilization. A

protracted conflict raging first in Italy and later in the entire

Mediterranean basin, resulted in the Roman Empire and eventually in

Roman civilization. A similar series of struggles, this time

planet-wide, gave the British a taste of planetary supremacy in the

nineteenth century and opened the door wide enough to give the United

States oligarchy a glimpse of an American Twentieth century, which never

eventuated.

Occupational differences within the city led to a differentiated class

structure. As the trading city developed, businessmen eventually played

a dominant role because they were able to command larger incomes,

accumulate more wealth and offer more aggressive leadership.

Nuclei of both empire and civilization were associated with a cluster of

allies, client states, dependencies and colonies related to the center

by economic interests and by diplomatic bargains or political controls.

They paid tribute or taxes as the price of living within the defense

perimeter of the ruling elite, conforming to the chief aspects of its

culture and in emergencies taking refuge inside the city defenses.

The city center made and implemented policy and provided local

leadership in emergencies. Inhabitants of the city enjoyed a superior

status and had a higher standard of consumer-living than most of those

who inhabited the countryside and the hinterland.

A structured society based on division of labor and/or function enjoys a

competitive superiority over a classless community. The structured city

was not only richer than the countryside, but it was in a position to

provide leadership, to plan and implement policy and act more

effectively.

A civilization consists of a cluster of associated allies, clients,

dependencies, and colonies bound together by economic, political and

cultural ties. Since armed force has been the chief instrument for

bringing these elements together, the agency responsible for exercising

armed force enjoys priority in a listing of the structural institutions

of civilization.

Land owners, often acting as military chieftains, dominated the

hinterland of a civilization. The city was dominated by businessmen. The

unification of city and hinterland and the complex of cities and

hinterlands composing a civilization established a governmental

apparatus in which all ruling elements were represented. In the earlier

stages of a civilization there may have been assemblies or parliaments

composed of representatives of various interests. As the civilization

was unified by war, representation was replaced by some form of monarchy

in which one supreme commander, emperor or pharoah was the final judge

and arbiter. The monarch set up a network of public authority, regional

as well as universal, provincial as well as central, and garrisoned it

with professional soldiers and sailors paid by the monarch and

responsible to him.

Corresponding with this political structure was an economic structure

consisting of a central treasury, a uniform system of weights, measures

and values, a system of spending priorities, decided by the central

authority, a source of income: taxes, tribute, booty, sufficient to

cover expenditures.

A civilization which ran a chronic deficit--over-spending its

income--moved year by year, through debt, inflation, currency

degradation, and repudiation toward its own disintegration and ultimate

bankruptcy. The historical record is very clear on this point,

especially in Roman civilization and in western civilization after 1870.

Most civilizations have had a body of religious institutions staffed by

a priestcraft, which has shared power with the economic overlords.

During certain periods in the long history of Egyptian civilization the

priestcraft held the balance of power. So great was its ascendancy that

the spoils of war and the gains of peace were shared by the temple

treasury and the royal treasury. In some cases the temple treasuries had

priority.

All civilizations for at least five thousand years have had a

professional military of sufficient consequence to play a leading role

in policy making and to claim a lion's share of the spoils of military

victory. In some cases civil and military authority were merged in one

supreme commander--emperor, pharoah. At other times, notably in Rome,

after the fall of the Republic, the Pretorian Guard nominated and

appointed its emperors.

Well up toward the summit of each known civilization, four groups have

shared authority and competed for supremacy: land-lords, wealth-lords,

war-lords and priests. Where these four major shapers of public policy

and directors of public administration were of like mind, they shared

wealth and power. When they differed, one or another enjoyed priority

and exercised some measure of control over the other three.

Less personal, but of major concern among the institutions of

civilization were the channels of communication and transportation that

have played so decisive a role in the life of every civilization. Top

ranking among the means of communication were common language, spoken

and written on metal, papyrus, paper; a unified system of accounting and

cost keeping; permanent records. Among the means of transport were

waterways, including canals, viaducts, roads, bridges skillfully built

and kept in good repair.

Another significant institution of civilization is the idea of

ownership, the division of property into public property and private

property and the right of the private property owner to do what he will

with his property, subject always to the over-riding principle of

eminent domain: the right of the community to expropriate private

property for public uses, with or without compensation.

Another institution of civilization is the provision of public services

in addition to means of communication and transportation. These public

services include a water supply; the disposal of waste; public defense

of life and property; food and diversion (bread and circuses) for the

needy; fire prevention and fire fighting apparatus; educational

facilities, including libraries and reading rooms; outside recreational

facilities such as parks and play-grounds. All of these facilities could

be provided by the rich and powerful for themselves and members of their

families. They could be supplied more effectively and apportioned more

justly when they were public services open to all.

The countryside lacks the financial and the administrative means of

providing a wide range of public services. Indeed, countryside dwellers

pride themselves on being able to provide necessary services on a

family, household or village basis. City dwellers learn to regard such

public services as a matter of public right. Their existence is a magnet

which draws a steady stream of migrants from the countryside into the

cities.

Civilizations are dominated by business interests. It is for them to

provide facilities for the transaction of business, cash money, credit

instruments, installment buying, means for changing money, insurance,

discounting facilities. As a civilization grows in wealth and population

the political apparatus becomes a major employer, a major producer of

goods and services, a major purchaser of producer and consumer goods, a

major agency for borrowing, lending, insuring, in short a major factor

in the multitudinous activities of a commercial, industrial community.

Classes, class interests and class lines are a part and parcel of all

civilizations. They are less rigid and more flexible than similar lines

existing in an agrarian community where land ownership plays so large a

role in determining social forms and social functions. In a static

agrarian community dominated by landlords, war-lords and the clergy,

rigid class lines help to hold the community together. In a community

dominated by business interests, both labor power and purchasing power

must be free to respond to demand and supply. This is as true in a

planned public economy as it is in a private enterprise economy. In

accordance with the same principle, facilities are provided for the

movement of individuals back and forth across class lines.

The specialized, interdependent structure of civilization with its city

control of the hinterland, its products and inhabitants, enabled the

city-centered oligarchy to accumulate and concentrate wealth and

monopolize power, to skim the cream from the available milk, monopolize

the cream, distribute the skimmed milk judiciously and thus perpetuate

its ascendancy through generations and centuries. During periods of

expansion civilized communities develop a dynamism which maintains their

ascendancy. In subsequent periods of contraction form takes over,

imposing conformity on the status quo.

During their periods of expansion civilizations are dynamic. Their

history records growth at home, expansion abroad, exploitation,

domestic and foreign under the pressure of effective motivating forces.

The resulting dynamism leads to the contradictions, confrontations and

conflicts which have studded the internal and external life story of

every civilization.

Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the dynamic functioning of

civilization is its growth in magnitude. It might be more accurate to

describe the process as an explosive expansion--explosive because rapid

and spectacular.

Form limits function. At the same time function modifies and ultimately

determines form. The two factors are omnipresent and complementary.

Except for purposes of analysis they are two inseparable aspects of

every human society. Where form predominates, social status results.

Where function predominates fluidity, flexibility and dynamism are the

outcome. Rapid change occurs on the home front at the same time that it

is taking place abroad.

Growth at home takes place in two fields. The first is the extension of

the homeland frontiers, broadening the geographical area of the nucleus

around which the civilization is being built. The second aspect of

growth involves an increase in multiplicity, variety and complexity and

perhaps also a higher level of quality. Increase in quality is an

optional feature of growth and expansion. Toward the end of a cycle of

civilization quality declines.

For the record we list fourteen aspects of the domestic growth of

civilization: (1) population; (2) production of goods and services; (3)

trade, commerce, finance; (4)wealth, capital, income, capital

construction; (5) the defense establishment; (6) growth in numbers and

in variety of consumer goods and services; (7) specialization; (8)

formal education, literacy, learning; (9) advances in science and

technology; (10) growth in the arts; (11) rising standards of luxury for

the oligarchy and growth in the volume of the professional and technical

middle class and their living standards; (12) growth of the state

bureaucratic apparatus in its complexity and in the number of its

personnel; (13) growth of the sources of unearned income and especially

in the number of persons living on unearned income; (14) growth of

dependents, delinquents, criminals and other outlaws. This list is not

exhaustive, but it is indicative of the wide area in which domestic

growth takes place.

Paralleling their domestic expansion, civilizations expand

geographically up to the point of diminishing returns, determined by the

growth of overhead costs. This process has taken the civilization, its

personnel, its institutions and practices into territory not heretofore

occupied, sometimes with the consent of the "foreigners", but more often

in the teeth of their determined and long-continued opposition.

Expansion of a civilization is of necessity a movement from an urban

center and beyond the urban center. Each civilization has been built

around one or more urban nuclei which accepted and practiced expansion

as the primary law of their beings.

Expansion takes many forms. It may be peaceful, as travel is peaceful.

It may be competitive, as trade is competitive. It may be economically

aggressive; the search for markets, for raw materials, for investment

opportunities carried on simultaneously by representatives of long time

rival cities, states, empires. It may be a movement for a place in the

sun; mass migration, colonization. It may take the form of planned

military invasion having as its purpose the conquest and occupation of

foreign territory; the subjugation of the citizenry of the conquered

lands; the establishment of an alien government in the conquered

territory; the reduction of the "natives" to the status of second class

citizens in their own homelands; exploitation of the natural resources;

the levying of tribute; the imposition of taxes and the expropriation of

moveable articles such as bullion, works of art and other treasure by

the invaders, conquerors and occupiers.

Policies of expansion, conquest and occupation rely upon weaponry and

war-making as essential instruments. Historically their role has been

frankly recognized by builders of every empire and the leaders of every

civilization. All civilizations known to history prepared for war and

utilized war as the final arbiter in their pursuit of expansionist

policy. Empire builders and civilizers have taken it for granted that

might made right. The mighty, in terms of military striking power and

killing power, have fought over and inherited the earth.

The practices of every civilization have centered about exploitation--of

natural resources, of labor power, of rivals in the race for supremacy,

of weaker and less aggressive peoples. Expansion gives the ruling

oligarchy of the expanding nation, empire or civilization command of the

strategic vantage points from which the principle of exploitation can be

made continuously operative.

We have dealt with exploitation in connection with the economics of

civilization (Chapter 7). Its central concept is the "you work--I eat"

formula. In sociological terms it extends far beyond livelihood, into

the relations of man with the natural environment (ecology); the

management and direction of labor power and policy making; social

administration and policy implementation, including policing of the

territories lying within the frontiers of the nation, empire or

civilization, plus contacts and relationships with territories lying

outside the frontiers: in short, with the success or failure, the

domination or subordination of the territory under consideration.

Structurally and functionally a civilization cannot remain static. It

must expand or contract. If it expands, crossing frontiers and

penetrating areas heretofore considered foreign or alien, and proposes

to remain in those alien territories, it must have sufficient means at

its disposal to continue the administration of its home territory and at

the same time to take on the administration of the newly acquired

foreign territory.

Home territory administration has as its broad purpose the utilization

of available means to attain its ends and serve its interests.

Administration of areas into which the home forces are penetrating must

attain the same ends and serve the same interests on the "you work--I

eat" axiom. Unless the newly acquired territory can attain those ends

and serve those interests it is a liability, not an asset, and its

continued existence will pose a threat to the expansionist venture.

Natural resources, plus labor power, plus effective management and

direction must be integrated in the interests of the entire enterprise.

Self determination is of secondary consequence, coming into play only

after the interests of the whole have been assured and safeguarded.

There is of course the collective principle under which the interests of

the whole can be best served through the cooperation of its component

elements. But this is a horse of quite another color. It presupposes the

willingness of the respective parts to enter voluntarily into a

cooperative relationship. Sociologically speaking this is the antithesis

of the situation we have been considering: expansion and exploitation in

the interests and for the purposes of the expanding forces. So long as

expansion and exploitation are accepted and practiced as the basic

principles of any community, so long independence and self-determination

will be irrelevant and inimical to the dominant elements in the nation,

empire or civilization under consideration.

Under the "you work--I eat" formula natural resources will be utilized

in the manner best calculated to advance the interests of the ruling

oligarchy. Who will be the judge, jury and executioner in the case? Who

else but the concerned ruling oligarchy?

In the history of civilization this principle has been followed

systematically. The forests have been cleared away, the land has been

overgrazed, cultivated and exposed to the erosive attacks of sunlight,

air, water and frost. Wood from the forests has been hauled to the

cities and burned, has been used to construct palaces and temples,

houses and ships, with no recognition of the principles of priority or

renewal. If wood was available where must it go? The oligarchy decided

the issue in terms of ostentation and expediency. Rarely during recorded

human history have there been oligarchs who said: "Irreplaceable

resources like minerals must be used with extreme economy. Replaceable

resources like forests or top-soil must be used and at the same time

replaced and if possible augmented."

Decision making in the civilizations reported by history has been

chiefly in the hands of specially privileged minorities. The purpose of

these minorities has revolved around the provision of comforts and

luxuries for the decision makers and their dependents and the increase

of their wealth and power. Rarely has any ruling oligarchy said: "The

continuance of our privileges and our barest existence is the result of

labor power applied to natures gifts. We must safeguard nature and

improve the health and vitality of those who do the world's work. If,

due to unforeseen circumstances, over which we have failed to exercise

adequate control, there is some shortage, let the idler and the wastrel

suffer. Under all circumstances the producers must have all those goods

and services needed to preserve their productive efficiency."

Through the entire course of written history the shrewdest, the

strongest, the best fed and most comfortably housed have gained wealth

and power, kept them and added to them. This has been the central

sociological principle followed by the wealth-owning, power-wielding

oligarchs of one civilization after another. Nature has been polluted,

despoiled, pillaged. Society has been exploited and plundered. Most

civilizations, during most of their history, have been led and ruled by

the rich and powerful, who have used their wealth and power to advance

their own interests, with scant respect for the hewers of wood, the

drawers of water and the tillers of the soil. Those at the imperial

center have milked the periphery. Cooperation has been occasional and

confined largely to pre-civilized communities. In all civilizations

exploitation has been the rule; the exploitation of nature, of labor

power and of the social fabric.

The record of natural resources exploitation is well known. Paul Sears'

_Deserts on the March_; Fairfield Osborn's _Our Plundered Planet_;

William Vogt's _Road to Survival_, and Rachel Carson's _Silent Spring_

tell the story of the misuse and the extravagant abuse of nature. The

record of labor power exploitation is less publicized.

Food gatherers like the North American Indians had no machinery and a

minimum of implements or weapons. They migrated with the weather and the

available game, traveling with their possessions. Herdsmen also moved

about in search of pasture. Land workers faced four new problems. They

must stay with their land and make a weather-proof habitat in dwellings

and villages. They must make the implements needed for farming, building

and defense against marauders. They must accumulate and preserve enough

food to carry them from one harvest to the next. They must improve and

beautify their artifacts and constructs. Traders added a fifth

must--they must produce and accumulate stocks to meet the needs of

various customers as well as their own greed for profits.

Successive stages, from food gathering to trading and manufacturing,

required more energy--human energy, animal energy, and eventually

mechanical energy. Part of this energy enabled humans to survive,

another part enabled them to multiply. Still another part made it

possible for one portion of the population to live without productive

work on the work output of their fellow creatures. This exploiting

minority was headed by land owners, soldiers and priests.

Landowners built themselves and their dependents strong houses and

castles. Much of the labor power that went into this construction was

"forced." The laborer gave the landlord labor time in exchange for the

privilege of working part of the land for his own support. Soldiers

defended the landlord and joined plundering forays on the territory of

neighbors. The priests, in exchange for sustenance, mollified "higher

powers" and built temples in which the people could gather, worship and

be admonished.

Farsighted, energetic, resourceful men (and women), using mass

productive energy, built themselves castles, built their priests temples

and mobilized serfs, war captives and slaves who worked in gangs for

generations and centuries to assemble the raw materials, construct and

decorate the buildings, and perform the services needed to operate the

enterprises and to provide their owners and masters with the

necessaries, comforts, luxuries.

As centers of civilization grew richer and more powerful they defeated

neighboring peoples, brought some of them home as war captives and

exacted from their defeated rivals promises to pay yearly tribute in the

form of timber, metals, food and often of slaves.

Mobilization of energy resources had been proceeding on a small scale

for ages. Successful civilizers made this one of their chief tasks,

mobilizing energy forces and materials and using them to build palaces,

temples, mausoleums and whole city complexes with appropriate defenses

against marauders and other enemies.

Administrative networks, adequate to produce such results, planned and

directed the construction and administered and policed the operations.

Using elaborate techniques of communication, transportation,

fabrication, beautification, accounting, planning, initiative,

leadership, mobilization, maintenance and replacement of labor power,

imposition and sharing of authority, discipline, adjustment to deviation

and opposition, means for dealing with revolt and rebellion, the

builders of civilization performed their necessary tasks.

As civilizations have matured they have grown at the nucleus, expanded

abroad and experimented more or less successfully with various means of

exploiting nature, man and human society. Most of the competitors for

survival and supremacy dropped out or were forced out in the course of

continuous survival struggles.

Survivors of the obstacle race dealt successively with personal

rivalries; class conflicts; civil wars; dictatorships; tyrannies; with

overhead costs that grew more rapidly than income; with empty

treasuries, inflation, depression, economic stagnation; with increases

in top-heavy bureaucracies; with parasitism; with hooliganism; with the

growing role of the military in decision making and administration;

sharing the honey-pot with migrants and invaders; with rivalry and power

struggle at home and abroad; with division, fragmentation and eventual

dissolution.

Any student of the sociology of civilization must turn from this

analysis of function with the conviction that whatever the advantages of

civilization as opposed to earlier phases of human association, the

pattern of civilization in action is workable only to a very limited

extent. Civilization is not an example of perpetual motion. Rather it is

a social life cycle, with a beginning and an end, and a peck of

troublesome contradictions and conflicts in between.

Civilization is an integrative process. During the course of its

competitive survival struggle, potential building units of an expanding

civilization are tested out and included or rejected in much the same

way that a stone-mason checks and tests the individual stones of which

his wall is being built. The analogy is not entirely accurate. A wall

becomes a completed part of a total structure. A civilization is a

process of existence from conception and birth to dissolution and death.

At any point in the process there is a delicate balance between

integration and disintegration. As a matter of fact, both integration

and disintegration exist and act, constantly, side by side. If the

integrative forces are in the ascendant, form is built and function is

accelerated. If the disintegrative forces are dominant, form breaks down

and function stagnates.

This shifting balance and/or imbalance with its resulting build-up

and/or break-down exists geographically, biologically, sociologically.

It can perhaps be best described as successive change. It cannot be

referred to as evolution except in its integrative aspect.

Disintegratively it becomes devolution.

Civilization is a result of sociological build-up at a certain cultural

level. It has not been universal in all human societies, but

exceptional, both in time and in geographical space.

What has caused the pattern of civilization to appear, disappear and

reappear again and again during the period of written history?

There have been many answers. The most general answer is divine

intervention by beings above and beyond mankind. Whether such

intervention has taken place or is taking place, human beings are unable

to say with finality, but several thousand years of recorded history,

plus our own daily experience provides convincing proof that the

political, economic, ideological and sociological constructs which have

appeared and disappeared in the course of social history are, at least

in large part, the products of human brains and human hands. They are

man-made.

The social pattern of civilization, like other social patterns which

preceded civilization and which continue to exist side by side with

civilized communities, is the result of human ingenuity and human

energy, of human inertia, ineptitude, and the human urges to build,

decorate and destroy.

Variety in human culture is caused by the variety in the human natural

environment, the human social environment and in man himself.

Natural advantages exist and vary from place to place. There are fertile

valleys; there are also mountains and deserts. There are a few fine

harbors, but for the most part landings are difficult and dangerous.

Certain islands have become the bases of civilizations, but this is true

of only a very small number of many existing islands.

Civilizations have flourished in certain climatic zones and not

elsewhere. At one historical period civilizations were established in

the tropics and semi-tropics. In the present period they are located

chiefly in temperate climatic belts.

Another source of differences between civilizations is the variation and

the adaptability of certain peoples to the peculiar conditions out of

which civilization grows.

Still another explanation of the presence or absence of civilization in

particular times and places is the "great man" theory of history. All

human communities, pre-civilized and civilized, have had gifted leaders

whose thoughts and actions have brought about social changes. These

"greats" were the divinely, ideologically or sociologically inspired.

Divine inspiration or revelation led to the founding of religious

faiths. Ideological and sociological inspiration resulted in domestic

cultural changes and the extension of economic, cultural and ideological

activities into foreign lands, thus pushing the frontiers of nations,

empires, and civilizations farther from the chief wealth-power centers.

Thomas Carlyle wrote that history is the lengthened shadows of a few

great men. Arnold Toynbee concluded from his _Study of History_ that

religion has been a prime motive force in the building and preservation

of civilizations.

Technology has been a motive force of hard-to-define importance in

revitalizing, changing, expanding and perpetuating civilizations.

Increased productivity, expressing itself as increases in income,

accumulated wealth and various forms of capital investment, have

provided the economic basis for population growth and the more effective

exploitation of natural resources and labor power, advances in the means

for transportation and communication, accounting, planning management

and "defense."

Among the social motive forces responsible for the development of

civilization is the accumulation of wealth in an impoverished world. The

most important single factor in this connection was the development of a

class of businessmen in a society dominated by landlords, churchmen and

soldiers. Landlords, churchmen and soldiers lived during periods of

animal husbandry and primitive agriculture on the very narrow margins

produced during bountiful harvests. When harvests were bad, husbandmen

and farmers were reduced to starvation levels. Lacking means of storage

and refrigeration as well as facilities for transporting heavy materials

such as food, fuel and building materials, pre-civilized society

accumulated wealth slowly in mobile forms (precious metals and jewels)

and made few productive investments.

The advent of trade (business) and the trading class created a small but

potentially powerful class whose income and wealth were not derived from

direct contact with nature but came from trade, money changing, lending,

insuring and other activities associated with the accumulation and

investment of wealth in profit-yielding enterprises. Only in a secondary

sense did business depend on animal husbandry or agriculture. As their

primary task businessmen devoted themselves to the exploitation of labor

power and the storage and merchandising of the products turned out by

herdsmen, farmers, craftsmen. Part of their profits went into more

elaborate standards of feeding, clothing and housing themselves and

their dependents. Another, and a more crucial part of their profits went

into ships, warehouses, and the implements used in converting raw

materials into consumer goods and services, transporting them to the

markets, displaying them and persuading consumers to diversify their

needs, purchase a greater variety of goods and services and thus

increase the number and profitability of business transactions.

As this process mushroomed with the expansion of civilization, consumers

demanded a greater number of more expensive artifacts and consumer

capital goods, from housing and house furnishings such as bathrooms and

well-stocked kitchens to refrigerators, washing machines, air

conditioners, telephones, television sets, bicycles, automobiles and

elaborate recreation facilities and equipment. The expansion of mass

production and the mass market paced one another, constantly raising the

ante.

Mass production, mass marketing and pyramiding profits resulted, first

and foremost in the enrichment of businessmen. Their riches

automatically pushed them into a position of pre-eminent importance from

which they were able to make public policy and utilize public authority

for the protection and advancement of their own class interests. It also

called into being a vast array of new professionals; teachers,

engineers, scientists, technicians, social workers and propagandists,

converting the "middle class" from a shadowy remnant of feudal society

into the largest class numerically and the most influential class

politically in the entire modern community.

At the same time, economic enrichment and expansion increased the

importance of the war-making apparatus. The expansion of civilization

has involved a competitive struggle carried on constantly along several

fronts, economic, political, cultural, ideological. The means of

struggle in every civilization has included the military as a political

force and as a final arbiter in deciding who should win and who should

lose civil and inter-group wars. Victory and defeat determined the fate

of land and natural resources, populations, capital installations,

taxing facilities, domestic policing. This deterministic role of the war

machine has never been more dramatically in the foreground than during

the crucial years from 1910 to the present day, when war apparatus costs

have topped the list of government expenditures.

Growth of state functions with the expansion of the economy has

resulted in the creation of a vast state bureaucratic apparatus. Heading

this bureaucracy are the ministers of state, each with a separate

department. Under the department heads are sub-departments, sub-divided

in their turn into bureaus or separate offices. At each level, functions

are assigned and salaries are fixed. Entrance into this anthill is

sometimes by personal favor, sometimes by examination. Once in, however,

barring misbehavior, or some catastrophe like the abolition of a

particular bureau, the office holder is in for life with a pension when

he is retired for age.

Inside the bureaucracy there is a slow movement determined by seniority.

There is also some skipping, as when new bureaus are formed or when

death or retirement offer opportunities for the favored few to move

forward or skip upward. As we read the record, the bureaucracy existed

in the days of Egypt's Amenhotep, or in those of Rome's Augustus Caesar,

as it exists today--locally in every municipality, province, nation and

empire and generally throughout western civilization.

Every civilization known to history has had its priestcraft as well as

its statecraft. Statecraft spawned its bureaucracy. Priestcraft spawned

its theocracy. Both patterns have inter-penetrated entire civilizations.

Each locality, region and district has had its representatives of state

and of church. In some instances the church took precedence. In others

the state was supreme. As the civilization matured, using war as the

chief instrument of policy, the state in the person of military

dictators has tended to predominate. In every civilization the state has

collected its taxes and the church has collected its tithes.

The net result, in every civilization, has been a ruling oligarchy,

self-appointed and self-perpetuating, which has shaped policy, planned

and directed administration, exercised authority and lived comfortably

and at least semi-parasitically on the backs of the underlying urban and

rural masses, sharing its sinecure with its middle class handymen. In

some times and in certain localities the oligarchy has maintained a

representative front. Elsewhere it has functioned arbitrarily. In

extreme cases one man has ruled for a brief period. Generally the

oligarchy has held the reins of authority.

Each phase of human society has had its oppositions, its confrontations,

its conflicts, proportioned to its magnitude, its specialization and the

interdependence of its component parts, its ratio of change to stability

and its foresight, plans and preparations for dealing with changes when

they occur. Since civilization, of all known forms of human association,

is the largest, most specialized and most interdependent, it is in

civilization that we should expect to find the most intensive and

extensive contradictions, confrontations and conflicts.

Among the many oppositions of civilized association five are

outstanding: the we-they relationship; rural versus urban life;

subsistence versus acquisition and accumulation; hard work versus ease,

luxury and parasitism; poverty versus wealth.

Civilization is not only complex and interdependent in form, it is

avowedly competitive in its functioning. Politically, nation building,

empire building and the establishment and maintenance of each

civilization is a competitive struggle between declared rivals to gain

and keep place and power. Economically, the efforts to get and keep

natural resources and labor power and to use them to _Our_ advantage and

_Their_ disadvantage dominates the field of livelihood. Ideologically

_We_ are right, while _They_ are wrong. Culturally _We_ are superior.

_They_ are inferior.

The _We-They_ relationship developed very early in the history of the

human family. Individuals and small, more advanced groups have reached a

level of understanding and living based on the cooperative inclusive

formula of _"We, Ours, Us",_ but every civilization known to history has

accepted and adopted the competitive, divisive formula and poured energy

and wealth into the political, economic, ideological and cultural

struggle to take and keep for individual, local or class advantage.

Resulting oppositions fragmented civilization: (1) urban vs. rural life,

city vs. hinterland; (2) cooperation vs. competition; (3) acquisition

and accumulation vs. sharing; (4) riches vs. poverty; (5) the individual

vs. the group; (6) status vs. change.

These fragmenting forces have been accepted, adopted and given priority

by civilizations as they developed predominance. As they grew in

magnitude they limited or subordinated the forces of integration and

unification.

Opposites and oppositions lead to confrontations along class lines,

geographic lines, cultural lines, color lines, racial lines. The

traditional confrontation of rural vs. urban life is doubly underlined

by two factors: first, the countryside operates generally on a use

economy with pay for services largely in kind or by barter. The city

operates under a market economy with payment for services usually in

money. Second, the standards of life and work are more primitive in the

countryside than in the city. Third, as the civilization advances toward

maturity, city population increases while it declines in the

countryside. Consequently vigorous, energetic, adventurous people leave

the deteriorating countryside.

Increasingly the owners of land and capital live in the cities, visiting

the countryside for holidays and recreation, leaving rural areas to

servants, peons, serfs and slaves. Small owning farmers are bought out

or expropriated. Unable to make a living in the countryside they move to

the city. Lacking city skills they work as casual labor or are

unemployed. The city is divided between enterprisers, their

subordinates, owners of country estates and members of the state

bureaucracy on one side and vassals, servants, serfs, and slaves and the

unemployed on the other. The rich and powerful become richer and more

powerful. The poor and dependent grow in numbers--protest, demonstrate,

riot, revolt.

This class struggle dominates public life in the urban centers of every

civilization. The rich offer petty reforms and minor benefits to the

impoverished, semi-employed city masses. At the same time the urban

oligarchy breaks up into rival factions: the Ins and the Outs. The Ins

hold public jobs, spend public money, award contracts and pass around

favors. The Outs wait and maneuver for their turn at the public

pie-counter. Both Ins and Outs appeal for mass support.

Oppositions and confrontations lead to conflicts which have studded the

life of every civilization. Conflicts include wars which may be divided

into six groups: (1) Wars of expansion, conquest, colonization directed

toward the enlargement of the territories included in the civilization.

(2) Wars of survival among adjacent nations and empires. (3) Wars fought

to suppress unrest and revolt in the colonies and dependencies of an

empire or civilization. (4) Wars fought to repel the invasion of

migrating peoples attempting to occupy territory over which an empire or

a civilization claims jurisdiction. (5) Peasant, serf and slave revolts

and rebellions against the authority of empires or civilizations. (6)

Civil wars to determine the leadership of particular empires; wars of

leadership succession; conflicts and power seizures within particular

oligarchies.

In every civilization final decisions regarding domestic and foreign

issues have been made by an appeal to arms. There were laws and legal

institutions in many civilizations under which confrontations might have

been prevented and armed conflict avoided. Where these legal means

failed to provide solutions, contestants turned to armed force as the

final arbiter.

Competitive survival struggle has played a prominent role in the life of

every civilization known to history. Competition at its highest level

employs armed force as its instrument of policy. War, domestic and

foreign has, therefore, dominated the history of every civilization.

Walter Bagehot called war a state maker. In the same context, war may be

referred to as a civilization maker.

Conflict, including war, has played a major role, often a determining

role in building and maintaining civilizations. It has also been a major

and perhaps _the_ major factor in undermining and destroying

civilizations. Arnold Toynbee contends that war has been a "proximate

cause" of the overthrow of one civilization after another. No observer

of current western civilization can fail to note the determining part

played by war during the first half of the present century.

Every completed civilization known to historians has passed through a

sociological life cycle: origin, growth, expansion, maturity, violent

premature dismemberment and death in the competitive survival struggle

or gradual decline and eventual dissolution.

Every completed civilization has had small, local beginnings, on an

island like Crete, or a group of islands like the Japanese Archipelago,

or a tiny spot like Latium on the Tiber River, or an isolated area like

the desert-surrounded Nile River Valley in Africa. The seed ground or

nucleus of each civilization has been a small, well-knit group of

vigorous, energetic people, well-led, living in an easily defended,

limited area, enjoying relative isolation, but also having ready access

to the outside world.

At the beginning the growth cycle has moved slowly, from victory to

victory, as competing neighboring peoples have been brought under the

authority of the victor in local wars. After generations or centuries of

struggle a point is reached at which the nucleus of the growing empire

begins to expand, through trade, colonization, diplomatic alliances,

conquest, into an era of survival struggle in which rival cities reach

out for the same piece of fertile land, the same markets, the same

mineral deposits. Again the life and death survival struggle tests out

the people, their leaders, their ambitions, determination, tenacity.

Earlier struggles were local. Now the struggle area has become regional.

At the outset the peoples were amateurs in the science and art of

expansion, occupation, consolidation, exploitation. Through the hard

school of struggle they became professionals. From victory to victory

they gained in territory, in wealth, in administrative skill. One by

one, rivals were eliminated, annexed or associated with the nascent

empire which was by way of becoming the central empire of a maturing

civilization.

Generations of effort and centuries of time have gone into the empire

building process. The farther the civilization has expanded, the greater

the necessary input of manpower, wealth, enterprise and administrative

talent needed to keep the enterprise strong, solvent, masterful.

Eventually the expanding civilization reaches a point at which the costs

of further expansion are greater than the income derived from further

extension of its authority. Up to this point expansion had paid its own

way. Beyond this point it is a losing proposition--politically,

economically, sociologically. At this point begin times of troubles; bad

harvests; colonial or provincial revolts; power struggles between

individuals or classes in the homeland; new rivals moving in to share in

the prospective plunder of the mother-city.

From this time of troubles the civilization enters a new phase of its

lifecycle. Up to this point victory has brought plunder and prosperity

which have financed new foreign adventures and led to new victories.

Beyond this point lies stalemate, economic stagnation, military defeat.

Building an empire and establishing it as the central force in a

civilization is a long and arduous process. Once the process is

reversed, the decline may move quickly or slowly, but as it proceeds the

civilization is fragmented and eventually dissolved or taken over by a

more vigorous rival.

At all stages of this cycle there have been life and death survival

struggles. Peoples, nations and empires entered the contest, played

their parts, made their contribution to the up-building process. There

were ups and downs, advances and withdrawals, victories and defeats.

There were many contenders for survival and supremacy. Usually there was

one survivor which gave its name to the civilization.

The period of ascendancy of any civilization has been historically

brief. The struggle to the summit was long and exhausting; the descent

from the summit more rapid than the ascent. Literally, like the bear

that went over the mountain to see what he could find, and who found the

other side of the mountain, the civilizations that have reached the

summit of wealth and power have found on the other side of the summit a

steep downward sloping time of troubles that ended in dissolution and

liquidation.

Civilization, as a sociological life pattern, has proved to be seductive

and alluring in prospect, but in retrospect unsatisfactory and

frustrating. Civilization has proved to be not an opportunity for the

ambitious, but a trap for the ignorant, inexperienced and unwary. For

the many contestants who set out to conquer the world the experience

has been disappointing and on the whole disastrous. For the few who have

reached the summit the experience has been frustrating.

Civilization as a way of life is like any other contest. The struggle is

good for those who are able to benefit from it by learning its lessons.

Whether they win or lose is a matter of no great consequence. For the

losers the experience often is heart breaking and death-dealing.

Students of social history have been tempted to draw a parallel between

the biological life cycle of an individual and the sociological

lifecycle of a civilization. There are elements of likeness between

biological birth, growth, maturity, old age and death of human

individuals and of human civilizations. All of the individuals and

civilizations that we know have passed or are passing through such a

lifecycle. The same thing may be true of the larger universe of which we

are a minute fragment. However exact or inexact it may prove to be, the

parallel certainly is unmistakable, alluring. It may also be seductive

and mortal.

CHAPTER NINE

IDEOLOGIES OF CIVILIZATION

This study was laid out along inductive lines: an examination of the

facts with such generalizations as the facts suggest or justify. We

began our social analysis of civilization by presenting noteworthy facts

concerning the politics, economics, and sociology of various

civilizations. In the present chapter we deal with their ideologies.

We are accepting and following the fourth variant definition of

"ideology" presented by Webster's New World Dictionary: "The doctrines,

opinions or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc." In this case

we are reporting on the doctrines, opinions, thought forms and action

patterns of entire civilizations.

Our concern is not with the doctrines, opinions and ways of thinking and

acting advanced by elite minorities. Such an approach would involve a

study of comparative ideologies. Rather we are asking what civilized

peoples were trying to do, as measured by their political, economic and

sociological activities, programs and purposes.

It may be presumptuous for an individual to generalize about

civilizations of which he knows so little. On the other hand, if we

recognize the limitations under which all assumptions and

generalizations operate it is possible and often helpful to assume and

generalize, although the generalizations may be no more than interim

reports, subject to later amendment, correction or rejection.

What were the prevailing ideas of civilizations and what ideas were put

into practice? What purposes dominated and directed the lives of

civilized peoples? How successful have civilized peoples been in

achieving their objectives?

At the outset we must realize that in any complex society there are wide

ranges of ideology, from the body of ideas held by small uninfluential

sects to the purposes, ideas, policy declarations and actions of

governing oligarchies. We do not wish to defend or attack the ideas, but

to summarize them and understand them in a way that will give a group

picture of the purposes, ideas, policies and day-to-day activities of

the civilizations in question. For convenience in our discussion we will

take up, first, civilized societies as collectives, and then the

operation of civilized ideology as expressed in the lives of

individuals.

Presumably the most immediate purpose of all civilized peoples has been

survival, getting on as a collective or group from day to day, through

summer and winter, under normal conditions, and/or in periods of stress

and emergency. If the group cannot survive it loses its identity,

breaking up into the self-determining parts of which it is composed.

Survival means continued existence as a group--in the face of disruption

from within or attack and invasion from without. The group which

survives continues to exist and to act as a group that maintains the

common defense and promotes the general welfare.

Each social group competing for survival has a sense of its own identity

and a belief in its capacity to survive. This ideology is strengthened

by the belief that the group has special qualities and is protected by

powerful entities that will guarantee its success in the survival

struggle. The group considers itself better qualified to survive than

neighbor groups. Such ideas, carried to their logical conclusion, make

the group in question superior to its neighbors in survival qualities

and a people chosen by its gods.

A superior people, chosen by its gods, is in a class by itself. Other

people, by comparison, are inferior. It is the destiny of the superior

people to take the lands of their inferior neighbors, and, whenever

opportunity offers, to defeat the neighbors in battle, capture them and

force them to do the bidding of the captors.

Cults of ideological superiority are widespread. Put into successful

practice by a victorious tribe, nation or empire, they develop into

cults of superiority which assert: "We, the victors, are stronger,

better people than our weaker neighbors." As one victory follows another

the belief in superiority grows. People in an expanding empire or

burgeoning civilization are obviously better survivors than their less

successful competitors.

Competitive survival struggle modifies the cultures of both victors and

vanquished. The dispersal and adoption of culture traits, supplemented

by negotiation and accommodation, broaden the geographical area of the

victors, increasing the population and adding to the material resources,

the wealth and income of the enlarged group. It may also involve the

corresponding decrease of the geographical area, population, wealth and

income of the vanquished.

In order to protect itself, preserve itself, to enlarge itself and,

where possible, to improve itself, each competing groups aims to set up

standards of ideas and conduct to which all living members of the group

are presumed to agree and to which they must adhere. When new members

enter the group, by birth or adoption, they are duly indoctrinated with

the group ideology. Early in their history the individuals and

sub-groups composing every civilization adopted such standards and

promulgated them by the decree of a leader or by the common consent of

associated groups, as the outcome of negotiation, discussion, give and

take. During the history of every civilization such agreements were

reached and recorded in compacts, treaties, laws, constitutions,

specifying the nature and limits of the collective cultural uniformity

at which the community aimed.

The struggle for collective uniformity was long and often bitter.

Individuals and factions resented and resisted the imposition of group

authority. Internal conflict led to civil wars in the course of which

the group was divided or the solidarity of the group was reaffirmed

despite hardships imposed on disagreeing, divergent minorities.

Closely paralleling the group need for survival and uniformity

(solidarity) was the need for group expansion, or extension. In the

competitive struggle for survival which played such an important role in

the life of pre-civilized communities, strategic geographic location was

often decisive. Soil fertility, mineral deposits, timber reserves,

access to waterways, location on trade routes all played a part in

community survival, stability and growth.

Such geographical advantages are few and far between. Often they are

already occupied and defended by stable communities. Their control and

utilization are basic in determining the survival or elimination of

rivals in the competitive struggle.

Above and beyond the need to occupy the "corner lots" of the planetary

land mass was the urge of civilized peoples to advance from littleness

to bigness as a goal in itself. Confined by limitations on communication

and transportation, pre-civilized man was circumscribed and localized.

With the advent of cultivation, land workers were tied to a particular

piece of real estate on which they lived and worked. When asked whether

the village across the valley was Sunrise Mountain the local peasant

could reply: "How should I know? I live here."

Reacting against restricted living and pressed by curiosity and the

spirit of adventure, the imaginative and adventurous members of each

generation pressed outward from the homeland toward wider horizons. Many

traveled. Some migrated. Others pursued the will o' the wisp of

expansion by adding field to field. The grass always looked greener on

the other side of the mountain. The ambitious expansionist therefore

tried to control both sides.

"Move on! Move on!" became the watchword, without any particular

emphasis on quality. In one civilization after another bigness

(magnitude) was accepted as a symbol of success, because "the more you

get and keep, the happier you will be."

Mastery of strategic advantages, plus the illusion of mere bigness,

without any specification to quality, became keys to survival and

success.

Civilized man exploited natural advantages and augmented his power over

nature and society by increasing his wealth and multiplying the

population. At the outset of the struggle strategic geographical

advantages were occupied and utilized by local groups. Through survival

struggle, one of the groups, better organized, better led, more

determined and productive, succeeded in securing possession of one

strong point after another, until an entire region, like the Nile Valley

or the Mediterranean Basin had been conquered and occupied by a single

great power. The measure of success in the power struggle is the

occupation of strategic strong points. Natural resources, including land

and labor power, are among the chief spoils of victory.

Seven basic goals or principles were involved in the building of

civilizations: group survival; propitiating the gods; recognizing and

following aesthetic principles; achieving and stabilizing property and

class relations; expansion (bigness); individual conformity to the

collective pattern; and collective uniformity in a united world of human

brotherhood. At times and in places the basic propositions were

accepted, rejected, fought over. Each civilization which followed them

successfully was able to establish itself, maintain itself, and up to a

certain point add to its prestige, wealth and power.

The first goal was success in the struggle for survival. Collective

uniformity and expansion opened the path to wealth and power, in the

city, state, the empire, the civilization. From a multitude of local

beginnings the struggle for expansion and consolidation led to ever

larger aggregations of land, population, capital and wealth concentrated

in the hands of an increasingly rich, powerful oligarchy, protected and

defended by a military elite pushing itself ceaselessly toward a

position from which it could make and enforce domestic policy and order.

A second collective goal has been propitiating and wooing the unseen

forces of the universe: holding their attention; keeping them on "our"

side; relying on their influence for defense against enemies, mortal and

immortal, and help in providing water in case of drought, fertility,

assistance in healing the sick, comfort for the dying, consolation for

the bereaved and success in business deals. These multiple aspects of

ideology are summed up under the term "religion".

Each civilization has had its religious ideas and ideals, its religious

practices and institutions. Many civilizations have divided their

attention between civil ideology and religious ideology. In some cases

religious ideology took precedence, resulting in a theocratic society

under the leadership of religious devotees. In other cases, notably

Roman civilization and western civilization, religious ideology was

subordinated to secular interests.

In the early stages of western civilization, religious ideology took

precedence over secular ideology. With the rise of the bourgeoisie,

secular ideology moved into the foreground, making loud religious

professions, but also making sure that business-for-profit had the last

word in the determination of public policy.

A third collective ideological goal of civilization has been aesthetic;

the yen for symmetry and balance; the love of beauty; the desire for

harmony; the quest for excellence; the lure of magnificence; the search

for truth. Out of these urges have arisen the pictorial and plastic

arts, architecture, music, the dance, science, and philosophy, providing

outlets, occupations and professions that have colored and shaped many

aspects of civilized living.

A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and

maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines

based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon

proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige

and power.

Since the principle of private property has been implicit in every known

civilization, the ownership of land, capital and consumer goods and

services has been a prerogative of the ruling oligarchies, shared by

them with their associates and dependents and used as their chief means

of establishing and maintaining the "you work, I eat" principal of

economic relationships.

Private property, and its derivative, unearned or property income, has

enabled the ruling oligarchies of civilized communities to receive the

first fruits of every enterprise. They have also enabled the oligarchs

to establish a priority scale of income distribution under which those

who held property and its derivatives could have first choice among

available consumer goods and services. Second choice went to the

associates, retainers and defenders of the oligarchs. Third choice went

to the preferred, professional experts who spoke for and represented the

oligarchy. Fourth choice went to the artisans--skilled designers,

builders, fabricators. What remained went to hewers of wood and drawers

of water, the workers, women and men, who provided the necessaries,

comforts, luxuries upon which physical survival and social status

depended. Generally this proletarian mass, including chattel slaves,

serfs, tenant farmers and war captives, were outside the pale of

respectability. In a caste-divided community they were scavengers and

untouchables, living a life close to that of domestic animals.

Most civilizations have permitted gifted individuals to move vertically,

from the bottom toward the top levels of the social pyramid. Vertical

movement was severely restricted, however. Generally people lived,

served and died on the class or caste level into which they were born.

Members of classes and castes are not free agents. They have privileges

and rights. They also have obligations and duties. Classes and castes

are functioning parts of an interdependent social whole which can

maintain balanced order only so long as each segment recognizes its

obligations and performs its duties.

Social balance therefore depended on class collaboration. Successful

collaboration, in its turn, is the outcome of a general acceptance of

class and caste and general willingness to go on living and functioning

in a class divided society.

A fifth collective goal of civilization has been expansion from the

nucleus outward, with final authority exercised by and from the nucleus.

At the outset of the survival struggle which led to the establishment of

one language, one religion, one law, one authority, one loyalty, each

among the many contestants had its own language, its own religion, its

own law, its own authority.

These rival forces were temporarily confederated against internal

disruption or foreign invasion. ("Liberty and union, now and forever,

one and inseparable.") In the course of the survival struggle, the

separate parts of which the civilization was composed began with the

local autonomy permitted by confederation, and ended up with one among

the many contestants donning the imperial purple and establishing itself

as the master and supreme dictator--the Caesar or Pharoah of the

conquered, unified world.

Foreign territories conquered and brought by force of arms within this

imperium were subjects of a central authority which they never really

accepted. Authority continued to be exercised from the imperial nucleus.

The newly conquered territories were policed by professional soldiers

whose primary loyalty was national but whose responsibility was to the

aggregate composing the Roman or the Egyptian civilization.

The acid test of the expanding civilization was embodied in the degree

of acceptance of wholeness as opposed to self-determination. Were the

individual members--the provinces and colonies composing the

whole--willing and able to sink their differences in an unquestioned

wholeness, or were they prepared at the first opportunity to exercise

their right to self-determination and declare their independence of the

whole?

The resolution of this question constituted the sixth collective goal of

civilization: to establish a whole in which the component members were

able and willing to recognize the axiom that the interests of the whole

come before the interests of any of its component parts.

The issue of central authority versus local self determination has been

one of the basic issues of the present century because during the

preceding period, the British, French, Dutch and Spanish Empires had

been built up by the conquest and occupation of foreign lands. If the

nineteenth century was an epoch of expanding imperial authority, the

twentieth century has been an epoch of the dismemberment of empires by

movements for independence and self-determination.

Seventh, and finally, among the collective goals of civilization, each

has developed an ideology that justified empire building by conquest,

exploitation, chattel slavery, peonage, wagery, the supremacy of the

empire nucleus, the subordination of the periphery to the nucleus and

other aspects of ascendancy and mastery including "divine" rights in

politics and "natural" rights in economics.

Civilizations expect the individuals and groups of which they are

composed to preserve the status quo, work as disciplined members of an

effective team and be satisfied with the outcome. This brings us back to

the goal with which we began this discussion of the collective goals of

civilizations: The primary task of any civilization is to survive.

Each individual human being, living and working in a civilized community

occupies a sphere of action, enjoys the advantages and disadvantages and

accepts the responsibilities and duties which pertain to his sphere.

Within his sphere the individual succeeds or fails in so far as he leads

a rewarding personal life and contributes his share toward the

collective life of the group to which she or he belongs.

If the individual in a civilized community is to live a good life, the

first task is to maintain normal health, good spirits and a

determination to get the most out of life and to contribute at least the

equivalent of what he receives in service to his group.

As a civilization expands and extends its influence, the individual must

contribute his mite to the entire enterprise while adding to his own

store of goods and services. Acquisition and accumulation satisfy a

human desire to have and to keep. They also add to the wealth and well

being of the community on the widely accepted utilitarian formula:

happiness comes in direct proportion to the extent and variety of ones

possessions.

In most civilized communities the building unit is a family. It is this

family unit, usually directed by a male or father figure, who acts for

the family and represents it in the community.

In passing, the reader should note that the breakdown in family life now

so prevalent in many parts of western civilization is a departure from

the civilized norm. It is really a measure of the extent to which

western civilization itself is disintegrating.

The revolution in science and technology, mass production and the

distribution of goods and services through a mass market have put

acquisition and accumulation of goods and services as a life-goal to a

severe test. Until the early years of the present century no

civilization had provided affluence for more than a small fraction of

its population. The vast majority consisted of slaves, serfs, war

captives, and tenant farmers. Only an exceptional few were in a position

to live in comfort or luxury on unearned income. As each civilization

matured, ownership of land and capital diverted the flow of consumer

goods and services into the coffers of a diminishing proportion of the

total population. The vast majority lived at or below the subsistence

level. General affluence was a goal that was talked about and dreamed

about, but there was no way to test its practical effects on the

population as a whole.

Under conditions presently existing in many parts of the West, millions

of individuals and families following the utilitarian principles of

acquisition and accumulation have secured and kept an abundance of goods

and services in strict accordance with utilitarian principles. Yet they

have not been and are not happy.

Quite the contrary, in many cases they are unhappy, particularly in the

second and third generations of affluent family life. This is notably

true in the United States, Scandinavia, Switzerland and other parts of

western Europe. It is true to a lesser degree in New Zealand and

Australia.

Millions of families in these countries, with all their possessions,

fail to enjoy peace and happiness. On the contrary, they are so acutely

unhappy that many of them have come to regard acquisition and

accumulation as a sterile rat-race. Consequently multitudes of people,

young and old, have turned their backs on civilization, separating

themselves from their affluent homes with their glut of consumer goods

to live at non-civilized or pre-civilized levels. These individuals are

avowedly anti-civilization in so far as its material incentives are

concerned.

Similar attitudes were expressed in previous civilizations. Socrates

went barefoot through the streets of Athens. Diogenes lived in a tub.

Uncounted numbers of Indian holy men and early Christians rejected all

affluence, embraced poverty, lived simply and austerely. Religious

asceticism is no novelty. But the wholesale rejection of acquisition and

accumulation as a way of life certainly marks a turning point in the

popular attitude toward the utilitarian axiom that human happiness is

directly proportioned to the quantity and variety of material

possessions.

Civilization presupposes getting, keeping and exercising power over

nature, society and man. Each civilization has added to man's

utilization of nature. This has been a notorious aspect of western

civilization since the inauguration of the scientific-technological

revolution. After a century of intensified exploitation of the natural

environment, entire communities are reacting with dismay and disgust

against the resulting pollution of air, water and land, the wanton waste

of soil fertility, forests and minerals, and extermination of various

forms of "wilderness." Freedom to exploit nature's storehouse has not

brought happiness. On the contrary, it threatens the existence of other

life forms and even the continuance of human life on the planet.

Private enterprise and other forms of permissiveness have led to

practices that circumscribe and hamper life. Their declared objective is

the liberation and enlargement of human life and well being. Where they

have been tested out they have proved themselves to be obstructive and

destructive rather than creative and constructive.

Notable advances in science and technology have greatly increased the

human capacity to transform nature and remake society. Designed and

executed as a means of enhancing the general welfare, science and

technology might have promoted human well-being. But employed as a means

of exploiting nature and society for the benefit of a favored few,

science and technology, whether directed by European and American

promoters of the African slave trade, Spanish conquerors in Latin

America, by Belgians in the African Congo, by European whites in their

dealings with the North American Indians, by the Nazis in Europe, or by

Americans in South East Asia, have involved merciless exploitation

accompanied by revolting atrocities.

Never in recorded history was the capacity of man to modify nature and

exploit society more publicly tested out than in the atom bombing of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the purposeful devastation of jungle life and

village life in large parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. Reported in the

public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest

developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation of nature have

become part of the record of the decline and dissolution of western

civilization.

Exploitation of human society for the benefit of the few at the expense

of the many is an old story that extends through the entire record of

written history. Every civilization has produced a cluster of

institutions and practices that enabled a few rich and privileged to

live in affluence at the expense of the impoverished many. This

juxtaposition of riches and poverty is the logical outcome of a system

of social relations designed to provide the few with comfort and luxury

while the many are forced to accept penury and hardship. Exploitation,

carried to its logical conclusion, permits and requires a parasitic

minority to live in abundance while the majority must content itself

with scarcity, extending to death from malnutrition.

Another goal presented to individuals by the promoters and fashioners of

civilization is individual perfection, physical, mental, emotional,

moral. Every generation of human beings contains individuals who are

beyond the average--bigger, stronger, more talented, seeing farther,

searching more deeply, endowed with greater sensitivity, working more

conscientiously, imbued with a love of their fellows and determination

to serve them. Such individuals have genius in one or another form and

offer themselves and their products as a gift to the general welfare of

their generation. Scientists, poets, musicians, inventors, artists,

teachers, healers, philosophers, statesmen have appeared in each

civilization adding their mite to the sum-total of community culture.

Innovators, moralists and counselors of perfection have played a

noteworthy part by advocating and often by living noteworthy lives.

Reports of their sayings and doings are part of the folklore and the

history of each civilization. If they did not set the tone of their

generation, they provided it with a model toward which their less

talented, less creative fellows might aspire. If they were creative

artists their works provided models which were admired, copied and

emulated by their successors. If they were moralists or philosophers

their sayings were recorded, respected and repeated by successive

generations.

Each civilization has adopted lines of thinking and codes of action

which embody the best and most advantageous in theory and in practice.

These codes of thought, feeling and action are attributed to some

outstanding individual and passed on from generation to generation as

codes of conduct to which all right-thinking individuals may or should

aspire.

Human beings know everything about themselves except whence they came,

what they should do and whither they will go. To compensate for this

lack of knowledge and wisdom each civilization has established and

maintained religious organizations and institutions whose duty it was to

search out the truth, record it and teach it to successive generations.

In some civilizations the religious institutions have dominated the

secular. At other times and in other places the secular has maintained

its ascendancy over the religious. In still other cases the religious

and the secular forces have maintained an uneasy balance leading to

acrimonious bickering and sometimes to civil war.

Central to their discussions is the nature of life. Is it continuous, as

it appears in vegetation and the animal kingdom, or is it discontinuous

like the rocks on the mountainside or the grains of sand on the

seashore? Those who live for the moment prefer discontinuity. Those who

observe their natural environment are forced to the conclusion that life

today is part of a sequence or progression which relates the life of

yesterday to that of tomorrow.

Recorded history, from fossil and geological remains, to the books on

library shelves assures us that man has had a past. Projecting this

experience, it seems quite reasonable that barring accident or a

purposed intervention, man will have at least some future. To prepare

for that future, using the knowledge and wisdom at our disposal, seems

to be a must for any reasoning creature.

Even for the short planetary life-span of the average human, the logic

of this position seems inescapable, whether it applies to the next hour,

day, year, or century. In terms of our children and grandchildren it is

even more impressive. Today we find it desirable to live as well as

possible. If there is any future, the same principle should apply to its

implementation and utilization.

If the "hereafter" begins tomorrow and if those whose well-being

concerns us will probably be "alive" tomorrow, the science and art of

the future (futurology) takes its place beside other fields of theory

and practice as a must for all responsible members of the human race.

If the conditions presently existing in human society affordment, skills

and technical experience necessary to make significant changes, why

wait? Why not proceed forthwith to live a better life?

This dilemma has confronted individuals and sub-groups in various

civilizations. It has been particularly in evidence during periods of

decline and social disintegration. It has led people of both sexes and

all ages to uproot themselves from the old social order and reestablish

themselves in a social order "nearer to the heart's desire."

Such efforts have been described as "intentional communities" to

distinguish them from a traditional, currently existing social order

which emerged from the past encumbered with vestigial remains and

obsolete institutions and practices having little or no relation to the

needs and wants of a changing world.

Pilgrim Fathers in New England, William Penn in Pennsylvania, Lord

Baltimore in Maryland aimed to organize local intentional communities.

Similar efforts were made by the Mennonites, the Dukhobors, the

Hutterites, the Mormons in North America. The Christians during the

decline of Roman civilization led a movement to convert a large

geographical area to a new and better way of life. Followers of

Mohammed, several centuries later, made a similar effort to convert the

Eurasian-African world to their ways of thinking and acting.

Young people by the thousands, in the United States and other western

countries, are turning their backs on western civilization and are

organizing enlarged families and communes that provide their members

with a modified social order which aims at improvements here and now.

Necessarily such social experiments are looked upon with suspicion by

the Establishment. They are "new", "different", "subversive", "godless",

"wicked." Hence, they are criticized, denounced, raided and often broken

up as threats to existing law and order.

Intentional communities may grow out of consumers' cooperation. They may

begin as farm collectives. Generally, however, they consist of the

followers of outstanding leaders of religious or ethical sects. Many

intentional communes spring up, mushroom-fashion, and disappear with

equal rapidity. Others endure for generations and centuries.

In a very real sense they are pilot plants designed to correct

individual or social maladjustments and substitute new ways for old

ones. As pilot plants they experiment with deviations from existing

social norms, acting as a social laboratory in which new ideas and

practices are tested, modified, accepted, rejected.

Change is one of the essential aspects of every society. There are

changes in personnel. In each generation individuals grow old and

retire. Others grow up and take over the tasks of organizing the

communities in which they live. Profound social changes result from

discoveries and inventions: the wheel, the arch, steam and gas engines,

electricity, atomic power. Cyclic changes occur in the economy. Social

changes follow alterations in the weather. Nations, empires,

civilizations are produced by the changing life forms.

During long periods, social changes are so gradual that they are

unnoticed save by the more sensitive and perceptive. At other times,

social changes tumble over one another in an overwhelming revolutionary

flood which sweeps away the old, yielding place to new, "lest one good

custom should corrupt the world".

Changes in society beget changes in ideology. Reciprocally, changes in

ideology lead to changes in social structure and function. The more

rigid the social order, the more stubborn its resistance to change. By

the same token, more fluid societies lend themselves more readily to

changes in practice and in theory.

It is not possible to discuss ideology without some reference to the

closely related problems of means and ends. As we consider our existing

social establishment, in the light of unceasing social change, we must

deal with goals or objectives, with practicable modifications of social

form and function and with the way in which changes can be, might be,

will be brought about.

One fact is obvious. Whether social change is major or minor, local or

general, it shifts the social balance. Any shift in the social balance

involves reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, radicals, some of whom

will gain, while others will lose in the course of each social

transformation. All will be concerned and involved.

Since political change involves some alteration in the balance of social

forces, it behooves those who advocate and those who oppose social

change to maximize acceptance and minimize opposition in order to take

advantage of the gains and cut down the losses incident to all change.

For present purposes we wish to make seven notes about means and ends.

1. _Opportunists_ propose to act now and win what they can

today. Never mind about tomorrow with its sequences and

consequences of today's action. Sufficient for the day is the

evil thereof.

2. _Pragmatists_ believe in serving their own interests, on the

theory that whatever serves personal interests must have

first priority. "What is good for me/us is good for the

universe".

3. _Experimentalists_ are prepared to try out any suggestion

which promises to achieve the desired goals. Singly and in

working teams they test and try out, seeking the most

effective means of reaching desired ends.

4. _Innovators_ formulate projects and test out results, checking

and rechecking as they search for more effective means

of achieving results.

5. _Radicals_ seek out the roots, digging, sifting, classifying,

assembling their findings, announcing their conclusions and

working to apply them in theory and practice to the structure

and function of their communities.

6. _Revolutionists_ are in a hurry. Disillusioned with the past and

the present they seek by "direct action" to create a new

social order, out of whole cloth, quickly, here and now.

Never mind the means, get results!

7. _Totalists_ have the whole truth, attained through reasoning,

experimentation, revelation. Having learned the truth, they

dedicate their energies to the propagation of the faith.

Where they encounter opposition they counter it and, if

necessary, annihilate it with its originators and advocates.

As a matter of practical experience, proponents of all seven approaches

to social problems and social change employ a wide range of techniques

from persuasion to coercion. To support their projects they advance

logical arguments, elaborate half-truths, make emotional appeal; employ

trickery, deceit, preferment, privilege, flattery, soft living, bribery,

coercion, physical and social violence--individual and collective

extermination.

Civilization as reported in history and in its current practice is based

on five faulty ideological assumptions:

1. _Competitive survival struggle results in social improvement._

Survival struggle has certainly played a role in stimulating

discovery, invention and the diffusion of culture traits. Its

end results have always included civil and inter-group war

with its unavoidable costs in destruction, dissolution and

death.

2. _The effort to grab and keep, with its accompanying competition,

is a chief source of social progress._ The game of

grab and keep is play for children. Mature human beings

should strive to create, produce, share.

3. _The accumulation of goods and services brings happiness._

At the out-set of life this may be true. But accumulation

for its own sake produces the miser. Misers are not happy

people. Riches yield happiness only as they are distributed.

Accumulation brings many headaches, and few abiding

satisfactions.

4. _Successful accumulators "have fun."_ Perhaps they do, for

a time, at the expense of others on whose backs they ride

and whose life blood they suck. But mature men and

women do not "have fun"; they shoulder and carry their

share of social responsibility.

5. _Progress can be measured by the multitude of personal

possessions._ Not so. True progress for humanity consists

in movement from having to doing; from the possessive to

the creative; from the material toward the spiritual.

Ideologies have played a role in determining the structure and function

of every civilization. As civilization grows up, matures, and declines,

ideologies change with the changing times. In its early history each

civilization seeks acceptance for its picture of reality and its

techniques for reaching individual and social goals. As each

civilization declines and disintegrates, a multitude of counselors

clamors for attention to a particular formula that will prove acceptable

and workable in the existing emergent circumstances.

_Part III_

Civilization Is Becoming Obsolete

CHAPTER TEN

WORLDWIDE REVOLUTION DISRUPTS CIVILIZATION

Every organism, mechanism or social construct reaches a point in its

life cycle at which its existing apparatus must be repaired, renovated

and updated or scrapped, redesigned and replaced. Today western

civilization in its totality faces that dilemma.

The culture pattern variously known as European, western or modern

civilization, dating from the Crusades, has existed for about a thousand

years, and spread across the planet. During that millennium western

civilization has passed through a life cycle similar to that of its

predecessors. According to Oswald Spengler's historical perspective, a

civilization passes through its life cycle in about a thousand years. If

the Spenglerian assumption is in line with the course of history,

western civilization should be in an advanced stage of decline and

should eventually disappear as a decisive factor in world affairs.

Spengler's argument is fully and floridly presented in _The Decline of

the West_. The author offers a theory of history based on the existence

of an arbitrary and rather mechanical life cycle. It includes a period

of gestation, rise and expansion, a period of maturity and stability and

a final period of decline and dissolution. Spengler believed that

western civilization is in the grip of an irreversable decline.

The Spenglerian perspective is based on the assumption of a normal

pattern in the growth and decline of civilizations. The normalcy on

which Spengler based his assumption was disrupted around 1750 when a

series of new dynamic factors entered the stream of modern social

history:

I. Mankind gained access to immense stores of energy which supplemented

human energy, the energies of domesticated animals and a miniscule use

of water power and air power. To these traditional energy sources the

revolution in science and technology has added steam, electricity, and

the energy stored in the atom.

II. These new sources of energy were harnessed and directed through

mechanical and chemical agencies that greatly extended human capacity to

convert nature's stored wealth into goods and services available for

human consumption, and to develop a surplus of wealth and a release of

manpower sufficient to build up a backlog of capital which, in its turn,

produced goods and services with economic surpluses convertible into

additional capital.

III. This revolution in the tempo of production and capital accumulation

was parallelled by a like revolution in transportation and communication

by land, water, and eventually by air and in space. Electricity played

an essential part in the process by speeding communication and helping

to put transportation on wheels.

IV. Building construction was also revolutionized--metals, concrete,

glass and synthetics replaced wood and stone as the basic construction

materials.

V. New energy sources and the new capital expanded the volume and

variety of production far more rapidly than the increase in population

and turned the resulting surplus into a technical apparatus that made

possible mass production for a mass market.

VI. Mass production, transportation, construction and marketing ushered

in an era of surplus that replaced the age of comparative scarcity with

an age of rapidly increasing abundance.

Changes in the means of production play havoc with any established

social pattern. The economic alteration that accompanied and followed

the eighteenth and early nineteenth century transformation of western

economy overturned various aspects of the western social structure:

1. Representative government made its appearance and spread

widely;

2. Social services and social security, previously reserved for

the elite, were provided for wider and wider circles of the

population;

3. Changes in technology, advances in science, the replacement

of landlords, clergymen and soldiers by businessmen

and professionals, including the military, as the recognized

leaders of the modern society, put social control in the hands

of a new ruling bourgeois class;

4. The bourgeois revolution brought into existence two other

classes: the industrial proletariat as an ally and/or an

acceptable leader of the peasant masses of Europe. At the

same time it enlarged the middle class to a point at which

it was able to play a decisive role in the formulation and

direction of social policy in industrialized communities.

5. Fragments of the industrial proletariat and the greatly

enlarged middle class came together in an avowedly revolutionary

movement: socialism-communism, which reached

the power summit between 1910 and 1917.

6. The bourgeoisie countered with a cold war aimed to exterminate

socialism-communism, using propaganda, petty

reform and armed intervention as its chief agencies.

7. The high birth rate, the prolongation of life and mass education

provided society with a substantial body of skilled,

experienced, socially conscious, alert citizens, increasingly

aware of the historical changes through which they were

living and determined to intervene whenever their well-being

was threatened.

8. Extension and equalization of opportunity opened the way

for an informed citizenry to express itself and defend its

interests.

9. Emerging planet-wide social consciousness spread an awareness

that the concerns, plans and programs of any part of

the human family are of vital importance to the whole of

mankind.

Change is a universal force which operates in nature, in society, in man

himself. At times it takes place so gradually that one day seems like

another. At other times it operates with furious energy, turning things

upside-down overnight. Such change, whether it takes place in nature or

in society is revolutionary.

Rome's demise as a world power was followed by centuries of

quietude--The Dark Ages. These in turn yielded to a period of

revolutionary change that found its early expression in the voyages and

discoveries that spanned the earth after 1450. Three centuries later the

rebirth of western humanity expressed itself in the industrial

revolution that flooded across the planet and became an early stage of

the planet-wide sweep that has played havoc with nature, turned the old

society upside down and presently promises to produce a new society for

a reborn human race.

World-wide revolution is the predominant force in the twentieth century.

Its existence and some of its consequences have become an all-embracing

theme for thought and discussion. They have put into the hands of

present-day humanity the ideas, experiments and experiences needed for

transforming nature, rebuilding social institutions and practices and

opening the way for mankind to move confidently into a future replete

with intriguing and exciting possibilities.

An excellent summary of this entire field is appearing in a six volume

_History of Mankind_, sponsored by the United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Volume six of the history

is titled _The Twentieth Century_. Particularly noteworthy is an

Introduction of more than a hundred printed pages, Part I, _The

Development and Application of Scientific Knowledge_, and Part II on

_The Transformation of Societies_. Events surrounding the war of 1914-18

are correctly described as "a turning point in world history." (Vol. VI

p. 11)

World revolution is one aspect of present-day society. From our present

vantage point we cannot tell how far it will go or what it will do to

humanity and its present habitat.

Advances in science and technology have provided mankind with a new

stage on which to go through a new act and speak a new piece. What

effect will they have on the institutions and practices of western

civilization? Have they rendered the forms and functions of civilization

obsolete? Or can western civilization adapt itself or be adapted to the

very difficult situation created by the revolution through which human

society is presently passing? Can western civilization be reformed to

meet the new historical situation created by the great revolution or

must it be rejected and replaced?

If the institutions and practices of western civilization can be

adjusted to meet the demands of the new situation created by the

scientific, technological, political and cultural revolution, the

reformed social apparatus may function in a new day that is dawning for

the human family. If reform proves to be impossible, the apparatus of

western civilization must be replaced by a social structure in keeping

with the requirements of the new age inaugurated by the innovations

introduced into the human culture pattern by the revolution of our time.

There is widespread recognition of the need to keep the structure of a

society in harmony with necessary functions and updated to the

consequences of probable or possible discovery and invention. This is no

mean task as western experience during recent centuries has so clearly

demonstrated. Power elites of feudal Europe neither anticipated nor

prepared for the consequences of the industrial revolution. The result

was the smash and clatter of the American and French Revolutions (1776

and 1789) and minor revolutionary shocks through the nineteenth century.

Power elites in western Europe dealt with mass production and its

consequent abundance of goods and services with mass marketing, social

security and other crumbs of affluence scattered among the restless

masses. But when the trade winds of the scientific and technological

revolution blew in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the Chinese

Revolution of 1911 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Romanoff

dictatorship was still ordering back the tide of social change and the

dominant United States oligarchy cold-shouldered the Mexican Revolution,

took sixteen years to recognize officially the Russian Soviets and

waited twenty-three years after 1949 before they were even on speaking

terms with the Chinese Communists.

For two centuries, new ideas, institutions and practices have followed

discoveries and inventions as regularly as day follows night. The

consequent flood of innovations that has swept through the West and

across the planet in the past two generations has made drastic social

change a matter of the utmost urgency. The only open questions concern

the direction of the changes, their rapidity, and the success of the

social system in adapting itself to the shattering effects of newly

released social forces.

Social change can come with the rush and turmoil of revolution or the

studied step-by-considered-step constancy of the conscious improvement

of society by society. Two powerful social forces limit gradualness. One

is human impatience. The other is the rapidity with which masses of

people all over the planet are being informed of the good-life potential

implicit in present-day western affluence.

Impatience is emotional rather than rational. It is a compound of human

urges on one hand and on the other hand of the frustrations built up in

individuals and populations attracted by new wants and frustrated by

barriers of custom-habit; the carefully constructed apparatus of

direction, division and restriction (the State, the Church, the

communication media), and the potent class forces of the

counter-revolution.

In every modern community the media of mass communication are

broadcasting information regarding the widening consumer prospects

created by the current revolution in science and technology. In every

modern community there are eager, ambitious, hopeful individuals urging

their fellow workers and fellow citizens to get moving toward the

promised land of peace and plenty. In every community the bureaucracy,

representing the more comfortable and secure elements of the population,

is asking the less well placed class groups to "take it easy," take "one

step at a time," and remember that "Rome was not built in a day."

Conservatives, urging law and order under the status quo, have reason

on their side. The movement of a technologically oriented community from

monopoly capitalism into socialism-communism is without historical

precedent and therefore largely experimental. Plans are tentative; there

are shortages of materials and particularly of skills based on

experience. Costly mistakes are made leading to delay until they can be

corrected. The counter-revolution, abundantly financed by the forces of

reaction, operates constantly, in critical situations almost always

through the military, to preserve the "law and order" which are the

prime forces behind its wealth and its power. In an untrod, untested

area ignorance is a blank wall until it is pierced by ingenuity and

innovation. There are many ways to miss a defined objective and only a

few ways to reach it.

Cautious, experienced people, living comfortably, are inclined to let

well enough alone. Restless, hopeful idealists are eager to reject,

modify, improvise and replace.

Conservatives try to preserve both the structure and the traditional

activities of a community on the plea that a bird in the hand is worth

two in the bush. Liberals (moderates) would preserve the structure but

bring its activities up to date. Radicals would scrap the old and

replace it with a new structure and new activities geared to the new

possibilities and the new requirements.

Survival wars from 1914 to 1945 marked not only the end of Britain's

planetary domination but the termination of Europe's planetary regency.

The events of the period also loosened the bonds that had held western

civilization together.

A social structure which includes imperial nuclei and colonial

dependencies is constantly threatened by colonial unrest and revolt.

Colonial revolt, endemic in every civilization, became epidemic after

1943. The path to independence had been blazed by North and South

American colonials. It was followed after 1943 by the inhabitants of

British, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Asia and

Africa. The slogan of the independence movement was "self-determination."

Before self-determination can operate there must be a "self" capable of

making decisions and carrying them into practice. Identification of the

"self," or "nationhood" as it was called in this era, involved bitter

domestic struggle, internal reorganization and consolidation. The

process was typified in the British Colonies of North America between

1770 and 1789 which produced the United States of North America. Asians

and Africans who gained their independence after 1945 faced a double

problem: the establishment of nationhood, and regional consolidation.

The British colonies in North America won their independence as a loose

confederation of sovereign states. After war's-end in 1783, they were

able to form a regional federation: the United States of North America.

Despite their efforts, they were unable to include Canada, which was

under strong French influence. British colonials in Asia and Africa

after 1943 were less fortunate. After winning their independence as

Indians or Burmese, they were unable to take the next step and organize

a United States of Southern Asia.

The Bandung Conference (in 1955) of representatives from Asia and

African countries failed to realize the hopes of its conveners. After

prolonged deliberations it was able to go no further than the "five

principles" of self-determination and co-existence, under which the

independence of each participating nation was reaffirmed and each agreed

not to interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors. The

conference adjourned without establishing any form of organization or

making provision for further meetings.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, hopes ran high for the establishment

of a bloc of Latin American States, led by the elected president of

Brazil, Joao Goulart, that might act as a bulwark against further

"yankee aggression" in Latin America. In 1962 a military coup overthrew

Goulart, drove him into exile, jailed and disenfranchised his supporters

and lined up Brazil, largest and most populous nation of Latin America,

solidly behind the Monroe Doctrine of United States supremacy in the

Americas, implemented by Washington's burgeoning "Pentagon diplomacy."

African developments were even less fruitful than those in Asia and

Latin America. Asians and Latin Americans generally had reached the

level of self-identification necessary for statehood and national

self-determination. Large parts of Africa living at pre-national levels

of tribal identification, devoted their energies to the realization of

nationhood. Their constitutions announced their frontiers and proclaimed

their sovereignty, but inter-tribal rivalries and personal ambitions

turned each new nation into a battle field for prestige and authority,

with the military often making the final decisions.

Asians and Africans had won telling victories in their struggle to drive

out their former imperial masters. When it came to the affirmative task

of organizing responsible regional federations, their failure was

dismal. Asia and Africa were regionally disunited. Former colonial

people, still monitored by alien representatives of monopoly capitalism,

were fragmented by the self-determination struggle into theoretically

sovereign nations many of which lacked the experience and the local

expertise which are the indispensible prerequisites of self-determination

and of fruitful regional federation.

Another aspect of the world revolution produced more tangible results.

The latter half of the nineteenth century brought into being a

grass-roots movement of peoples demanding everything from petty reforms

of administrative machinery to planned revolutionary transformations of

the established monopoly capitalist structure. This movement

crystallized as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist

national and international struggle. From the publication of the

Communist Manifesto in 1848 until the beginnings of socialist

construction in 1917, it was a movement of protest against poverty,

unemployment, war, waste, inequality, exploitation. After 1917 it became

a movement to end imperialism, war and exploitation and substitute a

planet-wide social system that would give every human being a chance to

play a meaningful part in utilizing nature, improving society and

creating socialist women and men, capable of cooperating for the general

welfare of mankind.

The Enlightenment had diminished ignorance, spread information and

brought elementary education to the masses. Self-government had given

people confidence in their ability to make the phrase "we, the people" a

working formula for social improvement. The Industrial Revolution had

converted millions of superstitious, frustrated peasants into craftsmen

and professionals confident in their ability to use nature effectively,

to advance their own interests and to improve society. These and

secondary social forces laid the foundation for the social revolution

that mushroomed across the planet during the opening years of the

present century. The occasion for the revolution was four years of

destructive war (1914-18) during which two rival gangs of imperialists

led their dupes and victims to shed blood and destroy property in a

struggle to decide which band of plunderers should exploit natural

resources and labor power for its own advantage.