Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History Part 12

Cities, with their acc.u.mulations 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-cla.s.sed, defeated and/or absorbed by the victors in the compet.i.tive 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 cla.s.s structure. As the trading city developed, businessmen eventually played a dominant role because they were able to command larger incomes, acc.u.mulate more wealth and offer more aggressive leaders.h.i.+p.

Nuclei of both empire and civilization were a.s.sociated with a cl.u.s.ter 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 compet.i.tive superiority over a cla.s.sless community. The structured city was not only richer than the countryside, but it was in a position to provide leaders.h.i.+p, to plan and implement policy and act more effectively.

A civilization consists of a cl.u.s.ter of a.s.sociated 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.semblies 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 ca.n.a.ls, viaducts, roads, bridges skillfully built and kept in good repair.

Another significant inst.i.tution of civilization is the idea of owners.h.i.+p, 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 inst.i.tution 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 mult.i.tudinous activities of a commercial, industrial community.

Cla.s.ses, cla.s.s interests and cla.s.s 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 owners.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s lines.

The specialized, interdependent structure of civilization with its city control of the hinterland, its products and inhabitants, enabled the city-centered oligarchy to acc.u.mulate 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.s 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 diminis.h.i.+ng returns, determined by the growth of overhead costs. This process has taken the civilization, its personnel, its inst.i.tutions 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 compet.i.tive, as trade is compet.i.tive. 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; ma.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.set, 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 a.s.sured 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 relations.h.i.+p. Sociologically speaking this is the ant.i.thesis 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 circ.u.mstances, over which we have failed to exercise adequate control, there is some shortage, let the idler and the wastrel suffer. Under all circ.u.mstances 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 acc.u.mulate 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 acc.u.mulate 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, wors.h.i.+p and be admonished.

Farsighted, energetic, resourceful men (and women), using ma.s.s 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 a.s.semble 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.