The Law Of Civilization And Decay

It just so happened that I've been reading Christopher Lasch's The True And Only Heaven: Progress and It's Critics when a friend sent me Philip Mirowski's The Great Mortification" Economist's Responses to the Crisis of 2007-(and counting). This latter article led me to James K. Galbraith's Who Are These Economists, Anyway?

That's a very good question—who are these economists, anyway? I will go a small but significant way toward answering this question today in the first of a series of essays on where we stand in the Modern Age. I can only touch on the main concepts today.

The real meaning of Progress is defined by Lasch—

Once we recognize the profound differences between the Christian view of history, prophetic or millennarian, and the modern conception of progress, we can understand what was so original about the latter: not the promise of a secular utopia that would bring history to a happy ending, but the promise of steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all...

Starting mainly with Adam Smith, and with the amendments of many others during the 19th century, the idea that continuous "improvement" was possible came to be embodied in the type of political economy we have today. Lasch quotes from Simon Patten's The New Basis Of Civilization (1921) to describe our roots—

Patten's widely acclaimed treatise ... argued quite explicitly that the emergence of a "pleasure or surplus economy" effectively nullified the "ancient tragic model" of civilization and decay. "The story of the rise and fall of civilizations, repeated again and again, seems to justify the familiar conclusion that the decline of a society after an epoch of prosperity is a natural, incontrovertible law." But "those who would predict tomorrow's economic states from a study of the economic states of Rome or Venice" overlooked the unprecedented abundance made possible by the productive system, which placed civilization on a new basis. Their apprehensions belonged to a "vanishing age of deficit" ... On the contrary, man's dominion over nature put an end to the "reign of want." according to Patten. "The social surplus is the superlative machine brought forth in the machine age for the quickening of progress."

Patten's optimism required the corollary assumption, directly opposed to the linkage of poverty and progress made by Henry George and Brooks Adams, that the growth of inequality could be reversed...

You can easily recognize the consumer society we live in today in Patten's views. The available "abundance" and our ability to consume are assumed to grow forever. Indeed, this is what Progress came to mean in the 20th century. Nothing has changed in this regard in 2010. That the available abundance might cease to grow or diminish in a new "age of deficit" is antithetical to our faith that Progress is inevitable & enduring.

The belief in this doctrine is nearly universal in our times. To dissent to the Progress paradigm in this day & age is to be cast as some kind of dystopian wacko. That there were other views of how the world works have long ago faded from memory. Simon Patten was responding to people like Henry George, who believed that the law of civilization and decay described below contradicted the notion of continuous improvement. Here is Lasch again, quoting from George's Progress And Poverty (1920)—

George's offense ... lay in his insistence that the theory of continuous progress—the "hopeful fatalism" that "now dominates the world of thought"—was contradicted by the "rise and fall of nations", the "growth and decay of civilizations." George did not deny that "we of modern civilization" stood "far above those who proceeded us." What he denied was that the achievements of modern civilization could be attributed to improvements now "permanently fixed in mental organization."

History, he thought, did not support the "current view" that "improvement tends to go on unceasingly, to a higher and higher civilization." The modern world owed its wealth and power to the transmission of skills and knowledge from one generation to the next; but the delicate mechanism of cultural transmission had broken down many times in the past, and could easily break down in the future...

[My note: Brooks Adams wrote a book called The Law Of Civilization And Decay (1895). I am not referring to that book or its contents when I cite the general law of civilization and decay in this post.]

You will recall that Simon Patten's optimism required the "corollary assumption" that the growth of (wealth, income) inequality could be reversed. George did not think this was possible. In fact, it was the inevitable wealth inequality brought about by endless growth which "must bring progress to a halt"—

This truth [the law of civilization and decay] involves both a menace and a promise.

It shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by the road which every previous civilization has trod."

It is not an accident that this blog is called Decline Of The Empire. I do not believe in Progress, for History and Human Nature—no improvements have been "permanently fixed in mental organization"—argue strongly against it. I subscribe to the law of civilization and decay. Furthermore, I do my best to document the ubiquitous decay of American society everyday. This puts me in direct opposition to virtually every economist, every government official, every politician and every pundit in this Great Land Of Ours. I'm more or less comfortable in that role.

Henry George's point about "the evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth" is well-taken. I myself have described it at great length, most recently in my post Trickle Down Economics. The tendency of wealth inequality to "bring progress to a halt" is obvious in the United States. See my posts The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing or Wiping Out The Middle Class. This deplorable trend is very far along, irreversible, and accelerating. Along with other disasters, it will be our undoing.

I have said little that might provide a direct answer to Galbraith's question who are these economists, anyway? But the answer should now be obvious: Economists are the High Priests of Progress who oversee & maintain Simon Patten's "superlative machine" to fuel ever-growing consumption. This goal is Holy, and the Sacred Obligation of economists is to make it so. I shall relate their role as Secular Priests to their manifest failure to understand why the superlative machine broke down later this week.

Comments

[Edward Boyle]

So a functioning middle class is necessary for the maintenance of a stable economic and social order.

I read a bit of a Roman history recently and in early Rome everyone was at a similar level, belief in the Gods, hard work, a society of hardworking peasants, merchants, etc. with common goals for the common good. That turned later into an empire with corruption, decadence and poverty. Life was cheap. The Gods were the emperors. Excess wealth due to resource drawdown is a societal illness. Moderate consumption according to current needs with longterm resource constraints of future generations in view is the view of a "religious" individual and community of an early stage of a civlization (e.g.Puritans/early Romans).

I never heard of economists in Rome. But somebody must have thought up management concepts to keep stuff working although it wasn't. Economists are B.S. artists needed when a society has become so complicated that nobody can understand how it works anymore. The economists are paid by the rich to justify their behaviour. A pseudoscience created by a society whose religion has become science (more inaccessible high priests with mumbo jumbo talk) having killed the "God of common sense" (to whom Everyman had access) long ago.

[Danny]

Oh Dave, you have shaken a sacred tree, and embarked on an immensely ambitious project: To explain why Mankind's defining myth is a lie. You will be tossed aside as a lunatic, a fringe dweller, by all those who dare partake of your forbidden writings. Good luck to you, my friend. I will pray you do not lose your way.

[LeRoy Murray]

I've read Smith, Patten, even Henry George, et al, but personally I find Malthus becoming more relevent every day, as population grows faster and farmers grow fewer, and we depend more and more on corporate farms to feed us, world wide. At some point we will outgrow food production, and everything else becomes moot.

Lee Murray

[jamesb]

Empires rise, empires fall

The USA is a turbocharged empire, thanks to oil, so a fast rise and a fast decline.

Demonising Hemp has undone the USA as a nation and others. Bring it back and the USA will rise again. Only the people can do this for themselves.

Maya, Egypt, Anasazi,Norse, all have tombs and remains of the kings and priests who would not control their ego. Nature wins, everytime. Dont follow them off the cliff.

Let the fools destroy themselves, Nature will always provide for those who are willing to learn from it.

Stand back, watch the dominoes fall, gether your friends and family, plant your seeds, sing around the fire and BE HAPPY, Life is eternal.

For clean water, anytime, anywhere - follow this link http://www.sodis.ch/methode/index_EN

Peace

[Greg Pinelli]

Dave and I part company on the idea that the idea of Progress is somehow refuted by what we see taking place in the world today. Progress..real progress..is simply a template for improving life for those who choose to take advantage of the past. Roman law struggled along for 500 years during the Middle Ages and emerged as property rights in the Netherlands and then throughout much of the Western Worlds.

Dave simply confabulates Progress with Financial Growth. The end game for this kind of seedy step child of Progress is what we have..financial Ponzi schemes taken to the Corporate level..and pathetic notion's of entitlement that make any piece of poor luck into a God given economic right and obligation on someone else. The good news is that the Market rules all..much like Mother nature it eventually kicks every phony, arrogant butt way far down the block...