Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History Part 11

Civilized merchandizers take two other steps aimed to activate consumption. They develop new lines of merchandise that will have more customer appeal, leading to new wants. They also advertise new wares that will create new wants, bring back old customers and attract new ones.

For the foot-weary customer who has shopped away his energy and enthusiasm for buying more and more, a civilized marketplace furnishes food and shelter, recreation, entertainment and culture--beer, libraries, concert halls and circuses as well as food, clothing and shelter.

These multiple functions of a civilized economy are part and parcel of the changes which have converted the simple barter deal of exchanging a pair of shoes for a shirt into a specialized, civilized market place.

They also cause civilized economies to devote far more time and money to marketing goods and services than they spend in their manufacture. In a broad sense, these supplementary costs are "overhead."

Shirt makers and shoemakers convert raw materials and partly finished goods into shirts and shoes. Operating costs of manufacture are minimal in a civilized economy. The major items that go into the final price of the product are overhead costs.

Current accounting practices include in overhead: taxes, interest, insurance and general items. Actually the price of goods and services in a civilized economy includes minimal charges for raw materials and labor and maximum charges for overhead.

There is another phase of overhead which pyramids with each advance in the extent and complexity of a civilization--taxes to cover the costs of government. As the civilization expands and specializes, governmental services multiply. The number of government workers grows in proportion and often out of proportion to the total production costs. Expenses of government rise and with them the corresponding need to increase taxes.

Overhead costs in the village or small town are low. Much of the "public service" is done by citizens who volunteer their time and energy. In the centers of civilization public service is a profession, often well paid and usually quite permanent.

Expansion is a basic feature in the life of every civilization.

Expansion increases overhead costs. When American Indians made their silent way through the forests or roamed the plains there was no overhead. Each provided his own means of locomotion. With roads came bridges. With roads and bridges came capital costs. As dirt roads gave way to macadam and macadam to asphalt and concrete, as country roads, winding over hill and through dale were replaced by graded superhighways cut straight through or built over all obstacles, the cost per mile rose fantastically. All of these added costs appeared somewhere in the tax bills which citizens were required to pay.

In any enterprise overhead costs rise in direct proportion to the extent and complexity of the social order. As they rise, they increase the prices of the goods and services which citizens (or consumers) must pay for their livelihood. A good ill.u.s.tration of this principle is the price of an identical acre of land: in the remote countryside; on an improved highway; in the suburbs of a growing city and at the city center.

Increasing wealth brings greater risks. Wealthy cities like wealthy individuals and families must pay for their protection against robbery and piracy; against extortion and expropriation. Among important business enterprises insurance ranks high. The costs and profits of insurance are suggested by elaborate insurance company buildings and the high salaries paid to their officials.

Insurance, usually a private overhead, comes high. Public insurance: maintenance of law and order, crime and punishment, the secret and open police, the armed forces, (land and sea and air) are vastly more expensive. If, to these limited costs of overhead are added the costs of militarism as a public enterprise and the ruinous costs of military adventurism and its inevitable wars, the mounting costs lead to insolvency and eventual economic and social ruin.

Another overhead cost which plays havoc with civilized nations and peoples is the support of a bureaucracy. Increased extent and complexity exhaust the community capacity for voluntary service and lead into an era where the volunteers who carried on the limited public activities of a village are supplemented and eventually replaced by a constantly growing body of public servants. Growing extent and complexity plus the need for finding safe places for those who are useful to the rich and powerful, widens and deepens the public crib. In large enterprises, private as well as public, paper work employs a small army, which must be fed and housed at a level worthy of "a great nation." Business machines reduce the personnel necessary for a given social enterprise, but their high capital and operational costs increase overhead.

Another aspect of overhead costs is the multiplication of parasitic professions. In simple villages, there are few body servants, no able-bodied individuals who fetch and carry at the word of command, or who only stand and wait for the moment when some whim, fancy or real need may call for their services.

Village life, with its limited area and still more limited resources, has little economic surplus upon which parasitism can feed. There is landlordism, of course, but the margin of surplus is small. The city, the province, the nation, the empire present a different picture.

Parasitic professions abound and proliferate: money changers, money lenders, realtors, confidence men, gamblers, fortune tellers, priests, entertainers, artists, thieves, robbers, and prost.i.tutes abound, consume more than their share of the community income, without making an equivalent return in production or service. Their support adds to the social overhead.

Another source of social overhead are the numerous followers of the "something for nothing" cult who receive unearned income--an income derived from civilization in its mature and its final stages.

Broadly there are two types of income--earned income and unearned income. Earned income is something for something--or return for goods provided or service rendered. Unearned income is something for nothing--an income derived from some monopoly, privilege, sinecure or form of property ownership.

Property in persons or things has been a characteristic feature of all civilizations. Property owners, receiving rents, interest, dividends, in proportion to the amount of property which they own are not called upon to make equivalent return in exchange for their property--based income.

This personal parasitism of property owners is aggravated by provisions of property law under which the owners of property can give, sell or bequeath these sources of unearned income to family members, friends, a.s.sociates.

Eventually, unearned income, handed on through generations, creates a cla.s.s or even a caste of citizens who live without rendering an equivalent of services, on the labor of their fellows, adding a significant amount to the total of overhead costs.

Wealth ownership, the exercise of power, living in luxury on unearned income, add to overhead costs, but are accepted as respectable in civilized communities. Another and far less respectable form of social parasitism is the manipulation of social forces in a way that will bring the operator more than a fair share of social income with no equivalent in service. Such is "politics" or "politicising." "Politics" as a source of livelihood takes many forms, some less legitimate than others.

The most usual source of office-holding is the humble work of the clerk, handyman or messenger, responsible for carrying out the nagging routine of government. Beyond this common labor of public service are public servants skilled in their several professions. Beyond and above them are department heads and still higher are the appointed or elected officials responsible for the success or failure of a given public policy.

Who are the occupants of town, city, state, and national positions of authority and responsibility? Preferably they are elected or appointed because of their popularity or are the successful product of civil service examinations. At worst they are appointed as a return for favors or else because they are relatives or friends of successful politicians or their backers.

Whatever its source and however efficient or inefficient its performance, the body of paid public servants increases with the expanding life of locality, region, province, state, nation and empire.

With its growth goes corresponding accommodations in wages and salaries, office s.p.a.ce and equipment and other routine outlays. Frequently the increase of the emoluments of bureaucrats, especially at the higher levels of authority and responsibility, creates sinecures which are filled by parasites or by individuals who are engaged in shoring up the bureaucracy rather than rendering a public service. The outlays necessary to finance such a top-heavy bureaucratic fabric grow in direct proportion to the age and rigidity of the bureaucracy, draining off public funds into private coffers and adding uncompensated elements to overhead costs. If inflation is a problem, at or beyond the apex of an imperial epoch or cycle of civilization, financial costs rise correspondingly.

The chief overhead cost in every civilization is and has been war.

Examine the budget of the United States or any other leading civilized power. From two-thirds to three-quarters of central government outlays are for war in the past and preparation for war in the future.

The net result of rising overhead costs appears in the history of all previous civilizations. They are eating out the vitals of western civilization while we write and read these words.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE SOCIOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION

Sociology is the science and art of a.s.sociation.

Human a.s.sociations range from kinship groups like the family, tribe and clan to larger more complex groups like villages, towns, cities, nations, empires, to still more inclusive leagues, federations and civilizations.

In a broad view, sociology includes politics, economics and ideology.

For the purposes of our social a.n.a.lysis, we have divided the field into four separate categories, beginning with politics, continuing through economics and drawing our study together under the general headings of sociology and ideology.

No civilization that we have studied can be regarded as an intentional or projected or planned enterprise. On the contrary, civilizations have developed and matured in true pragmatic fashion, taking one step after another because their predecessors had followed this course or because, given the human urges and the available natural and social opportunities, the next step seemed to be determined by previous steps plus the momentum of the enterprise. In the course of this development an ideology was built up and modified in such a way as to justify and strengthen the entire project.

When William Penn received a grant of land from the English Crown, he was already committed, ideologically, by the Quaker faith to Quaker methods. Without ever seeing his proposed home across the Atlantic he drew up a plan for his City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia), and for the organization and conduct of his enterprise. The entire project was formulated in Penn's mind and put on paper. This is a good example of an intentional community.

No civilization so far as I know, has followed such a sequence.

Certainly in the civilizations with which we are most familiar, political and economic forces, the principles of necessity and availability have led to the formulation of an ideology that would justify and promote the interests of the social group which was controlling and directing the community or communities in which the civilization was maturing.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that each of the component elements making up the expanding civilization--each people, city, state, nation, empire--developed its own total culture pattern, subject to the pressures mutually exerted by neighboring communities. The aggregate of these culture patterns, separately and often antagonistically matured, comprised a lesser totality called an empire and a larger totality called a civilization. It is with this larger totality that we are concerned.

We propose to a.n.a.lyse the sociology of civilization under the following headings: (1) the structure or anatomy; (2) the function, physiology, or process; (3) motive forces in civilization; (4) contradictions and conflicts, with a final section on the life cycle of civilization.

The structure of human society consists of specialized economic, political, administrative and cultural groupings a.s.sembled and maintained in relationships that supply necessities, conveniences, comforts, luxuries for the individuals, together with capital goods and services for the social groups composing the civilization.

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 compet.i.tor in the race for supremacy develops productivity, acc.u.mulates 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.