À propos of nothing, I have found myself wondering recently what it would be like to live through a collapse. Would I see it coming? What would be the signs?
A number of times in human history, a society has gone from a relatively high level of sociopolitical complexity to a much lower one—rapidly, within the span of a few decades. This is what we will call collapse. Collapse manifests as a lower degree of social differentiation and economic specialization, less centralized control, less behavioral control, less investment in art and monuments, a lower flow of information within society, less sharing and trading of resources, a lower degree of social coordination and organization, and territorially smaller political units. And a lot of people probably starve, if they don’t meet more violent ends.
Collapse is a fate that befell at least the Western Zhou empire; the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley; medieval Mesopotamia in parts of the Abbasid caliphate, including the Anarchy at Samarra; the Egyptian Old Kingdom; the Hittites; the Minoans; the Mycenaeans; the Western Roman empire; the Olmecs; the Lowland Classic Maya; Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, and Tula in the Mesoamerican highlands; Casas Grandes in northern Mexico; the Chacoans in what is today New Mexico; the Hohokam in southern Arizona; the Eastern Woodlands civilization, including the Mississippians centered on Cahokia in today’s East St. Louis; the Huari and Tiahuanaco in Peru; the Kachin of highland Myanmar, who oscillated between complex and egalitarian social forms as described by James C. Scott; and the Ik of northern Uganda, who have simplified society to such an extent that they allegedly reject familial bonds, although this has been disputed.
Collapse has happened often enough that it is not likely to be a series of flukes, but a general feature of human social organization. Not every society eventually suddenly collapses; it may be the case that when one does it is because some particular conditions obtain. What are those conditions? Can we come up with a general explanation? And while the subject is interesting as a pure matter of social science, we all want to know: could it happen here?
The GOAT on the topic of collapse is archeologist Joseph Tainter. His 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies weaves together historical and prehistorical fact, an insistence on explaining the cross-sectional variation, rigorous theorizing including an embrace of marginal analysis, and generally great social scientific judgment. It is a tour de force. If you want to understand why it has lived rent-free in my head for the last few months, as several friends can attest, read on.
Why complexity?
If we’re going to understand why societies sometimes spontaneously simplify, we must first have a solid theory about why they become complex in the first place. In both a historical and analytical sense, simple human societies arise first. These simple societies are highly egalitarian and non-hierarchical. Why do they move toward greater hierarchy, stratification, inequality, and complexity?
There are broadly two views on this question. One view is dominated by class conflict. The state reflects domination and exploitation based on divided interests. A ruling class coercively subjugates the population out of greed and selfishness. Marxists are not the only exponents of this view, but they are perhaps the most vehement, viewing society as sharply divided between workers who engage in social production and elites who appropriate the output. Of course, subjugation of subpopulations happens—American slavery is a gruesome example. The pure class conflict view is that subjugation explains the entirety of society, which is composed of ruling elites and subject populations.
At the other end of the spectrum are integrationist or functionalist views, which are based on shared interests between members of society. Even an egalitarian society is going to face problems, and many of these problems are most readily addressed by creating some form of hierarchy and social division of labor. For example, limited water resources may require the creation and maintenance of an irrigation system, including the need to mobilize and direct labor. The threat of invasion may require the establishment of military defense, including a command and control system. In general, society faces some problem, which requires the creation of public goods, which requires the creation of administrators, who are rewarded for realizing the benefits of centralization. Complexity solves social problems and serves population-wide needs.
Tainter adopts a moderate position, one that leans integrationist but also includes a role for class conflict. Complexity in society does exist to solve problems and provide benefits to the populace. And yet, “compensation of elites does not always match their contribution to society, and throughout their history, elites have probably been overcompensated relative to performance more often than the reverse.” Public choice considerations mean that even if complexity arises to solve broad-based social problems, the ultimate distribution of the benefits can be influenced by greed and power. “Integration theory is better able to account for distribution of the necessities of life, conflict theory for surpluses.”
Although the distribution of the social surplus is not always fair, in what follows, the role of complexity in society as a problem-solving mechanism is what is most important. Without this foundation, collapse is no big deal, or good, or perhaps it is even the ascension of society to a Marxist anarcho-primitivist Utopia. We can sympathize with this view when true subjugation is occurring, while recognizing that, in the general case, complex society exists to solve social problems.
Collapse theory
There are many non-general or underspecified theories of collapse. Tainter goes through these exhaustively, but I’ll run through a few of them that deserve special mention.
1. Depletion of a vital resource. These explanations are popular with environmentalists, and feature strongly in books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse (which came out 16 years after Tainter’s). Tainter has contempt for depletion arguments as a causal mechanism, because, as we have just discussed, the complexity of society exists to solve problems including resource depletion. What about all the times that resources are effectively stewarded? Is it not true that for most resource/society/time period combinations, societies do just fine in not collapsing due to resource depletion? Depletion arguments don’t explain the cross-sectional variation, why sometimes societies effectively manage resources and other times they don’t. “If a society cannot deal with resource depletion (which all societies are to some degree designed to do) then the truly interesting questions revolve around the society, not the resource. What structural, political, ideological, or economic factors in a society prevented an appropriate response?”
2. Insufficient response to circumstances. Suppose a society is faced with a problem, perhaps depletion of a vital resource. Not responding to the problem can lead to collapse. But why does this insufficient response occur? Often, historians have argued that a society is a lumbering dinosaur, a runaway train, or a house of cards—static, incapable of changing directions, or fragile. While these theories rightly recognize that collapse depends more on the characteristics of a society than on its stresses, they too do not explain the cross-sectional variation. After all, societies sometimes do respond to serious problems in dynamic, agile, and robust ways. What explains why they would suddenly stop doing that?
3. Elite mismanagement. To some extent, exploitation and misadministration is a normal feature of hierarchical societies. Even if we take a class conflict view, shouldn’t elites, if they are even slightly rational, view the support population as a vital resource? If so, then the problem becomes the same as in the “vital resource” explanation given above. If we blame elite greed and self-aggrandizement, why should we assume that this is variable, and if it is variable, how can we explain it? Again, allegations of mere elite mismanagement do not explain the cross-sectional variation.
Tainter discusses many other theories, and holds particular contempt for decadence theories of collapse, which are common in the literature, but which he considers mystical and non-scientific. They too do not explain the cross-sectional variation.
So what does explain the cross-sectional variation? Tainter develops a theory based on diminishing marginal returns. Diminishing marginal returns are ubiquitous in economic analysis and indeed in life. The first bite of a pecan pie is sublime; the 20th may be cloying. The same principle operates in countless domains. The exceptions are usually temporary, yielding increasing returns to scale over some range, but eventually succumbing to diminishing returns. Tainter argues that there are diminishing returns to complexity itself.
Society adds complexity to address problems and stresses. In an American context, this is easy to understand. When drugs are unsafe, we increase the stringency of FDA review. When federal projects are too polluting, we pass the National Environmental Policy Act. When there is an oil shock, we create a federal Department of Energy. Terrorist attack? Department of Homeland Security. Financial crisis? CFPB.
This added complexity accumulates. As it does so, it requires resources—Tainter emphasizes energy and fiscal resources—to maintain. Often, the resource demands of one piece of complexity necessitate more complexity, as when a higher tax rate necessitates new resources to be put into legitimization and coercion. The complexity accumulates as a system. At first, the cost-benefit ratio of this added complexity is very favorable, and the marginal benefits are high. As more complexity is added, the marginal benefits diminish, then go to zero, before turning negative.
A society that is past complexity level C2 on the graph above is in a very precarious position. Many members of a society at C3 would rather be at C1, although there is no direct path there because, as just noted, the complexity itself behaves as a system. As Tainter puts it, “when the marginal cost of participating in a complex society becomes too high, productive units across the economic spectrum increase resistance (passive or active) to the demands of the hierarchy, or overtly attempt to break away.” He emphasizes that this can be equally true across the income spectrum; everyone from the peasants to the merchant class to the nobility will be tempted to defect from the current system. “A common strategy is the development of apathy to the well-being of the polity.”
The situation can spiral out of control quickly. An overtaxed peasantry may put up little resistance to invaders. Increasing costs can make public services unsustainable. An increasing share of resources may have to be devoted to legitimation and control. The economy weakens. The ability or desire to meet new challenges evaporates. Collapse is only one new problem away.
According to Tainter, collapse can temporarily be prevented by the acquisition of a new technological capability or energy subsidy. With the additional resources afforded by the technology or subsidy, societies can support a higher degree of complexity. I think Tainter’s graphical representation of this point gets it wrong, but the image below from Ben Reinhardt accurately captures how I envision it.
Even this possibility, however, does not change the logic that the returns to complexity eventually diminish and go negative. If a society keeps increasing its level of complexity, it will inevitably get to a point at which the population would prefer less complexity.
by Eli Dourado | Read more:
