If you cap the volcano, eventually the pressure beneath rises to the
point that the cap gets blown off in spectacular fashion.
That the dramatic upheavals of war, pestilence and environmental collapse
can trigger social disorder and revolution is well-established.
Indeed, this dynamic can be
viewed as the standard model of social disorder/revolution: a large-scale
crisis—often a bolt-from-the-blue externality—upends the status quo.
Another model identifies
warring elites and imperial meddling as a source of revolution: a new elite
forcibly replaces the current elite (known colloquially as meet the
new boss, same as the old boss) or a dominant
nation-state/empire arranges a political coup to replace the current leadership
with a more compliant elite.
A third model was described
by David Hackett Fischer in The Great Wave: Price
Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. By assembling price and wage
data stretching back hundreds of years, Fischer found that cycles of economic
growth spawn population growth, resulting in more workers entering the market
economy. Their earnings trigger a demand-driven expansion of essential
commodities such as grain and energy (wood, coal, oil, etc.).
In the initial phase, wages rise and commodity prices remain stable as
supplies of essential goods expand and the demand for labor pushes up wages.
But this virtuous cycle reverses when the supply of essentials no longer
keeps pace with rising population and demand: the price of essentials begin an
inexorable rise even as an oversupply of labor drives down wages.
Fisher found that this wage/price cycle often ends in transformational
social upheaval.
While proponents of these models have a wealth of historical examples
to draw upon, these models miss a key factor: the vulnerability or
resilience of the nation-state facing crises.
Some nations survive invasions, environmental catastrophes, epidemics
and inflation without disintegrating into disorder. Something about these
nation’s social/ economic /political order makes them more resilient than other
nations.
So rather than accept the proximate causes of disorder as the sole
factors, we should look deeper into the social order for the factors behind a
nation’s relative fragility or resilience.
The Decline Of Shared Purpose
Historian Peter
Turchin defined a key factor in the resilience of the social order as
"the degree of solidarity felt between the commons and aristocracy,"
that is, the sense of purpose and identity shared by the aristocracy and commoners
alike.
"Unlike the selfish elites
of the later periods, the aristocracy of the early Republic did not spare its
blood or treasure in the service of the common interest. When 50,000 Romans, a
staggering one fifth of Rome’s total manpower, perished in the battle of
Cannae, the senate lost almost one third of its membership. This suggests that
the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the
average citizen….
The wealthy classes were also
the first to volunteer extra taxes when they were needed… A graduated scale was
used in which the senators paid the most, followed by the knights, and then
other citizens. In addition, officers and centurions (but not common soldiers!)
served without pay, saving the state 20 percent of the legion’s payroll….
The richest 1 percent of the
Romans during the early Republic was only 10 to 20 times as wealthy as an
average Roman citizen.
Roman historians of the later
age stressed the modest way of life, even poverty of the leading citizens. For
example, when Cincinnatus was summoned to be dictator, while working at the
plow, he reportedly exclaimed, 'My land will not be sown this year and so we
shall run the risk of not having enough to eat!'"
Once the aristocracy’s ethic of public unity and service
was replaced by personal greed and pursuit of self-interest, the empire lost
its social resilience.
Turchin also identified
rising wealth inequality as a factor in weakening social solidarity. By the
end-days of the Western Roman Empire, elites held not 10 times as much wealth
commoners but 10,000 times as much as average citizens.
Wealth inequality is both a cause and a symptom: it is a cause of
weakening social resilience, but it also symptomatic of a system that enables
the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few at the expense of
the many.
Diminishing Returns On
Complexity & Expansion
Thomas Homer-Dixon’s
excellent book The Upside of Down:
Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe,
Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization outlines two systemic sources of
increasing fragility: diminishing returns on complexity and the rising costs of
continuing strategies that worked well in the past but no longer yield positive
results.
Successful economies generate surpluses that are skimmed by various
elites to support new layers of complexity: temple priests, state
bureaucracies, standing armies, etc.
All this complexity adds cost
but beyond the initial positive impact of rationalizing production, it reduces
productivity by draining potentially productive investments from the economy.
Building temple complexes and
vast palaces for the aristocracy appears affordable in the initial surge of
productivity, but as investment in productivity declines and the population of
state dependents expands, surpluses shrink while costs rise.
Meanwhile, strategies that
boosted yields in the beginning also suffer diminishing returns. Conquering
nearby lands and extracting their wealth paid off handsomely at first, but as
the distance to newly conquered territories lengthen, the payoff declines:
supplying distant armies to maintain control over distant lands costs more,
while the yield on marginal new conquests drops.
Expanding land under
production was easy in the river valley, but once water has to be carried up
hillsides, the net yield plummets.
What worked well at first no longer works well, but those in charge are
wedded to the existing system; why change what has worked so brilliantly?
As the costs of complexity and state dependents rise, productive people
grow tired of supporting an economy suffering from terminal diminishing
returns.
Empires do not just
suddenly collapse; they are abandoned by the productive citizenry as the burdens
become unbearable. The independent class of tradespeople (a.k.a. the middle
class), driven into serfdom by taxes, lose their shared identity with the
aristocracy. Beneath the surface, social cohesion frays. Once the benefits of
the status quo no longer outweigh its costs, the system is vulnerable to an
external disruption that would have been easily handled in previous eras.
The Suppression Of Social
Mobility
There is another key factor
in the resilience or fragility of social order: the permeability of the barrier
between the ruling class and everyone below. We call this permeability social
mobility: how easy is it for a working class family to rise up to the
middle class, and how easy is it for a middle class family to enter the
political and financial aristocracy?
I recently read Venice: A New History,
a fascinating account of Venice's rise to regional empire and its decline to
tourist destination.
What struck me most
powerfully was Venice's long success as a republic: it was the world's only
republic for roughly 1,000 years.
How did the Venetians manage this?
Their system of participatory democracy accreted over time, and was by no means
perfect; only men of substance had much of a say. But strikingly, key political
turning points were often triggered by mass gatherings of craftsmen and
laborers.
Most importantly, the system
was carefully designed to enable new blood to enter the higher levels of power.
Commoners could rise to power (and take their families with them if their
wealth outlasted the founding generation) via commercial success or military service.
The Republic also developed a
culture that frowned on personal glorification and cults of personality: the
nobility and commoners alike deferred to the Republic rather than any one
leader.
In Venice, the political
leadership (the doge and the Council) were elected via a convoluted series of
steps that made it essentially impossible for one clique to control the entire
process.
The doge was elected for a
term, not for life, and he had to be acceptable not just to the elites but to
the much larger class of movers and shakers--roughly 1,000 people in a city of
at most 150,000.
Venice's crises emerged when the upwelling of social and financial
mobility was capped by elites who were over-zealous in their pursuit of
hegemony: all those blocked from rising to power/influence became the source of
political revolt.
If you cap the volcano,
eventually the pressure beneath rises to the point that the cap gets blown off
in spectacular fashion.
The suppression of social
mobility and the monopolization of power by the few at the expense of the many
are universal dynamics in social orders.
Broadly speaking, Venice's
1,000-year Republican government, with its complex rules to limit
concentrations of power and insure the boundaries between elites and commoners
were porous enough to diffuse revolution and social disorder, speak to what is
once again in play around the world: social unrest due to the concentration of
power and the suppression of social mobility.
I don't think it's a stretch
to say that the greater the concentration of power, the lower the social
mobility, the greater the odds that the system will collapse when faced with
crisis.
When the entire economy is
expanding faster than population, and this tide is raising all ships, the
majority of people feel their chances of getting ahead are positive.
But when the economy is
stagnating, and those in power are amassing most of the gains, the majority
realizes their chances of securing a better life are declining. This is the
pressure that is being capped by the status quo that first and foremost
protects the privileged.
How porous are the barriers to
social mobility in our society? That a few people
become billionaires from technological innovations that scale globally is not a
real measure of social mobility for the masses.
In Part 2 we
identify the wellspring of revolution, and reach a conclusion that may surprise
many.