Timothy Wilken
As I have explained elsewhere, Progress + warfare = human extinction. We are Time-binders and the mark of human power is everywhere. When knowledge is incorporated into matter-energy, it becomes a tool. As Andrew J. Galambos explained:
“Humans develop evermore powerful knowledge and therefore evermore powerful tools. When tools are used to harm other humans they are called weapons. Since human knowledge can grow without limit then tools themselves can be made without limit. And limitless tools can will produce limitless weapons.”
And, limitless weapons (progress) combined with leveraged adversity (warfare) must by all definitions and understanding of science produce human extinction. As our current political leaders move humanity towards ever increasing risk of extinction, it has never been more important to understand politics.
The following three excerpts are from a longer paper by synergic scientist Peter A. Corning titled Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Evolution of Politics.
Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.
The tumultuous political events of the past decade or so have, among other things, compelled political scientists to rethink some of their long established concepts and analytical constructs. One example is “political development,” a term which has traditionally been associated with the optimistic post-World War Two scenario in which “developing nations” were said to be following “industrial societies” into a final stage of “post-industrial” history that would, presumably, be permanently embalmed in stable democracy and some variant of the traditional “balance of power”—or terror. That smug scenario has been deflated by a sequence of events which suggest that the modern nation-state may itself be a transient phenomenon, a stepping-stone on the way to something larger, or smaller, or both—or perhaps neither.
One indication of a sea-change in the discipline is a growing interest in the concept of “political evolution.” (See, for example, the report of a workshop on the subject edited by Modelski, 1994a.) This seemingly innocuous linguistic shift is not merely a fad, or a borrowed metaphor, but the reflection of a fundamental paradigm shift. It represents a revisioning of our conception of macro-level political change. In this nascent new paradigm—which has yet to be fully articulated, much less agreed upon—political development can be viewed as analogous to political “engineering”—the construction of a viable political process or structure more or less from pre-existing plans. Political evolution, on the other hand, is located at the creative cutting-edge, where old problems are solved with new techniques or new forms of organization, and where new problems are brought under political control. Also, following Charles Darwin’s broad definition of evolution as “descent with modification,” political evolution may include systemic reconfigurations, reorderings and even breakdowns. Accordingly, it can be said that political development is to political evolution as ontogeny is to phylogeny. (See Corning and Hines 1988.)
Some years ago, Kenneth Waltz (1975) drew a useful distinction between a political system and what he called a “political market,” the latter being a collection of independent actors in a “framework” of forces, with varying relationships and with varying degrees of interaction. For reasons that will become evident below, I prefer the term “political ecosystem.” But, in any event, the distinction is an important one, especially in international politics, because it highlights the fact that political evolution also involves irreversible historical changes in the character of the global system. However, it should also be emphasized that political evolution is not simply another name for political history. To the contrary, it connotes a patterned process whose causal dynamics are amenable to theoretical generalizations, to causal theories.
One implication of an evolutionary perspective is that short-range issues (say, the future of Eastern Europe or the prospects for European Union) can usefully be viewed within a much broader theoretical framework. An evolutionary framework can—and should—encompass, among other things, the evolution of other social species, the three-million-year process of human evolution and the evolution of complex human societies and polities over the past 10,000 years or so, long before the modern nation-state was even conceived. In addition, as we shall see, an evolutionary paradigm must take account of the propensities of “human nature” and the opportunities and constraints (and imperatives) in the natural environment, along with the traditional social, economic and political variables. Such a paradigm provides a far richer perspective for theorizing about political change in the immediate past, present or future. (I will elaborate on this contentious point below.)
Over the past two decades, a number of political scientists have become conversant with this broader evolutionary paradigm. (The full version of this paper included some 32 references.) Equally important, a variety of hypotheses have been advanced to explain the process of political evolution, either as a whole or in part. For example, Gary R. Johnson (1992) proposes what could be called a sociobiological hypothesis to account for the origin of human polities. Politics, in his view, is derivative of reproductive competition, and the advancement of various co-operative efforts is seen as secondary, in terms of the functional basis of government, to the containment of individual conflicts. Johnson also adopts the sociobiological assumption that there are only three bases for social organization, all of them derived from individual reproductive interests, namely, altruism (or nepotism toward closely-related individuals), reciprocity and exploitation. Nepotistic “kin selection,” he argues, was the “primary force” responsible for establishing societies and polities.
A second hypothesis has been suggested by Gebhard Geiger (1988). His theoretical focus is confined to the Weberian transformation of small face-to-face societies into large-scale, hierarchical, bureaucratic states (“macrostructures”). He is concerned with explaining the evolution of “political power”—i.e., specialized instruments of centralized control that are endowed with the ability to use force. Geiger argues that this transition requires a theory that goes beyond neo-Darwinian “inclusive fitness” models, because these explanations are not sufficient to account for various factors in real-world human polities. Specifically, he claims that hierarchical organizations in human societies are not an adaptation and are not designed to engender mutual benefits for their members. Accordingly, Geiger proposes that the explanation for such political macrostructures lies in an extension of the theory of “self-organizing” dynamical systems (see Footnote 2). That is, the properties of “natural self-organization” are postulated by Geiger to engender “structural stability” in a dynamical system, including large-scale polities.
A number of theorists have adopted a micro-level approach to political evolution. The pioneer in this area was biologist John Maynard Smith (1982), who was the first to apply classical “game theory” models to the problem of explaining social evolution. Maynard Smith’s focus was the strategies pursued by individuals in a population, and his objective was to identify co-operative strategies for the members of the population as a whole that could not be “invaded” or replaced by exploitative strategies. Such strategies were then characterized as being “evolutionarily stable.”
An important alternative to this approach, with direct implications for political evolution, was developed by political scientist Robert Axelrod and biologist William Hamilton (1981; also Axelrod 1984). It involved a revised version of the famous two-person “Prisoner’s Dilemma” game, incorporating a number of more realistic assumptions about the nature of the game and the players. Axelrod and Hamilton then conducted a tournament among a number of their colleagues. The winning strategy, submitted by Anatol Rapaport, was called “TIT FOR TAT” (co-operate initially then respond to whatever the other player does in subsequent rounds), and it proved to be remarkably robust as a generator of co-operative behaviors among individual players. Among other things, it was found that (1) co-operation can get started even in a world that may also favor “defectors”; (2) it can also thrive in an environment where many other strategies are also being tried; and (3) it can resist invasion by less co-operative strategies. “Thus,” Axelrod concluded, “the gear wheels of social evolution have a ratchet” (1984:20).
Other theorists have focussed on political evolution at the most inclusive macro-level. George Modelski is concerned with the evolution of the “global political system” over the past 1000 years. He is well-known for a theory of “Long Cycles” in world history, which he conceptualizes as a “learning process” (Modelski 1987). In his earlier work, he envisioned “waves of innovation” coupled with a recurrence of wars and periods of political hegemony in apparently repetitive patterns. More recently, Modelski (1994b) has more firmly embraced an evolutionary paradigm. He now characterizes global history as a process involving “structural change” and “directionality” along a steady “path”. He speaks also of the “mechanisms” of “variation, and innovation, co-operation and reinforcement.” Yet, at the same time, he envisions the global process as an “unfolding” according to an “inner logic,” and he quotes the systems theorist cum evolutionist Ervin Laszlo: “Evolution is not an accident but occurs whenever certain parametric requirements have been fulfilled” (1994:13).
There are also various “coercive theories” of political evolution. The so-called “warfare hypothesis” is a perennial favorite, dating back at least to Thucidides’ great History of the Peloponnesian War. Likewise, Clausewitz’s On War [1832] remains one of the classic statements on the subject. Darwin, Herbert Spencer and an assortment of 19th and early 20th century Social Darwinists also singled out the role of war in human evolution. (For a succinct review, see van der Dennen 1991.) More recently, anthropologist Robert Carneiro (1970) advanced a theory of war based on “environmental circumscription”—a refinement of pioneer sociologist William Graham Sumner’s “man/land ratio”—to account specifically for the formation of early states. The theory is concerned with the relationship between populations and resource constraints, particularly arable land.
There is also the “balance of power” hypothesis of, among others, Arthur Keith (1947), Robert Bigelow (1969) and sociobiologist Richard Alexander (1979). The core idea is that, over time, human polities have grown progressively larger primarily in order to strengthen themselves against other human groups. Alexander envisions a three-stage process, including: (1) the formation of multi-male bands mainly for protection against large predators, (2) a combination of defense against predation and group hunting, and (3) a combination of anti-predation, group hunting and competition/conflict with other human groups. Moreover, as populations grew, warfare with other groups came to predominate over other forms of co-operation. Warfare, he claims, is both the necessary and sufficient cause of large-scale human societies.
In contrast, Roger Masters (1989) has adopted an eclectic approach to political evolution, one which skillfully melds contemporary sociobiological models of individual interests (inclusive fitness), theories of intra-group co-operation and theories of inter-group conflict.
In this paper, I will offer a summary (and update) of a radically different theory of political evolution, one which dovetails with a larger, interdisciplinary enterprise focussed on the evolution of complexity in general. To be precise, this theory is a special case of a more general theory about the evolution of biological and social systems. It also involves a major shift in methodology and, it may not be too much to say, in our vision of how the world works. (For in-depth treatments, see Corning 1983, 1994; also see 1971a,b, 1974, 1977, 1987). The key features of this theory are the concept of synergy and the utilization of a cybernetic model of biological, social and political systems and processes.
Explaining Political Evolution
How, then, do we account for the evolution of political systems, both historically and in the often puzzling contemporary cases? For example, how do we account for the collapse of the Soviet empire, which, as political scientist Kenneth Jowitt points out, “was not supposed to happen?” Or, for that matter, how can we account for the recent “Balkanization” of the Balkans?
In The Synergism Hypothesis (1983), a chapter was devoted to what was called an “Interactional Paradigm” (which was really a synthesis of various interdisciplinary paradigms that have been put forward over the past two decades). Here I can only provide a sketch of that causal framework. In brief, the pattern of causation in something as complex and variegated as the evolution of human societies requires a framework that is multidisciplinary, multi-leveled, “configural” (or relational), functional and cybernetic. It involves geophysical factors, biological and ecological factors, an array of biologically-based human needs—and derivative psychological and cultural influences—that must all be attended to, as well as organized economic activities and technologies (broadly defined) and, of course, political processes, all of which interact with one another in a “path dependent,” cumulative historical “flux” (see Figure I.).
This framework compels us to focus explicitly on the many co-determining factors that, in each case, interact synergistically—rather than trying to single out some monolithic causal variable that is ultimately destined to fall short. Also, it requires a recognition that the process of political evolution is always situation-specific, even when there may be recurrent patterns of covariance and invariances within the total configuration of factors. (The development of “evolutionary economics” over the past decade or so has introduced a similar, albeit not explicitly “bioeconomic,” perspective into economic theory.)
Some of these variables are obvious to political scientists. They involve the staples of conventional political analyses. But other variables are not always appreciated, or may be treated as constants. One case in point is fresh water resources, which have played a key role (necessary but not sufficient) in co-determining both the locations and the rise and decline of various civilizations—not to mention the conflicts between them. Thus, recent research has indicated that a major climate change precipitated the sudden collapse of the Akkadian empire in ancient Mesopotamia about 2200 B.C. (Weiss et al., 1993). Climate changes have also been implicated in the fall of the Mayan civilization and of Teotihuac·n.
In fact, a major challenge for any theory of political evolution is that it must be able to account not only for “progressive” innovations and complexifications but also for “regressive” changes, for the episodic rise and decline of political systems. Two examples, one of each kind, will perhaps suffice to illustrate the synergistic nature of such changes.
The rise of the Zulu nation in the nineteenth century provides an instructive example of the former process (see Gluckman 1940, 1969 and Morris 1965). Until the early 1800s, the people (mainly of Bantu origin) who had come to inhabit what became known as Zululand (a region of the South African province of Natal) consisted of a disorderly patchwork of cattle-herding and minimally horticultural clans that frequently warred on one another. The most common casus belli were disputes over cattle, rights to grazing lands, and water rights. The ensuing combat was usually brief, for the most part involving prearranged pitched battles at a respectable distance between small groups of warriors armed with assegai (a lightweight, six-foot throwing spear) and oval cowhide shields. Injuries and fatalities were usually low.
As the human and cattle populations increased over time, resulting in “environmental circum- scription” (in Carneiro’s term), there was a corresponding increase in the frequency and intensity of warfare among the clans until a radical discontinuity occurred in 1816, when a 29-year-old warrior named Shaka took charge of the Zulu clan. Shaka immediately set about transforming the pattern of Natalese warfare by introducing a new military technology involving disciplined phalanxes of shield-bearing troops armed with short hooking and jabbing spears designed for combat at close quarters.
Shaka’s innovation was as great a revolution in that environment as were the introduction of the stirrup and gunpowder into European warfare. After ruthlessly training his ragtag army of some 350 men, Shaka set out on a pattern of conquests and forced alliances that quickly became a juggernaut. Within three years Shaka had forged a nation of a quarter of a million, including a formidable and fanatically disciplined army of about 20,000 men—who were motivated in part by Shaka’s decree that they were not allowed to marry until they were blooded in battle. Shaka’s domain had also increased from about 100 square miles to 11,500 square miles. There was not a tribe in all of black Africa that could oppose the new Zulu kingdom, and in short order Shaka began to expand his nation beyond the borders of his peoples’ traditional lands.
The further evolution and ultimate downfall of the Zulu nation at the hands of the Europeans in the latter part of the century is another chapter. What is significant here is the profound structural and functional changes—changes involving the superposition of an integrated political system—which occurred among the Zulu by virtue of decisive political entrepreneurship stimulated by population pressures and coupled with synergistic changes in military techniques and organization. Again, the causal process was configural and interactional, with cybernetic control processes being an integral part of the synergies that resulted. Moreover, these synergies were positively “reinforcing”, as well as providing “positive feedback” in the strict cybernetic sense.
The classic example of political decline is the Roman empire, which recent scholarship suggests involved, among other things, a nexus of populational, economic and political causes. (For a more detailed analysis, see Corning 1983.) The explanation begins, ironically, with a population explosion. In 400 B.C., there were only about 150,000 adult citizens on the entire Italian peninsula. As late as 70 B.C., there were only about 500,000 citizens and about the same number of slaves and freemen in metropolitan Rome, according to the Roman census. But by 28 B.C., the number of Roman citizens had reached about four million, the majority of whom, it is thought, were living in the provinces.
Meanwhile, a profound shift was occurring in the Roman economy. The rapid population increases created a growing dependence on overseas food imports—especially grain from Sicily and Egypt—to a considerable extent independently of a conversion of “domestic” agriculture to large-scale, export-oriented, slave-based Latifundia. At the same time, Rome’s once thriving export markets for manufactured goods declined as the provinces learned to make Roman products more cheaply at home. Unfavorable trade balances eventually led to inflation and a debasement of the currency.
To cope with this imbalance, Rome began to place greater tax burdens on its empire, ostensibly to support the military legions and civil servants that were supposed to be out there to provide protection and maintain law and order but who ultimately came to be perceived as being there to support the tax collectors. The rest of the story is complicated, but this important configuration of changes (which were exacerbated by a stagnation of investment and enterprise, serious structural weaknesses in the political system and some other factors not mentioned here) fundamentally altered the cost-benefit calculus for many Roman subjects and thus undermined the synergies that had been responsible for Rome’s ascendancy.
There was nothing deterministic or orthogenetic about these two evolutionary episodes. Nor can any monolithic causal variable encompass them. The causal matrix in each case involved a dynamic mix of interacting factors located at several “levels” of causation—from geophysical to ecological, biological, technological and political. Numerous factors “worked together,” synergistically, in a relationship of mutual and reciprocal causation, to facilitate the rise of the Zulu nation and to bring about the destruction of the Roman empire. As the eminent classical scholar Charles Alexander Robinson observed: “The problem of the decline of the Roman Empire will probably be debated as long as history is studied, for it was a complex phenomenon in which many factors interacted, not one of which can be singled out as the prime cause” (1951:611).
It would appear that a similar configuration of factors worked together to undermine the Soviet empire. Ironically, a reduction in Russia’s historic sense of vulnerability to external attack was one of the factors that served to weaken the perceived need for the empire. When this was coupled with a disastrous war (Afghanistan), an upwelling of internal demands for dissolution and the need to reform a “sclerotic” internal economy (among other factors), the calculus of perceived costs and benefits was altered for those who had the power to defend the empire.
Conclusion
Beyond such conditional predictions, does this paradigm have any heuristic value? For one thing, it implies the use of more expansive, multi-leveled, multi-variate (and multi-disciplinary) analyses, with a focus on the functional relationships among the variables and not merely on their additive statistical properties. For instance, the accumulating evidence that sudden, drastic climate changes were associated with the precipitous decline of many early civilizations impels a more systematic analysis of this variable as a cause of past, present and future political changes.
A second implication is that a more sustained effort should be devoted to elucidating the bioeconomics (and economics) of synergy—the concrete, measurable consequences, or “payoffs”, of co-operative phenomena that may serve to sustain or undermine cybernetic (political) processes.
This paradigm also invites us to utilize the insights gained by the life sciences about the evolution of complexity. As noted earlier, two major modes of functionally-based complexification have been evident in the broader process of biological evolution: (1) symbiotic partnerships, or “mergers” of various kinds that have precipitated new forms of synergy and new functional capabilities, and (2) “autogenous” differentiation and specialization, again resulting in new forms of functional synergy and new cybernetic processes. Indeed, if social organization based on an inclusive fitness model may provide an appropriate framework for explaining the earliest phase of human evolution, it may well be the case that a “Symbiogenesis model” (co-operative partnerships among unrelated individuals) best fits the revolutionary changes in human societies since the Paleolithic. One must, of course, avoid using facile analogies as a substitute for rigorous analysis. But in this case the biological analogy directs our attention to phenomena in human societies that may be viewed as variations on a basic evolutionary theme rather than as borrowed metaphors.
Finally, there is the challenge of testing further the theory itself. A better causal theory of political evolution may in due course be established. But, in the meantime, I would hope that this one will be given serious consideration.
Copyright © 2001 ISCS. All rights reserved.