Me, the collapsnik!?
What is a collapse? Do I believe in collapse? If so, what kind of collapse do I envision and what will come thereafter? Is the current system collapsing?
What is a collapse? Do I believe in collapse? If so, what kind of collapse do I envision and what will come thereafter? Is the current system collapsing? Those are the issues I plan to write about in a few essays. Instead of providing references and quotes from more brilliant thinkers than me, I will just write with few links and references. Having said that, clearly I draw inspiration, analysis and terminology from many others, and I don't claim any unique insights. I write to shape up my own thoughts and get feedback from you, the reader, rather than preaching my belief.
I am inclined to a very restrictive use of dramatic expressions like collapse, emergency, polycrisis, climate breakdown. I think people use hyperbolic language far too often and not defining properly what they mean. For example, I hear many calling for a transformation of the food system, but when I read what they propose it is rarely a transformation but just some minor tinkering, such as eating less meat or reducing the use of pesticides.*
My ”definition” of societal collapse is that most salient features of a society are fading or disappear altogether. That includes the political system as well as the population size and where people live, economy, trade and the tecnhosphere. It will also be linked to changes in culture and interpersonal relationships. It is not necessarily a sign of collapse, in my sense, when one aspect goes through a phase shift. Clearly, there will be instances of crisis or recession in most societies and they are often linked to fundamental shortcomings or contradictions in society, but in most cases, societies will bounce back. However, if such oscillations appear with increasing intensity and magnitude, they are strong indications of impending collapse.
Importantly, a collapse will, mostly, not manifest itself in one dramatic event. It might be a protracted process over such a long time that it is not even well understood by those living in the system. Mostly, there will be incremental changes, perceptions change, assets will be stranded, things that appeared rational at one point in time is no longer so (sea front property, sending fish for processing from Norway to China and back again, wasting human waste into waterways etc). By and large, simplification is one of the characteristics of a collapse.
In Marxist circles, the inevitable collapse of capitalism has been a strong conviction, mostly based on Marx' concept of falling rate of profit. But in the Marxist version, this collapse would not mean the collapse of many aspects of modern society, rather it is seen as a amplification or continuation of the current, where the Proletariat (under expert leadership...) would unchain and augment technology and human industriousness.
In a similar way, the increasing globalization and de-regulation of capital and trade in the post-war period and in particular after the 1970, represent a major upheaval of national state capitalism and politics, but by and large it was a (logical) continuation of a market-based society. Interestingly, both the Marxist view and the neo-liberal view are (were) based on that the developments are both inevitable and desirable (ever heard about TINA?).
During my life time (i.e. 1957 and onward), the most collapse-like event was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the associated Warsaw pact. It was not only a political collapse and the collapse of an empire, it also led to a huge restructuring of the economy and trade patterns as well as dramatic changes in living standards. The effects of the collapse are still visible, and one can best understand Russia's war in Ukraine (and other Russian territorial disputes and wars) as part of this process.** It was a collapse of the political entity, but many things continued, the trains kept going, the oil and gas was pumped etc. Trade was reorganized. It wasn't smooth and a lot of people got hurt in the process, and many were liberated from political oppression.
The chicken and the egg
What causes a collapse then? Well, I don't believe in a unified unique driver for collapse. Important factors are:
energy supply
equality
the legitimacy of the prevailing (political) system, be it dictatorship, theocracy, one-party-state or a representative democracy
population size and structure
economic system
technology
the carrying capacity of the ecosystems
environmental factors, man made or not
They, in turn impact other factors and each other. One factor can be both a driver and a result in this. The growth of population in the current system, certainly has been a major driver for economic growth, for the development of knowledge and science etc. But the increased population is also a result of the system itself. The same goes for energy. Fossil fuels have been extraordinarily important for the development of global capitalism and economic growth. At the same time, the system has also spurred the use of more energy, e.g. through mass tourism, AC and private automobiles.
Will the current global human civilization collapse? For sure. It is only a matter of time. Even humans as a species will go extinct. Any other opinion would represent a mix of hubris and wishful thinking. Only microorganisms prevail over aeons of time.
Even with a shorter term perspective of, say, 100 years, it seems likely that the system will collapse. The ability of the society to adapt to changes has a major impact on the likelihood for collapse. The current economic system, a capitalistic market economy has been able to adapt and adjust to many changes and has at the same time caused many of the changes. I will come back to capitalism in the next essay. But let's first discuss globalization.
Is the current system collapsing already?
First, this depends on how you define ”the system”. I would say that the globalized international system is collapsing. Already in my book Garden Earth (2013, the Swedish edition 2011), I claimed that globalization had peaked in a process starting at the turn of the century:
”Looking into the crystal ball, it seems as if globalization as a political economic ‘project’ has lost its speed and credibility as a universal truth. This is because of a combination of factors, such as fear of global terrorism (e.g. 9/11), fear of global epidemics (e.g. AIDS, repeated flu scares, SARS), fear of a country’s competitiveness, mistrust of unregulated markets in general and financial markets in particular (e.g. the Asian crisis at the end of the 1990s, the global crisis in 2008/2009) and an increased interest in the local.”
Today, there are many more signs of that: The collapse of the ”international” world order, which rather should be understood as an order where United States and its vassals called the shots and defined what was acceptable or not. The track record of US foreign interventions and outright wars is the most apparent sign of that the international world order never applied to the Empire itself. Israel´s war on Palestinians and its disregard of both human rights and international law is also an expression of the hegemony of the Western system. The protests against the war are, however, an expression of that the legitimacy of the system is questioned, even within the Western sphere.
The war in Ukraine and the associated sanctions has led to a major restructuring of the world economy (there are many other wars going on with terrible suffering but most of the wars are not impacting the global system). Tariffs, other trade obstacles, redirection of supply chains into national or regional networks have increased lately. The mandates and acceptance of international institutions, such as the UN, WTO and international treaties are weakening. The USA has blocked the WTO dispute settlement since 2019 and the so called Doha round in WTO has stalled since its inception 2001. The USA left the Paris climate agreement and a number of countries are planning to leave the Ottawa treaty eliminating anti-personnel landmines (the USA, Russia, China and many others never signed it). The Covid pandemic created a blue-print of a world to come and was also itself a driver of de-globalization.
Will the modern civilization collapse because of this de-globalization? That is not certain even if de-globalization certainly is a process of simplification of a very complex system. As such it can be seen as a stage of collapse. The predecessor of late 20th century globalization was late 19th century imperialism. Already in the end of the 19th century, big parts of the human economy was entangled in global trade networks. This era of globalization was interrupted by two big ”world wars” and a very deep depression. Those were major crises, but modernity (another term that warrants definition, I will come back to this) and capitalism prevailed, wars fuelled new technologies and the economy bounced back and after the 1950s, globalization picked up speed. It was a bit different than 19th century imperialism, but essentially both were about integration of global markets.
If globalization is collapsing, does that apply to capitalism as well? In the next essay, I will discuss capitalism as a system.
* I must confess that I the other day signed a petition about the food system emergency. I would not have used that terminology myself though. In my food system book Global Eating Disorder, I just called it a disorder.
** This is certainly not any justification of the Russian aggression, but it makes it much more comprehensible than references to Russian exceptionalism or the evil nature of Vladimir Putin.
Thank you for your post (and more generally, your posts which I read like treats).
Just a quick thought about this one. I do believe that there is something new in the current situation: the fragility of the ecological basis of our society. When we speak about the "environmental" crisis, many people read the "energy" crisis (as if sorting out the energy equation would solve the environmental issues…). My reading of the system is influenced by the strong sustainability approach: ecology is the basis of everything, embedding society, embedding economy, embedding markets (more or less the famous donut I guess). Energy is an economical issue, not an ecological one for me (although, of course, energy mobilisation has huge impacts on ecology).
Indeed, Europe has faced a major eco-fertility crisis of its agriculture at the turn of the Middle age, which worsen the impact of the Great plague and entailed major social changes such as the replacement of slaves by paid workers (Lords had no choice; demand >>> supply after the hecatomb; they had to pay). One can say that something good resulted from this crisis on the long term, called modern Western civilisation. One can also say that on the longer term, it has caused the crisis we are currently facing.
I think we are already experiencing a crisis of our agricultural production, but more profound than the one of the Middle-age because of the combination of climate change and the remanence of the impacts - I am thinking about pesticides amongst other things. I can't see how we can escape a collapse on this basis. We can imagine a bounce, but it might take centuries to reinvent a working socio-economic system (or several co-existing systems). I do see that "working" would need further definition. I am not sure I am able to say, as Günnar would: "it will be the object of a coming post" 😏
I have written extensively on collapse and it forms the starting point for my three books. The global house of cards built on sand which is laughingly called "modernism" is not working so well, is it? By my reckoning, the general collapse of western societies, and specifically the US, started in 1968. The proxy here is the value of the minimum wage, which has gone downhill in inflation-adjusted terms every since. That is, the peak of the US minimum wage was in 1968. The peak of US oil production was in 1970, as measured in conventional oil. The fracking of the last 15 years is a move to lower EROI oil that is treated the same in the statistics as conventional oil. It is not. So there is a lot of lying and shifting goal posts going on. Our troubles are over 50 years old.
If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of collapse, you are going to have to do a dive into a bit of calculus, specifically the difference between inflection points and saddle points. It would also help to understand what the second and third derivatives of the growth economy are. Finally, one has to take a broader perspective and actually become a social scientist. The polycrisis is a generalized term, but it is NOT just about economics. We have a polycrisis (or metacrisis if you prefer) becausel the crises in the political, economic, environmental and social realms are all interactive variables. If you want to understand the problem AND work on solutions, you are going to have to deal with the polycrisis. It is not just a term of art. It is a real problem and an indication that we are in deep shit.