The Collapse of Complex Societies

Published in 1988, this is the grandaddy of collapse literature. A short, but pithy academic treatment of the subject. Tainter starts by analysing all the past attempts at explaining why societies collapse including: resource depletion, new resources overwhelming old systems, catastrophes, insufficient response to circumstances, other complex societies taking over, intruders, conflict contradictions and mismanagement, social dysfunction, mystical explanations, chance concatenation of events and finally the only one he feels is viable—economics.

Because complex societies excel at handling adversity, he accounts for collapse as the logical fallout from diminishing returns on investment of labor and resources, particularly in agriculture, information processing and education, sociopolitical control and specialization and overall economic productivity.

He examines in detail the collapse of Ancient Rome due to over expansion leading to high operational costs. Leaders tried to compensate by debasing the currency, thus shifting the burden to future taxpayers, but the future also faced equivalent crisis. Eventually overly high taxes drained the agriculture sector and the peasantry upon which Rome relied.

He also details the Mayan collapse. The societies herewith were competing in an art race (to intimidate their enemies). He doesn't mention Easter Island, but sounds similar to those big heads. The Mayan elites further imposed an expanded building program on a weakened and undernourished population that could not support the demands and presumably fled or died.

The third society he examines is the Chacoan of the American southwest. This network of communities was challenged by arid land that eventually was not diverse enough to meet the unpredictable production of the land. Communities left the network, preferring to migrate rather than deal with drought. Major construction of food storage facilities drained resources.

Tainter claims that collapse is not likely today because of 1) absorption by larger state or neighbor, 2) economic support by a dominant power or by an international financing agency, 3) payment by the support population of overhead costs to keep the society going. The situation today is unique because all societies are complex; there needs to be a power vacuum to bring on collapse. What we have today are competitive peer polities. It is an arms race situation. Tainter points out that unilateral economic downsizing is as foolhardy as unilateral disarmament, but doesn't say why.

He feels that we will finance diminishing returns well into the future and that collapse will be global. He points out that reliance on stored energy reserves (oil?) demands that we find a new energy subsidy. Lack of a power vacuum and competitive spiral have given the world a reprieve from collapse. Failure to take advantage of the current reprieve will lead to collapse. Competition may also lead to collapse. The appearance of a disastrous situation that all decry may force us to tolerate a situation of declining marginal returns long enough to achieve a temporary solution to it. He urges that we must proceed rationally and make it our highest priority to find new energy source.

Tainter actually comes across as fairly optimistic especially now that global warming is being seriously discussed since complex societies are supposed to be good at solving complex problems like this. His description of complex societies and how they work projects a solution that is based in technological innovation and bureaucratic management. If a society fails to solve problems of insufficient resources or environmental degradation, then he feels that it is not a dysfunction of the complex society, but of the psychological underpinnings of said society.

His thesis gives the impression of inevitability. We will collapse because increasing complexity will overwhelm the resources needed to manage such complexity. He doesn't really leave room for rethinking how we live or creating a new myth to live by. We are trapped in a prison of our own making. Is this merely a patriarchal way of thinking given all the research on matriarchal societies that lived in harmony with the land?