Page 2 of 2 REUVEN BRENNER Make babies or die How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) by
David P Goldman
Reviewed by Reuven Brenner
The high fertility among the very religious Jews whose numbers were decimated
by World War II may be an example of Goldman's insights: a religious tribe that
wants to prevent the disappearance of its unique culture. So this is a case
where first half of this tribe was killed, rather than the case of an ordinary
tribe sustaining or increasing its numbers. So it is not clear whether this
case can be generalized and applies for Goldman's analysis.
So is demography destiny or not? And if not, what else matters?
Historians still debate what made world population stay stable for
about 100,000 years. They debate whether agriculture was invented to solve a
sudden population pressure, or was it the case that the accidental innovations
allowed for more people to stay alive. Before the invention of agriculture,
humanity settled during those 100,000 years in what anthropologists later
called "primitive societies".
Closer examination suggests that they were not quite so primitive, as
anthropologists drastically misunderstood their languages, customs, and
traditions that were, actually, very well adjusted to small numbers of people
living relatively isolated from others.
Children in such societies assisted their parents in their work and were the
only insurance against rainy days. The relatively isolated tribes' survival
depended on having enough surviving children. We do not know how many children
families had to have to overcome high child mortality to achieve the remarkable
100,000 years stability.
Later, the main feature of the most populous agrarian societies became their
immobility. In these societies, as in most societies until recently, people
derived wealth from the land. Farmers learned the minute details of adjusting
to changes in weather conditions and of the soil. Farmers needed protection to
defend "their land", thus the understandable linguistic references to
"father-land" or "mother-land."
The institutions, values, and culture (civilization as it is called) became all
shaped by being wedded to "territory". And though there are variations across
such cultures, they give birth to one type of civilization. I called it the
"immobile" one, which is now in the process of gradually vanishing. Not without
bloody fights though.
As populations eventually continued to increase and move, "commercial"
civilizations developed. Each time and everywhere this happened, intellectuals
and those at the top of the land-based hierarchies deplored the weakening of
features of land-based, "immobile" society. The land-based hierarchy did
everything in its power to prevent the mobile, commercial, and, eventually,
industrial civilization from emerging. Merchants, traders, bankers, and
financiers were all suspect, as were people dabbling in technology. Unless, of
course, these strengthened the power of those at the top of the land-based
civilization's pyramid.
When occasionally populations declined due to epidemics, more commercial and
advanced civilizations went through temporary coma. Societies reverted to
variations on land-based type civilization. Once the increases in Europe's
population were on their way, its tribes rediscovered their commercial roots:
first the miracle of the Dutch Republic (the first tolerant place to all
religions in Europe), and later England.
Clashes today are variations on such struggles, only land-based civilizations
may be based not necessarily on agriculture but on a wide variety of mineral
resources. And the clashes are within tribes and not necessarily between them.
The origins of the conflict between the two types of civilizations is, as I
once wrote, that the idea of "individual rights" did not exist in those
land-based, immobile societies. By individual rights, I mean the idea of
negotiating rights and obligations that are unconnected to one's inherited
status. It was the idea of equality before the law, and the freedom to contract
unless explicitly prohibited, that eventually allowed people from all walks of
life to use their talents, abandon the status they were born to, and bet on
ideas without rulers' favors.
Freedom to contract, backed by a variety of possible, independent sources of
capital, made one "mobile" - upward or, if one failed, downward. This is what
brought about eventually Europe's first version, then, in a better way, the US
's unique "mobile civilization".
Although Goldman does not make explicit this distinction between "immobile" and
"mobile" societies, some of his conclusions suggest that the civilizations he
identifies as having died or are in the process of dying, are those that, as he
puts it in his concluding chapter, "suppress individual rights on behalf of
some expression of the collective, and technological advance simply accelerates
the pace of state failure". Thus, the problem with the declining civilizations
may not be abandoning Christendom, or sticking to Islam or other state
religion, but rather living in societies without freedoms.
If that is the case, demography then may not be destiny after all, except when
epidemics and natural disasters strike. And fertility may not be linked to a
specific religion either, but rather become a choice in free societies. Goldman
may be right that some societies seek the immortality of their civilization,
though it is evident that some members of these same societies would be ready
to move on.
But how would this translate to individual decisions? Some people want, no
doubt, their genetic immortality. Others decide to have children because their
closest friends have made the same decision or because they would lose their
company if they did not. Perhaps others decide to have kids because they are
the biggest of debt of all. As such, having them is perhaps the best way for
some to discipline themselves, withstanding many fleeting temptations and a
dissolute lifestyle. It is a bit like a self-imposed leveraged buy-out. And
perhaps others do not rationalize but have faith. Who knows what are people's
motivations?
Whatever they might be, the most important conclusion of Goldman's book is that
dictatorial civilizations, no matter what the ideology, are more likely to die
than freer societies.
So what about Europe?
Goldman is pessimistic, but my perception is that Europe's declining fertility
may not be a sign of a dying civilization. Perhaps it is an adaptation to the
perception that they grew "too populous". Members of these societies prefer to
get back to features of civilization they were accustomed to during their less
populous phase. Once they get there, fertility would be stabilize at a
replacement rate. This is what has roughly happened in France for a century by
now.
When ratifying the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, George Clemenceau, France's
prime minister, announced that: "The treaty does not say that France must
undertake to have children, but it is the first thing which ought to have been
put in it. For if France turns her back on large families, one can put all the
clauses one wants in a treaty , one can take all the guns of Germany, one can
do whatever one likes, France will be lost because there will be no more
Frenchmen."
Later, the Vichy politicians embraced "pronatalism of the French population",
and gave gold medals for women having more than 10 children (silver to those
with seven, and bronze to those with five). It did not help. Absurd policies
rarely do. But a century later, France's fertility is at replacement level.
How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) by David P Goldman.
(Regnery Publishing, Washington DC, September 2011). ISBN-10: 159698273X. Price
US$27.95, 256 pages.
Reuven Brenner holds the Repap Chair at McGill's Desautels Faculty of
Management. The review draws on his aforementioned books, and on his articles,
"Unsettling Civilizations" and "Oiling the Wheels of Tribal Societies".
(The writer's arcticles are also published by Forbes.)
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