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 1970s, 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 hear 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 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 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 in 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 were 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.
