Decadent Societies, Part 3

From our library; note the Couture
painting, unfortunately black-and-white 

Yesterday I tried to examine the question of American decadence as raised by the late Robert M. Adams in his book Decadent Societies. My conclusion was that, from the perspective of 2020, the USA of the early 1980s was not in fact decadent, and a lot of the symptoms of potential decadence Adams identified turned out not to be all that deadly.

What might be the condition of the USA in mid-2020? Let’s look again at the main symptoms of societal decadence Adams declared:

·       military weakness;

·       losses in major wars;

·       food insecurity (dependence on outside sources beyond the society’s control);

·       technological stagnation;

·       a “grossly oppressive” tax system;

·       acceptance of rising inequality;

·       inability to prevent massive losses through epidemic disease;

·       a complete lack of concern over the increasing proportion of the population with little to no reason to continue to support the society’s existence.

How does the US stack up in 2020?

Well, in terms of military weakness the US is no more decadent in 2020 than it was in 1980. Many no doubt complain that China is a threat, but it is I think actually less of a threat to US existence than was the Soviet Union of 1980. A threat to US hegemony in the Pacific China certainly is, but this in itself poses no existential threat—unless the USA somehow defines itself in terms of empire, the way it could be argued Great Britain tried to in the period 1878-1956. The US has lost no major wars (nor minor ones) since Vietnam, and while it can’t be said to have been very successful in winning the peace in either Afghanistan or Iraq, a single fumble on that score doesn’t necessarily represent incipient decadence.

Only the first one is free, though. If it happens again…

Food insecurity is an interesting issue. The USA is not insecure in the way Rome was, if only because the US is so big it is only for the sake of convenience food is imported; self-sufficiency in food is (for the time being at least) a readily available option. The quality of the available food is another matter; no chlorine-washed chicken for me, please. And the impact on the environment of industrial farming is an issue of concern even before one takes into consideration the changing climate. So: not an existential threat yet, but Watch This Space.

Technological stagnation seems to be a non-issue. The USA has been a technological front-runner for a century and a quarter now, and seems to me to have shifted fairly smoothly from a manufacturing to a services-oriented economy over the past fifty years without appalling amounts of disruption. I realize this is not much compensation to those West Virginians who’ve lost coal-mining jobs, or to their steel-making compatriots in Indiana. But for society in the greater sense the US has kept abreast of the technological wave, and Adams’s 1980 concern about the coming IT revolution was a complete non-starter. Again, the use of technology to oppress rather than aid society is something to watch out for, but that particular blade has points at both ends, and there are plenty out there interested in using IT to keep government in line as well.

There are no doubt plenty of Americans who consider themselves to be labouring under a “grossly oppressive” tax system; these people completely miss the point of what taxation is about. And here I think there is a risk that might well rhyme with the existential threats that doomed Rome, Bourbon France and Romanov Russia. I’m no radical but it seems to me wilfully perverse that an entire political class seems to have evolved, over the past half-century, to focus almost exclusively on an opposition to the raising of tax revenues needed to support the infrastructure allowing that very class to thrive. There was much wailing and moaning when then-President Obama said “You didn’t build that” back in 2012, and I can only call it decadent that the complainers either didn’t understand or refused to admit that there was a lot about his argument that was valid.

In this respect I think that one of Adams’s signs of concern, back in 1980, has indeed been getting worse. As long as resistance to taxation (and resistance to government regulation, which poses a similar threat) continues to be the main philosophical underpinning of a big chunk of the US political ethos, the infrastructure so impressively built in the first half of the twentieth century (give or take a decade) is at risk of having completely rotted by the middle of the twenty-first. The seriousness of the threat might not be completely visible to many yet (dam and bridge failures haven’t killed too many people… thus far)—but when it does become visible it will probably be too late to avoid calamitous consequences. And the cost of rebuilding is going to be hugely greater than the cost of proper maintenance would have been.

Tied in with the question of taxation is acceptance of rising inequality; here again the issue has undoubtedly got worse over the past forty years. The Occupy movement of a decade ago did not reverse this problem, but people are much more aware of the threat now than they were before the Great Recession. A society as large as that of the US, and with a substantial (though apparently shrinking) middle class is by nature a resilient society, and the subsistence level at which many live is considerably more affluent than in pretty much any society previous to the present (read about the state of poverty in late-Victorian Britain and weep), but this should never be assumed to mean the situation is not bad… and getting worse. Because of the size of the population the sheer numbers of the disadvantaged ought to be alarming to that pathetic fraction of a percent that owns such an enormous proportion of America’s wealth. Being a grossly unequal society is not in itself a sign of decadence. Refusing to admit there’s a problem, and therefore doing anything about it—that’s something else, and not something especially attractive.

About a society’s inability to prevent massive losses through epidemic disease I suspect I don’t have to say very much, as we move through Month Four of the Pandemic Lockdown of 2020. James Fallows of The Atlantic has alreadysaid all that need be said: nothing screams DECADENCE more loudly than the fact there was a plan in place to deal with precisely the situation currently killing Americans in large numbers—and the current administration not only ignored this plan, it tried to pretend the plan had never existed. The US is no doubt fortunate that the lethality of SARS-CoV-2 is not as great as that of earlier coronavirus threats. But while epidemiologists might consider a death-toll of a quarter of a million people to be minor in the greater scheme of things (and minor is hardly the word to use around the survivors), it means a great deal when you look at more than just the absolute numbers.

The legal term that comes to mind when thinking of the US government’s response is depraved indifference. And while it is a bad sign indeed that such a significant part of US society seems to be more concerned with the economic impact of a lockdown than it is with the casualty figures, it is truly terrifying that the government itself seems to be utterly indifferent to the grosser nature of the threat posed by the inability to respond to the virus. Decadent? Hell yes.

And so we come to the final, greatest sign: a complete lack of concern over the increasing proportion of the population with little to no reason to continue to support the society’s existence. Here the present situation isn’t irreparable but the trend-line seems to be headed the wrong way. And the decline in the number of people who think their society worth saving as it is seems to be coming from all extremes of the political quadrant. It isn’t just that Black and Hispanic† Americans are increasingly frustrated with the society they live in*—there is also the increasing evidence of a sort of nihilistic violence coming up from the white-supremacist/quasi-libertarian fringes. The truly destructive members of these groups are, we must remember, still fairly small in number. But their impact appears to be out of proportion to their numbers, and may well be increasing.

This may be reflected in survey numbers showing that only 12 percent of American respondents are satisfied with the current state of the country (87 percent are dissatisfied). That’s a decline by more than two thirds over the past year, and on the surface at least suggests a disturbing trend. (We mustn’t get carried away, though: these opinions are almost laughably fickle: at the worst of the Great Recession the percentage of Americans who were satisfied with the way things were going was seven. Obviously the concerns reflected here are short-term, rather than systemic.)

Has this dissatisfaction reached a tipping point, at which a majority of people no longer care to lift a finger to prevent the damage to society becoming worse? No, it hasn’t; and in fact the survey mentioned in the previous paragraph actually suggests Black Americans are more optimistic about the future than their White or Hispanic counterparts. So there’s some encouragement there.

And yet… Is the situation in 2020 worse than it was in 1980? I’m beginning to think so. US politics is no longer an interest of mine, and I have no desire to get involved in it, but there are trends visible even to one who tries to keep his head under the covers; and those trends cannot be considered encouraging. When people define themselves more by what they’re against than by what they’re for, an observer can be forgiven for wondering how able such a society is going to be to resist a shock even stronger than the one presented by the current pandemic. (And such a shock is coming, don’t doubt that for a moment.)

Is the USA in 2020 a decadent society? Not yet. Is it in danger of becoming one? Very much so. A society that is unwilling to even investigate the risks posed by climate change, increasing economic inequality, and systemic racism is not a society built for the long term. The optimism of the Gilded Age may have been to one extent or another a misguided optimism. But it was real for all that. The present age appears to be increasingly tarnished. Robert Adams, who died in 1996, would not be impressed by what he could see today.

*The question of race in the US is one that Robert Adams almost completely ignored in Decadent Societies. (He did sort of discuss it in terms of the two Romes, but mostly as a negative.) I won’t presume to speculate on his reasons—he was much more class- than race-oriented in his discussion of this subject—but given the current state of things it’s clear this can only be considered an unfortunate—if unfortunately typical—oversight.

†Here I’m using the term preferred by polling organizations. Feel free to substitute your own preference.