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THE DECLINE OF THE WEST, AN UPCOMING CENTENNIAL AND A PRESENT REALITY

By Norman A. Bailey, Ph.D.

In 1923 the German philosopher, Oswald Spengler, published his masterpiece, THE DECLINE OF THE WEST, of which World War I was the first chapter.  He did not live long enough to witness the second chapter of the decline, World War II, or the third chapter, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and its satellites and the United States and its allies.  That event covered the forty-two years between 1947 and 1989, when the Soviet Empire collapsed, followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.  The Cold War was, in essence, World War III, and included very hot war episodes, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

      All-in-all, the three world wars of the twentieth century covered fifty-two years, more than half the century.  The remaining forty-eight years included the great depression of the 1930’s and several episodes of rampant inflation.  In other words, as Spengler would have said, the twentieth century saw the beginning of the end of Western Civilization, so painstakingly built-up over centuries on the twin pillars of Judeo-Christian religious morality and Greco-Roman civil ethics.

     In essence, the three world wars of the twentieth century were civil wars in Western society, during which it threatened to tear itself apart.  Nevertheless, by the dawn of the twenty-first century, the United States of America, latest paladin of Western civilization, bestrode the world like a colossus, not only the richest and most powerful country in the world, but the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world.

     Now, only over twenty years later, the United States has gone from a Colossus to a pathetic giant, rent internally by partisan hatreds and spendthrift governments, and threatened externally by Muslim Jihadists, a resurgent Russia and a triumphant China, determined to restore its glorious imperial past.  

WHY IS THE WEST DECLINING?

     There are many reasons, including fiscal incontinence; class, racial, religious, and ethnic conflicts; the decline of rational discussion and civil discourse; the precipitous decay of religion, classical education, beauty in art and music, and rapidly declining births.

     One of the most significant causes of the decline is  the obscene concentration of wealth (defined as income-producing assets) in a tiny percentage of the population and those who service them—lawyers, accountants, engineers, managers, scientists and technicians. The new technologies upon which these mega-fortunes are based, are developing at a pace far beyond the capacity of the great majority of the population of the Western countries to understand, absorb and utilize.   As a result, they accelerate the decline, rather than serving as the basis of a resurgence of  Western civilization.

     Various remedies have been suggested for this situation.  Unfortunately, ost of them involve the forcible redistribution of wealth through taxation and/or breaking up the companies which embody them.  The likelihood of the success of such measures overlooks that fact that wealth can and does buy public influence and governmental power.

     There is another set of remedies, which aim to reverse the concentration of the ownership of capital and spread it throughout the general population, giving everyone the opportunity to participate in the riches generated by the new technologies. This approach is no form of charity, but but rather provides for the dispersal of the ownership of self-generating wealth for all, and for future generations, without taking anything away from anyone by force.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

      Spreading the ownership of wealth throughout the populace can be accomplished in various ways, all of which can be illustrated by American examples.  These categories are:

I  Cooperatives, which can be exemplified by the giant cooperative Sunkist, which brings together six thousand producers of citrus fruits in southern California and Arizona, with annual revenues currently exceeding one billion dollars.  

II  Employee Stock Ownership Plans, which now cover over 14 million                      employees in the US, who own all or part of the 6500 companies they work for.  In all, ESOPs hold, on behalf of their participants, over one trillion dollars” worth of assets.  ESOP employees are much less subject to the vagaries of the market, or to events such as pandemics, than ordinary employees.    

III  Community Investment Trusts or Corporations, exemplified by the Alaskan Native Corporations, founded in 1971 and which in 2019  generated $10.5 billion for the 140,000 Alaskan natives:  Eskimos, Indians and Aleuts, who are by far the wealthiest native peoples in the world.  Community investment trusts or corporations can be established on any basis; geographic, racial, ethnic, religious or otherwise. 

      In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, the Congress passed and President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, the single most important piece of economic legislation in the history of the United States.  It provided a way for the teeming, crowded, inhabitants of the cities of the east coast to populate the Western plains and becoming landowners, then the principal form of wealth, through their own labor.  In other similar countries, such as Brazil, where no such legislation was adopted, huge tracts of land were bought by wealthy speculators, who sold them piecemeal, to developers.  The difference in the historical social development of such countries and the US is notorious.

      Years ago, The Center for Economic and Social Justice, an NGO established to promote expanded capital ownership, proposed the adoption of a Capital Homestead Act, to replicate the success of the original Homesteading Act, but no such legislation has been passed. It was urgent then—it is a thousand times more urgent now.  The US, by adopting such measures, could point the way and resume the leadership of Western civilization.  But there is no time to lose.  If Spengler is to be proven wrong in the end, effective pushback to present destructive trends must begin immediately.

About Norman A. Bailey

Norman A. Bailey is an economic consultant, adjunct professor of economic statecraft at the Institute of World Politics, and president of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

He is an emeritus professor at The City University of New York. He served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush Administration.

Mr. Bailey’s degrees are from Oberlin College and Columbia University. He is the author, co-author or editor of several books and many articles.