The Collapse of Complex Societies
February 10th, 2010 | 
Product Description
Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.
The Collapse of Complex Societies
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This is the worst book I have ever purchased on Amazon. The title is intriguing but the substance is shallow. The writing style is absolutely abysmal and it is worth noting that the editing is credited in the introduction to the author’s wife, hardly unbiased. This is probably one of those required texts that accompanies some arcane college course for burned out seniors in the social sciences. Since Mom and Dad are paying the bills, the final is multiple choice, a guaranteed B or A-. It is a slick production designed and promoted by confused academics.
The topic, properly treated and written about more scientifically and less quasi scholarly, has possibilities. Although the archeological evidence is limited but steadily accumulating, the subject matter has great speculative potential. Our own society, thought by many to be deteriorating under the undo burden of religious superstition similarly parallels many of the cited civilizations in this book and as such makes the study relevant. But this point is by no means an endorsement of this book.
If you are looking for substance on this topic, either write your own book or look elsewhere.
I felt overly generous giving this product one star; it deserves some symbol representing a “black hole.”
Rating: 1 / 5
Yourdon recommends Joseph Tainter’s book, _The Collapse of Complex Societies_ (1988).
From a Y2K perspective, after a quick skim, not sure it is worth reading unless you are really interested in detailed history and economics. This book does not attempt to describe the collapses or provide especially helpful info in our context, I think.
The author IS rather proud of himself, though, as he beats up on many other theories of how civilizations collapse (e.g., Roman, Mayan). Other authors have proposed causes such as:
1. Depletion of vital resources, 2. Discovery of brand new resources, 3. Catastrophes, 4. Insufficient response to circumstances, 5. Competition from other complex societies, 6. Intruders, 7. Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement/misbehavior, 8. Social dysfunction, 9. Mystical, 10. Chance concatenation of bad things
He says the cause is not these things, but instead, the fact that the society had achieved a level of complexity such that the economic overhead for maintaining the bureaucracy, etc was so great that the society was weakened. Then, when items like 1-10 occur, the society is less able to handle it.
Rating: 3 / 5
Academically exhausting book to read.
Thouroughly researched and annotated.
Valid concepts/ideas, with detailed supporting material, a lot of it.
Teaches a generalized way to analyze the future of complex societies.
Rating: 4 / 5
As a history book on the rise and fall of ancient civilizations dating back to 1000 BC and beyond, Professor Tainter’s book was interesting in places and more than acceptable in others to a historically challenged lay person like me. I purchased this book because the title suggested that its contents might help me make sense of the socio-political-economic turmoil of today. Unfortunately in this regard the book did not satisfy. Tainter’s proposals about diminishing marginal returns on investments in complexity as possible factors leading to sociopolitical collapse in ancient civilizations was way too much for me to accept as relevant to our modern day troubles. To envision a Mayan Head of State in 500 BC unable to sleep because he is troubled about whether he should invest more or less of the nation’s wealth into “complexity” because last year’s returns had fallen below his expectations is beyond my visionary powers. To envision a current head of state losing sleep about national deficits is also beyond my visionary powers. He/she simply takes the nation deeper into debt and loses not a minute of sleep.
In his early pages Tainter defines collapse as a “rapid, significant loss of sociopolitical complexity” and then goes on to define complexity and relate it to civilization; asserting that civilization implies complexity and complexity implies civilization. (Note that “civilization” here is unrelated to morality). In order for an ancient society to advance, he claimed, they had to invest in complexity and in so doing they inevitably ran into some rigid limitations that lead to declining marginal returns on their investments. If such conditions persist the society becomes vulnerable to collapse, he argued. In his final pages Tainter assures us that “Collapse today is neither an option nor an immediate threat.” Since nearly 20 years have passed since he wrote those words and the USA society is still functioning (?) it seems he was/is correct.
The major portion of the book is a literature review using the 400 or so references listed on 25 pages. Such an enormous quantity is obviously great for archaeological students but I as a lay reader disinterested in all the various models put forth by archaeological scholars belonging to the various ideological schools identified by Tainter, all the various taxes levied by all the various Roman Emperors, I found the reading dry and choppy. Yes, I went into high gear and speed-read through most all of this. Example graphs are presented in chapter 4 to illustrate his explanations of declining marginal returns on investments in complexity, all from societies that have not yet collapsed. In his final pages he assures readers that we have nothing to fear in the immediate future but if a society does go under, it will not do so exclusively; the whole world will go down with it. Two final comments.
First, I find his proposals about the importance of declining marginal returns from “investments in complexity” to be highly shaky, built on shifting sands, forcing a fit of parts that do not comfortably fit. At first glance it gives an appearance of innovativeness, of originality, of creativeness but on further study I conclude that it adds little to our store of knowledge about the dynamics of abrupt social changes.
Secondly, on page 3 Tainter writes that his objective is “…to develop a general explanation of collapse applicable in a variety of contexts and with implications for current conditions.” If so, I submit that he falls way short of his goal. I found almost nothing applicable to our current troubled times in his book for which a more appropriate title would have been “The Collapse of Ancient Societies”.
Rating: 3 / 5
Professor Tainter has written a useful review of many Nations’ declines, blaming the increased complexity of successful societies as a ballooning burden on productivity that brings on the Fall. Like most historical surveys of this type,the author provides a scholarly review of many competing theories and an overview of the major issues facing successful nations throughout history. However, this book’s conclusions, like most theories explaining the cycles of history, deals with the symptoms of decline, and fails to get to the underlying heart of the matter. Of course by their very nature all large successful societies become more and more complex, but the complexity itself is not the problem. Indeed, the extraordinary complexity of the computer and internet age may be what saves this nation from decline.
No theory of history’s failures can be comprehensive unless correlated with the cause of history’s successes. Many writers have argued that individuals make the difference: the creative hard working citizenry, if given the freedom to exercise their genius, will solve all shortages and move a nation forward. There have been only a handful of societies that achieved widespread freedom and prosperity for their people–Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Florence and Venice, Holland and eventually England, France and America. Most of the billions of people in the hundreds of other nations throughout history have lived under oppressive rulers and in hunger and poverty. The common denominator for the few successful cases is that their national and theological cultures empowered the common people and allowed them room to operate. For an exposition on this theory see COMMON GENIUS: Guts, Grit, and Common Sense: How Ordinary People Create Prosperous Societies and How Intellectuals Make Them Collapse
Except for these few free successful enclaves, the isolated stepping stones that led to America’s overwhelming affluence, everywhere else in the world, for the past few millennia, the ordinary people were held down, restricted, subdued. Now, if that is the case, collapse and declines must come when the populace of a nation lose their freedom and motivation to contribute in a coperative way for their own benefit. Any reduction in marginal returms on investments, which Tainter’s theory blames for collapse, only arise because the elites of the land burden the citizenry with excessive regulations and inordinate taxation, or weaken their motivation by excessive federal hand-outs. Young vibrant societies have usually been free of these classes of people that come in and burden prosperous nations–after the heavy lifting has been done!
These burdens are a form of “complexity” but they are not the actual cause of decline. Complex labor saving devices and medical and scientific breakthroughs do not hurt, because they empower the citizenry to be more productive. All one has to do to evaluate what helps vs what hurts is to ask, Does this new complexity free the people to be more productive or less productive? Thus the author is close to the answer, but avoids going the next step to the fundamental underlying cause of success and failure.
The basic difficulty faced in explaining why societies Collapse is that the concept of Social Complexity by itself is too vague to be useful. The author is right in arguing that a bloated class of administrators not involved in production, and excessive central governing structures, creates inefficiencies and lowers the marginal rate of return on investments. Reviewer Robert Steele is quite correct in calling for a downsizing of government and restoring states rights over many issues. Reviewer Allen Hundley asks the key question: Can we have an advanced society immune to complexity’s dangers. The answer may be to allow the complex technical, scientific and industrial communities the freedom to solve the tangible problems we face and keep the nonproductive “experts” out of their way. If the common people create progress, as Wayne Te Brake argues in “Shaping History,” then it is only necessary to keep them free of excessive government complexity. The IRS Code is a good example–the complexity of this monstrosity costs the American people billions of dollars of wasted money. The complexity of the internet, if it allows a grass roots demand for tax simplification, could on the other hand increase marginal rates of return for all. Thus, it is necessary to separate helpful complexity from destructive complexity to preserve the nations unprecedented success and avoid decline.
A final point is that “sudden collapses” are rare–invasion by the Huns, meteor strikes, the plague. The problem facing America is the slow gradual decline brought on by those favoring an expanded and suffocating big government that is designed to replace the citizenry’s creative self-reliance with dependency on centralized cures that rarely work. The complex theories of these Platonic elites, that want to create niches ruling the rest of us from “on top,” are the only type of complexities that we don’t need! Bill Greene
Rating: 2 / 5