utsiders and other intruders. An
army of volunteers and novices is converted into a military
establishment which becomes a state within the state, extending its
control until it makes policy, selects top leaderships and carries on
its internal feuds and wars of succession dividing the defense forces
and using them for partisan purposes. Overhead costs rise; deficits in
the public treasury grow; so does public debt. Inflation follows, and
the debasement of the currency. Levies are made on private wealth for
public purposes. There is expropriation of the property of political
enemies. Espionage, secret agents, the growth of informers become part
of the society, along with the use of assassination as a political
weapon, the increase of violence and crime, and eventually, a flight
from the cities.

This tragic enumeration only skims the surface of the many and various
aspects of a situation that reaches its breaking point in civil war,
famine, pestilence and eventually in depopulation.

Social dissolution is accelerated by provincial revolts against central
authority; by survival struggle between the empires which were
coordinated and consolidated into the civilization; by revolt in the
subordinate and dependent segments of the civilization; by rivalry and
conflict between racial, cultural and political sub-groups forced into
the civilization, held there by coercion, policed by armed force and
taking the first opportunity to win political independence and self
determination.

While the momentum for expansion lasted, the civilization grew in wealth
and power. When it waned, disintegration set in. Changelessness seems to
be impossible in a social group. A civilization either expands or
withers, builds up or falls to pieces.

Starting from one or more local groups, each civilization has reached
out "to conquer the world", occupy it, organize it, dominate it, exploit
it, perpetuate itself. In each case expansion, occupation, domination
and exploitation are limited by human capacity (human nature); by the
relative brevity of a single human life; by the extreme variations in
the capacity of successive leaders. It is limited by geography; by the
means of transportation and communication; by overhead costs that
increase geometrically as the civilization expands arithmetically; by
the means of delegating responsibility; by accounting devices, available
raw materials and labor power; by power struggles inside the ruling
oligarch