Before Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee and other historians of
cultural rise and fall, there was Brooks Adams. And while today
there are ever more historians adding their theories as to why
civilizations collapse through such factors as military invasion,
over-taxation, or ecological shifts, most of these theories do not
get to the cause of how civilizations, if not stunted and killed in
youth or middle age, die of old age.
Our Western Civilization has an optimism that we have a culture of
eternal life because of our science and industry, but it is
precisely in this cycle of so-called 'progress' that a civilization
falls. While Spengler described this process of the birth, life and
death of cultures, several decades previously Brooks Adams,
contemplating his observations of societies, concluded that the way
a society considers its money as a culture-symbol tells the
character of the society. Spengler also dealt with the money
question as a symbol of cultural rise and fall, and would surely
have applauded Brooks Adams' work, although he did not seem to have
been aware of the American's study.
In the Law of Civilisation and Decay, Adams considers various
societies and civilisations by the symbolism, manner and influence
of their coinage, and concludes that a society or civilisation
becomes sapped of its culture-vigour, its creative genius, when
entering a cycle where money becomes the dominant factor rather
than merely serving as a mechanism. The energy of a society, or
what we might regard as its collective libido, is diverted fully
into commerce and trade and what remains of cultural creativity
becomes an economic activity for the market: a commodity. This is
precisely where our Western Civilisation stands today. For those
'with eyes to see' the value of Brooks Adams' work should strike an
immediate chord.
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