Jared Diamond's "Collapse", part one

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" is 
currently listed at #7 on Amazon.com. It is of some interest that such a 
book has become a best-seller since it explicitly addresses the question of 
whether the USA might eventually fail, just as Rome or other empires did in 
the past. Paul Kennedy's 1989 "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" was 
another such book.  While Kennedy's doom-and-gloom scenario revolved around 
the relationship between economic and military power, Diamond's focus is on 
ecology. In either case, the interest in such books is certainly driven by 
the perception of the American public that all is not well. It is hard to 
imagine such books becoming best sellers, or for that matter written, in 
the immediate post-WWII period. Things are obviously changing.

To a large extent, we can assume that people are buying "Collapse" because 
it is in many ways a follow-up to his best-selling "Guns, Germs, and Steel: 
The Fates of Human Societies." Although I have not read this book, I am 
fairly confident that my late cyber-friend Jim Blaut had an accurate 
assessment of it in "Eight Eurocentric Historians" 
(<http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/diamond.htm>http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/diamond.htm.)

From all appearances, "Collapse" is an extension of ideas put forward in 
"Guns, Germs and Steel," which in my view can be described as environmental 
determinism. As Jim Blaut puts it:

>>"Environment molds history," says Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs, and 
Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" (p. 352). Everything important that 
has happened to humans since the Paleolithic is due to environmental 
influences. More precisely: all of the important differences between human 
societies, all of the differences that led some societies to prosper and 
progress and others to fail, are due to the nature of each society's local 
environment and to its geographical location. History as a whole reflects 
these environmental differences and forces. Culture is largely irrelevant: 
the environment explains all of the main tendencies of history; cultural 
factors affect the minor details. Diamond proceeds systematically through 
the main phases of history in all parts of the world and tries to show, 
with detailed arguments, how each phase, in each major region, is 
explainable largely by environmental forces. The final outcome of these 
environmentally caused processes is the rise and dominance of Europe.<<

Diamond's methodology is a challenge to ecosocialists for obvious reasons. 
On the surface, Diamond's approach seems similar to John Bellamy Foster's 
"The Vulnerable Planet" or Mike Davis's "Ecology of Fear." It would also 
appear that Diamond might be on the side of the angels for at least warning 
humanity that the clock is ticking even if a satisfactory answer to the 
question of what is to be done is lacking.

Jared Diamond's academic discipline is evolutionary biology. His early 
research consisted of studying animals, especially birds, in their natural 
habitat. More recently, he has turned his attention to primates, including 
homo sapiens. "The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human 
Animal" and "Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality" predate 
"Guns, Germs and Steel."

For an evolutionary biologist examining the rise and fall of civilizations 
great and small, temptations to adopt a kind of social Darwinism are 
inevitable. In the 19th century social Darwinism was used to justify the 
dominance of Europe over the colonial world in terms of the survival of the 
fittest. The White European was more fit than the Black African just as 
some species were fitter than others. In the 20th century, such 
explanations are obviously too racist for polite society. Instead, you get 
"value-free" explanations that account for the death of 90 percent of 
American Indians through germs rather than genocidal intentions. The rise 
of Europe should not be interpreted as a vindication of capitalism or 
Protestant values but merely as the dispassionate working out of the iron 
laws of environmentalism.

If Diamond is anxious to separate the ascendancy of the West from any sort 
of innate cultural superiority, he is just as anxious to debunk the notion 
of a Golden Age that existed before colonialism. In the 1992 "The Third 
Chimpanzee," he has a chapter titled "The Golden Age That Never Was," which 
according to a Washington Post article, "disposes of another myth: that 
until industrial societies started to rape the environment, our forebears 
were careful stewards of our world." This theme is obviously amplified in 
"Collapse," which depicts Mayans and other precapitalist societies as being 
as obtuse as the George W. Bush White House when it comes to environmental 
challenges.

Turning now to Part One of "Collapse," we are presented with a depressing 
view of what the state of Montana has become in environmental terms. 
Diamond selects Montana for personal and methodological reasons. He has 
taken fly-fishing vacations there over the years and owns a home. Montana 
also serves as a microcosm of all societies faced with the prospects of 
success or failure. Since he cannot conceive of a different framework than 
that defined by geographical borders (he teaches geography as well as 
physiology at UCLA), Montana becomes a useful test case. Moreover, the 
focus is on Bitterroot Valley in Southwest Montana, an area that is favored 
by the super-rich like Charles Schwab who take private jets in for a 
weekend of hiking, fishing or golf as well as the blue collar workers who 
work 2 or 3 jobs just to subsist.

Beneath the glamorous surface, Montana is a toxic dump. There are 20,000 
abandoned mines in Montana and they all leach arsenic, cadmium, sulfuric 
acid and other poisonous byproducts into the rivers and streams. Diamond 
warns about becoming "indignant at mining companies" since the "moral issue 
is more complex." Specifically, he cites an environmental consultant named 
David Stiller who wrote, "?ASARCO [American Smelting and Refining Company, 
a giant mining and smelting company] can hardly be blamed [for not cleaning 
up an especially toxic mine that it owned.] American businesses exist to 
make money for their owners; it is the modus operandi of American capitalism."

Diamond accepts the excuse of such "rich companies" that cleaning up after 
themselves is an "excessive" cost. Since a capitalist firm can be expected 
to do whatever is necessary to return a profit, it is up to the taxpayers 
to assume the financial burden. But since the taxpayers of Montana tend to 
be rugged individualists either of the big bourgeoisie type like Charles 
Schwab or loggers and ranchers who have often turned to the militias in 
their hatred of Big Government, not much can be expected from those 
quarters as well.

The prospects for water, forests and wildlife are just as daunting. This 
leads Diamond to practically throw up his hands in helplessness. He writes:

"We have previously seen in this chapter how Montana is experiencing many 
environmental problems that translate into economic problems. Application 
of these different values and goals that we have just seen illustrated 
would result in different approaches to these environmental problems, 
presumably associated with different probabilities of succeeding or failing 
at solving them. At present, there is honest and wide difference of opinion 
about the best approaches. We don't know which approaches the citizens of 
Montana will ultimately choose, and we don't know whether Montana's 
problems will get better or worse."

It is really too bad that in the 50 pages Diamond devotes to Montana, the 
American Indian does not enter the picture. It as if one decided to write 
about the environmental crisis facing Alaska and failed to mention the 
Inuit. This omission is particularly egregious since the Indians had a 
different relationship to nature than those who conquered them.

Since Jared Diamond is so anxious to show how precapitalist societies were 
just as negligent as their successors on environmental questions, you'd 
think he'd have at least mentioned how the Blackfoot and other indigenous 
peoples fared.

My own travels to Indian country in Montana and my readings in Blackfoot 
history provide a different perspective than that laid out by Jared 
Diamond. In a visit to the Blackfoot reservation in Browning a few years 
ago, I met Alfred Young Man, a professor in the Native American Studies 
Department at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. (The Blackfoot 
people are divided by the US-Canadian border, although traditionally their 
territory extended from north of Alberta down into Missouri.) He was 
allowing native vegetation to the land allotted to him as a Blackfoot and 
hoped to raise bison at some point.

For somebody so anxious to look at Montana as an environmental microcosm, 
you'd think that Diamond would be interested to see how Alfred Young Man 
and his ancestors related to nature.

For George Catlin, the artist who chronicled the lives of the American 
Indian in paint and word, the contrast between the Blackfoot and the modern 
rulers of Montana could not be starker:

"The Blackfeet [sic] are, perhaps, the most powerful tribe of Indians on 
the Continent; and being sensible of their strength, have stubbornly 
resisted the Traders in their country, who have been gradually forming an 
acquaintance with them, and endeavouring to establish a permanent and 
profitable system of trade. Their country abounds in beaver and bison, and 
most of the fur-bearing animals of North America; and the American Fur 
Company, with an unconquerable spirit of trade and enterprize, has pushed 
its establishments into country; and the numerous parties of trappers are 
tracking up streams and rivers, rapidly destroying the beavers which dwell 
therein. The Blackfeet have repeatedly informed the Traders of the company, 
that if their men persisted in trapping beavers in their country, they 
should kill them whenever they met them. They have executed their threats 
in many instances, and the Company lose some fifteen or twenty men 
annually, who fall by the hands of these people, in defence of what they 
deem their property and their rights. Trinkets and whiskey, however, will 
soon spread their charms amongst as they have amongst other tribes; and 
white man's voracity sweep the prairies and the streams of their wealth, to 
the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean; leaving the Indians to inhabit, 
and at last to starve upon, a dreary and solitary waste."

That dreary and solitary waste are words that exactly describe Jared 
Diamond's Montana of today.

John C. Ewers' "The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains" contains 
the most thorough examination of the role of the bison in Blackfoot 
society. Ewers was the first curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian on 
the Blackfoot reservation, which is in Browning. Later he served as Senior 
Ethnologist in the Smithsonian Institution.

Because the Blackfoot warriors held the upper hand until relatively late in 
the 19th century, the bison remained plentiful in their territory. In the 
first instance the animal provided excellent nutritional value. Practically 
every part was edible, including the brains, liver, kidneys, soft nose 
gristle and bone marrow. The meat itself was either roasted or boiled. Care 
was taken to prepare pemmican, a preserved dried meat, in advance of the 
long, harsh winter. Pemmican was made by taking layers of dried meat and 
separating them with back fat, wild peppermint and berries. The pemmican 
bags themselves were made of the skins of unborn bison calves and could 
themselves be eaten in lean times.

They also made their clothing from bison skins. Making use of steel knives 
obtained through the fur trade, the Blackfoot made beautiful, long-wearing, 
waterproof clothing. All of the horsegear was made from bison hides as 
well: including saddles, bridles and shoes for sore-footed horses. Arms 
were also made from rawhide, including the strong shields constructed from 
the bull's neck. Warclubs were held together by thongs made of rawhide.

In addition to providing food and clothing, the Blackfoot transformed bison 
skins into lodging and furniture as well. Soft-dressed bison skins without 
the hair were used for lodges (tipis). The bison-hide covering for a lodge 
weighed about one hundred pounds. Each day when a village moved to a new 
hunting ground, the lodge covering was packed up and stowed in a travois 
that was also made of rawhide, along with the rawhide bedding.

While I am not prepared at this point to challenge what Jared Diamond has 
written about the Mayan or other peoples who allegedly destroyed the 
environmental basis for their own reproduction, I am prepared to say that 
the Blackfoot peoples have something to say about "recycling" in the 
deepest sense of the word. With their light footprint on the Plains and 
their skill at using every single fiber of nature's bounty for food, 
lodging, transportation, etc., they certainly present an alternative to the 
current wasteful system.

In my view, socialism will synthesize the best of hunting-and-gathering 
societies and the technology that capitalism has fostered. As bleak as the 
picture Jared Diamond draws of Montana, it would seem that the only 
realistic solution is one that is rooted both in the primeval past and the 
revolutionary future.

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