History and Social Evolution

There is an interesting history of what might be called "social evolutionary" ideas in political philosophy. This can be seen as being manifested in multiple ways, in the ideas of figures ranging from Karl Marx to Herbert Spencer. In the case of Marx's historical materialism, a social evolutionary theory of a sort is put foreward that predicts an inevitable linear historical trend towards a particular "absolute" (communism) and an analysis of history in terms of phases (such as "late capitalism") determined by "economic forces". In the case of Herbert Spencer's theories of socio-cultural evolution, the trend is supposed to be towards "industrial society" as opposed to "militant society" (although, unfortunately, towards the end of Spencer's life society was becoming increasingly both militant and industrial at the same time).

As a general rule, I think that social evolutionary theories are better at explaining the past than predicting the future. They can be useful as a historical analysis, but predictive claims made on such a basis tend to be dubious. A mistake that proponents of notions of social evolution may often be prone to make is to treat a particular ideal (communism, anarchism, liberal democracy, whatever it may be) as the ultimate end of history in a strictly linear sense, and as if such an ultimate end is "absolute" in the sense of being all-pervasive and/or unconditional. This is problematic because there simply is not merely one possible direction or outcome of history, and it seems to eliminate the role of people's actions in determining social and systematic outcomes.

Another issue is that it is not necessarily the case that social evolution is always "progressive" in a positive sense. It could concievably be regressive or even a cycle of both progression and retrogression. The view that mankind is inherently fated or predestined towards a particular utopia (which implies that it will occur regaurdless of what people think and do) seems naive. One's utopia is likely to function as a purely floating abstraction, and even if one's ideal is possible in some sense, this does not necessarily mean that it will inevitably occur without deliberate change in terms of human action and thought. If "the ideal" is treated in a fatalistic way, it would seem to follow that there is no reason for deliberate action or advocacy of such an ideal. On the other hand, if the matter is viewed more multi-dimensionally, it becomes clear that there are multiple tendencies at play that depend on a variety of factors.

Marx's historical materialism ends up functioning as a secularized version of millenialism or messianism, and Marx as a figure serves the function of a religious prophet in this way. Of course, Marx also faced the internal contradiction between such a prediction about the inevitability of the ideal of communism as the ultimate outcome of capitalism in a sense and his "practical" proposal for a dictatorship as a means to the ultimate end of the communist ideal, which the proof-by-demonstration of history has fairly clearly refuted. But insofar as what concerns us is the predictive part of Marx's philosophy, it seems quite evident that communism is treated as an "absolute" ultimate end in a way that mirrors platonism and judeo-christianity, and history is sweepingly described in terms of certain abstract phases that only seem to tell part of the story at best.

It should be clear that neither communism or anarchism are inevitable future stages of history. At the same time, it should be clear that modern liberal democracy is not eternal and is ultimately unsustainable. In fact, there really is no such thing as a permanent state of affairs or system or organization, unless there was a total statis and hence the end of time itself. The forces of traditionalism in general are likely to be futile in this sense. The claim of various post-modernists to "the end of history", even when construed as a metaphor for something more narrow, is not only highly dubious but it's ultimately an incredibly pompous notion that functions to close the book on anything other than what's already been established - a defacto defense of the status quo. The tendency to simply pinpoint a particular point in history as the end of possible progress is a manifestation of a certain conservative historical viewpoint that essentially defies the nature of time.

I think that it is important and healthy to aknowledge dynamism and multiple-probabalism. I also think that social evolution cannot reasonably be thought of one-dimensionally for this very reason. History cannot be explained let alone predicted purely in terms of one isolated factor, and as if it is somehow independant of individual action. All being considered, I endorse the general notion of social evolution (which is not necessarily the same thing as "social darwinism, but generally signifies the extension of evolutionary concepts to a historical analysis of social interrelations and dynamics), but advise one to err on the side of caution in terms of what they may be tempted to read into history.