On the Likelihood of a Collapse of the Political System of the United States of America

Extract

Most of the current ills affect all the highly developed capitalist countries if not all industrial societies regardless of the type of structure. In the United States, however, these trends have assumed the most extreme forms for two circularly intertwined reasons: the first and more obvious being that American capitalism has developed fastest and furthest; while the second is that (in contrast to Britain, for instance) the American civilisation comprises hardly any pre-capitalist traditions or institutions which could contain and mollify the nefarious tendencies of unbridled capitalism, and prevent them from being pushed to their extremes. The absence of such restraints has permitted in the past an outstandingly vigorous development of capitalism, but in recent times the same factor has given an especially large scope to the self destructive tendencies of this system. Two thousand years ago Polybius put forth the view that any of the types of constitutions distinguished by Aristotle—that is, democracy, aristocracy and monarchy (i.e. autocracy)—is weak or even unviable in its pure form; and that the strongest and most long-lived form of government consists of a balanced mixture of these three pure types. As it stands this statement (as well as the concepts it contains) are debatable; but I am sure there is a good deal of truth in it, and that an analogous rough approximation could be made about the economic structures.