Cutting up the cake.

It is difficult to say when the story started, as its beginnings are lost in the mist of time. The cities of Our, Thebes, Athens, Alexandria and Rome are parts of the thread. The crusades and the unexpected discovery of America are a follow up. But the tale really gets under way towards the end of the 17^th century, when several engineers (Papin, Savery, Newcomen) imagined how to use the pressure of and expanding gas to produce a mechanical force, how fire and water could be brought together as a driving power. A century later Watt's steam engine ignited the hubris that has pervaded human thinking ever since. The 19^th century saw a boom in coal and steel, and the rapid expansion of railways, which would soon be causes for conflict. This gigantean development influenced philosophy, literature and empire building. The gods were an endangered species about to be swept into oblivion by the Titanic revival. Man would conquer the skies and the deep blue sea, while steamships and fire power made world dominion a necessary burden. 

The power of machines in the hands of a few allowed them to submit their own people and the peoples of the planet. Not many nations had this capacity, but their voracity was such that, the Earth being round, they soon ran out of land to grab and were back at one another's throats. After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo there was a lull in the fighting. Europe was war weary, but still had huge armies and navies. France, Britain and Russia coalesced against the Ottoman Turks in support of Greek independence (Navarin, 1847), French troops occupied Algiers in 1830, and the Opium Wars began in 1840. The “peoples spring” of 1848 was a turning point. In Russia and Prussia the reaction was ferocious. In revolutionary France the restored monarchy was replaced by a Second Republic that became the Second Empire four years later, with the previous tyrant's nephew at its head. In England, the army was active in quelling unrest in London and Ireland, and in annexing the Punjab. And, after a brief military incursion, the US annexed the northern half of the young Mexican republic. Thereafter annexation became the mode. Prussia progressively annexed all the German states, encroaching on Poland, Austria and France. Russia spread south into the Caucasus and Central Asia, and pushed for independence in the Balkans, all at the expense of the Ottoman empire. France's new emperor finalised the conquest of Algeria, failed in Italy and Mexico and met his Waterloo at Sedan in 1870.

 Annexations brought iperium. Having just defeated Napoleon III, William I was proclaimed emperor of the Second Reich at Versailles palace. Five years later, in 1876, Victoria was made empress of India. Japan, Russia and Austria were already there, while the French Third Republic kept the concept of empire and the US practised without naming. At the close of the century, the inhabitable continents were partitioned (Antarctica would come later). However, the new-comers to industrial unity, the Reich, the Boot and the Rising Sun, were late comers to the feast and felt dissatisfied with the leavings. The 20th century saw greed and frustration push the imperial nations into a long and destructive world struggle over who should posses what. The outcome was a division of the world between the two winners, in the old tradition of drawing lines on a map (the agreement between Stalin and Roosevelt is reputed to have been sketched out by hand on a piece of paper). Russia had become a socialist union of republics, but had not changed the habit of absolute centralised power wielded by the fallen monarch. It was extended to Eastern Europe. On the other side of the border a different regimen was put in place. At its conception the United States had fought for independence. Submitting nations to colonial rule was contrary to the foundation narrative. The solution was proto-colonialism, with local governments corrupted by imported consumption (it used to be glass beads and muzzle loaders) who grant foreign corporations the right to exploit the region's resources (it used to be ivory, gold and slaves). 

Colonies were granted political independence without financial sovereignty. And their colonial borders, arbitrarily decided in Europe by imperial administrations, divided ancient cultural groups and united traditional enemies. The result was violence, bloodshed, oppression and tyranny. But the flow of raw materials to the industrial powers grew continually as new reserves were discovered. The system was a success and, when corruption was not effective, assassination and armed intervention were the ordinary alternatives. On the other side of the global divide, a different narrative was imposing its conditions. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 had founded its legitimacy on the soviets of peasants, workers and soldiers. It was the re-appropriation of politics and capital by the people for the people. This founding ideal and a high concentration of power, reinforced by the war effort against Nazi Germany, produced an ideology of centralised uniformity. One side had variety and disparity, the other had monotony and sameness. Both imagined they were universal models, but the contest turned out to be technological and financial, not ideological and egalitarian, which favoured western concentration of wealth and innovation. 

The Cold War adversaries had adopted inverted precepts concerning the concentration and distribution of political power and wealth. Can centralised politics rule the production of riches, or does accumulated wealth command political action? When the soviet gerontocracy collapsed twenty years ago, the event was judged to be a condemnation of state control per se. Though, in fact, several other factors had contributed, notably the arms race inaugurated by Reagan's “Star Wars” program. That political supremacy had not been a success in the soviet sphere was also due to the corruptible totalitarian form it had inherited from a recent past of absolutism and serfdom. However, the judgement was final. Governments should have nothing to do with production and finance, and should disengage from education, health, defence and security, opening them to the free play of market forces. The same way that legislation was in the hands of lobbying forces. It was the triumph of money as the only measure of value. Anything that could not be marketed was worthless. 

The plutocratic renaissance had begun with Thatcherian demagogy and Reaganomics. But the real boost came two decades later, when China “came in from the cold” to join the World Trade Organisation. It seemed to be the continuation of a secular domination by Europe and its American melting-pot. But it turned out to be a Pandora' box rather than a cornucopia. However, the beginning was full of promise. Work intensive industries, such as clothing and electronics, were moved to China where capable and educated workers could subsist on a fraction of the income needed by their European and American counterparts. The proclaimed intention was that China would be the workshop, while America and Europe would conceive and design, research and develop, and keep all the intellectual property of patents and copyrights. The scenario assumed that all Chinese would remain content with subsistence wages, and that the citizens of the developed nations would all be artists, scientists and entrepreneurs. It was, of course, an improbable fiction. The Chinese have always had very shrewd businessmen. Unleashed from the ties of Party Orthodoxy they soon showed their worth, by exacting a growing share of the profits and counterfeiting on a grand scale. In a decade China has moved from being the West's sweat-shop to being the world's second richest nation. In the US and Europe – the late comer Japan should be included – the creative and inventive sectors thrived as never before, while redundant manual labour turned to washing cars, trimming hedges and delivering parcels. The production of goods was replaced by the provision of services. Industrial labour became domestic labour. 

The mechanisation of society initiated two centuries ago has multiplied power and speed. But, for most of that time, this transformation privileged a minority of the world's inhabitants. Namely those nations who were the first to build machines, thereby giving themselves the means of global dominion. This technological advantage allowed the accumulation of capital and the construction of welfare states. A dozen or so nations, comprising some fifteen per cent of humanity, had the monopoly of industrial goods and financial services, and controlled the commodities market. China alone, without the other BRICS, has a population that outnumbers all those of the original industrial powers. So that, quite suddenly, the beneficiaries of the world's technology and resources have been multiplied by two. The monopoly has been broken and the remuneration of inputs is being modified. The price of labour has fallen due to an increased supply, and the price of raw materials has risen due to an increased demand, which means the privileged nations will be obliged to work more for less value. As the new partition of value stabilises, the Chinese will increase their incomes, but adopting the capitalist model has advantages and defects. 

Private property and free enterprise are great encouragements to the production of value. But they are also the cover-up for atrocious abuse. Over time, these rapacious practices have been reduced by legislation, wherever governments managed to differentiate themselves from the capitalist class, relying either on strong popular support, or on the contradictions opposing land-ownership, industry and banking. When governments depend on majority elections, they cannot give a free rein to the 1%. Unfortunately, since the advent of the 24/7 Political Television Show, and of cross-party consensus on everything except who gets the jobs and prestige, this no longer holds, even if some basic laws are still effective. China does not have this heritage. The Party has owned and decided everything in the name of the people for the past sixty years. Before that it was the imperial court, and the infighting for leadership is as obscure now as it was then. China adopted the Western industrial model at a stage of extreme liberalisation of its rules, without a substratum of protective legislation. The quality of air, water, food and drugs had no past standards to respect. And the Western example was unpicking its regulations as fast as it could. The two systems have converged in their worship of technology and their unchecked/unbalanced decision making. 

If the Western life-style was extended to all of humanity, it has been estimated that planet Earth would have to produce four to six times more of everything and, consequently, absorb four to six times more pollution. If the example of the 1% was to be generalised the multiplier would be in the hundreds. The trouble is that the only figure on hand is one. The Earth is the only planet in the attainable part of the universe that provides the conditions for human existence. It cannot be increased by any multiple. This does not present a problem if the Western program is dominion over subject nations, which it was for as long as the West kept its technological supremacy. The 15% could consume 75% of global production because the other 85% did not have the means to claim a share. Industrial development and mass consumption in China, India and Co. have reached a point where this situation is no longer tenable. So far their expansion has increased the global cake. But it seems that the planet's ecosystem is approaching the limits of what it can produce and absorb. In future, whatever remains of the cake will have to provide for a growing number of diners.