An
army of volunteers and novices is converted into a military
establishment which becomes a state within the state, extending its
control until it makes policy, selects top leaderships and carries on
its internal feuds and wars of succession dividing the defense forces
and using them for partisan purposes. Overhead costs rise; deficits in
the public treasury grow; so does public debt. Inflation follows, and
the debasement of the currency. Levies are made on private wealth for
public purposes. There is expropriation of the property of political
enemies. Espionage, secret agents, the growth of informers become part
of the society, along with the use of assassination as a political
weapon, the increase of violence and crime, and eventually, a flight
from the cities.
This tragic enumeration only skims the surface of the many and various
aspects of a situation that reaches its breaking point in civil war,
famine, pestilence and eventually in depopulation.
Social dissolution is accelerated by provincial revolts against central
authority; by survival struggle between the empires which were
coordinated and consolidated into the civilization; by revolt in the
subordinate and dependent segments of the civilization; by rivalry and
conflict between racial, cultural and political sub-groups forced into
the civilization, held there by coercion, policed by armed force and
taking the first opportunity to win political independence and self
determination.
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