Joseph Tainter is an American anthropologist and historian. He published “The Collapse of Complex Societies” in 1988. We review his analysis on ancient societies, and the risks associated with post-industrial societies he mentions at the end of the book. Finally, we examine how the cost of complexity has varied accross countries since this book is published.
Materialist Explanation of State Formation
V Gordon Childe, an Australian-British archaeologist (the father of modern archaeology) proposed the following ideas:
neolithic revolution 10,000 BC: the switch from hunter/gatherer to agricultural societies allowed larger population and State formation
urban revolution 3,000 BC: surplus enables specialization (artisan, priests), technology: metallurgy, writing, masonry, class society: ruling elite
materialist framework: innovation intensify production and enable elite control, States arise to manage inequality between rulers and producers.
In 1957, Karl Wittfogel, a former Marxist trying to explain Stalinism publishes “Oriental Despotism: a comparative study of total power”. His main idea is that complex irrigation projects led to State formation. Hydraulic States in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China were highly centralized and peasant revolts could cause anarchy but were by a return to centralized administrative state. This contrasts with the collapse of the western Roman Empire, which led to the fragmentation of the State. Hydraulic State elites were uniquely resilient.
Other Explanation of State Formation
Colin Renfrew, a prominent archaeologist contended that State formation occurs in well-delimited areas (Greek islands in the Cyclades, valleys), and explained in 1986 that intense competition between peer polities, followed by centralization after wars and shared rituals (as with Minoans) help define a common identity. He stresses that symbolic and cognitive capacity emerges with common rituals, measures, and writing and record keeping that enable the formation of a common culture. He rejects monocausal explanations as those of Wittfogel or Childe, and views culture as an incremental process.
Similarly, Herrlee Creel in “The Origins of Chinese Bureaucracy” claims in 1970 that the rise of the Chinese State is not linked to material causes such as hydraulic works, but to the rise of a merit-based bureaucracy, which is an institutional cause.
Explanations of State Collapse
Tainter explains that it is futile to ascribe a single cause of collapse to a system, and that systems tend to fail not because of stress but because they slowly become unfit for their environment. He suggests 3 types of mal-adaptation:
fossil: society is fossilized and unwilling/unable to change
speeding train: society directs ever more resources towards some goal
house of card: society is fragile and its supply chains over-optimized
Marginal and Average Returns
Decreasing marginal returns and average return: extensive vs intensive cultivation, coercive and legitimating cost of maintaining a hierarchy, alphabetization vs specialized studies.
Marginal: Cost of next unit of complexity (e.g., adding a new province).
Average: Total cost divided by benefits (e.g., empire-wide tax revenue vs. legions’ upkeep).
Marginal costs are bound to rise, and when average costs also rise, the burden of the complex society becomes too high and collapse occurs.
Tainter’s work critiques non-materialist explanations for societal collapse—those that invoke **divine punishment, cosmic cycles, or cultural "degeneration"** rather than systemic, empirical factors. Here are the "mystical" theories he dismisses:
Divine retribution and supernatural causes: Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed for wickedness, Nineveh falls due to Yahweh’s judgement.
Cyclical theories of history (Polybus anacyclosis, Hindu Yugas, Chinese dynastic cycle through mandate of heaven)
Social evolution: Oswald Spengler comparison of cultures with organisms, Arnold Toynbee on elite vigor.
He views this theories as post-hoc and at best, descriptive but non predictive. This maters today as modern "mystical" collapse narratives (e.g., "AI will end humanity," "climate karma") obscure real policy solutions.
Rise of Complexity
Tainter illustrates the rising cost of coercion and legitimation in the Roman Empire.
Roman entitlement to panem et circenses turned the plebs into a parasitic class. Additional entitlements are granted by new emperors and leading to cost increase with ratchet effect. The system support a navy and ports to import the wheat and large scale bakeries producing the subsidized product. This is not the cause of collapse for Tainter but a symptom of unsustainable complexity. Military salaries are constantly increased from 225 denarii per year under Augustus (14AD) to 400 denarii under Septimus Severus (226AD). This later leads to the debasement of the denarii.
Tainter mentions the Bagaudae Gaul: Peasants and slaves revolting in 3rd and 5th century Roman Gaul against rising taxes imposed by a collapsing state. The revolt was against the Roman state and landlords. Bagaudae movement had a class aspect.
Anachoresis in Ptolemaic Egypt: (greek ἀναχωρέω: to withdraw) Egyptians rebel against extortionate taxation by a Greek elite by retreating to the desert to become hermits or bandits, or by moving to another country. The Greeks lowered taxes or granted amnesties to maintain the tax base.
John Fairbank, a historian of China argues that the Qing dynasty collapsed in the 19th century for its failure to adapt its foreign relations from a tribute system to western imperialism and to internal revolt such as the Taiping rebellion.
Bernard Lewis is a historian of the Ottoman Empire, his view is that Ottoman decline was due to institutional decay and failure to adapt to newer gun technology (conservative Janissaries), economic mismanagement (corrupt tax farming), administrative decentralization (rise of ayan, corruption of devşirme), and to intellectual stagnation as the ideas of enlightenment did not come. (Anti-orientalists argue these views are Eurocentric, biased towards enlightenment, the Ottoman State became fossilized and unwilling to adapt).
Robert McC Adams, an archaeologist of Mesopotamia and Iran views the collapse of the Sassanid Persian State in favor of an islamic state as due to a decline of intensive agriculture due to warfare with Byzantines and Arabs, political instability, plague, and excessive taxation, leading to anachoresis. The Umayyad and Abbasid kept hydraulic infrastructure, but its management was done at a local level, and a land tax was introduced. The capital was moved to Baghdad, but there was some continuity, not a dark age as in Europe.
David Stuart (b. 1965) is a leading **Mayanist epigrapher and archaeologist**, renowned for his decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs and contributions to understanding Maya political cycles. His work challenges simplistic "collapse" narratives, emphasizing cyclical shifts between centralized power and decentralized efficiency in Maya states. He mentions the cost of extravagant ceremonial warfare (Star Wars) and legitimating ceremonies for the cities’ god/king.
War and Conquest to Delay Collapse
Tainter explains that initial expansion of the Roman Empire helped pay for much of the rising complexity cost. So it is only when expansion stopped that this cost became unsustainable.
Biases in favour of Complexity
Tainter reminds us that for all their monumental, artistic and literary production, complex societies might impose unacceptable costs to their producers. It is not only rulers, artists and writers who benefit from complexity who are biased in favor that social order. Historians and archaeologists show a bias for “golden ages” against “dark ages” (ages where society is less centralized or less productive of high culture or symbolic artifacts), and find it more difficult to get grants to study less centralized periods.
In the case of the Roman Empire or Mayan society, the cost of maintaining the empire might have become excessive to most of the population, and the collapse might have been beneficial to the common weal.
Post-Industrial Age
While this book is classified as ancient history and archaeology, Tainter writes about the 1972 Meadows report on the limit to growth, the preppers subculture, and the question of diminishing returns in industrial and high energy societies.
On the war and conquest section, he mentions that complex society obtaining access to cheap resources (mining, energy, fertile soil, slave work) help delay the reckoning.
Like Rome’s conquests for grain, modern ‘oil wars’ (e.g. Iraq, Libya) seek energy subsidies. Yet Tainter warns that high-energy societies face catastrophic collapse: fewer than 2% of Americans farm, making food supply chains vulnerable.
Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) was a Russian-American sociologist who developed a grand theory of civilizational cycles, emphasizing shifts between cultural mentalities rather than purely material or economic factors. His work contrasts with thinkers like Tainter (economic complexity). Societies cycle between these types, each sowing the seeds of its own collapse:
Ideational Culture
Reality is spiritual: Truth is found in faith, religion, or transcendence (e.g., Medieval Europe, early Buddhism).
Decline trigger: Overemphasis on asceticism leads to stagnation.
Sensate Culture
Reality is material: Truth comes from senses, science, and empiricism (e.g., Modern West, Roman Empire at peak luxury).
- Decline trigger: Hedonism, corruption, and moral decay weaken social bonds.
Idealistic Culture (Transitional)
Balance of spiritual and material: Synthesis of faith and reason (e.g., Renaissance, Golden Age of Islam).
Role: Temporary harmony before a new shift.
Why Civilizations Collapse (Sorokin’s View)
Sensate overextension: Materialism → inequality, decadence, loss of meaning → crisis. Example: Roman Empire’s luxury and bread/circuses preceded fall.
Ideational rigidity: Excessive religiosity → resistance to adaptation → collapse. Example: Byzantine theocracy’s resistance to reform.
"Creative Famine": Elite exhaustion—no new ideas to solve crises.
Unlike Tainter: Sorokin sees collapse as **cultural-psychological**, not just economic. Sorokin would diagnose the modern West as late Sensate—materialist, skeptical, facing meaning crises (rising mental illness, polarization).
Xenophon Zolotas (1904–2004) was a prominent **Greek economist, academic, and politician**, best known for his leadership of the **Bank of Greece** (1944–1945, 1955–1967, 1974–1981) and his contributions to monetary policy, European integration, and development economics. While not a theorist of societal collapse like Tainter or Sorokin, his work on economic stability, currency crises, and structural reforms offers insights into how states manage—or fail to manage—financial stress and is quoted by Tainter.
While Zolotas did not write about societal collapse per se, his analysis of economic mismanagement aligns with broader collapse theories: Greece needed reforms before euro adoption. Warned against unsustainable borrowing, Criticized populist fiscal policies.
21st Century
The book is published in 1988, but its content is relevant to the 21st century.
Some scholars suggest U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Libya resemble Rome’s resource-driven conquests, seeking energy subsidies, though motives also include security and ideology. Critics, including anti-imperialists, highlight economic drivers, while others, like Madeleine Albright, framed intervention as America’s “indispensable” role, reflecting diverse interpretations of modern complexity
Besides the imperial scramble for resources, a materialist Marxian analysis would predict that the rise of State capacity and spending organized by elites increases complexity and introduces a cost of coercion and legitimation.
While in the 1950s, the OECD, the communist block and third world had very different level of development. The rapid development of countries since then means that government expenditure ranges from 20%-35% (for well managed states such as Singapore or Switzerland) to 60% for social-democratic Europe.
In France, minimum wage sustains a modest life due to high taxes and costs, but 2/3 or minimum wage in Thailand offers better living standards. Low-income Europeans, some earning below minimum wage, relocate as digital nomads, hoping to build wealth, echoing Ptolemaic/Sassanid anachoresis driven by economic burdens, though modern connectivity enables entrepreneurial aims unlike ancient withdrawal.
OECD states with high 60% government spending (e.g., France) face higher cost of complexity (pensions, healthcare) and stagnant growth while they prioritize comprehensive State welfare service. Meanwhile, states prioritizing efficiency (Singapore, 20% spending) reach higher levels of income and human development (as measured by lower infant mortality and crime rates).
Conclusion
Joseph Tainter remind us that complex societies usually do not collapse due to a shock, but because they have become unable to adapt. The Marxian view of history, explains the rise of elites and State capacity as a way to organize an increasingly complex society.
From expensive wars initially motivated by resources, security or ideology considerations, to nomads fleeing high-cost Europe to overburdened welfare states, Tainter warns of maladaptation.