Making Sense of Rifkin's Third Industrial Revolution

* PhD Thesis: Making Sense of Rifkin's Third Industrial Revolution: Towards a Collaborative Age. McAllum, Michael J C

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Thesis submitted to The University of the Sunshine Coast. Under the supervision of Dr. Sohail Inayatullah & Dr. Marcus Bussey. Submitted: June 7, 2016

Description

"The published works of the global, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin are increasingly influencing planetary debates, yet few have explored his central contentions with a critical eye. In essence, Rifkin asserts humanity must either transform or collapse, with the latter being likely unless there is a significant change in trajectory. In Rifkin’s view this scenario has developed as a consequence of unsustainable ‘entropic debt’ and an economic system that cannot continue to sustain itself, given that it has successfully reduced margins (through technology) to almost zero. However, he maintains that transformation is possible if disruptive (paradigm shifting) energy and networking technologies are adopted in a timely fashion, and a post-capitalist economic system emerges as a consequence of lower transaction costs: the privileging of access over ownership; and the development of Commons based markets. The process of transition Rifkin describes as a Third Industrial Revolution and the new civilisation that emerges from it (the transformation) as a Collaborative Age. The transdiciplinary nature and pan-civilisational scope of Rifkin’s contentions extend beyond conventional (historical, sociological, political and economic) thinking and the applied/empirical frameworks that are central to most Western academic enquiry. Thus a broader framework is required; one that examines not just the litany of the proposed changes, but the deeper patterns that underpin both the transition and the transformation. Consistent with this requirement for a more integrated and holistic perspective, it is asserted that ‘macrohistory’ (the study of the patterns in societies and cultures over the long time) provides the means to frame, interrogate and understand propositions such as the Third Industrial Revolution. Drawing on the insights and writings of selected macrohistorians from diverse historical periods, cultures and worldviews, this thesis identifies patterns in the rise and fall of past civilisations/cultures. These are also evident in contemporary society and are central to Rifkin’s theorisation.

It posits that the Third Industrial Revolution represents a decisive technological juncture and cultural evolution that goes beyond a mere artful bundling of a number of smaller shifts, which will at some future time seem mere blips on the radar. Further, it asserts that in this (partially) technologically determined transformation there will be a substantive reframing of both socio-economic relational dynamics, and the notions of time, form and space upon which those relationships depend. However, this thesis argues that in an interconnected world, these different conceptions of reality cannot be constituted inside of those senses of reality currently privileged by modernity and its deconstructed successor, post modernity. It contends that a different kind of (biosphere) consciousness and philosophy (beyond the spectrum of contemporary ‘isms’) is necessary to reconstitute collaborative identities in a networked future. Such a future will be ecological in its relationship models, and complex, chaotic, contradictory and uncertain in its system effects. Consequently, over time, as these different identities interact, a new metanarrative will develop that will define a counter hegemonic ‘beyond the horizon of modernity’ culture. Finally, emerging from this consideration of Rifkin’s work, the work of selected macrohistorians and of those engaged in the contemporary ransformational discourse, this thesis postulates a ‘causally layered’ theory of civilisational revolution, together with descriptors of the emanant ‘relational’ scaffolding and the distinctive social morphology of a Collaborative Age."

Excerpts

Michael McAllum:

Difficulties with critiquing Rifkin

From the summary of chapter 2:

"At the outset of this chapter, it was argued that there were a number of hermeneutical and epistemological challenges when contemplating Rifkin’s work and the central questions of this thesis. Further it has been asserted that the failure to contemplate let alone resolve these challenges has lead to a surprising lack of critical commentary of Rifkin’s work, given its scope, influence and implications. What this chapter has sought to demonstrate is that this has been due in part to a narrative style that places it outside of accepted disciplinary boundaries, in part because of a lack of understanding and acceptance of frameworks through which to explore multidisciplinary and pan civilisational contentions, and in part because of an approach to scholarship that normally privileges ‘applied and empirical’ discourse over other ways of understanding.

It has been posited in this chapter that the academic convenience of discipline-based approaches is rarely contested in the modern discourse, yet this approach has been central to, and largely unquestioned, in both contemporary historical writing and macro-sociological theory. Moreover at a systemic level, this disciplinary influence has created at least the illusion of a hermeneutic objectivity, a scientific reality that simply cannot be sustained under close examination.

The realisation that interpretation is a consequence of what Dilthey describes as a hermeneutic circle has seen, as Arnasson suggests:

- [T]he disappearance of plausible models for radical and programmed social change (variously diagnosed as the end of socialism, the demise of secular religions or the exhaustion of the idea of progress) and left a void which the positivist movements, among others, attempted to fill or to conjure away.

Nowhere is this more so than in most contemporary Western historical scholarship; study that privileges events and critical agency as central to revolutionary theory. Rifkin’s notions of revolution sit outside of, or at least uncomfortably with, such definitions.

Further, his ideas are presented through a content and stylistic approach that Tilly describes as a superior narrative; a way of writing that provides contextualisation and enlightenment, which in turn creates the capacity to see beyond the litany and the system conditions that a discipline bias often takes for granted. Given this difference in starting points, what this chapter has argued is that a different typology or framework is needed. One that is capable of stretching beyond the confines of disciplinary thinking and accepting of alternative narratives and praxis without compromising, in any way, the quest for intellectual rigor required for the examination and acceptance of any particular set of ideas.

This chapter then argued that the frameworks used to explore a body of work known as macrohistory—or, for those with a discipline bias, ‘speculative history’ — provides a way of framing, synthesising and thus understanding Rifkin’s work. It introduces key elements of this framework and points to a number of critical questions that the use of such a framework provides. These will be explored and deconstructed in some detail in Chapter 4 where the work of a select group of marohistorians will be used as reference and counterpoints.

Finally the chapter posited that Rifkin’s Theory of Revolution cannot be proven in any applied or empirical sense, and indeed that the quest for proof, by definition, requires use of the a logic model that privileges those forms of understanding Instead it proposes that the range of insights that emerge from comparative thinking; translations into alternative traditions; multidisciplinary framings; explorations of different phenomenologies; how reality (worldviews) are constructed; and what can be learnt from ‘beyond discourse’ insights help in understanding the inherent discontinuities in the current societal construct, and the kinds of questions and conversations that societal transitions (revolution) and potential transformations (the Collaborative Age) require. These understandings are explored in both Chapter 4 within the macrohistorical framework and Chapter 5 where Rifkin’s work is ‘situated within the contemporary transformational discourse."

The Theoretical Underpinnings of Rifkin's work

"In summary these theories are:

1. A Theory of Limits.

An argument about the entropic effects of current socioeconomic arrangements.

2. A Theory of Discontinuous Change.

Causes of change based on the proposition that significant changes in energy form and use, together with different communication technologies, have disruptive and radical effects on the societies where such changes are realised and expressed.

3. A Theory of History.

The framing of the history of these discontinuities as a series of identifiable and sequential revolutions have culminated in the Third Industrial Revolution and thus might be described as ‘Stages of History’.

4. A Theory of Empathic Consciousness.

Advocacy of the view that humanity’s biophysically determined sense of empathic consciousness frames as our collective sense of time and space and is reframed by our individual metaphysical choices.

5. A Theory of Leadership.

The development of a number of concepts that interwoven create a ‘sinew of leadership’; a social code that enables networks to act appropriately and synergistically in ways that can be widely shared and accessed by many actors in multiple locations. These actors through choice, not positional power, embed this social code through agency in their activities, products and services across the civil and private spectrum. Over time those who understand the need for transformation become widely distributed within and beyond the established order. They include key policy makers required to create the frameworks for future infrastructure, scientists and technologists who are providing the enabling mechanisms, and finally, ‘prosumers’ who are taking advantage of emergent transformational effects.

6. A Theory of Post Capitalism.

This argues that the current system is at its limits. Further that discourses which privilege the Khunian view of mechanistic organisation and the US senses of individualism as the basic unit of society are both incompatible with, and insufficient for, the emerging collaborative society, as well as the perpetuation of the capitalist model, upon which the current system rests. If these discourses and the hegemony they have created (mythology) are prolonged, there is no exit from cumulative entropic effects. On the other hand the development of a new kind of infrastructure (the Internet of Things) together with a post capitalist collaborative economy provides the basis for escape.

7. A Theory of Transformation.

Only two possible future scenarios are available as future options. These are either Transform or Collapse, on the proviso that the former occurs in a timely manner.

However, a sense of coherence needs to go beyond a litany of applied or empirical explanations. It requires an understanding of the systemic changes that are either explicit or implicit in these theories; the worldviews that are privileged in those systems; and identification of the mythologies, metonymies and metaphors that underpin those worldviews. For instance, the central role of mythology and the use of the metonymic ‘hydraulic civilisation’ allusion is better understood if one accepts, as Rifkin believes, significant shifts in the mastery of energy and communication technology reframe our sense of space and time, and that they have been and are, as a consequence, transformative in nature."

Jeremy Rifkin's Theory of Post Capitalism

"Two of Rifkin’s most important contentions—the effects of entropy on the global environmental system and the effect of energy efficiencies as drivers of growth—are largely neglected in conventional economic theory. While his early work, for the most part, sets out the logic and evidence for these propositions, his later works articulate potential responses to the challenges these contentions raise. The evolution of this ‘challenge and response’ process has lead him to a point where he has declared that the essence of the current economic system (capitalism) “is passing, not quickly but inevitably and that in its place a new economic paradigm, the Collaborative Commons is in the ascendant”.

Substantiation of this declaration requires Rifkin to: theorise about systemic limits and new options as alternatives to the current model; identify worldviews alternative to those that underpin the capitalist ethic; and at least proffer some possibilities for future metaphors and mythologies.

At the outset it should be noted that, while some would regard Rifkin’s views as ‘of the left’, he is not a Marxist economist, in the accepted sense of that term. For the Marxists, the question is not about whether or not to ‘exploit, grown and own,’ rather the issue is about who controls or has the right to ‘exploit, grow and own.’ In contrast, Rifkin questions the concept of production and its entropic effects per se. As such, he might be more accurately characterised as an ‘individualist’ in the European sensibility, where “the emphasis is on inclusivity, diversity, quality of life, sustainability, deep play, universal human rights and the rights of nature”393. It is within this context that, in the Zero Marginal Cost Economy, he notes mixed feelings about the passing of the capitalist era, and is somewhat surprised that an economic system organised around scarcity and profit could almost counter intuitively spawn a system of nearly free goods, services and abundance, that will see its demise. For Rifkin, the emergence of the Collaborative Era that in earlier works he has described as distributed capitalism and lateral power, provides the opportunity to reframe world views that if they were to continue would (and still do) provide the greatest challenge to “the survival of our species in recorded history”.

The strands of Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism litany are several. Firstly, as was explained in an exploration of his Theory of Limits, he argues that Adam Smith’s economic model is flawed in two important ways. These include the Newtonian view on which it is based, and the lack of regard it has for the entropic effects that are consequential to the growth-and-accumulation imperative inherent in the model. Secondly, he argues that this same model has reached the outer limits of how far it can extend growth aspirations, within an economic system deeply dependent on oil and other fossil fuels. He then posits that the emergence of a new energy and communications infrastructure will reinvent the way the world does business. By design, in the manufacturing realm, it will shift the way of life from highly capitalised, giant, centralised factories, equipped with heavy machines, to economic models that are distributed, modular and personalised in their relationships between buyer and seller398. Most importantly, through the way it is designed and constructed, this process must occur with fewer entropic effects.

This realignment of how economic activity occurs also alters the dynamics of relationships and the exercise of power. It favours lateral ventures both in the social commons and in the market place on the assumption that mutual interest pursued jointly is the best route to sustainable economic development. This is a different kind of capitalism; one that is distributed in its nature and which fundamentally reconfigures the temporal and spatial orientation of society. It changes the nature and cost of transactions and offers the possibility of new ways to organise and manage economic activity. As an economic model, it is systemically different in its modality and therefore, it requires a different kind of theorising. Moreover, it must be asked: can an economic system, which is systemically different, be understood through the same lens used to theorise the existing system? If it is to be considered through the lens of the current system, then it differs in three important ways. The first is that the logic of a system, contingent on substantive margins on both the supply and the demand sides—what we call profits or accumulations—cannot be sustained if those margins are almost zero. The consequence in Rifkin’s view will be that:

...capitalist markets will continue to shrink into narrow niches where profit-making enterprises survive only at the edges of the economy...relying on very specialized products and services.

The second is that the nature of the market function, however that is expressed, changes from an opportunity for accumulation to an opportunity for exchange. In this model, capitalism is ‘distributed’, premised on the idea that everybody can trade and exchange, without the controls that exist in the current proprietary models. In this reformulated future, and given that markets are, at least in part, an extension of socio-economic identity, we can assume that an understanding of economic identity for both individuals and communities is reframed as well. In a real-time, near-term, future world existing market mechanisms are too slow and “a new economic system will be as different from market capitalism as the latter was from the feudal economy of an earlier era”.

Thirdly, with less opportunity for capital accumulation, the ability to ‘own’ property is less available; ‘mine versus thine’ becomes harder to sustain and the focus shifts to an interest in access to shareable goods and services.

In Rifkin’s later works, the shift from ‘property ownership’ to ‘access’ to goods and services is a tangible expression of the challenge the Third Industrial Revolution poses to a highly embedded pattern of economic thought: a worldview integral to the concepts of capitalism. Nothing, he argues, is more sacrosanct to an economist than property relations, for these are an explicit representation of a commitment to economic growth.

If the possibility is considered that the idea of property accumulation will be gradually set aside, this new Age will “bring with it very different conceptions of human drives and the assumptions that govern human economic activity”. These contemplations of what will constitute economy are deeply problematic in the current order, yet to limit their characterisation to being simply components of an economic revolution is too narrow a lens through which to understand what is, or what might, occur. This is because their impact is and will be a reflection of different motivations and constitutions of identity.

While having traced the rise and establishment of the private property rights, and the consequences of those rights, in some detail, in all his works since The European Dream (for it was not always that way), he contends that, in a collaborative future, social capital plays an increasingly important role. This is because the accumulation of social capital enables increased access, rather than ownership, to networks where the cost of participation is plummeting as communications technologies become cheaper. The consequence of this rebalancing of capital is “a shift in emphasis from the quantity and worth of one’s possessions to the quality of one’s relationships [and] requires both a change in spatial and temporal orientation”406. As such, it is likely to play a far more significant role in economic life that will increasingly take place in a Collaborative Commons.

From the systemic shift, and a worldview that reconstitutes property rights as a process of access not ownership, what emerges is a new series of case studies and metaphors about collaboration and commonality that reflect the swing from a scarcity to an abundance mentality. This new mentality is not the kind of abundance that, as Gandhi observed, provides for every human’s [sic] greed, rather it is an abundance that, anchored in our ecological footprint, provides enough to satisfy every human’s [sic] need.408 Therefore, it is a step away from a materialist ethos to one of sustainability and stewardship, where nature becomes a community to preserve, rather than a resource to exploit409. Rifkin contends that the absence of the fear of scarcity mitigates against the desire to over consume, hoard and over indulge, and while not quickly removing the dark side of human nature, encourages the development of a new cultural social code. This he sees emerging in at least a portion of younger generations who have “grown up in a new world mediated by distributed, collaborative, peer-to-peer networks”.

Rifkin therefore argues his Theory of Post Capitalism from three premises.

The first is that the system conditions that already exist in the present growth-focused construct make its continuation impossible. In this sense, these conditions are a reflection of Sorokin’s principle of immanent change. He also posits that the attributes and ubiquity of the new infrastructure, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), by design and structure undermines core principles on which the present capitalist model is based. Secondly, he asserts that these networked, lateral and distributed arrangements privilege relationships over ownership, thereby creating conditions for economic activity and social arrangements that are systemically incompatible with the culture and ethos of the contemporary economy. In this way, the forces that have been unleashed are “both disruptive and liberating and are unlikely to be curtailed and reversed”411. Thirdly he submits that economic systems are situated within larger human systems and therefore, when an economic system changes, so do philosophies, institutions that exist within those systems, and ultimately social and cultural conventions. In this way Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism steps beyond the disciplinary boundaries in which economic theory is normally considered and it links to the other transdiciplinary (and perhaps uni-disciplinary) theorising critical to the Third Industrial Revolution contention.

Macrohistorical Commentary

The unsustainability of economic systems and their role in civilisational change have preoccupied all macrohistorians and many contemporary transformational theorists. Unlike Marx and Gramsci, who theorised over the ownership arrangements of the capitalist system, perhaps only Sarkar, among the macrohistorians, comes closest to offering an alternative economic model that is ‘distributed by design’. For Sarkar, like Rifkin, unabated accumulation and misuse of wealth is a central problem. The goal, in his narrative, is for a good society to provide all individuals with the basic requirements of life in the way that Ghandi’s ‘Swadeshi’ defines them, and to ensure that in the process, wealth is used for benefit and not hoarded. However, for Sarkar, economy and economic growth has a subordinated role as it only exists “to provide physical security such that women and men can pursue intellectual and spiritual development”. Spengler also rails against ‘money thought’: “the grand legacy of the Faustian Soul”. He maintains that little attention has been paid to the presumptions that underpin the thinking of Hume and Adam Smith: that its privileging of materialism ignores the soul that is at the heart of culture.

The consequence is that “the heroic and the saintly withdraw into narrower and narrower circles and the cool bourgeois take their place. [Thus] in the frictions of the city, the stream of being loses its rich form” and the culture inevitably declines. The only way out of this crisis is for “power to be overthrown by another power”416. The question this assertion poses is: is a change in system conditions, as described by Rifkin, sufficiently powerful to effect the revolution Spengler prescribes, or will some other more explicit agency be required? The linkage or otherwise of economy to ‘soul’ also preoccupied Toynbee.

He argued:

- Western humanity [sic] has bought themselves [sic] into danger of losing their souls through their concentration on a sensationally successful endeavor to increase material well being. If they [sic] were to find salvation they [sic] would only find it only in sharing the results of material achievement with the less materially successful majority of the Human Race.

This was not an argument by Toynbee for some kind of socialism; indeed to the contrary. Rather it is questioning ‘where to next?’ for the ‘psychic energy’ that has been capitalism’s driving force and which fashioned the industrial revolution, for as Schumpeter suggests “stabilized capitalism is a contradiction in terms”.

Similar themes to those expressed in Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism are emerging among some modern transformational theorists. They have, of course, the advantage of contemplating the contemporary condition in ways that earlier macrohistorians could not. While their views, in relation to understanding Rifkin, will be explored in some detail later in this thesis, a number do contemplate the end of capitalism, the emergence of the distributed or collaborative economy and a future of access, not ownership. This suggests that Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism has both intellectual precedent and contemporary support."

The Role of Technology in Civilizational Transformation

Disruptive and Revolutionary Technology

"This apparent inconsistency, though, in no way denies that technologies can engender revolutionary effects. Technology that is disruptive at a civilisational scale, occurs when particular technologies (in the contemporary situation networking, robotic and energy technologies) reorder, replace and integrate, certain dimensions of human life, while excluding others previously used to establish ‘meaning’; how we connect, organise, express culture or enable power. Consistent with this disruptive characterisation Castells postulates, what these networks are doing is redefining cultural and social meaning, in ways that hitherto have been defined by ‘place’ on the one hand and the ‘functionality of wealth and power flows’ on the other. Others like Katz extend exploration of these technology effects. They assert that just as the ethos of mechanical progress influenced the 2nd Industrial Age, so too the design and the use of the technology has assigned a number of new meanings to network technology devices, an Apparatgeist, that was never intended when the technology was created. In a sense, the machines have become us—and for that matter, more than us—to a point where one of the defining characteristics of individuality and our age—what we call ‘work’—“will soon come under threat from forged labourers and synthetic intellects”. So pervasive will be their impact “the future will be a struggle of assets against people, as the resources accumulated by our creations serve no constructive purpose or are put to no productive use”629. As the technologies evolve or are replaced by newer and smarter versions, the revolutionary effects of the never ending redefinition of meaning permeate ever deeper into the existing fabric, eroding what is and providing opportunity to establish what might be (a process previously described as pseudomorphosis).

Disruptive Technology enables Discontinuous Form

If technologies enable ‘meaning’ to be redefined, and if such reconstitutions are widely shared, then the entire social and economic fabric is also rearranged to an extent that it can only be described as revolutionary. For example, with almost ubiquitous technological connectedness (a central tenet of Rifkin’s sense of revolution) Perez argues what distinguishes a technological (network) revolution from the emergence of interesting but random technologies is the strong interconnectedness and interdependence of the participating technologies in how they influence markets and societies, together with their capacity to profoundly transform economies, institutions and society itself. Figure 5.4 suggests that it is at deeper levels of reality that redefinition, due to the introduction of a particular technology, becomes important. This importance might be measured by the capacities any particular technology creates, to enable transformation; to redefine society at a structural level—thereby reframing worldviews and creating new myths and metaphors—that defines revolution at a scale that is material.

Why Network Technologies Undermine Continuity

Almost paradoxically, an understanding that it is the reconstitution of meaning that matters in transition and transformation assists in understanding the dialectic tension that exists between the widespread dissemination of network technologies and at the same time the evident capacity of some of those technologies to undermine the existing system (particularly capitalist economic systems). While the implications of this tension and the possibility that it will usher in a post model, will be explored later in this chapter, there are a number of more generalised effects that might be considered.

Firstly, they enable a radical redefinition and rearrangement of transaction costs631. This has profound implications, for both margins (on both the supply and demand side) and on the formshape-size of organisations. Secondly, as was alluded to earlier, advances in robotics and cognitive technologies will see the end of work, as we understand it. If this is as rapid, as some argue632, then how wealth is socially distributed to allow any kind of economy (be it for accumulation or exchange) will require a different alternative to work as a wealth distribution mechanism. The third reframing reflects the tension engendered by technologies that allow for significant global, and therefore non-state based, economic activity. This allows particular classes of actors to avoid or go beyond the frameworks of any particular nation whose policy settings they perceive are not in their best interests, thereby challenging the close connection that the nation state has with economy. While each of these contentions is important and are worthy of further exploration within the context of this study, what they demonstrate both separately and together is that networking technologies create significant disruption to current arrangements, and the potential for the reconstitution of an economic system or systems635 that is different from these arrangements."

Civilisation Transformation

The Civilisation Transformists, including Rifkin, can be distinguished from both the Descent School and Technological Optimists in three important ways.

The first is their shared perspective that environmental issues confronting contemporary society are so severe they not only cannot be resolved inside the current system. Indeed if left in situ, they will ensure ‘civilisation collapse’ sooner rather than later. Thus, Transformists argue descent contemplates particular change trajectories that are insufficient, Further that technological advancement, without concomitant socio-economic shift, merely amplifies the problems humanity now faces. For the Transformists therefore the societal arrangements must be constituted in a way that extends beyond the accepted conventions and assumptions that dominate the contemporary condition. Theirs is an eschatological proposition, the present or near future a time of profound global discontinuity. Secondly, they contend this ‘beyond state’ requires fundamental and systemic change. It is the only hope for a viable future. In other words, to avoid Collapse, a transformation or revolution is required. Thirdly, they maintain that this revolution will reframe socially accepted constitutions of reality at multiple levels. As the futurist Polak asserts, this means that the dynamics of continuous interaction, in all parts of the social and cultural fabric, will result in the form and shape of most of what we now understand being altered637, thus ushering in a new civilisational model. The contemporary civilisation transformist discourse therefore argues for a reframing of reality at multiple levels, in both systems and mentalities and can thus be defined as revolutionary.

In this definition transformation is both additive (in considering technologies and limits) and discontinuous and the revolutionary effects it contemplates are deeply embedded in transformist literature. One of the earliest contemporary revolutionary theorists, Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, contends humanity is on the brink of a Third Wave, a postindustrial shift driven by technology and enhanced communications that would be so distinctly different it would “alter the chemistry in our brains”. The sociologist Wagner is equally dramatic in asserting that modernity (civilisational shift) is “a distinct rupture of historical consciousness”. Eisler also argues for a transformation, one that is not just ‘civilisational’ but also ‘relational’ in nature. By this she means that any transformation that continues to be andocratic merely perpetuates the mythology of domination. To effect Eisler’s revolution, a future networked society would at a systemic level require partnership systems where gylany is normative. This argument for philosophical shift is extended by Henderson, who suggests that moving beyond the competitive model that characterises what she terms as global economic warfare, is fundamental to the social architecture of the 21st century. What these descriptors of revolution suggest is that the transformation being contemplated here is non-event based, multidimensional, philosophical and multifaceted. It is a revolution whereby understandings of form and shape reach far beyond the explicit to include the implicit of cultural and behavioural orientation.

Above all, the Civilisation Transformists can be distinguished by their alternative narratives, or proposed escapes from the existing condition. In analysing their thinking,

Figure 5.5 has been reordered from previous tables to align common questions/issues in both Rifkin’s and other Transformist theorising and discourse with (already explored) various macrohistorical understandings. The intent is to establish where there are shared and common understandings or extensions to Rifkin’s work.

This sense of revolution frames the comprehension of the real at multiple levels. It provides a scaffold for a contemporary discourse—one on which Rifkin’s work might be ‘arranged’—and, through which different understandings that have been made visible through macrohistorical investigation might be explored in the contemporary condition. A critical outcome of this exploration will be to inform and extend perspectives about a number of questions central to this thesis.

Within this ‘situational’ context these are as follows:

o Firstly, are Rifkin’s propositions consistent with other contemporary theorists in describing the challenges of transforming society, beyond the limits?

o Secondly, does the proposed revolution resolve critical issues in a way that enables collective humanity to live within the constraints of the planet?642

o Thirdly, can either of the above occur without the emergence of a new philosophical construct? If so, then this discourse must always be contextualised as ‘contemporary’ rather than ‘modern’, for to consider it otherwise frames senses of reality that privilege the centrality of modernity, and thus retention of the system conditions that have created the point of ‘historical rupture’ in the first place.

Furthermore, it is posited that the macrohistorical and transformation wisdom available to all of us has an important place in contemporary dialogue. It argues that the Transformists, however, complete their narrative, and are a ‘creative minority’ whose role is vital in the rise of a new civilisational idea.

Toynbee, writing about such roles in either the growth or dissolution of a civilisations, described them as theorists who:

...have learnt the tricks of the intrusive civilisation’s trade in so far as it may be necessary to enable their own community, through their agency, just to hold its own in a social environment in which life is ceasing to be lived in accordance with local tradition and...more and more in the style imposed by the intrusive civilisation.

Thus Transformists, including Rifkin, have a critical role in creating an ‘intrusive pseudomorphosis’ enabled by superior narratives. In the contemporary situation these narratives enable those who subscribe to transformation to visualise alternatives to the litany of modernity; a new context “where new kinds of stories arise and [where] tracing the consequences of adopting those stories rather than others [makes these] in principle available”644. The question in all circumstances is: do such narratives create the systemic conditions that will either enable or defeat the possibility of the narrative they visualise?"