Spengler's argument is fully and floridly presented in _The Decline of
the West_. The author offers a theory of history based on the existence
of an arbitrary and rather mechanical life cycle. It includes a period
of gestation, rise and expansion, a period of maturity and stability and
a final period of decline and dissolution. Spengler believed that
western civilization is in the grip of an irreversable decline.

The Spenglerian perspective is based on the assumption of a normal
pattern in the growth and decline of civilizations. The normalcy on
which Spengler based his assumption was disrupted around 1750 when a
series of new dynamic factors entered the stream of modern social
history:

I. Mankind gained access to immense stores of energy which supplemented
human energy, the energies of domesticated animals and a miniscule use
of water power and air power. To these traditional energy sources the
revolution in science and technology has added steam, electricity, and
the energy stored in the atom.

II. These new sources of energy were harnessed and directed through
mechanical and chemical agencies that greatly extended human capacity to
convert nature's stored wealth into goods and services available for
human consumption, and to develop a surplus of wealth and a release of
manpower sufficient to build up a backlog of capital which, in its turn,
produced goods and services with economic surpluses convertible into
additional capital.

III. This revolution in the tempo of production and capital accumulation
was parallelled by a like revolution in transportation and communication
by land, water, and eventually by air and in space. Electricity played
an essential part in the process by speeding communication and helping
to put transportation on wheels.

IV. Building construction was also revolutionized--metals, concrete,
glass and synthetics replaced wood and stone as the basic construction
materials.

V. New energy sources and the new capital expanded the volume and
variety of production far more rapidly than the increase in population
and turned the resulting surplus into a technical apparatus that made
possible mass production for a mass market.

VI. Mass production, transportation, construction and marketing ushered
in an era of surplus that replaced the age of comparative scarcity with
an age of rapidly increasing abundance.

Changes in the means of production play havoc with any established
social pattern.