Fucks 1965 DE

Wilhelm Fucks (1902−1990) was a German physicist. He studied physics at the University of Munich and did a PhD at RWTH Aachen University. In 1938 he became professor of theoretical physics at the RWTH Aachen University. In 1940 he became professor of theoretical physics at the Berlin Institute of Technology, and in 1941 he returned to RWTH Aachen University to become professor of experimental physics until his retirement in 1970. From 1958 to 1970 he was simultaneously director of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Nuclear Research Center Jülich. In 1965 he published Formulas for Power: Predictions on Populations, Economics, Potentials [Formeln zur Macht:

Prognosen über Völker, Wirtschaft, Potentiale] (FUCKS 1965, 1966), which has received international attention to this day, though it was never translated. His 1978 follow-up Powers of Tomorrow: Force Fields, Tendencies, Consequences [Mächte von Morgen: Kraftfelder, Tendenzen, Konsequenzen]

(FUCKS 1978) is hardly known at all. He applied mathematical analysis to literature and music as well, thus contributing to quantitative linguistics and the quantitative study of literature.

In discussing the design and reasoning of his 1965 formula in Formulas for Power (FUCKS

1965: 120−133, or 1966: 120−133), Fucks clarifies that he wants to calculate power potential, which for him is economic power, and that he excludes the aspect of military strength from his calculations.

185 Cohen's definition of Maritime Europe is synonymous with noncommunist Western Europe at the time (COHEN 1963: 75, or 1973: 77).

He thinks that military power and economic power will eventually become proportional, with inequalities in the distribution of armaments (especially WMDs) diminishing over time. The prime variable for Fucks is population. Besides that he chooses steel production and energy production as basic goods representing matter and energy (FUCKS 1965: 86, or 1966: 86). He mentions food production as a basic good, then he moves on to infer that this is already approximated in the size of the population. He creates two sets of equations: one time he multiplies population by steel production, another time he multiplies population by energy production. In each set he plays around by applying different exponents on the two factors to give them different weights. Comparing the results of applying different exponents, he arbitrarily judges which results look most plausible to him. He then combines one formula from each set and takes the arithmetic average. The formula is:

economic_power = ( p^1/3 × st + p^1/3 × e ) / 2

p = population; st = steel production (USA = 1000); e = energy production (USA = 1000)

The following table presents the complete published results from the two editions of Formulas for Power as calculated by Fucks;¹⁸⁶ combined values like that for the European Economic Community (EEC) are excluded:

Table 25: Power of Nations in 1960/1963 & 1963/1964 [Fucks]

Country 1960/1963 1963/1964 Country 1960/1963 1963/1964

USA 1,000.00 1,000 Romania 11.80 12

Soviet Union 674.00 673 Spain 9.50 9

China 405.00 236 Sweden 7.30 7

Japan 143.00 155 Hungary 7.30 7

West Germany 147.00 149 Netherlands 7.00 7

Great Britain 120.00 120 Yugoslavia 6.30 6

France 71.00 68 Austria 6.10 6

India 67.80 67 Bulgaria 1.96 2

Poland 43.30 42 Turkey 1.66 2

Italy 36.80 32 Norway 1.14 1

Canada 30.60 33 Switzerland 0.83 0

Czechoslovakia 26.20 25 Denmark 0.62 0

East Germany 19.50 19 Portugal 0.57 0

Belgium 16.40 17 Greece 0.28 0

Union of South Africa 12.60 13 Total 2,875.56 2,708

Source: FUCKS 1965: 129, 1966: 129.

The one noticeable difference between the values of the two indexes is in the case of China. Possibly Chinese steel production and energy production had been overestimated.

In discussing the design and reasoning of his revised 1978 formula in Powers of Tomorrow (FUCKS 1978: 121−146), Fucks first defines power as ability to force your will on somebody, which is

186 Klaus Heiss, Klaus Knorr, and Oskar Morgenstern calculated their own values for 1960/1963 and 1970 (HEISS et alia 1973:

33). Their 1960/1963 values slightly differ from those of Fucks for 1960/1963. Karl Deutsch recalculated values for 1950, 1963, 1973, 1990, and 2010, the latter two being projections (DEUTSCH 1988: 27). His values slightly differ from those of Fucks.

politico-military power. He mentions the importance of the psychological disposition and ideological orientation of a population as well as the decisive role of the quality of leadership. After considering these factors, he returns to what he considers the demographic-economic base of power, which he now calls virtual power. He prefers virtual power because military power is less useful for prediction as military expenditures as percentage of GNP vary enormously. As for the reason he does not use GNP, he mentions problems of currency conversion associated with comparability. On using multiplication rather than addition, he argues that a powerful country must have both a large population as well as sizeable production, onesidedness being insufficient. He justifies taking the cubic root of the population by the law of diminishing returns, the logic of this justification sounds a bit contrived.

Because steel production has grown more rapidly in the Soviet Union than in the United States, he considers that steel production has become less adequate as an indicator. As a result energy production is given three times the weight of steel production in the revised 1978 formula:

virtual_power = ( p^1/3 × st + 3 × p^1/3 × e ) / 4

p = population; st = steel production (USA 1960 = 100); e = energy production (USA 1960 = 100)

Fucks also designed an industry index, which gives steel production and energy production equal weight and disregards population. It is unclear as to what the precise formula is. The following table contains the complete published results for virtual power from Powers of Tomorrow, including projections; results are also available for the industry index (FUCKS 1978: 146):

Table 26: Index of Virtual Power 1960−2000 [Fucks]

Scores Country

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 USA 100.0 157.0 202.0 241.0 270.0 Soviet Union 52.0 96.0 138.0 179.0 216.0

China 34.0 41.0 77.0 144.0 238.0

Japan 9.6 35.8 52.0 64.0 75.0

West Germany 14.0 21.0 23.0 28.0 33.0

India 5.0 9.0 14.0 21.0 36.0

Brazil 1.3 3.0 7.0 16.0 39.0

Total 215.9 362.8 513.0 693.0 907.0 Source: FUCKS 1978: 144.

Richard Muir misrepresents the formula of Fucks in his book (see MUIR 1981: 149, 253). If it were not clear from the text that this is a mistake, it could pass as a modification, if not a formula of its own:

power = production³ × population^0.5

Criticism of Formulas for Power has come from Daniel Michaels, who commented that Fucks had

"ignored the potential of entire continents, including South America, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent" (MICHAELS 1966: 310). In 1965 Fucks had focused primarily on the expected rise of

China. In 1978 he broadened his attention to include India and Brazil.¹⁸⁷ Another critic, Tuomas Forsberg, has commented that "Fucks' power analysis of the 1960s, based on measurement of the production of steel and coal, relied on experiences of the Second World War, and was severely outmoded already when it came out, not to mention its predictions that reached until the 21st century"

(FORSBERG 1997: 178).

The special feature of Fucks' two books is his prediction of the future of power in accordance with what he calls "exact scientific" modeling imported from physics. Klaus-Peter Schmid mentions exactly those predictions in order to mock them, as Fucks had predicted for the year 2000 that China would have a population of 1.7 billion and a steel production of 600 million tons, whereas in fact the population was then 1.2 billion and the steel production 100 million tons (SCHMID 1999: 2; compare MAXEINER 1995: 2; SUŁEK 2010b: 114−119). Fucks had predicted that China would surpass the Soviet Union in 1975 and the United States in 1980 to be five times as powerful as either power in the year 2000 (FUCKS 1965: 133).¹⁸⁸ In 1978 he moderated his predictions (see table above).

As for political significance, in 1966 Helmut Schmidt (subsequently Chancellor of West Germany 1974−1982) has commented on Fucks' Formulas for Power. He says that while this work is useful to read, the formula is too arbitrary, ignoring "national character, religious and ideological stance, level of education and technology, political system, quality of the power elites and so forth"

(SCHMIDT 1966: 82).¹⁸⁹ He also criticizes the predictions for China as exaggerated. In the 1980s Huang Shuofeng (section 14.3) in turn criticized Fucks' formula for consisting only of material factors, ignoring intangibles (PILLSBURY 2000: 225).