We have never had a government by the rich, and for the rich, quite like today. How this could come to pass as a response to one of the most severe financial panics in our history, to financial mass malpractice, and to the Occupy movement, is quite curious. It is perhaps a testament to the innate temperamental conservatism, coupled with the extraordinary power of money in our media and political system. Where are we headed? One way to think about it is to look to history.
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| Fabulous relief from a late Empire sarcophagus. Rome was about power. |
Rome ruled the Mediterranean for roughly five hundred years, from its scrappy beginnings assimilating neighboring city states on the Italian peninsula to its wimpering end at the hands of successive Germanic armies. Some of its greatest gifts were for politics- running a durable, elitist political system with extremely complicated rules, operating a likewise complex legal system, and treating foreign and allied powers with harshness, but also substantial generosity. Throughout its time, inequality was the rule, including slavery at the very bottom. The system was run by and for those at the top- the senators, landowners, and slaveholders. But at the beginning, there was a great deal of civic virtue- it was a republic, and ambition for the public good / growth of the empire often coincided with personal ambition. But defending a static or contracting multi-continent empire is not as much fun. Increasingly, the rich relieved themselves of taxes and public responsibilities, and the burden of supporting the enormous empire fell on the lower classes, in the form of tax-farming.
This is briefly outlined by Michael Grant in his book "A Social History of Greece and Rome". He stresses at some length that the lower classes- the slaves, the ex-slave freedmen, the poor and middling classes- lived quite miserably, and were treated miserably by the system. But they had no political organization or power, and no consciousness of themselves as a class. They were inert, apart from a few riots and revolts which were always local affairs, driven by desperation rather than principle or organization. This has been true through history. Democracy and other revolutions from below are generally not led from below, but by a faction of the rich, engaged in their customary occupation of competing for power at the top. Our founding fathers were not Scots-Irish hillbillies, but colonial aristocrats disaffected from their fellow lords and peers back in Britain.
So Rome was always nervous about its poor and its slaves, but never faced an organized revolution, let alone a Marxist intellectual critique. This allowed progressively worse treatment as time went on, to the point that free Romans chose to become virtual serfs under large landowners rather than face the tax collectors and military recruiters on their own, leading right into the conditions of the medieval period. A state rests on the allegiance and service of its members. If the rich couldn't be bothered to fund its needs, and the poor were hounded to the point of desperation, of what is such a state made?
"Christian writers, too, support the poor, sometimes with passion, but the effect was one again, in practice, non-existent. The destitute had to be content with the assurance that their plight would stand them in good stead in the next life. Christianity, like to many other institutions, has been blamed for its contribution to the fall of the western Roman empire- because it perpetuated the internal social rifts. And there may be something in this, although the main contribution of faith was to establish a focus of loyalty which was not the imperial court, and was not, in fact, of this world. But the fall of the empire was complex. External pressures played a major part. Internally, the main cause was not Christianity, but the gulf between the rich and the poor whom the rich exploited." - Michael Grant, in A Social History of Greece and Rome
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| What Americans think inequality of wealth should be like, compared with what they think it is, compared (top) with what it actually is. In fact, the top 1% owns over 40% of the wealth and gets one fifth of all income. |
While we in the US have only had such antique social extremes in the slave-holding South, the current level of inequality is, in quantitative terms, astonishing and alarming. The trend of our current administration of giving gargantuan tax breaks to the rich, along with countless other gifts of relief from public good regulations, worker rights, and criminal enforcement, means that we are headed not just back through the New Deal into another gilded age, but possibly well beyond. It is hardly the land of the free if so many are economic slaves to others, with homeless beggars on every corner. As Rome evolved from an aristocratic Republic into a more frankly royal Empire, we seem headed in a similar direction, under a new Octavian who has no patience for the weak, the losers, civil society, democracy, or civility. The state exists for winners. Why anyone (who is not rich) follows him is beyond me, but then the lessons of history are usually learned only by those who don't need them.
- Other theories about Rome.
- Making America great would mean... being more like Europe.
- One consequence of inequality? Murder.
- The euro is dying.
- Wildlife is dying.
- Climate change is causing hunger, and not just for other animals.
- Unfinished business in healthcare- the public option, real negotiation, fair pricing.
- Trump and the "sheriff's star". Even Bill Kristol makes a comment.
- Sleazy fraud.
- Free speech? Not for workers.
- How the Fed thinks.
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