Progressivism, the paradigm for what later came to be called state-activist liberalism, was a variant of a twenty-centuries old model of economic development that the Romans conceptualized. Most models of economic development are variants of Roman policy. But the approach to economic development that was most successful, individualist laissez-faire capitalism, was in concept of more recent vintage even though elements of it existed in Hellenic times. The Greeks and the Hellenic states did not develop a method of analysis capable of identifying the elements of laissez-faire capitalism that facilitated development. The first to do so were the Physiocrats and Adam Smith in the 18th century.
Roman culture was based on the economic and technological advances of the Greek states. It is true that there was some innovation and dynamic business practice in the Roman world, but the Romans' statist model inhibited technological development and industrialization. Rather, the Romans conceived of progress as replication of the Greek polis and capitalist agricultural economy that the Hellenic states had innovated. This picture of cultural development drove the Roman concept of progress. Of course, Rome was unabashedly self interested and its chief concern was plunder and extraction of taxes from conquered territories. But eventually it did so through a developmental process. It assumed that the Hellenic/Roman model would maximize the productive output of the conquered territories so that imposition of the Roman model of social organization on the conquered territories would optimally increase its wealth. Therefore, progress meant that the rest of the world, which was barbaric, should adopt the Roman model.
The Roman notion of optimality was, therefore, static and did not conceptualize that technology or industrialization could radically increase and transform a nation's productive output. Moreover, it saw conquest and compulsion as essential to development. Thus, it rested on barbaric assumptions that are still reflected today in Marxist and other left wing ideology.
If productive output among primitive tribes is to be maximized, it is very likely that force is compatible with the optimality. The history of the idea of optimality might run something like this. Primitive tribes were traditionalist and saw their own way of life as optimal. Other tribes were not equal. Conquering tribes saw the optimal, profit maximizing approach as killing the other tribes and stealing their wealth. At some point tribal conquerors realized that enslavement could be more profitable than murder (a base realization that was forgotten in the twentieth century by the totalitarians following Marx and Hitler). Egyptian, Greek and to a lesser degree Roman culture were based on slavery. Ancient civilization would have been impossible without the innovation of slavery, which was actually more humanistic than the alternative to which Europe and China reverted in the twentieth century--mass murder.
The Greeks realized that trade could produce benefits that exceeded enslavement. Their colonies in Asia Minor and Arabia briefly realized that technology and enterprise could produce more wealth, but the realization was not firm and they did not develop a philosophical foundation for it. Moreover, the Greek and Hellenic states engaged in a considerable degree of class resentment and internecine warfare, which in turn limited their focus on the technological advances they were making.
The Romans saw adoption of the Hellenic model as optimal and ultimately their idea of optimal economic strategy was to impose the Hellenic model on the uncivilized.
Rome too became wracked with class conflict, notably the conflicts between upper and lower classes in Rome at the time of Julius Caesar and the resentments of the peasant army at the time of Septimius Severus and thereafter, leading to frequent murder and virtual enslavement of the Antonine-era upper class as well increasing statism and government control. The elements of what became medieval serfdom and the medieval economy were introduced in the time of Diocletian and Constantine. The Middle Ages were a continuation of Roman society in a barbarized form. The peoples whom Rome conquered did not understand the Roman concepts of government and the manorial system that existed under feudalism was a degeneration of the Roman model.
De Jouvenal traces how what he terms "Power", the centralizing force of kings over local fiefs, was a constant theme throughout the Middle Ages. This had in fact begun with Diocletian and really with Augustus, the creator of the Roman model of progress. This centralizing effort over many centuries was merely a reassertion of the Roman model. Part of the reason that the notions of liberty and decentralization were able to take hold were the barbaric feudalism that was an assertion against the Roman model. The assertion of the liberties of the aristocracy was not a continuation of the Roman model but a barbarian assertion of power by co-conquering barbarians.
The question is, though, how the decentralizing model of Locke, Montesquieu, Trenachard and Gordon, Adam Smith, the American Anti-Federalists and Jefferson evolved. The Reformation unquestionably played a role. The emphasis on individual conscience, direct reading of the bible, predestination and a direct relationship with God are powerful inducements to individualism.
The Romans might have been right about the development of much of the world, but not completely so, for the Persians and other oriental cultures had reached levels of development comparable to Rome's. Few today would argue that one civilization has the right to interfere with another. Today's critics of globalization argue that globalization interferes with local cultures. Yet, the same critics argue for centralization in their home countries, which involve greater degrees of compulsion and are less defensible on humanitarian grounds. A firm that builds a factory in a Third World nation compels no one to work there. Economic development leads to objectively better outcomes such as improved access to health care. The same advocates who would compel all Americans to participate in the same health plan would deny any access whatsoever to health care by the population of undeveloped countries.
In response to the individualist philosophy that appeared in England around the time of the Reformation, some began to argue for a divergent approach to progress that deviated from the Roman and hearkend back to the insight of the Hellenic states: businessmen experiment with alternative production methods and technologies, and so profit from their good ideas and suffer losses from the bad ones. This approach was relatively untried, yet it was productive of far greater economic progress than the Roman model.
The individualist model limits state power. But there are always moral issues in life that are difficult to settle voluntarily. These include how much to give to charity; whether bosses ought to be mean or kind to their employees; and the degree of compulsion the state ought to use in assessing taxes. Individualism did not permit a wide degree of choice with respect to the resolution of moral conflict. Henry David Thoreau's response to the ills of the liberal state were to reject the state altogether. But this would not have solved the moral problem with which he was most concerned: slavery.
Many will argue that the Civil War was about states' rights and the conflict between two economic systems, but historically its most important outcome (besides being the first example of what Thomas X. Hammes has called second generation warfare--and the killing of 600,000 human beings) was the abolition of slavery. This is a moral end, but to achieve it Roman means were necessary. The model of civilization and economy of the industrial north had to be imposed on the agrarian south. Thus, laissez-faire capitalism adopted the Roman approach to modernization in enforcing its economic model. Slavery and the kind of agrarian capitalism that the south practiced were themselves remnants of the manorial agricultural capitalism that was the basis of the Roman Empire.
Progressivism in turn was an amplification of the Roman approach to imposition of moral and developmental solutions as a form of development.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Roman Model
The Roman conquest of Europe was a natural extension of the tribal world view in that it assumed that resource endowments are given and cannot be expanded so that conquest rather than technology generates additional wealth. The resource-dependence view of wealth is still with us and has challenged the technological view of wealth expansion from the time that modern technological advance began to materially challenge Rome's. That would be the sixteenth century around the time of the Protestant Reformation. It is possible that the English rejection of Catholicism is related to it in that the traditional legal and social patterns that had been handed down from the Romans were eliminated and to be replaced by new patterns. It would not be surprising if early designers of the new Roman models, such as Henry VIII and his ministers, were to adopt the same pattern of thinking as the traditions that they overturned. Certainly, by the 17th and 18th centuries mercantilism involved an attempt to impose an economic social purpose on England and the rest of Europe. Socialism and other "progressive" ideologies are variations on the mercantilist pattern. As change proceeded, it caused increasing anxiety. The chronic anxieties of people moving from tribal to individualist ways of organizing society generated reaction in the form of alternative Romanizing models such as socialism, communism, social democracy and Progressivism.
The reaction to individualism was Roman in that it aimed to impose methods of production and social organization envisioned by an elite. In the case of communism the elite was to be revolutionary while in the case of social democracy and Progressivism the elite was to be economic, hereditary and social.
The Roman model takes a value position that it aims to impose on the uneducated and unwashed. In contrast, the individualist model assume that individuals are ends into themselves and therefore ought not to be molded or assigned position. The assumption of all discussants of political systems hinges on power --- who gets what, when, why and how. Individualism, in contrast, focuses on individual autonomy. Psychologically, these are different position and therefore we would expect different psychological and perhaps even biological types to be attracted to individualism and Romanism. Jefferson claimed that liberals (by which he meant individualists) tended to be hardy while conservatives (by which he meant Romanizers) tended to be sickly. Today, a number of scholars are working on a thesis that biologically or even genetically rooted patterns generate political belief. It that is so, then different types of people will thrive under liberal versus Roman political patterns. Because the Roman model contemplates the assignment of elite positions to intellectuals and the molding of society according to intellectuals' preferences, intellectuals mostly support it.
In economics, the history of the Roman model begins with mercantilist views of Shaftesbury and David Hume, which were adopted by the Federalists, especially Hamilton. The history of the individualist view is rooted in the English Civil War and the Whig culture as well.
If one compares the development of Rome to the Progressivism in the United States and to attempts to develop the Third World in the immediate post war era, one sees that they operate on almost identical assumptions. That is, modern socialist theory is simply a reassertion of Roman imperialism, not so much in terms of it assumption of the need to conquer other nations (the reason being that individualism has already disproved that assumption) but rather in their assumption that an elite is necessary to impose a specific world view. Much of the dialogue about society rests not so much on Rousseau as on the Roman view that urbanization of values and imposition of process by an elite is necessary to civilize society. Thus, one philosopher advocates the necessity of requiring a "minimax" assessment of risk, a policy of minimizing the maximum possible loss to any member of society, as a necessary condition for rational social organization. Another argues that a specific range for income inequality is necessary. A third that all Americans must have psychiatric care as part of their health insurance, and so on. These refined positions can be subjected to a a popular vote and even win it, but they are too refined to conceivably reflect permanent public preferences.
Yet, most of public policy is designed along these lines--enforcement of particular preferences of a particular segment of the public at a particular point in time as somehow reflect the "national will".
The reaction to individualism was Roman in that it aimed to impose methods of production and social organization envisioned by an elite. In the case of communism the elite was to be revolutionary while in the case of social democracy and Progressivism the elite was to be economic, hereditary and social.
The Roman model takes a value position that it aims to impose on the uneducated and unwashed. In contrast, the individualist model assume that individuals are ends into themselves and therefore ought not to be molded or assigned position. The assumption of all discussants of political systems hinges on power --- who gets what, when, why and how. Individualism, in contrast, focuses on individual autonomy. Psychologically, these are different position and therefore we would expect different psychological and perhaps even biological types to be attracted to individualism and Romanism. Jefferson claimed that liberals (by which he meant individualists) tended to be hardy while conservatives (by which he meant Romanizers) tended to be sickly. Today, a number of scholars are working on a thesis that biologically or even genetically rooted patterns generate political belief. It that is so, then different types of people will thrive under liberal versus Roman political patterns. Because the Roman model contemplates the assignment of elite positions to intellectuals and the molding of society according to intellectuals' preferences, intellectuals mostly support it.
In economics, the history of the Roman model begins with mercantilist views of Shaftesbury and David Hume, which were adopted by the Federalists, especially Hamilton. The history of the individualist view is rooted in the English Civil War and the Whig culture as well.
If one compares the development of Rome to the Progressivism in the United States and to attempts to develop the Third World in the immediate post war era, one sees that they operate on almost identical assumptions. That is, modern socialist theory is simply a reassertion of Roman imperialism, not so much in terms of it assumption of the need to conquer other nations (the reason being that individualism has already disproved that assumption) but rather in their assumption that an elite is necessary to impose a specific world view. Much of the dialogue about society rests not so much on Rousseau as on the Roman view that urbanization of values and imposition of process by an elite is necessary to civilize society. Thus, one philosopher advocates the necessity of requiring a "minimax" assessment of risk, a policy of minimizing the maximum possible loss to any member of society, as a necessary condition for rational social organization. Another argues that a specific range for income inequality is necessary. A third that all Americans must have psychiatric care as part of their health insurance, and so on. These refined positions can be subjected to a a popular vote and even win it, but they are too refined to conceivably reflect permanent public preferences.
Yet, most of public policy is designed along these lines--enforcement of particular preferences of a particular segment of the public at a particular point in time as somehow reflect the "national will".
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
4th Century Rome or 21st Century America?
"The reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, by giving permanence to the policy of organized robbery on the part of the state, made all productive economic activity impossible. But it did not stop the formation of large fortunes, rather, it contributed to their formation, while altering their character. The foundation of the new fortunes was no longer the creative energy of men, nor the discovery and exploitation of new sources of wealth, nor the improvement and development of commercial, industrial and agricultural enterprises; it was in the main the skillful use of a privileged position in the state to cheat and exploit the state and the people alike. Public officials, both high and low, grew rich on bribery and corruption. The senatorial class...invested their spoil in land and used their influence, the influence of their caste...to divert the burdens of taxation on to the other classes, to cheat the Treasury directly, and to enslave ever larger numbers of workmen...Thus, more than ever before, society was divided into two classes: those who became steadily poorer and more destitute, and those who built up their prosperity on the spoils of the ruined Empire--real drones, who never made any contribution to economic life but lived on the toil and travail of other classes."
----M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, pp. 475-77.
----M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, pp. 475-77.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Septimius Severus, Progressivism and the Banality of Evil
Going through Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire leads to a question: Is the pattern of the rise and fall of Rome similar to the pattern of events that the United States has been and is experiencing? The answer is complicated but I would argue that on a certain level of abstraction the two are parallel. The similarity is most direct in comparing the sequence of events following Progressivism to the decline of Rome, specifically to Americans' adoption of a rigid state strategy, Progressivism, as opposed to flexibility and decentralization characteristic of states' rights and laissez-faire capitalism. The differences between Rome and the American experience were most pronounced in America's 17th through the 19th centuries. The American model of progress differed sharply from Rome's. But the twentieth century might be called America's Roman age, for America adopted not so much the Roman techniques but the formulaic rigidity that characterized the Roman model, although there was greater emphasis on conquest and imperialism beginning with the Progressive era. As well, Progressivism and the New Deal adopted the Antonine and Severine strategy of playing the proletariat against the capitalist in order to concentrate power at the imperial height, i.e., in Washington cum Rome. America's adoption of the philosophy of Progressivism and the New Deal was the Romanization of the United States.
Rome fell because it was inflexible. All civilizations, like most business firms, are to some degree. It was in the adoption of a rigid formula, Progressivism; reform through experts; centralized control of the money supply hence the economy through the Federal Reserve Bank; a large military; and universities to supply advice and provide the experts, that America parallels Rome. Not in these policies themselves, but in the existence of a pre-determined strategy and the creation of an elite that depends on favors from a centralized source. The similarity is this. All strategies and policies reach breaking points. Civilizations fail when they lack the flexibility to redeploy assets in response to strategic failures. The ability to change and to experiment is more important than a specific strategy. Adoption of high fixed cost, large-scale strategies leads to ridigity and the unwillingness to experiment. The emphasis on economies of scale, which was associated with Progressivism, hearkens back to the Roman model of progress which also depended on large, institutionalized state-backed military-industrial complex.
In comparing any two large groupings of humanity there will be differences and similarities. The key difference between Rome and the US is the American concept of liberty, which differs from the ancient concept and which, in turn, led to the idea of spontaneous progress through private enterprise. Spontaneous order rooted in decentralization and liberty of decentralized units versus the Roman vision of centralized control and duplicative decentralization. The American approach led to technological advance that might have been seen 2,000 years ago if the Greek world had predominated over the Roman instead of the other way around.
The Roman concept of progress was based on conquest, political manipulation (co-opting the upper classes of conquered nations) and exploitation. By our standards the Romans were cruel and destructive. This is not just a moral question. The Roman model of progress, because of its rigidity and its assumption of a fixed pie, placed limitations on the Romans' ability to become wealthy. The rigid commitment to the model of conquest, establish cities, establish a dominant local elite, and exploit the majority as tenant farmers, serfs or slaves, what might be called the Romans' resource-dependent model of expansion (as opposed to the Americans' learning- or technologically based- model) led ultimately to Rome's decline. Sadly, Americans have increasingly adopted the resource-based model at the expense of the learning-based one. Witness the policies surrounding the recent financial and banking failures, which involved subsidies and insistence on control rather than organizational death and renaissance.
However, the Roman model was robust and the ascendancy of Rome lasted seven centuries. Time is not a perfect indicator because the pace of travel and communication were slower. Also, the Romans created intolerable conditions for many inhabitants of the conquered nations. Although the system was stable it was violent, exploitative and cruel.
The Romans did permit considerable latitude to the private sector, and there was a considerable amount of capitalistic agriculture, shipping and manufacturing. But the role these played was to serve the military-industrial complex. Rome's wealth could only increase through new conquest. They did not imagine that technological advance or business innovation could enhance wealth. The Romans did not envision progress through technology, learning, invention or better products. There was learning and advance in areas like law, engineering and construction and, as well, there were sophisticated farming and shipping enterprises. But these largely relied on technologies that the Greeks, especially the Hellenic cities of Asia Minor, had innovated. Rome invented the military-industrial complex. It existed on a smaller scale in medieval and mercantilist Europe and it also existed in Greece, China and elsewhere. Prior to Progressivism America was isolationist and economic activity entrepreneurial. The centralization of industry opened the door to the argument that Progressive government was needed to protect the poor. This was the argument of Hadrian and Septimius Severus. Few would argue that the Roman Emperors were primarily concerned with the poor. We know, historically, that the lot of European peasants did not improve from the Second to th Fourteenth centuries. Yet, many Americans believe Progressives' claims, the claims of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, that they were for the poor. Yet, real wages started declining less than 30 years after FDR's death, and they have not recovered.
Coordination of the massive land area that it had conquered posed important managerial challenges that Rome had to meet through decentralization. But the decentralization it practiced led to reduction in the value of the conquered provinces. It was an imposed decentralization that inhibited spontaneous development. Rome tended to destroy cultural differences and initiative and to aim to homogenize the elites of each conquered province. The provinces were to be clones of Rome. In turn, their provincial agricultural and economic surplus was Rome's.
As the extent of the empire grew, the cost of expanding further increased and the benefit from expanding further decreased. Part of this was simple mechanics. The Empire's circumference became larger; there were more threats; greater distances to travel. As well, as Rome went further from the Mediterranean the level of civilization was lower and the difficulties in establishing footholds greater.
To enable the conquered colonies to turn into decentralized duplicates or mini-Romes, Rome had to build urban centers in each one. It spent huge amounts of money building urban centers in all of the colonies. The purpose of the urban centers was to create an elite who would dominate the colony on behalf of Rome. It encouraged urbanization to create Romanization of the conquered populations. But in order to Romanize, resources had to be diverted to support the urban centers and subsidize "bourgeois" regional elites.
In effect, Rome was involved in a "pyramid scheme" that lasted seven centuries. In order to become wealthy it needed to conquer new provinces that in turn subsidized the mother-city and Italy. In order to control the provinces it needed to create new urban centers that absorbed much of the wealth of the conquered colonies. To pay for the expansion and allow the new elites in the newly conquered provinces to prosper, additional conquest had to be made. Additional gain could only be achieved by new conquest. Over centuries the pyramid scheme became so unwieldy that it could not be continued. Stresses began to be felt in the time of the Flavian and Antonine emperors.
Moreover, decentralization weakened Rome and Italy because Romans had to settle in the provinces in order to accomplish the goal of replication of Roman society. In other words, the provincial urban centers were a combination of Roman expatriates and elite colonial nationals. The result was a hollowing out of Rome as the best and the brightest settled in Gaul, Spain, Britain, upper and lower Germany, Africa, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and Arabia.
A comparison of Rome and the United States suggests that decentralization needs to be spontaneous to be productive. Without decentralization Rome could not have functioned, but it lost the ultimate value of decentralization. This was inevitable because spontaneous decentralization is inconsistent with conquest.
The ultimate result of the duplicative decentralization policy was that Rome became ruled by non-Romans from the provinces. The reason was that the praetorian guard, the Roman army unit that protected the Emperor and Rome itself, had selected the Emperor. Historically, the scope of the provinces had become too large for a Roman national-dominated army to protect it. Moreover, the Romans did not trust their own proletariat and were reluctant to permit them to dominate the military. The result was a provincially-dominated military whose soldiers were not completely Romanized. The end result was an Emperor who himself was non-Roman. The pattern had begun with Augustus, but reached a head in the second and third century AD reign of Septimius Severus, the first foreign-born emperor and one who perpetuated Marcus Aurelius's institution of a hereditary monarchy.
Rostovtzeff describes the Antonine Emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius, as "enlightened". The Antonine pattern was that the Emperor would adopt the ablest Senator as his son, and power would be passed to the adopted son. Unfortunately for Rome, Marcus Aurelius broke this tradition and appointed his natural born son, Commodus, who was a poor ruler and in some ways paralleled Nero:
"He relied too much on the praetorian guard and the police corps of the capital, and neglected personal relations with the provincial armies...The repeated doles and other favors bestowed on the garrison of the capital...aroused their jealousy...The rumors about his dissipated life, his ignominious behaviour, and his liking for charioteers and gladiators, which were spread by the efforts of the officers, made it possible for the commanders of the most important armies, those of Britain, Pannonia and Syria, to take part in a military pronunciamento."
A senator, Pertinax, served briefly as Emperor, but the praetorians did not like him and murdered him. There was a civil war and for the first time the praetorians had become too weak to decide who the emperor would be. The provincial armies fought it out among themselves, and Septimius Severus, the leader of the Pannonian army in Germany and Illyria (what is now eastern Europe) ultimately prevailed after Didius Julianus bought the office from the praetorian guard and was deposed.
The pattern of economic development that Rome followed was that they conquered a nation. They built an urban center. They encouraged the elite of the nation to become educated in Roman culture and customs. The elite then supported Rome and adopted Roman culture. They permitted free enterprise, but the vast majority of the population was forced to work as tenant farmers. Industry became centralized because the largest markets were for state use: the army and Rome itself. Thus, farming had gone in the time of Augustus from peasant and self-owned to capitalistic farming. Ultimately, the state took control of considerable lands. Wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few who benefited from state contracts and trade. But trade was widespread and private manufacturing existed throughout the provinces, especially Alexandria. Much of the cost of administration was born by wealthy businessmen, in the form of what was called liturgies or duties. Eventually Rome required elite businessmen to collect taxes and perform other services as well.
As a usurper, Septimius Severus depended on the army for support. In response, he introduced military reforms and he dramatically increased the presence of barbarians in the Roman aristocracy and the Senate and made membership in the Roman aristocracy dependent on having a military career. He also increased military pay, exempted veterans from municipal liturgies and recognized marriages by soldiers.
To legitimize himself Septimius calimed to wish to avenge the murder of Pertinax, claimed to be Commodus' brother and forged papers showing that he had been adopted by Marcus Aurelius. Crucially, he adopted a policy of reconciliation with the peasants at the expense of urban centers and the wealthy. Rostovtzeff emphasizes:
"the legislation of the Empire was never more humane than in the age of the Severi. The great jurists of this time, Papinian, Ulpian, and Paulus, were given a free hand to develop their favorite humanitarian ideas of equal law for everybody and of the duty of protecting human life in general and the weak and the poor in particular. On the eve of the great social revolution for which the militarization of the Empire was preparing the way, Roman law displayed for the last time its noblest and most brilliant aspect...It is manifest, however, that the liberal social policy of Septimius was designed first and foremost to consolidate his own power and that of his dynasty. Like Commodus, he determined to base his power on the classes from which his soldiers were drawn: hence his liberal legislation and his measures for the protection of the peasants and the city proletariat against the ruling classes and the imperial administration...Septimius apparently wished to increase the numbers of free landowners on his estates, and he insisted on the strict adherence of the contractors and the procurators to the provisions of his predecessors..."
Like Hadrian and Commodus, Septimius aimed to win over the peasant population in Egypt and Asia Minor (p. 357). Rostovtzeff writes:
"We possess three or four petitions dating from the time of Septimius, all recently found in Lydia. After making complaints to the high officials and suffering disillusionment, the peasants appealed directly to the emperor, using the most devoted and loyal language. In one of the petitions their representative says: 'We beg of you, greatest and most sacred of all emperors, that having regard to your laws and those of your ancestors, and to your peace-making justice to all, and hating those whom you and all your ancestors on the throne have always hated, you will order...
"...Thus the policy of Septimius towards the humble was a policy of protection and concession. Towards the cities his attitude was different...We cannot forget the fate of Lyons in Gaul and of Byzantium. The former never recovered from the ruthless punishment meted out to it. Severe chastisement was also inflicted on Antioch. Scores of cities were obliged to pay enormous contributions because they had been forced to furnish money to ( Septimius's rival) Pescennius Niger. Of the confiscation of the property of of many members of the provincial aristocracy we have already spoken.
"More important than these temporary measures of repression was the general policy of Septimius towards the upper classes of the city population. In speaking of liturgies in the preceding chapter, I laid stress on the fact that Septimius was the first emperor who insisted upon the personal responsibility of the municipal magistrates. He was also the first who, with the help of his jurists, developed the oppressive system of liturgies into a permanent institution legalized, regularized and enforced by the state. The jurists who did most to elaborate the system and theory of munera (duties) were Papinian and Callistratus, the contemporaries of Septimius, and Ulpian, the adviser of Alexander Severus..."
Rostotzveff notes two liturgies, duties or taxes that Septimius reenforced (they had previously existed but he intensified them): decaprotia, or a duty or munera on the top ten citizens of a city; eikosaprotia, or a duty or munera on the top twenty citizens. Rostovtzeff adds:
"It is certain also that more systematic pressure was exercised by Septimius and his successors on the associations and corporations which served the state. The fact that Callistratus, in speaking of the organization of the munera in municipal life, devotes so much attention to the corporations (or trade associations), shows that Septimius, following the lead of his predecessors, particularly Hadrian, M. Aurelius and Commodus, minutely regulated the relations between the corporations and the cities. Specially important were the navicularii (shippers) and the merchants...It is significant of the position of these corporations that Callistratus emphasizes the assistance of the merchants and the service of the shipowners, and that he insists upon the point that both are performing a munus publicum (public duty)."
Thus, as in Progressivism, special interests played a role in the early decline of the Roman Empire. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, Septimius saw an important advantage primarily in support for the poor:
"While helping in this way some members of the privileged classes whose service was needed by the state, or rather while endeavoring to ease somewhat the increasing pressure of the burden which lay on their shoulders, Septimius never forgot the interests of the humbler and poorer classes. It is probable that it was he who extended the privilege of exemption from the municipal liturgies to the tenants of the imperial estates. Very likely he was moved to do so by their repeated complaints about the arbitrary way in which, though not resident in the cities, they were forced by the municipal magistrates and the imperial officers to share the municipal burdens. In the petition of Aga Bey in Lydia the peasants lay great stress on this point and threaten the emperor with a mass strike in the form of an anachorasis
The end result was the squeezing of the well to do in favor of the poor and very wealthy:
"Some of the richest men being thus exempt, the owners of land and shops, belonging chiefly to the middle class, remained the sole bearers of liturgies. It was no wonder that they tried by various ingenious devices to escape these burdens, which undermined their economic prosperity."
Septimius engaged heavily in the redistribution of wealth, which in turn led to widespread criminality during his reign:
"Confiscations of landed property en masse convulsed economic life to an extent which must not be underestimated. Private capital and private initiative were thus removed from large and flourishing concerns and replaced by a new system of management, bureaucratic and lifeless in the extreme. Political persecutions on a large scale scared thousands of people, both guilty and innocent, and forced them to flee from their homes . The chief evil, however, was the enormous number of government agents, mostly soldiers performing the duties of policemen--the frumentarii, stationarii and colletiones--who in their pursuit of political criminals penetrated into all the cities and villages and searched private houses, and who were, of course, accessible to bribes...Still more serious were the exactions of these same agents in connexion with the frequent military expeditions of the emperor. In time of civil war no one cared a straw for the people. New recruits were levied in masses and compulsorily; means of transport and men were requisitioned for armies on the march; foodstuffs and war material also had to be supplied by the people; and quarters provided in their homes for soldiers and officers. The inscriptions mention many prominent men who were in charge of the war chest, that is to say, whose function it was to levy money contributions and war supplies from cities and individuals. These men naturally could not perform their duties without the aid of a mass of minor officials and soldiers, who swooped down like a swarm of locusts on the cities and villages, devouring their substance and scaring and exasperating all class of the population."
Naturally, American society has not reached such extremes. But as Hannah Arendt noted in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, the modern world is characterized by the "banality of evil". Who needs officials to levy taxes and terrorize the population when this can be accomplished effortlessly through the Federal Reserve Bank?
Rome fell because it was inflexible. All civilizations, like most business firms, are to some degree. It was in the adoption of a rigid formula, Progressivism; reform through experts; centralized control of the money supply hence the economy through the Federal Reserve Bank; a large military; and universities to supply advice and provide the experts, that America parallels Rome. Not in these policies themselves, but in the existence of a pre-determined strategy and the creation of an elite that depends on favors from a centralized source. The similarity is this. All strategies and policies reach breaking points. Civilizations fail when they lack the flexibility to redeploy assets in response to strategic failures. The ability to change and to experiment is more important than a specific strategy. Adoption of high fixed cost, large-scale strategies leads to ridigity and the unwillingness to experiment. The emphasis on economies of scale, which was associated with Progressivism, hearkens back to the Roman model of progress which also depended on large, institutionalized state-backed military-industrial complex.
In comparing any two large groupings of humanity there will be differences and similarities. The key difference between Rome and the US is the American concept of liberty, which differs from the ancient concept and which, in turn, led to the idea of spontaneous progress through private enterprise. Spontaneous order rooted in decentralization and liberty of decentralized units versus the Roman vision of centralized control and duplicative decentralization. The American approach led to technological advance that might have been seen 2,000 years ago if the Greek world had predominated over the Roman instead of the other way around.
The Roman concept of progress was based on conquest, political manipulation (co-opting the upper classes of conquered nations) and exploitation. By our standards the Romans were cruel and destructive. This is not just a moral question. The Roman model of progress, because of its rigidity and its assumption of a fixed pie, placed limitations on the Romans' ability to become wealthy. The rigid commitment to the model of conquest, establish cities, establish a dominant local elite, and exploit the majority as tenant farmers, serfs or slaves, what might be called the Romans' resource-dependent model of expansion (as opposed to the Americans' learning- or technologically based- model) led ultimately to Rome's decline. Sadly, Americans have increasingly adopted the resource-based model at the expense of the learning-based one. Witness the policies surrounding the recent financial and banking failures, which involved subsidies and insistence on control rather than organizational death and renaissance.
However, the Roman model was robust and the ascendancy of Rome lasted seven centuries. Time is not a perfect indicator because the pace of travel and communication were slower. Also, the Romans created intolerable conditions for many inhabitants of the conquered nations. Although the system was stable it was violent, exploitative and cruel.
The Romans did permit considerable latitude to the private sector, and there was a considerable amount of capitalistic agriculture, shipping and manufacturing. But the role these played was to serve the military-industrial complex. Rome's wealth could only increase through new conquest. They did not imagine that technological advance or business innovation could enhance wealth. The Romans did not envision progress through technology, learning, invention or better products. There was learning and advance in areas like law, engineering and construction and, as well, there were sophisticated farming and shipping enterprises. But these largely relied on technologies that the Greeks, especially the Hellenic cities of Asia Minor, had innovated. Rome invented the military-industrial complex. It existed on a smaller scale in medieval and mercantilist Europe and it also existed in Greece, China and elsewhere. Prior to Progressivism America was isolationist and economic activity entrepreneurial. The centralization of industry opened the door to the argument that Progressive government was needed to protect the poor. This was the argument of Hadrian and Septimius Severus. Few would argue that the Roman Emperors were primarily concerned with the poor. We know, historically, that the lot of European peasants did not improve from the Second to th Fourteenth centuries. Yet, many Americans believe Progressives' claims, the claims of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, that they were for the poor. Yet, real wages started declining less than 30 years after FDR's death, and they have not recovered.
Coordination of the massive land area that it had conquered posed important managerial challenges that Rome had to meet through decentralization. But the decentralization it practiced led to reduction in the value of the conquered provinces. It was an imposed decentralization that inhibited spontaneous development. Rome tended to destroy cultural differences and initiative and to aim to homogenize the elites of each conquered province. The provinces were to be clones of Rome. In turn, their provincial agricultural and economic surplus was Rome's.
As the extent of the empire grew, the cost of expanding further increased and the benefit from expanding further decreased. Part of this was simple mechanics. The Empire's circumference became larger; there were more threats; greater distances to travel. As well, as Rome went further from the Mediterranean the level of civilization was lower and the difficulties in establishing footholds greater.
To enable the conquered colonies to turn into decentralized duplicates or mini-Romes, Rome had to build urban centers in each one. It spent huge amounts of money building urban centers in all of the colonies. The purpose of the urban centers was to create an elite who would dominate the colony on behalf of Rome. It encouraged urbanization to create Romanization of the conquered populations. But in order to Romanize, resources had to be diverted to support the urban centers and subsidize "bourgeois" regional elites.
In effect, Rome was involved in a "pyramid scheme" that lasted seven centuries. In order to become wealthy it needed to conquer new provinces that in turn subsidized the mother-city and Italy. In order to control the provinces it needed to create new urban centers that absorbed much of the wealth of the conquered colonies. To pay for the expansion and allow the new elites in the newly conquered provinces to prosper, additional conquest had to be made. Additional gain could only be achieved by new conquest. Over centuries the pyramid scheme became so unwieldy that it could not be continued. Stresses began to be felt in the time of the Flavian and Antonine emperors.
Moreover, decentralization weakened Rome and Italy because Romans had to settle in the provinces in order to accomplish the goal of replication of Roman society. In other words, the provincial urban centers were a combination of Roman expatriates and elite colonial nationals. The result was a hollowing out of Rome as the best and the brightest settled in Gaul, Spain, Britain, upper and lower Germany, Africa, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and Arabia.
A comparison of Rome and the United States suggests that decentralization needs to be spontaneous to be productive. Without decentralization Rome could not have functioned, but it lost the ultimate value of decentralization. This was inevitable because spontaneous decentralization is inconsistent with conquest.
The ultimate result of the duplicative decentralization policy was that Rome became ruled by non-Romans from the provinces. The reason was that the praetorian guard, the Roman army unit that protected the Emperor and Rome itself, had selected the Emperor. Historically, the scope of the provinces had become too large for a Roman national-dominated army to protect it. Moreover, the Romans did not trust their own proletariat and were reluctant to permit them to dominate the military. The result was a provincially-dominated military whose soldiers were not completely Romanized. The end result was an Emperor who himself was non-Roman. The pattern had begun with Augustus, but reached a head in the second and third century AD reign of Septimius Severus, the first foreign-born emperor and one who perpetuated Marcus Aurelius's institution of a hereditary monarchy.
Rostovtzeff describes the Antonine Emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius, as "enlightened". The Antonine pattern was that the Emperor would adopt the ablest Senator as his son, and power would be passed to the adopted son. Unfortunately for Rome, Marcus Aurelius broke this tradition and appointed his natural born son, Commodus, who was a poor ruler and in some ways paralleled Nero:
"He relied too much on the praetorian guard and the police corps of the capital, and neglected personal relations with the provincial armies...The repeated doles and other favors bestowed on the garrison of the capital...aroused their jealousy...The rumors about his dissipated life, his ignominious behaviour, and his liking for charioteers and gladiators, which were spread by the efforts of the officers, made it possible for the commanders of the most important armies, those of Britain, Pannonia and Syria, to take part in a military pronunciamento."
A senator, Pertinax, served briefly as Emperor, but the praetorians did not like him and murdered him. There was a civil war and for the first time the praetorians had become too weak to decide who the emperor would be. The provincial armies fought it out among themselves, and Septimius Severus, the leader of the Pannonian army in Germany and Illyria (what is now eastern Europe) ultimately prevailed after Didius Julianus bought the office from the praetorian guard and was deposed.
The pattern of economic development that Rome followed was that they conquered a nation. They built an urban center. They encouraged the elite of the nation to become educated in Roman culture and customs. The elite then supported Rome and adopted Roman culture. They permitted free enterprise, but the vast majority of the population was forced to work as tenant farmers. Industry became centralized because the largest markets were for state use: the army and Rome itself. Thus, farming had gone in the time of Augustus from peasant and self-owned to capitalistic farming. Ultimately, the state took control of considerable lands. Wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few who benefited from state contracts and trade. But trade was widespread and private manufacturing existed throughout the provinces, especially Alexandria. Much of the cost of administration was born by wealthy businessmen, in the form of what was called liturgies or duties. Eventually Rome required elite businessmen to collect taxes and perform other services as well.
As a usurper, Septimius Severus depended on the army for support. In response, he introduced military reforms and he dramatically increased the presence of barbarians in the Roman aristocracy and the Senate and made membership in the Roman aristocracy dependent on having a military career. He also increased military pay, exempted veterans from municipal liturgies and recognized marriages by soldiers.
To legitimize himself Septimius calimed to wish to avenge the murder of Pertinax, claimed to be Commodus' brother and forged papers showing that he had been adopted by Marcus Aurelius. Crucially, he adopted a policy of reconciliation with the peasants at the expense of urban centers and the wealthy. Rostovtzeff emphasizes:
"the legislation of the Empire was never more humane than in the age of the Severi. The great jurists of this time, Papinian, Ulpian, and Paulus, were given a free hand to develop their favorite humanitarian ideas of equal law for everybody and of the duty of protecting human life in general and the weak and the poor in particular. On the eve of the great social revolution for which the militarization of the Empire was preparing the way, Roman law displayed for the last time its noblest and most brilliant aspect...It is manifest, however, that the liberal social policy of Septimius was designed first and foremost to consolidate his own power and that of his dynasty. Like Commodus, he determined to base his power on the classes from which his soldiers were drawn: hence his liberal legislation and his measures for the protection of the peasants and the city proletariat against the ruling classes and the imperial administration...Septimius apparently wished to increase the numbers of free landowners on his estates, and he insisted on the strict adherence of the contractors and the procurators to the provisions of his predecessors..."
Like Hadrian and Commodus, Septimius aimed to win over the peasant population in Egypt and Asia Minor (p. 357). Rostovtzeff writes:
"We possess three or four petitions dating from the time of Septimius, all recently found in Lydia. After making complaints to the high officials and suffering disillusionment, the peasants appealed directly to the emperor, using the most devoted and loyal language. In one of the petitions their representative says: 'We beg of you, greatest and most sacred of all emperors, that having regard to your laws and those of your ancestors, and to your peace-making justice to all, and hating those whom you and all your ancestors on the throne have always hated, you will order...
"...Thus the policy of Septimius towards the humble was a policy of protection and concession. Towards the cities his attitude was different...We cannot forget the fate of Lyons in Gaul and of Byzantium. The former never recovered from the ruthless punishment meted out to it. Severe chastisement was also inflicted on Antioch. Scores of cities were obliged to pay enormous contributions because they had been forced to furnish money to ( Septimius's rival) Pescennius Niger. Of the confiscation of the property of of many members of the provincial aristocracy we have already spoken.
"More important than these temporary measures of repression was the general policy of Septimius towards the upper classes of the city population. In speaking of liturgies in the preceding chapter, I laid stress on the fact that Septimius was the first emperor who insisted upon the personal responsibility of the municipal magistrates. He was also the first who, with the help of his jurists, developed the oppressive system of liturgies into a permanent institution legalized, regularized and enforced by the state. The jurists who did most to elaborate the system and theory of munera (duties) were Papinian and Callistratus, the contemporaries of Septimius, and Ulpian, the adviser of Alexander Severus..."
Rostotzveff notes two liturgies, duties or taxes that Septimius reenforced (they had previously existed but he intensified them): decaprotia, or a duty or munera on the top ten citizens of a city; eikosaprotia, or a duty or munera on the top twenty citizens. Rostovtzeff adds:
"It is certain also that more systematic pressure was exercised by Septimius and his successors on the associations and corporations which served the state. The fact that Callistratus, in speaking of the organization of the munera in municipal life, devotes so much attention to the corporations (or trade associations), shows that Septimius, following the lead of his predecessors, particularly Hadrian, M. Aurelius and Commodus, minutely regulated the relations between the corporations and the cities. Specially important were the navicularii (shippers) and the merchants...It is significant of the position of these corporations that Callistratus emphasizes the assistance of the merchants and the service of the shipowners, and that he insists upon the point that both are performing a munus publicum (public duty)."
Thus, as in Progressivism, special interests played a role in the early decline of the Roman Empire. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, Septimius saw an important advantage primarily in support for the poor:
"While helping in this way some members of the privileged classes whose service was needed by the state, or rather while endeavoring to ease somewhat the increasing pressure of the burden which lay on their shoulders, Septimius never forgot the interests of the humbler and poorer classes. It is probable that it was he who extended the privilege of exemption from the municipal liturgies to the tenants of the imperial estates. Very likely he was moved to do so by their repeated complaints about the arbitrary way in which, though not resident in the cities, they were forced by the municipal magistrates and the imperial officers to share the municipal burdens. In the petition of Aga Bey in Lydia the peasants lay great stress on this point and threaten the emperor with a mass strike in the form of an anachorasis
The end result was the squeezing of the well to do in favor of the poor and very wealthy:
"Some of the richest men being thus exempt, the owners of land and shops, belonging chiefly to the middle class, remained the sole bearers of liturgies. It was no wonder that they tried by various ingenious devices to escape these burdens, which undermined their economic prosperity."
Septimius engaged heavily in the redistribution of wealth, which in turn led to widespread criminality during his reign:
"Confiscations of landed property en masse convulsed economic life to an extent which must not be underestimated. Private capital and private initiative were thus removed from large and flourishing concerns and replaced by a new system of management, bureaucratic and lifeless in the extreme. Political persecutions on a large scale scared thousands of people, both guilty and innocent, and forced them to flee from their homes . The chief evil, however, was the enormous number of government agents, mostly soldiers performing the duties of policemen--the frumentarii, stationarii and colletiones--who in their pursuit of political criminals penetrated into all the cities and villages and searched private houses, and who were, of course, accessible to bribes...Still more serious were the exactions of these same agents in connexion with the frequent military expeditions of the emperor. In time of civil war no one cared a straw for the people. New recruits were levied in masses and compulsorily; means of transport and men were requisitioned for armies on the march; foodstuffs and war material also had to be supplied by the people; and quarters provided in their homes for soldiers and officers. The inscriptions mention many prominent men who were in charge of the war chest, that is to say, whose function it was to levy money contributions and war supplies from cities and individuals. These men naturally could not perform their duties without the aid of a mass of minor officials and soldiers, who swooped down like a swarm of locusts on the cities and villages, devouring their substance and scaring and exasperating all class of the population."
Naturally, American society has not reached such extremes. But as Hannah Arendt noted in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, the modern world is characterized by the "banality of evil". Who needs officials to levy taxes and terrorize the population when this can be accomplished effortlessly through the Federal Reserve Bank?
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