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Surely Rome wasn't a warmongering, genocidal, capitalist-colonialist society with the rich elite hoarding untold wealth and trading in slaves 1500 years earlier, right?
The Roman mode of production wasn't capitalist exploitation of wage earners who sold their labor, but through their exploration of slaves in an agregarian system. There's some arguments to be made that capitalist systems start as early as 12th century Italy, but it becomes dominant in 1600s England and is able to radically transform that society.
There's actually a lot of interesting recent work that points to wage labor being very prevalent in the Roman economy! The idea of slavery as the main driver of the production of the Roman economy is not nearly as popular now even amongst academics who take a 'primitivist' view of the Roman economy (ie that it resembled the customary economies around it more than later, early modern economies). Though, obviously, either way it had significant social influence and implications, and was far from economically inconsequential.
That really does not apply to Rome. There was some private industry and profit, but at the end of the day, it was all about enriching the empire and giving the people bread and circuses to keep them quiet. Every Roman citizen got fed. Which is pretty anti-capitalistic.
There was some private industry and profit, but at the end of the day, it was all about enriching the empire and giving the people bread and circuses to keep them quiet.
Less than you might think! The Imperial state apparatus was actually very skeletal compared to what we think of it, at least during the height of the Empire. We're talking entire provinces with only a few dozen actual imperial officials to manage it, most of whom brought their own private staffs. Senators were formally barred from large-scale commerce, but they got around this by investing their money with non-office-holding individuals to engage in business on an obscene scale. Most of the resources moving around were moved by private trade, and at immense profit. Only a few resources were subject to imperial monopolies or had widespread imperial control; everyone else was playing a more-or-less recognizable hustle of commerce - buy or lease cheap, produce at low cost, sell at high profit.
Every Roman citizen got fed. Which is pretty anti-capitalistic.
Not even close, I'm afraid! Even in the city of Rome itself, and it was only in the city itself where the grain dole was in effect, it was limited to a certain number of citizens, and most of it was sold subsidized by the state rather than free. Those citizens who received the grain dole, furthermore, were not selected out of the poorest of the poor - it was largely the established working families - semiskilled workers, artisans. small merchants and the like, who might be expected to have times of hardship but not be in constant danger of starvation - it was a political subsidy to these people, who still had some social pull and connections in the city but were not integrated enough into the power structures to have a firm interest in sustaining it, to keep them from calling for anything dangerous, like more democracy!
The ultra-impoverished largely were left to the issue of charity and political patronage (which was big in Rome), and starved about as much as any impoverished pre-modern group. Maybe a little less, considering votes were almost literally bought long after voting ceased to be meaningful. One supposes that's a bit more money than most would have.
and giving the people bread and circuses to keep them quiet. Every Roman citizen got fed.
Fed and entertained.
Since @PugJesus@lemmy.world seems to be the expert in all things Roman, I'd be interested in seeing their take. Seems to me from what I've read that Rome was capitalist as hell and that was a major reason for expansion.
The notion that they gave out "bread and circuses" somehow made them other than that seems pretty facile. The bread and circuses was usually a quid-pro-quo to the colleges for their votes. There were very, very rich civilians and dirt poor nobles, and that doesn't seem to happen in an inheritance feudalism very often. Funding an army as a general and taking the wealth it conquered seems about as capitalist as you can imagine. Yah, you had to wait for an appointment as a governor for the areas you conquered, but that was usually just a matter of form.
That's a very funny question, and you can get a lot of answers, but generally the thinking, since Peter Temin's work on the Roman economy, has shifted predominantly to a "Proto-capitalist" view, at least during the height of the Empire. Nonetheless, the answer remains incredibly contentious. I'll try to give a rundown as best I can - as a supporter of the proto-capitalist view myself:
spoiler
First, much of the expansion of Rome happened during the mid-Republic, in which the customary/traditional economy predominated, so don't put too much stock in capitalism or protocapitalism as a reason for Rome's expansion. Rome, ultimately, was an incredibly aggressive, proud, and strangely assimilationist (for the time) polity, so it had the relentless warring with its neighbors to maintain an experienced and well-tested military system, the arrogance to take over everyone and anyone who seemed ripe for it (I would like to note that the arrogance of a Classical republic is a funny and dangerous thing, because civic pride is much more sustainable than the ambitions of autocrats), and the ability to both use their new human resources not simply as slaves, but also as members of the polity (and thus, both assistants in further expansion and, in the long-term, stable and loyal populations in their own right - to varying degrees),
Second, the Roman Empire's financial customs were, by modern standards, primitive, but by Classical standards incredibly advanced. They effectively united the Mediterranean into a single market, or at least a series of closely connected markets, complete with mobility of labor and capital. Crude forms of joint-stock companies and corporations had legal standing, contract enforcement was rigorous, and while credit was tracked on an informal basis, moneylending (from both individuals ad hoc and dedicated professionals/businesses) and debt were essential parts of the overall functioning of the economy. Roman aristocrats largely held a very rationalist financial-oriented mindset, unlike, say, Medieval nobility or Chinese bureaucrat-scholars. They were quite literally investing capital and managing businesses for (sometimes grotesque) profit. So while you can certainly make arguments about the relative balance of the traditional economy to these very advanced parts, on the whole, I think it's very fair to regard the Roman Empire as capitalist or at least some form of protocapitalist, like the Netherlands in the 15th-16th century, just making the transition.
Third, the Roman Empire's capitalism or protocapitalism definitely pushed forward economic development, if not necessarily expansion. Some recent work suggests an average GDP growth rate of 0.1%-0.2% per year through the first 200 years of the Empire - incredibly sluggish by modern standards, but an unheard-of sustained rate of growth for pre-modern polities that would not be matched until the Netherlands and England in the 17th century AD. It would be hard to argue that this was technological as, for all the losses experienced after the fall of the Empire, technology in Europe did continue to improve after its fall. It seems pretty intuitive to attribute this not to technological advancement, but economic organization - ie the development of a capitalist or protocapitalist mode of production.
Fourth, independent funding of armies was a very temporary thing. That was only really major in the Late Republic, and it caused a lot of civil wars. Furthermore, individuals could not raise an army nor make war without consent of the Senate (at least not in their capacity as Roman citizens), and command was only granted by appointment of political office - typically by the Senate (or by the popular assemblies). So there wasn't quite that level of independence in plundering and looting the surrounding states - Rome liked to have a pretext for its wars, and generally frowned on large private forces. Caesar himself, for example, only was in command of forces to begin with because he had been granted command of a province (which he lobbied hard for, mind), and then had to get special permission from the Senate to raise additional Legions (which he himself had to fund) when he started his conquest of Gaul (under the pretext that a Roman ally had been attacked and he HAD to intervene - to save the allied Gauls, of course!). His level of independence in starting such a massive conquest was only rendered possible because he was one of the most politically influential men in the Republic at the time (in an alliance with two other incredibly powerful politicians) - and even then, despite having one of the most glorious and republic-expanding/enriching conquests in Roman history, almost got him arrested and executed for illegal warfare at the end of it all (the suspicion of which kicked off the civil war which Caesar eventually won). So even that lower level of independent conquest was far from the norm.
Fifth, Bread and Circuses is a bit of a funny thing. The initial grain dole was part of an overall reformer effort in the Late Republic to restore prosperity to the (at the time) hard-pressed working classes... by returning them the power of a traditional economy in which the majority of citizens would engage in subsistence farming. By the time of the Empire, the importance of bread and circuses was political - less about the economy, more about the fact that, for the 1st century AD, into the 2nd, and arguably into the 3rd, the population of the city of Rome was still aware of its informal political power (however reduced), and could make and break imperial officials, up to the Emperor himself in particularly dire cases. So there was a definite urge to keep the city of Rome as placated as possible.
tl;dr; yes, it would be fair to call the Roman Empire capitalist or protocapitalist.
Well, thanks for that! It fleshed out some layman's impressions I had and disabused me of some others.
Love me some Roman history, keep that up.
Always happy to
infodumphelp! 🙏
The cura annonae went way beyond the "bread and circuses" claim and was a pretty important thing in the lives of the plebs. It was also expected. Juvenal mocked it as "bread and circuses," but there would have been both riots and probably mass starvation without it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_annonae
As it says in that link:
In 22 AD, Augustus' successor Tiberius publicly acknowledged the Cura Annonae as a personal and imperial duty, which if neglected would cause "the utter ruin of the state".
Now it is true that the cura annonae would be increased in order to gain favor or quell the populace for one reason or other, but that's not the same thing.
As far as the "circuses," free entertainment for the masses is not exactly capitalistic either. And it's not like it was a one-time thing. That was true for centuries. And remember the free entertainment wasn't just gladiatorial combat. It was also things like chariot racing and theater.
On top of that, there was massive investment in public artworks. Artworks that were designed specifically to glorify the empire and its leaders. That sounds positively Soviet to me.
As far as the “circuses,” free entertainment for the masses is not exactly capitalistic either. And it’s not like it was a one-time thing. That was true for centuries. And remember the free entertainment wasn’t just gladiatorial combat. It was also things like chariot racing and theater.
Only some seats were subsidized or free; many seat tickets would have been paid, as in the modern day. A lot of the time, free games and entertainment were done by private politicians as a form of political advertisement - "I, Gaius Julius Caesar, have spent my own money to provide entertainment to the good people of Rome! Please take note I'm running for office in a few months' times!" Even after all meaningful political power had been centered in the position of the Emperor, such popular support remained important in political jockeying for the Emperor's favor.
On top of that, there was massive investment in public artworks. Artworks that were designed specifically to glorify the empire and its leaders. That sounds positively Soviet to me.
Ah, that's a curious thing there - there are certainly examples of imperial-funded art and architecture for the purpose of glorifying the state (and also for some Roman legal oddities), but much of it was in the tradition of Greek euergetism - ie the ultra-rich funded such things both to show the poor why they shouldn't kill them, and to suck up to the powers-that-be. Much of the time, there are inscriptions or plaques on major works like that that will say things like "Tiberius Flavius Aurelius and his two daughters paid for and dedicate this statue of the Emperor to the Res Publica, the people of the town, and to our fair and noble Emperor himself!" And the money acquired in order to make such 'magnanimous' donations? Usually quite commercial in origin.
Rome wasn't capitalist.
Rome was like that already when it was just a town, some argue that is one of the reasons why it became a
bullysuperpower.I enjoyed this insight into that mentality: youtube/P3IIRiSTc3g.