The Collapse of Antiquity by Michael Hudson
Be aware of self-congratulatory hubris.
Great thinkers have all warned us.
Economic determinism, espoused by social Darwinist philosophy, has this sanguine circular reasoning:
It posits that any given society is the result of natural selection favoring policies that successfully maximize productivity and prosperity.
With this Panglossian logic, today’s Western civilization is envisioned as the culmination of past triumphs, tracing lineage from classical Greece and Rome as progressive leaps from the near Eastern palatial economies to Western Europe. Adopting this self-congratulatory perspective, contemporary institutions such as individualism and the security of credit and property contracts are traced back to classical antiquity as flawless, positive evolutionary developments, steering civilization away from what is labeled as “Oriental Despotism”.
Yet, the reality is that Rome’s predatory oligarchies waged five centuries of civil war to deprive populations of liberty, blocking popular opposition to harsh pro-creditor laws and the monopolization of the land into latifundia estates. But the dynamics that drove labor into clientage and ultimately into serfdom have been downplayed by modern historiography that focuses more on Rome’s military conquests and biographies of its leading consuls and emperors than on its struggles over debt and land tenure. The verdict is merciless: What impoverished the population of the Roman Empire bequeathed a creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world.
In the book The Collapse of Antiquity, the author, Michael Hudson, sets out to prove that what impoverished the population of the Roman Empire bequeathed a creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world. Hudson’s verdict is merciless: The pillars of Western Civilization, Ancient Greece and Rome –set the stage for what is happening today: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.
Hudson delves into the perennial clash between creditors and the real economy. He illustrates that unlike some historical traditions that acknowledged the significance of debt pardoning and equitable land distribution, ancient Rome adopted a stringent pro-creditor legal system. This approach led to drastic measures, including the elimination of figures who remotely threatened it, including Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and Jesus. Consequently, the empire descended into a rentier economy, ultimately succumbing to internal dissolution. Unfortunately, contemporary neoliberal establishments in the West persist in defending this futile state framework, despite the adverse dynamics it perpetuates.
The author challenges established perspectives on the demise of the Roman Empire, positing that its decline stemmed from a financial crisis precipitated by an excessive burden of debt, pervasive wealth inequality, and the concentration of economic authority. Drawing parallels with present-day economies, he underscores the hazards inherent in the processes of financialization and the concentration of wealth.
Hudson describes in excruciating detail how Rome, in essence, behaved akin to a failed state, with a plethora of figures such as generals, governors, tax collectors, moneylanders extracting silver and gold through military plunder, tribute, and usury from regions like Asia Minor and Egypt. Yet this Roman wasteland approach has been lavishly depicted in the modern West as bringing a French-style mission civilisatrice to the barbarians – while carrying the proverbial white man’s burden.
Greek and Roman economies ultimately ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies. Does this not resonate with contemporary circumstances? Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy, giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors," today euphemized as the 'security of property rights.' Public spending on social welfare was minimal, aligning with today's political ideology advocating leaving matters to 'the market.' This market, in turn, compelled citizens of Rome and its Empire to rely on affluent patrons and moneylenders for basic needs, while bread and circuses were sustained through the public dole and games financed by political candidates, often borrowing from wealthy oligarchs to fund their campaigns.
The semblance to the current system led by the Hegemon is more than coincidental, according to Hudson. He contends that these pro-rentier ideas, policies, and principles mirror those followed by today's Westernized world, rendering Roman history remarkably pertinent to contemporary economies grappling with similar economic and political strains. Hudson underscores that Rome's own historians, including Livy, Sallust, Appian, Plutarch, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, emphasized the citizens' subjugation to debt bondage. Even in Greece, the Delphic Oracle, along with poets and philosophers, cautioned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned of the major threat to social harmony and society posed by "wealth addiction and its money-love."
Remarkably, this criticism was systematically erased from Western historiography. Hudson notes that very few classicists delve into Rome's own historians describing how debt struggles and land acquisitions were chiefly responsible for the Republic's Decline and Fall. Hudson also reminds us that the barbarians were perennially at the Empire's gate, and Rome was weakened not by external threats but from within, through centuries of oligarchic excess.
It would be impossible to fully cover the precious ideas, but to name a few, I liked the parts where Hudson reminds us how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them. That became an occasion for endowing the wealthiest families with public land when Roman state treated their ostensibly patriotic donations to aid the war effort as restorative public debts subject to repayment. After Rome defeated Carthage, the glitzy set wanted their money back. Yet, the only asset left to the state was land in Campania. The wealthy families lobbied the Senate and gobbled up the whole lot. With Caesar, that was the last chance for the working classes to get a fair deal. In the first half of the 1st century B.C. he did sponsor a bankruptcy law, writing down debts. But there was no widespread debt cancellation. Caesar being so moderate did not prevent the Senate oligarchs from whacking him. After Octavian’s triumph and his designation by the Senate as Princeps and Augustus in 27 B.C., the Senate became just a ceremonial elite. Hudson summarizes that the Western Empire fell apart when there was no more land for the taking and no more monetary bullion to loot Once again, one should feel free to draw parallels with the current plight of the hegemon.
In essence, the lesson drawn from Greece and Rome is clear: creditor oligarchies, in their pursuit of monopolizing income and land through predatory means, inevitably stifle prosperity and growth. Overall this is a good read and it serves as a cautionary tale illustrating how deifying the antiquity, pleonexia, and the long lasting curse of interest-bearing loans being handed out that could not be repaid can erode the fabric of society.
