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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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File: 1676143713203.jpg ( 83.82 KB , 334x500 , poster-karl-marx-1717305.jpg )

 No.465309[View All]

Ok, I've never really heard anyone here explain what the left is (except the one dude with the asinine and convoluted definition about 'how the left doesn't exist because people don't perceive the left or it doesn't do the same thing as 100 years ago).

I've obviously used this place as a bit of a platform to rant against muhleft or the left (tm), and I genuinely appreciate the latitude the mods have given me to do that - since I feel like critique of the left has always been a tradition within the broader termed left. (Bolshevik split with the Mensheviks, the anti-revisionists broke from the USSR, in the west the 60s new left broke from the old, etc).

In some ways, the fake and ghey left is an example of a section of the broader left trying to distinguish themselves from the rest, albeit on a misguided cultural footing within the lap of finance capital.

But, this still an open question: what is the left.

I always find myself returning to the Marx quote - the free development of each is the free development of all.

This presents a sort of paradox, since development (on the individual and collective level) itself is never free. It always has an expense. Moreover, often development occurs faster through episodes of adversity, challenge, and even necessity.

At the same time you have a situation in which something is to lacking of freedom, has very little optionality or autonomy, it becomes stunted or dies, or it develops accordingly as cattle.

So you have these two (four really) qualities you wanted to maximize: collective and individual liberty and development. Of course, you cant completely 'max out' one without sacrificing stats in the others, but you can arrange a society in which all are raised a great bit.

This begins to provide an teleological orientation for the left - toward the maximizing of personal and social liberty and development.

This, of course, raises the question: development, what means.

To this I would argue the natural response - the expansion of personal and collective capability and achievement (against, something that requires both liberty and challenge to attain, with a special focus on liberty/freedom).

This, I'd argue, answers the sort of shared defining goal the left proper ought seek.

>Inb4: anti-capitalism, socialism>communism, some variation thereof


1) ok, to what end..? to what end? and to what end x3? What is the actual goal beyond 'ending exploitation, class oppression yadda yadda.' (Refer back to Marx quote)

2) Regarding communism as such, let's be real - command economy socialism wasn't as glorious as it looked on the propaganda posters or as outline by the chairman of the CP of that particular country.

Sure it solved many many problems, but it came with it own sets of other problems and expenses. As it turns out, centrally planning how much lettuce to grow isn't the very best idea - at least not at the time.

But - and this is important - it's a different time. Technology has developed quite a bit, to the point where literally planning how much lettuce to grow is actually far more feasible and productive than leaving it to private or contracted peasants.

That itself raises a whole other can of worms on political economy. But suffice to say, while the left proper is certainly dead is some sense, we ought to still be able to agree on a definitional kernel of wtf the left means.
178 posts and 44 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.
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 No.465768

>>465765
If he knows classical history then he and you should know that superimposing a modern conceit about historical progress on an earlier time is a piss poor understanding. This idea of historical progress is really a mangling and an attempt to build grand narratives about nothing. That was one of my arguments, which gets back to this whole problem of what the left even is. The left was replaced with a narrative rather than what it was in the past, when the left was a force that could affect anything.

Everyone involved in Roman times believed slavery was the basis for their empire, and acted accordingly. Nobody thought they were making a system called "feudalism" or that what was put in place from Diocletian on was intended to be a whole "system". They were instead a series of reforms and edicts intended to salvage Rome because it was basically broken beyond repair. That is all anyone can really do - engage with the world as they confront it, rather than live in a narrative detached from anything real. You would want your historical narratives to match real events if you are studying history through science, rather than try to fit history into a politically convenient narrative of what you think historical progress is. To someone in the future, capitalism will almost certainly appear as a regression and a willingness to transgress norms that were in place and worked fine. Capitalism exists not because it was historically inevitable by some spooky force, but because the trading monopolies like the East India Company wanted to run drugs around the world and fuck everyone up. If you understood American history and what the project was, you'd understand that, instead of imposing this ridiculous and artificial European narrative on a country where it doesn't apply, and it doesn't even apply to European nation-states. The European nations worth a damn were all in the imperial game, and weren't isolated nation-states but competitors who wanted to claim the global empire. The world wars would probably be seen in hindsight as a really big global civil war to decide who and what would rule the whole thing.
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 No.465773

File: 1676784960979.mp4 ( 8.03 MB , 512x288 , Latin Lessons.mp4 )

>>465768
>If he knows classical history then he and you should know that superimposing a modern conceit about historical progress on an earlier time is a piss poor understanding.
You are objecting to our respective ideas about historiography, not our knowledge of history. I am better than most at understanding Roman history, in the sense that I can discuss the Antonine Plagues, the Edict of Caracalla, the military reforms of Gallienus, and the establishment of the diocese with folks who also know a bit about that stuff. The alleged malthusian seems to be likewise knowledgable, but I disagree with his historiography as far as feudalism is concerned. I agree with him as far as acknowledging that overwhelming evidence of distinct modes of production can be found in the historical record.

Your historiography appears to be an individualistic conception of history, which is its own "modern conceiet." Certainly it was not a popular concept before the Enlightenment. Furthermore, it does not jive with the historical record very well. There very clearly were sea changes in the ordering of historical societies when they were introduced to significant external economic forces. Likewise, there are marked similarities between societies in isolation that operate under the same mode of production. A posteri, the mode of production framework fits the historical record where the idividualistic model does not, at least as far as I can see. What evidence do you see for individualistic historiography?
>Everyone involved in Roman times believed slavery was the basis for their empire, and acted accordingly.
The other guy and I were discussing Domitian, Vespasian, Commodus, Gallienus, and others who were of the opinion that the empire was based upon tough, scary motherfuckers with spears and shields. They all disregarded other concerns in favor of courting the support of said scary motherfuckers, sometimes to their own detriment. As far as production is concerned, slavery was central during the Imperial Era, but the emergant peasantry, notably in Egypt, was a huge part of what kept the army and the major cities fed.
>Nobody thought they were making a system called "feudalism" or that what was put in place from Diocletian on was intended to be a whole "system".
No, they did not. I am with you on that.
>They were instead a series of reforms and edicts intended to salvage Rome because it was basically broken beyond repair.
The Edit of Caracala and the reforms of Gallienus and Diocletian kept the empire going for a really, really long time. Don't forget that the Roman Empire did not fall until 1453.
>You would want your historical narratives to match real events if you are studying history through science, rather than try to fit history into a politically convenient narrative of what you think historical progress is.
Marx absolutely, unquestionably invented historiography as science. The mode of production model was the first such model, and it still holds true, although not in the form that Marx originally laid out, despite what the other guy thinks. Still, Marx never couched the transition of "slavery" to "feudalism," or even the transition from "feudalism" to capitalism as a historic necessity. Unlike with capitalism, there are no dialectic contradictions inherent in the agrarian mode of production that would necessitate self-destruction. According to the model, the transitions were facilitated by extraordinary circumstances.
>To someone in the future, capitalism will almost certainly appear as a regression and a willingness to transgress norms that were in place and worked fine.
A regression? No, not in any sense. The advent of capitalism was explosive, a devestating upheaval unlike anything human society had experienced before, but it transformed the social order into something truly new. It necessitated new kinds of production and adaptation in ways that hadn't been matched since humans first climbed out of the trees and started walking across the savannah. 1492 should be Year 0 on the calendar as the beginning of the Current Era. Capitalism was that fucking seminal.
>Capitalism exists not because it was historically inevitable by some spooky force
That is true. If the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria had sunk, and if Vasco de Gama had died of malaria in South Africa and the Mexica and the kingdoms of the Andes had been left alone for a couple hundred more years, the Americas would have likely had more than just syphilis to inflict their discoverers with. No definitive quality of the ancien regime necessitated its annihilation.
>but because the trading monopolies like the East India Company wanted to run drugs around the world and fuck everyone up
Fuck no. Capitalism happened, because an empty pair of continents full of silver and where sugar could be grown just appeared before the conqistadores.
>If you understood American history and what the project was, you'd understand that, instead of imposing this ridiculous and artificial European narrative on a country where it doesn't apply, and it doesn't even apply to European nation-states.
You are going to have to unpack that one, buddy.
>The European nations worth a damn were all in the imperial game
Only if you define "being worth a damn" as being in the imperial game. Switzerland has been a pretty nice place to live for just about its entire existence as such.
>The world wars would probably be seen in hindsight as a really big global civil war to decide who and what would rule the whole thing.
Oh, no. The last two World Wars (the British/French/Spanish wars that preceded them were pretty damn global) constituted the ultimate annihilation of the old empires. Regardless of who "won," none of them survived. Leninists like to call the United States an empire, but in fact it serves more as a barracks for a global bourgeois order than it does as a proper empire in the antebellum sense. That is my take on it, anyway. It isn't a popular take.
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 No.465774

>>465773
Keep it up, comrade. Just 2 more posts in this super important debate, and we will have entered the period of strategic equilibrium!
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 No.465775

>>465773
Oh you really don't know. You think you do, but you don't. It's like you don't want to because you're afraid to acknowledge how fucked we all are, or you think you're totally going to win.

The empires never died. One empire won, absorbed the United States which was always basically part of it, and could conduct plan wars basically at will. Everyone eats out of their hands and is afraid to challenge any of their core doctrines and practices, unless they're crazy suicidal. That's how it goes. You never want to go against the Satan for real, and guess what they believe in…
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 No.465776

>>465773
Empires are never fixed things in the realm of ideas. Empires in practice are dynamic beasts clashing with each other and sucking the life out of the world every single day. It's always been that. There is usually one hegemon above all. China believed itself to be that, until it wasn't. Rome, as big as it was and as much as we regard it as central to history, was born on the periphery of civilization, and could have been seen as just another barbarian tribe that happened to rule for a long time. All of the money, culture, science, and basically anything worthwhile was in the East and was never really "Roman". The Romans just ran the place for a while.
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 No.465777

>>465775
Damn, now you're two posts away from reaching strategic equilibrium too. However, if they're not at least 9 paragraphs long, you might fall back into strategic defense. Don't let that happen.. The revolution is upon us, comrades!
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 No.465778

File: 1676785690752.jpeg ( 88.15 KB , 1600x900 , Wut.jpeg )

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 No.465779

Point being, empires are not lines drawn on a map, but interests and particular people and families. The name of the empire is less important than the continuation of imperium itself, whomever holds it. All who vie for the world have to play that game. They don't play the game of nation-state essences locked in eternal war. That's the fools' narrative. People don't want to fight the empire - they always seek to join the biggest thing, and right now that's the empire ruled nominally by the Americans. No one is there to challenge the empire. Purin, Xi are doing their part, team players. It just so happens the people of the supposed metropole are not on the team, and the rulers of America have been running it into the ground since 2000. Why wouldn't they? They fucking hate Americans and hate the idea of America, and can't shut up about their plans to demolish American living standards. If you think this is going to turn out to be a good thing for the world, you haven't seen the shit they're pulling in Putin's Russia… it's full bore eugenics over there, with a whole Satanic contingent pushing the present war. Shit like that wants to be the norm, and as it happens, anything decent in this world is going the way of the dodo. You uyghurs enabling this, and you are uyghurs, are going to be cucks.
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 No.465780

File: 1676786134472.mp3 ( 14.34 MB , 01. Hell Awaits.mp3 )

>>465775
>You never want to go against the Satan for real, and guess what they believe in…
Praise hell, Satan.
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 No.465781

>>465780
t. broke loser.

A least Hollyweirdoes become rich and famous for worshipping Satan. You just get a small dirty apartment/trailer and a porn addiction
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 No.465782

>>465781
LOL, Satan is cooler than your god.
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 No.465786

Ironic satanists are prematurely aged fat men with receding hairlines and a double chin with gross looking facial hair. Not a single masculine or successful men among them. Often, they are in an 'open relation' (i.e perennially cucked by) equally unattractive women.

How many of those boxes do you check?
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 No.465787

>>465786
I love that Slayer offends Zoomers every bit as much as they offended Boomers.
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 No.465794

>>465779
>Point being, empires are not lines drawn on a map, but interests and particular people and families.
>The name of the empire is less important than the continuation of imperium itself
I'm not entirely convinced about the power of family clans, but this is generally true especially the latter part.
I think that capitalism would have already been replaced by a more advanced mode of production if it wasn't for "imperium" stamping out attempts of individual countries to move on to a newer mode of production. In a way imperialism is capitalism attempting to halt time.

>They don't play the game of nation-state locked in eternal war

Yes the really big bourgeoisie is transnational and has no loyalties. But it would also be wrong to omit the fact that nation states are competing against each other. The version of imperialism that keeps order and piece, that's fiction, going all the way back to people like Karl Kautsky.

>People don't want to fight the empire

That's wrong there's always people who fight against the empire.

>the empire ruled nominally by the Americans

>No one is there to challenge the empire
Yes the US empire is the biggest force, but that doesn't guarantee that people will seek to submit them selves to it. Most people will avoid submission with considerable effort. But that's not all, the US empire is also declining and that negative trend-line is a factor too. Forward looking people will seek out the rising trend-line.

>Putin, Xi are doing their part to challenge the empire.

I think that Russia and China are in the process of becoming regional powers that are undoing the regional structures of imperial domination. Neither is really seeking to break the US empire, just push it back a little. They want the US empire to sunset gradually without setting the world on fire.

>the rulers of America have been running it into the ground since 2000. Why wouldn't they? They fucking hate Americans

That's true.

>you haven't seen the shit they're pulling in Putin's Russia… it's full bore eugenics over there

Full bore eugenics ?
Like Fascism in WW2 ?
Not buying that.
Your comment was pretty reasonable until that.
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 No.465796

>>465794
Look at Putin's alliance with the WEF program and what they're teaching in Russian schools. They teach kids about the essences in people to track them. Literal Plato's Republic shit. It's madness and a sign of what the right wants to become, the agenda they would push if they win the culture war. You already see that in the Anglo-American right and the program they hint to with their many influencers and shills - they want full bore eugenics and they all march to the same program. The "left" has a slightly different program but still eugenist. Eugenics is the one thing that is paramount above all, because that is what the rulers actually care about now. They don't care about capitalism and talk about how profit and productivity are evil and economic growth is out of control (because it's a proxy for population and population is evil).
You'd have to see enough of the rightoids' own propaganda and be able to pick it apart to see it represented in Putin's Russia and the Dugin shit, plus the shit Russian English-language propaganda puts out. I've been lurking and see their shit for the past several years, and they stepped up with COVID, the Trump cult, and that infusion of money for influencers after the Floyd riots. I know for certain eugenics is their ride or die. That's the only thing keeping the coalition of interests and the ruling institutions together. They don't believe in the market system as a disciplinary force, because increasingly people realize the market is rigged and the rich can just print themselves free money and make us accept it. There was doubt that 2008 could be repeated, until they did that in 2020 and burned everything to the ground while they offered the so-called stimulus.

>That's wrong there's always people who fight against the empire.

There are people who fight the empire out of a pathological opposition to the Satan, and those who fight the empire because they must and submission is not an option. Most people who want to take part in politics know how this game works, and if you are a revolutionary, you are playing that game. Not playing that game entails being a hermit or being a madman fighting a doomed cause. If you have political though, you realize empires are the only way humans can really orient the state towards aims. People will not fight and die for an idea bereft of any real purpose. They will not fight for a lie, and that's all republics ever were. Since we are denied a type of government that overcomes the irrationality of republicanism and we're not even allowed the dignity of an enligthened despotism, we're stuck in this cycle for a long time.
Look around most of the people who are active in politics, and if you talk about a world without empires with any seriousness, you realize you're in the wrong game. Calls to abolish the empire are always sops. The Marxists are no different. They were not fighting to end empires, but to gain position in the imperial camp. It was one of the charges Mao made against the Russians - they were selling out to the imperials and going against their fellow communists, which they were. Then the Chinese sold out to the empire even harder, finalized with the ascension of Deng.

>Yes the US empire is the biggest force, but that doesn't guarantee that people will seek to submit them selves to it.

The US as a legal institution is not the empire. This global network of oligarchic firms, NGOs, and institutions above the state is the form the empire takes, supplying its useful officers. The formal state is just an arm of the beast. Private bureaucracies and enforcement mechanisms are massive, and the formal state as massive as it is largely exists to keep this private sector aligned to the mission, and the state is owned by those oligarchs. There is no public oversight or interest overriding oligarchy, and hasn't been for a long time.
Most of the people opposing "the US" are really seeing that the US is a sick dog and jumping on to the new thing, thinking they'll be on top. It's still going to be the same people, and the US state apparatus isn't going anywhere. The only thing that is being abolished is anything good in the former United States.

> But it would also be wrong to omit the fact that nation states are competing against each other.

The nation-state as a geopolitical actor was done after 1989, which is something most history and political theory students will know. The rulers of constituted nation-states are tasked with keeping local interests in line, but they cannot pursue genuine "national interests", and really never did. The national interests of the older nation-states were that they sought to enter this global system that was coming into the world. First they compete by racing for colonies and trading opportunities, then they see the global market, the rise of monopolies, and the dominance of oil in technology and industry. Controlling the oil was key to the global system during the 20th century. Only now do you see the interest of oil receding, and it is still necessary to ensure that no one breaks the oil monopoly or utilizes the machine for unapproved purposes. Now the interest is in mechanisms of control, and the rise of data mining and operational control is the "new oil" of the 21st century.

Imperialism never "kept the peace" in any serious way. A look at the Anglo-American empire shows an empire kept in line by war, deception, narcolords, Satanism, a particular attitude towards science and technological institutions, eugenics, gratuitous sadism as a moral philosophy, and whatever genuinely productive qualities can be squeezed out of a wholly maladaptive society. Fortunately for the Empire, the rest of the world doesn't present any serious alternative idea and gave up trying, because in their heart they just want to do the shit the Americans do. If they had a different idea for a global empire that didn't involve planned wars, depopulation, narcostates, and eugenics, they haven't propagated the idea - not that they would, since going against eugenics is going against the Satan. It's death, unless you're like me and have nothing serious to lose. I'm just pissing in the wind, but political actors cannot do what I do. They'd be destroyed if they refused to play with the kayfabe.

Kautsky gets a lot of shit, much of it deserved for being pretty fucking wimpy about the war and what Nazism really meant. Imperialism was the global system at that time, and the supposed conflict of nation-states - which was really a conflict within the nation-states to control the empire - was a temporary state of affairs. The Nazis aren't fighting for Germany - they hate Germany and hate Germans, and sacrificed it all for the eugenic creed. They really did, and that is the only explanation for Nazi conduct during the war. The Nazi strategy was all about organizing fifth columns in any country they wanted to take over, either by invasion or subversion. They were the conspiratoral Jews themelves when it came to their strategy, and that's what you would do if you wanted to win in Germany's position. The moment one country did the right thing and purged the shit out of fascists is the moment they were fucked. German war plans were premised on the idea that the British and Americans were secretly with their Aryan brothers and would coup the US. You still have the apologist types in the US who bemoan the Krauts losing and fail to recognize who their betters are. They didn't succeed in shitting up the world in the 1940s so they try, try again, this time with the support of blue blooded English assholes and the slimiest of America's aristocracy.

>I think that capitalism would have already been replaced by a more advanced mode of production if it wasn't for "imperium" stamping out attempts of individual countries to move on to a newer mode of production.

1930s, new economic order. The capitalism Marx described was superceded by this new thing, by decision of those who won rather than by revolution. The revolution was defused by allowing some of the left elements into the imperial structure and allowing them institutional legitimacy - this is what Gramsci's strategy was, march through the institutions. Once that part of the left got their stake in the institutions, they held on to that and turned against the working class base. They invented "fuck you, I've got mine".
The market system persists because a lot of people were invested in it, and that was the only thing they had. They had no reason to ever allow that stake to be sacrificed in favor of any socialist plan. The communists had to defeat their enemies, and when they did win, they usually co-opted the bourgeois in their nation rather than destroy them. They had to give up their claims to property but they often found themselves in favored positions so long as they accepted the Party's rule. That's why you have aristocrats all over the Soviet Union who remain in good standing, because they didn't really consider the Soviet Union ideological evil or fanatical at all.
This just gets to how "mode of production" is nebulous, and is never constituted as a wholly realized "system". Capitalism forms gradually as merchant banks gain prominence and are the facilitators of trading empires starting in the 16th century. By the time there is a revolution to formally introduce capitalism, the bourgeoisie had insinuated themselves in the older system, and the old nobility really could not save the ancien regime. There were liberal nobles who saw the revolution as a conspiracy to put themselves in charge, because Louis was a piece of shit surrounded by other pieces of shit. It gets complciated when you look at the details of these things, and get past the idea of a clean narrative and just-so stories. The people who lived through the French Revolution and its aftermath had a more nuanced view of what happened, because there was enough living memory of how it actually was.
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 No.465802

>>465796
>Look at Putin's alliance with the WEF
All the Russians were thrown out of the World Economic Forum club in Davos.
They made their own club called "St Petersburg International Economic Forum"

>look what they're teaching in Russian schools.

>They teach kids about the essences in people to track them.
tracking essences ?
I don't understand what that means

>Literal Plato's Republic shit

Marx read the Greek classics, didn't harm him.

>eugenics stuff

it's not clear what you mean

>empires are the only way humans can really orient the state towards aims

i call bs

>politics is about selling out to the empire

it doesn't have to be, there's always an alternative

>Then the Chinese sold out to the empire

And yet here we are in a world where China offers alternative ways of development for countries all around the world

>The US as a legal institution is not the empire.

>This global network of oligarchic firms, NGOs, and institutions above the state is the form the empire takes.
I don't know if you can pin it down, i always thought the managers and henchmen of empires were flexible about what hat they wear. Like for example the German foreign minister Bearbock, she's parts of the US empire as well.

>The nation-state as a geopolitical actor was done after 1989

That's technically not true, the DPRK for example is a nation state and a geopolitical actor. Try setting up a fake NGO there. Belarus also acts a nation state. I think that state-power can override the imperial tentacles if it wants to, it's just that ideologically it doesn't want to, but not for lack of capacity.

>The capitalism Marx described was superseded by this new thing

I agree that there have been several capitalist variants since the 1800s but Marx is still correct about the core mechanisms.

>This just gets to how "mode of production" is nebulous, and is never constituted as a wholly realized "system".

You almost never have a single mode of production over the entire economy, you usually get a dominant mode of production with remnants of the previous mode of production still fading away and also parts of the more advanced mode of production already forming. That's not nebulous it just lacks clearly delineated boundaries.
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 No.465804

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>>465756
>Did you think the feudal lords liked having to recede from the empire because it was no longer functional?
They sure liked Diocletian, Constantine and other monarchs who supported aristocracy and their economic interests, so much so that soon after the last militant soldier emperor was killed and Danube regions entered the same crisis of the polis as the rest of the Empire, there was finally peace in the Empire for 50+ years.
Only it was all just the clam before the storm. Soon there would be a class war of such intensity that it would wipe the Empire off the face of the Earth, leaving only scattered feudal kingdoms. Soon the great masses of coloni will rise and fight together with the invading barbarians against the late roman army, that is no longer an army of free roman citizens, but a closed warrior military caste.
Of course the senate aristocracy would have preferred the feudal Empire of Diocletian and Constantine to last longer. And it did last much longer in the east. But this was a whole another Empire from the Ancient Roman Empire of the roman citizen-slaveowners. That Empire died in the civil wars of the third century. The landed aristocracy proved in those constant wars that it would sooner see the Empire die than to sacrifice their new economic class interests.
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 No.465808

>>465802
<empires are the only way humans can really orient the state towards aims
>i call bs

Think about what a state actually is, rather than the pretenses that are made about it. If you want a state that is anything more than a club of men with swords or guns or a secret society where they do the paddling of the swollen ass and slap each other on the back, you need an apparatus to find men who will serve the state, feed those men and feed their activity. The ideal city-state was premised on parasitically extracting from the world everything that fed the ruling philosophers, making everyone and everything alien to the ruling ideas on purpose, but somehow operating on inertia. This doesn't work once the assumptions of a city-state with antagonistic relations in close quarters are inoperative, and it never works in its pure form. To reliably extract wealth and feed the beast, you need an empire and a whole ethos of extraction. Slavery is one way. The moral philosophy of capitalism is another. All of these apparati are imperial in purpose, and that includes socialist or communist societies. In communist societies, the collective feeds either on the world or on a group that is considered "outside of society", and so the class conflict is invisibilized. The mental invalid is a slave class in all ways today, using the same justification that was used for chattel slavery in the American South. The earliest psychiatry in America is an extension of methods used to control slaves, and psychiatry and therapy today are insanely racist when you know what these people really think. The only place where I saw more racism was in education. The typical Trumptard has nothing on the racism of the worst ivory tower liberals, and it's not all of the liberals, but it is enough of them and they set the policy. It's one reason why we still have racism even though it no longer serves any direct economic benefit, and is economically a pain in the ass due to promoting intercine conflict and resentment and the need to placate the failing white populace with racist pandering. The rulers would very much prefer not to rely on racism, and replace it with pure eugenics, and that is what the Reaganite version of racism did. The racists can't say "uyghur uyghur uyghur" any more, that hurts them, it backfires as Lee Atwater mentioned. Shifting racism to support liberal policies to suppress the poor was a deliberate switch, and the liberals learned to give enough cheap hints to the white rabble that they really mean it for the nigras, while those who figured out what this was learned that it was time to figure out which white people were "real whites" by enforcing a Hitlerian echo chamber, and kicking out any white person who wasn't a screaming maniac and accusing them of self-hatred for not going along with this cuckold ideology. There was a brief period where it seemed like white people could get over themselves, but then that was corrected from the 1990s onward to create the discourse of today.

>Marx read the Greek classics, didn't harm him.

There's a difference between understanding the classics and actually thinking it would be a good idea to do exactly that. The Republic was a thought experiment, not a how-to to implement exactly as it says. A lot of the crude interpretations in modern utopias and dystopias are things that would have been avoided if someone was familiar with how the Greeks and the Platonists in particular viewed the world. You're not supposed to actually think the Forms are the real nature of things if you get what the thinking was. It is rather that by "mastering the Forms", you're mastering how to communicate power and control the world, and control people. It's about how you present to the unwashed masses, not what you are supposed to believe yourself. Someone seemed to not get that the ideal city is not actually a utopia you would want to live in, and it actually is pretty shitty - the whole thing is premised on a grand deception and keeping up kayfabe.

<politics is about selling out to the empire

>it doesn't have to be, there's always an alternative
No, there is no alternative. The only alternative is another empire. That was an alternative in the distant past, but from the late 19th century on, all contests would be for the world. Any empire that could seriously stand against the British enterprise was nowhere near the extent of influence, when you understand what the British Empire was/is. The Germans were pretenders. The Soviet Union was not fully independent from the global system, but was an offspring of it and its necessary counterweight. In both cases, the contesting nations in WW2 didn't want to become a different empire, but inherit the one that had been created or steer its development. So you had a "British liberal" faction, a Germanic faction that wanted full reactionary eugenics, and a pro-Soviet faction that was sort of okay with the liberals on a good day when it came to internal Anglo-American politics (they had to be, there was no space for communism as an independent trend in this part of the world for a lot of reasons). There were a lot more Americans who wanted to work with the Soviet Union and thought the Cold War posturing was idiotic from the start. The anticommunist crusade was purely about enabling the Nazi types who never stopped screaming for hardline eugenics. Most Americans thought it was a bullshit pseudo-war engineered to make them suffer, and there was a lack of seriousness about the threat communism posed. This is mostly because the communists weren't threatening anything and weren't the crazy aliens they would be made out to be during the neoliberal period. It took the most extensive brainwashing effort ever to eradicate any understanding of what communism even meant. Most of the people denouncing communism in the past could tell you roughly what communism meant, because there were actual communist countries who made no secret about what they were for. Americans simply did not want communism, and it's not because they didn't understand the magic of dialectics or were too stupid for it. Communism was not in their interest, and the groups for whom it was an interest were going to get rekt and didn't have the support of international communism anyway. All the basically normal communists were scared out of the party during the 50s.

>>465804
At this time, there are actual rival empires, and contenders that want to capture or inherit Rome, or take lots of gold from it like the Huns.
"Class war" doesn't describe any of the actual wars, and often misunderstands why events like the secession of the plebs happened in the first place. There weren't any material conditions prompting the patricians to lock ranks - that was the right of the patrician nobility, and a struggle of capable plebians to quit Rome until the nobility stopped pulling the usual horseshit aristocracies did. The classes were defined by this institution of the nobility, rather than property rights. The only property the patricians held was their access to the highest offices and the religious functions of their class and institution (with the religion remaining in patrician hands for a long time, because noble blood was holy or something). The wars of history are usually between men jockeying to rule the world, rather than whole classes organized in formation. About the only war in history that is truly a "class war" is the democide going on now, where economic interests are the decisive division between who is selected to live and who is selected to die. Funny how that class war is not considered a class war, but the narrative of class war is superimposed to build a false narrative of what actually happened in historical events. The American rebellion against the Crown was not motivated by class struggle, because the colonial leaders saw themselves as an aristocracy with the same rights as other British free men. They figured out that they could shake off the crown forever, but a good number of them wanted to do nothing but make a whole new aristocracy and appoint an American king. The republic only exists because no one fucking liked the guy who really wanted to be king, and they didn't trust any of each other. Factionalism would prevent any one king from ruling. That's all it was - not a narrative of republics replacing kings because republics were virtuous, but because the new aristocracy didn't fucking like each other, and realized they had far more to gain by colluding against everyone else. The republic in all of its forms is nothing but a racket, but we have not been allowed any alternative.
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 No.465809

There are class struggles, but the nature of those struggles is horribly misunderstood, especially when people wish to obfuscate the mechanisms of a ruling class and how they maintain discipline. The cajolers and mystifiers like the idea of a ruling class marching in lockstep and indestructible, because they see themselves in that position after the revolution and make that clear with everything they do. It also increases the glamour of making grand political gestures. The ugly truth is that ruling institutions lock ranks by compromising each other and making sure everyone plays the game, and this infects anyone who wants to play the game of politics. Ideology is for the slaves.

What has the struggle truly been for? It has been for freedom, including the freedom to simply exist and not face constant threats, as most of us do. It was not about "class war" for its own sake, but because class war was a proxy for a war against freedom and security. The oppressed classes certainly weren't free. If this were merely a theoretical exercise, class war is stupid, and collaboration between classes has been the norm rather than the exception. The ruling class like having their cuckolds in the lower classes, and the lower classes more often want to join the cycle of plunder and looting rather than end it. Truly ending it is only what the very desperate desire, and those people are systematically ignored when they hit upon solutions that would actually accomplish that. The peaceful solutions that seem reasonable enough are rejected out of hand because they would entail leniency towards the historically hated groups in humanity, while the necessarily violent solutions would entail transformations not just of institutions but of people themselves, in a way that the conceits of an aristocratic mindset cannot abide in any form. An aristocracy might be able to pretend they're just like you and me, but they know in their heart they are not, and they emphasized in eugenics exactly who they didn't want in their society, which is someone like me. The war against the hated retards was more valuable than any vision of the world where people got along, and for that reason, there was no class war. There was only the democide.
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 No.465812

File: 1676823404721.png ( 822.95 KB , 500x670 , commodus_amused.png )

>>465757
>There was always plenty of arible land in the empire, especially so at that particular time with the Antonine Plague literally decimating the population.
That there was plenty of "free land" is proven wrong by the fast growth of the colonate at the time, which was a form of exploitation exclusive to the large landowners and Emperor's estates. This indicates a growing concentration of land.

>Come to think of it, I don't know about that "600k strong" figure, considering the Plague hit the army harder than it hit any other segment of the population. The number of individuals surviving twenty years in the Roman army during the time of the Antonine Plague would have been few indeed.

Plague would only affect the numbers for twenty years after it had ended max. Anyway, this would have only further exacerbated the crisis of the polis.

>The regions that Marcus Aurelius had recently pacified, yeah. You can't rightly give credit for the success of Dacia to Commodus. It would have been difficult to fuck that up after his father's legions did all the work.

I don't give credit to Commodus for any military achievements. I give credit to his policy of land expropriations that objectively had a positive effect on the polis economy and decurion class.

>I don't think that ideology played much part in the birth of the new bureaucratic aristocracy (as opposed to the old aristocracy that emperors had spent the previous two-hundred years killing).

Imperial bureaucracy was not a social force in itself, ie a class. Its position was fragile and depended entirely on the mercy of the army, which represented interests of the municipal roman citizenry.

>Rather, I think that it had become an inescapible reality that rule by the sword with only the barest pretext toward republicanism was how the empire must operate. The Antonine Plagues, the instability caused by the civil wars that flared up every time an emperor was assassinated, the aggression of the Parthians, and the economic stagnation of the Pax Romana all made centrally governing a Medierannean-wide empire increasingly unsustainable. It needed to be broken into pieces with aristocrats with their own little armies independently controling their own regions, which was, more than anything else, the key to Diocletian's success.

I see all the external shocks, such as the plague and the external threats, to be marginal. In the bloody civil wars of the first century BC Rome was waging constant wars on the side with all kinds of external shocks. And yet Rome was never even close to collapse.
Again, the crisis had something to do with the changes in the economy, because you see a growing trend of immiseration of the free roman citizenship with such symptoms as citizens selling their children into slavery, decurions struggling with their financial responsibilities, etc. It's characteristic that Commodus reemphisized again that free roman citizens can't be sold into slavery, including by their parents, and passed a law that severely punished such behavior.

>I know what Marx said, but I do not buy that "feudalism" was anything fundamentally different from what he called "slavery." It was more like the aristocratic class adapting the state to account for the effects of de-urbanization.

Well, one distinct characteristic of colonate compared to slavery was that, as Diocletian pointed out, they were "slaves to their land", as opposed to slaves to their owner. In practice that meant that landlord bought land with peasants who were tied to this land due to them being born on it, and the landlord couldn't sell the peasant without also selling the land that he is tied to. While in antiquity you bought slaves who were not tied to the land.
This is a distinct form of exploitation compared to the ancient slavery, where slaves were employed in all sorts of activities.

>This was just the same thing that Caligula had done a century earlier kill rich guys you don't like, steal their shit, and give the spoils to the military. As was the case during Caligula's rule, it was nothing more than robbery to fill empty coffers that were needed to keep the military loyal.

Caligula ruled only for four years. His expropriations were very individually targeted and not comparable to that of Commodus (including because there wasn't such a massive concentration of land at the time).

>Nah, Domitian holds that distinction, although his father Vespasian is said to have given him the idea.

The term "soldier emperors" is used in the context of the crisis of the third century. Landed aristocracy was in its embryonic state at the time of Domitian.
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 No.465814

>>465757
>I know what Marx said, but I do not buy that "feudalism" was anything fundamentally different from what he called "slavery."
Also, coloni were exploited differently from slaves in the past (slaves in the third century were largely exploited as coloni).
They were exploited as peasants - they were given a plot of land that they worked and paid to the landlord with a share of the produce.
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 No.465815

>>465808
>Think about what a state actually is
implying a state is the same as an empire.
The Soviet Union had a state but it wasn't an empire
>There's a difference between understanding the classics
Sure but there's no reason to think people can't understand it by reading it.
>No, there is no alternative. The only alternative is another empire.
There's always an alternative. The TINA mantra from the Neo-liberals is false.
>The Soviet Union was not fully independent from the global system, but was an offspring of it
That's patently false
>and its necessary counterweight
Although i do agree with that

>>465809
>If this were merely a theoretical exercise, class war is stupid, and collaboration between classes has been the norm rather than the exception.
Sounds like reactionary apologetics.
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 No.465817

File: 1676826078843.jpeg ( 177.93 KB , 698x454 , aristocrats_joke.jpeg )

>>465779
Man, you were even more drunk when you wrote that silly shit than I was last night, weren't you?
>>465802
>it's not clear what you mean
That guy is high.
>And yet here we are in a world where China offers alternative ways of development for countries all around the world
Capitalist "development" is not an alternative. It's the same devil's bargain in a red and yellow package.
>>465804
>And it did last much longer in the east.
A thousand years longer. It's a wonder that the Byzantines do not get more love, in a historical nostalgia sense. The capital of the empire was in Constantinople far longer than it was in Rome.
>But this was a whole another Empire from the Ancient Roman Empire of the roman citizen-slaveowners.
I don't buy that the Byzantine Empire was different, frankly. It looks to me more like the empire had been undergoing incremental changes from the moment that Pompey the Great established the grain supply, and it never reached any kind of conclusion, politically speaking, until Mehmed II dragged his ships around the chain. Where the Roman Empire ended is ultimately just a question of framing. If the "Roman Empire" was the economic system that brought wealth in the form of slaves and grain to the city of Rome from the rest of the Mediterranean, then it ended with the loss of the grain supply from Egypt, or maybe even when the capital efectively moved to Milan. If the "Roman Empire" was a particular class dominating the Mediterranean, then it had existed before the Republic fell and didn't really die until Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

What, after all, is the difference between a slaver and an aristocrat? I would contend that there is no real class distinction to be made, regardless of what Marx thought. Slavers and aristocrats have the exact same relationship to those who produce their wealth for them–armed men force them to work on their owner's behalf or die. In terms of the Roman Empire, the only difference between them appears to me to be merely that one operates in an urban environment, and the other operates in the countryside.
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 No.465818

>>465808
>"Class war" doesn't describe any of the actual wars, and often misunderstands why events like the secession of the plebs happened in the first place.
What about massive coloni uprisings that welcomed invading barbarians all over the western empire in the late fourth century? If this is not class war I dunno what else is.
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 No.465820

>>465817
>Capitalist "development" is not an alternative. It's the same devil's bargain in a red and yellow package.
Most of the Chinese foreign investment is done by SOEs (state owned enterprises) who are bound by political considerations, and China does a lot of debt forgiveness, so it's not a devils bargain.
The Chinese are of course self interested, and want to get something out of it too, but it tends towards mutually beneficial agreements, rather than neo-collonial pillaging with financial characteristics.
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 No.465821

>>465820
>A China expert is speaking. Listen and learn.
>*Also never leaves the US despite claiming to hate it there
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 No.465823

It's about 12:30 pm in central burgerstan. Comrade dunning kruger must have just woken up
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 No.465824

>>465818
It's more like "there's a lot of barbarians who have just been fucked over by Rome, and the Roman Empire is run by sadistic gangsters, so better the new boss than the old boss". The barbarians setting up shop were using fleeing to the Empire and working with the Empire. There was a history of this where the Romans let barbarians enter the empire in exchange for service in the army. It was a way of acquiring manpower both for the legions and for farm labor, since the slave supply was running out. Those barbarians were fleeing from each other and especially the Huns when they came knocking.

The barbarians weren't an oppressed class, but an alien within the empire that eventually looked to their own chiefs rather than Rome for leadership, since Rome wasn't doing much for them and couldn't lead anything by that point. It's less that the coloni had a choice in the matter, then the simple reality that there was nothing left of "Rome" except the military and the bureaucracy, and eventually the "military" part was supplied by, you guessed it, the barbarians offering their service - not as members of the legion, but fighting under their own kings. If all that remains of Rome is a predatory bureaucracy, of course the locals are going to be happy to accept the new boss. Rome didn't have anything like a national myth for the provincials, or any "Roman" ideology. The provincials usually retained many of their own customs and had local elites, who often intermarried with Italian elites. Rome survived because they were the biggest game in town, and meant economic and military stability. That was what Rome had been to most of the colonies.

The idea that the invading barbarians were taking the side of the peasants is rather curious. Perhaps the Goths and Vandals were better lords than the Romans, but it wasn't really going to be a choice of the coloni, unless the coloni developed patriotism. Serfs, unsurprisingly, are not very patriotic.
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 No.465825

>>465818
You might find more class war in the East, where class struggles would have been more at the forefront due to being basically the economic center of the empire. There still wasn't really a concept of class struggle at that time in history. There was a struggle over religion - paganism was the religion of the ruralites and the elite aristocracy and many of the intelligentsia, and Christianity was the equivalent of bluehaired anarchists propped up by the empire to have a replacement cult. Once the Christians got in they conspired to keep themselves there, and made people convert and go along with their fruity cult if they wanted to keep their job. They were the new normalists of their time, and Christianity had that legacy going for it up to now. But, Christianity was really class collaborationist, and paganism didn't care about class so much because it had always been about an elite lording over the fools. It was fag versus fag, as I like to call such lose-lose situations for anyone who believed in something decent.
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 No.465826

The religious struggle was the closest proxy to class struggle - because it shouldn't be forgotten that to mean anything in politics at this time, you either had to be a rich proprietor or you had to be a soldier. The civilian path to rule was pretty much closed. You have to make your way into the imperial college and play that game. Also, the barbarians represented a wholly different element and a whole different system, and the steppe tribes were pushing against everyone at this period - they're active against Iran and China as well, and shit is going really bad for virtually everyone. It's not the situation where you can really have revolution, and when there is revolution it was often religious in nature.

I recall reading about a proto-communist-like class struggle in Iran during the 6th century, where a holy man starts talking about shit like feeding the poor and doing one better than Christianity's reputation for charity. There were questions of the failure of their country, which is one reason they were getting stomped by the Romans shortly afterward and then got BTFO by Islam.

In that time and place, there was no vehicle for the subordinated classes to do much, unless they could rise through a very small number of institutions to make something of themselves. It really remained the case all along. The workers' struggle in modernity was fighting a bitter retreat from the rulers' offensive. You have to believe that the state is a primarily passive actor to believe in the narrative that the working class is the conspiratorial party, always ahead of the curve and duping the foolish aristocrats. It was the other way around - the workers were scattered regularly and every victory was bitterly contested and then muted almost as soon as the workers finally won. The workers didn't fight because they believed they had a long-term strategy for their own class, but because they were basically forced to fight or die. Eugenics was already making clear its genocidal plans towards the end of the 19th century, and the workers were already on the defensive after the ruling institutions redoubled their offensive. The state is always a very active institution, not a passive one. Having a legal monopoly on violence is something a state will use very often - that's what states do every day. The idea that order is maintained by passivity is illusory. States reproduce themselves every day in a million diffferent ways, and then the mystification is sold as ideology to claim this is all passive and natural. It's an old trick, but in the 21st century it is running out of steam and no longer desirable for the rulers even if they wanted to keep it. The new order of things displays the activity of the state in the things it actually values, which is the imposition of eugenics - since eugenics is what keeps the alliance of interests that can rule together more than anything else. That's their ride and die and their weapon against those who are locked out.
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 No.465830

>>465826
What's your definition of eugenics?

I'm sure I'm an outlier here, but I support eugenics in the most basic and literal sense. Imo, societies are either eugenic (in which case, heritable health and adapativeness is improving) or it's dysgenic (degrading). I see this in the most basic and literal sense, stripped of class context. There isn't really a middle ground where the genetic condition of a species ceases to develop or change, either for better or worse. Obviously, modern society, especially in the west is highly dysgenic (except penis size apparently). As a correlary, I think epigenetics is the most important factor when it comes to genetic changes, not necessarily telling xyz type people that they mustn't have children. Nor am I for imposing a singular standard of what genetic health means (though I think we can broadly describe what genetic disease and degradation is - morbid obesity and slavish mental lethargy for example).

This, of course, is in line with the OP:
>the expansion of personal and collective capability and achievement

I have a feeling we are somewhat on the same page,
since you've hinted at a critique of technocratic oligarchy, and we're just using the term differently. But I'm still curious as to what you mean by eugenics since it's something you frequently mention.
Even if we disagree on this issue, your opinion on this is something I'd still find interesting and perhaps informative.
>Comments from comrade dunning kruger will be ignored. He should go try to convince normal people of his revolutionary expertise and brilliance, or at least go outside and touch grass.
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 No.465831

File: 1676832171934.jpeg ( 103.41 KB , 1623x812 , commodus_not_amused.jpeg )

>>465817
>It's a wonder that the Byzantines do not get more love, in a historical nostalgia sense.
You heard my point of view. I view it as one of the feudal shards of the roman empire equivalent to the Frankish Kingdom.
The primary characteristic for me is the mode of production and the corresponding social content of the empire. I don't care about what emblems you put on your banners and what language you speak. All throughout history various societies claimed to be the successor of the empire - all while being nothing like it.

>I don't buy that the Byzantine Empire was different, frankly.

Well, that's what denying the difference between feudalism and ancient slavery does to you.

>It looks to me more like the empire had been undergoing incremental changes from the moment that Pompey the Great established the grain supply, and it never reached any kind of conclusion, politically speaking, until Mehmed II dragged his ships around the chain.

If the changes were truly incremental there would be no social explosions and prolonged bitter civil wars. There are weeks where decades happen.
Also Africa was a breadbasket no less than Egypt.

>If the "Roman Empire" was the economic system that brought wealth in the form of slaves and grain to the city of Rome from the rest of the Mediterranean, then it ended with the loss of the grain supply from Egypt, or maybe even when the capital efectively moved to Milan.

The roman empire was the global (for mediterannian) political system of the ancient polis communes and their corresponding mode of production.
When the ancient polis died - so did the empire.

>If the "Roman Empire" was a particular class dominating the Mediterranean, then it had existed before the Republic fell and didn't really die until Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

How so, when the class composition has changed? You talk as if it's the same class throughout history.
I can make the same argument that we are still living in feudalism because majority of Britbong capitalists came out of the feudal class.

>What, after all, is the difference between a slaver and an aristocrat? I would contend that there is no real class distinction to be made, regardless of what Marx thought. Slavers and aristocrats have the exact same relationship to those who produce their wealth for them–armed men force them to work on their owner's behalf or die.

There is a difference in *how* they produce the surplus for the ruling classes from one mode of production to another.
Else you can reduce all history to "armed men force people to work" - it has no explanatory power for the observed massive social changes throughout history.
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 No.465832

>Also Africa was a breadbasket no less than Egypt.
to clarify, I mean Africa as a roman province, not a continent.
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 No.465834

File: 1676832878147.jpg ( 2.55 MB , 2000x3000 , Commodus_Musei_Capitolini_….jpg )

>>465812
>That there was plenty of "free land" is proven wrong by the fast growth of the colonate at the time
That is not proof at all. All that shows is consolidation, which would have happened in an environment where huge swathes of the population were dying of what was probably smallpox. And let us not forget that Marcus Aurelius had only recently won territories with legions that had since been largely annihilated by plague. There was plenty of good land to be had.
>Plague would only affect the numbers for twenty years after it had ended max.
It hadn't been twenty years since the first outbreak, and the plague kept coming back in waves during Commodus' reign. The legions were utterly laid waste.
>I don't give credit to Commodus for any military achievements. I give credit to his policy of land expropriations that objectively had a positive effect on the polis economy and decurion class.
I would think that the influx of slaves and spoils that his father claimed had a greater effect. Conquest always brought about good economic times in the Classical Age. With empires, military campaigns are economics.
>I see all the external shocks, such as the plague and the external threats, to be marginal.
"Marginal?" The Antonine Plague killed more people than the civil wars did, even by the most conservative estimates. Commodus himself likely lost siblings to it. The plague more than the Germanic tribes had halted Marcus Aurelius' conquests.
>as Diocletian pointed out, they were "slaves to their land", as opposed to slaves to their owner.
That effectively concerns only how slaves/serfs are traded between lords. The relationship of the individuals themselves to the means of production is the same. Furthermore, slaves are useless without land to work, so both slave-based production and serf-based production worked out to the same combination of violently compelled labor combined with land claimed be way of upper class rule. Strip all of the legal fictions like "ownership" and "duty" away from the material relationships to the means of production, and "feudalism" is just the same machine with a new paint job.
>This is a distinct form of exploitation compared to the ancient slavery, where slaves were employed in all sorts of activities.
That harkens back to my point earlier about the distinction between a slaver and an aristocrat being that one operates on rural land and the other operates on urban land. Slaves, being employed in urban environments, had a lot more varied functions to perform than did serfs who only really had rural land to work.
>His expropriations were very individually targeted and not comparable to that of Commodus
How are they not? Both Caligula and Commodus killed rich guys that they didn't like to steal their wealth and give it to the soldiery to garner loyalty. It was the exact same act with the exact same motivations, and I don't imagine that Commodus chose who to terminate with any less than extreme predjudice.
>The term "soldier emperors" is used in the context of the crisis of the third century.
Yeah, but killing senators to steal their shit to bribe the soldiery with was not an idea that was conceived during the chaotic reign of Commodus or the Barracks Emperors.
>Landed aristocracy was in its embryonic state at the time of Domitian.
Perhaps if you draw a clear distinction between Imperial Era slavers and aristocrats, but I see no reason to do so, especially not before the diocese were established.
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 No.465836

File: 1676834038663.jpg ( 2.69 MB , 2894x1964 , GracchiBrothers.jpg )

>>465824
>The idea that the invading barbarians were taking the side of the peasants is rather curious. The invading barbarians were peasants.
>>465825
>There still wasn't really a concept of class struggle at that time in history
Oh, there absolutely was. The most powerful office in the senate apart from maybe the two consuls was the Tribune of the Plebs who had sweeping veto powers, which he was expected to employ to prevent the aristocracy from enacting policies that would be harmful to the plebians. The social distinction between slaves and plebians was well-entrenched, even when emperors started using slaves as advisors. The small rural landholders, most notably in Egypt, were also their own nascent order. Truthfully, class had been at the forefront of the social order from the first time that some asshole declared himself king until about seventy years ago when it began to be intentionally obscured.
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 No.465837

>>465826
>In that time and place, there was no vehicle for the subordinated classes to do much, unless they could rise through a very small number of institutions to make something of themselves.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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 No.465841

>>465836
In fact the Tribune of the Plebs was an office that itself was created from a historic general strike of the plebeian class, the Secession of the Plebs. The plebeians orchestrated general strikes multiple times in the first few centuries of the Republic. Anyone who claims there wasn't a class conflict doesn't know Roman history.
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 No.465844

File: 1676841138141.jpeg ( 117.43 KB , 1920x1080 , Disney-Hercules.jpeg )

>>465834
Beautiful bust.
Take notion of the symbolism - Commodus as Hercules - one of the most venerated religious figures in the third century - holding the apples of the Hesperides in his hand - the symbols of fertility and prosperity - with the horns of plenty below him.
Very ideological, don't you think?.. Nah, must be because he is just a madman and thinks he is a literal Hercules or something.. nothing to do with politics.. everyone knows that Hercules is a just a silly country bumpkin..
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 No.465845

>>465830
I refer to the program of Francis Galton in particular, and similar such drives to police through strict taboos who is allowed to mate with whom. If you wanted to selectively breed for whatever quality, you wouldn't do anything like the program Galton suggests, with its insinuations and brazen lying at every step of the process. If they didn't lie, though, the hypocrisy and stupidity of their claims would be too obvious. This was nothing but a coup to destroy what little good there was in the empire. Eugenics as a policy has meant in practice dysgenics. It has split humanity into two camps, with every dysgenic habit imaginable promoted among those selected to die. Those selected to live are bred not for any quality we would consider good, but for nothing more than a low cunning and obedience to Galton's coup. Today's ruling elite is a pale shadow of those who built this system - but of course, the people who actually built this apparatus saw eugenics as a means to an end, and knew it was bullshit. Retards like Galton and the screamers that latch onto eugenics are the worst of the ruling elite, offering nothing but terror and lies. They're the worst thing to happen to this cursed Satanic country, and the whole world. They're worse than the Nazis.

I rather doubt you could accomplish anything by selective breeding except the culling of the residuum, which would be repopulated because the conditions of eugenics are deprivation and overwhelming fear. Even a benign eugenics program would only amount to population control and clearly political objectives. That is what such policies meant in the past where they have existed - they were less about any marked improvement in hereditary traits, and more about ritual sacrifice that has been the original moral code of the human race. Generations of eugenics have not led to any improvement, let alone the grandiose claims the eugenic faithful believe in. The eugenic faithful themselves are depraved and usually insane, and their intelligence is always of a low sort. So far as intelligence has improved, it has been due to arranged pairings that occur in secret, without Galton's bullshit involved at all. There's an underground world where the intelligent figure out who's actually smart and decide among each other who they believe will live and die. Galton's project is purely about exterminating anyone who is caught in the trap, to ensure that no one who isn't approved can become anything. It exists entirely for social control and behavior modification. That's why it resorts to moral shrieking and always resorts to an absolute insanity, rather than anything that would be practical. They could just say who is allowed to mate and who is not, but that would be too decent. The entire point is to transgress all decencies, because decency itself is a trait to be abolished.

Since I'm in that group selected to die, I'm obviously not thrilled about anyone suggesting I should be put to death or relegated to the desultory existence I live now. I really think humanity didn't need state intervention or this purge that consumed so much of the world's wealth and destroys the valid by wasting them on Galton's perverse insanity. It is also unlikely that marked improvements to intelligence by heredity would be better than the long-term damage over a century of maladaptive education has done to humanity. We've been made far stupider and denied even simple solution, because education and society are set up as a giant trap to weed out the majority of people, all for eugenics. If people were allowed an education worth anything, or allowed standards of comparison to know how much they've been lied to, they would resist eugenic encroachment. Every eugenic policy has been proclaimed with an imposed crisis and threats. They knew they were never going to persuade many people to go along with Galton's program, or any eugenics program.
If you ask me, the entire welfare state is set up for eugenic purposes and with perverse incentives. If support were given to families so that the working class could retain their standing and wealth, that would be far better than giving a desultory existence on the dole on the condition that welfare recipients are tagged as morally bad and evil and worth purging. We punish people who fall on hard times or are unfortuante, and it is really a lot of cost just to keep people damaged, while depriving them of any purpose beyond being whipped and judged for eugenic qualities. Eugenics as a policy, Galtonite or otherwise, must consume the whole society in inhabits and become life's prime want - and this means life's prime want is suffering. Galton's eugenics is just the purest form of this, which is one reason it won out of all the variants of eugenics. Galton's moral and political philosophy is basically Satanism, announced as loud as possible and maximizing the thrill of torture. That is what they are. They're the worst thing in the world.

I mentioned technocracy in some past writings. It is not one and the same as eugenics, because they represent a different interest and it is one that has many antagonisms with eugenics. They don't care about the magic genes - they simply care about holding the machines and extracting their pound of flesh. Many of the technocrats know they are nothing special and know not to believe in the mystique of science they tell to the plebs. I'm writing again and I note three interests latent in the philosophical conception of the state - the eugenic, the technological, and the "cybernetic", or roughly speaking a drive in the state to get rid of the managers by automating them. This last interest would have entailed a few things:
- the working class is dragged into technological society by the technocrats
- the working class is eliminated by the eugenists
- the working class seizes both their lives and the machines, not just with a claim to property or by institutional authority, but in their own person.
Since the working class is not one monolith, and the other interests ultimately have to draw from men of humble origins to populate the state and higher classes to start, these are not mutually exclusive.
The right to property is not inherent in the philosophical concept of the state. Just about every philosophical concept of the state does not have regard for a particular type of property or any "rights" you would have for it. Plato's ideal imagined wealth held in common. Many other takes imagined the base of society being the real wealth and health of the productive basis that creates crops and soldiers, and allowed for some concept that wealth could be pooled collectively on a smaller or larger scale. So, the rights of the proprietor are really represented by one of these three interests in one way or another. The eugenic corresponds to the interest of those who aspire to rule through fear and imperium, and that is the basis for all eugenics-like plans for humanity, which imagine society as livestock to be controlled utterly. The technological interest corresponds to a coalition of work types found among all classes that imagine transformation that perpetuates their interest before anything else. Their role is not inherent to nature or a "basic task" that humans perform, but something that arose that does not correspond to any single division of labor, and has an interest in eliminating that division of labor, and thus it does not have the same affinity for classes that a eugenic society has. The rise of the technological interest is the rise of class consciousness in a sense we would recognize. Earlier concepts of the state and society were purely about religious institutions or clans, while the philosophical state relating to individuals and promoting empires creates a niche for technological advancement and a class of specialists that were previously limited in scope. The technological interest arises out of both necessity and opportunity, but it can only arise in earnest when specialized knowledge and a theory of perpetuating knowledge formally becomes normal - that is, when philosophy expounds on ideas and education becomes something more than a crude method of passing status to prospective youth. The cybernetic interest corresponds to both the interest of workers, who fucking hate managers telling them what to do and running their life, and the dispossessed and damned - the retarded - who are the only ones in the whole society who actually want the entire cycle to end for everyone. There are occasional hangers-on among the other classes that entertain this idea of getting rid of the managers, but they cannot win so long as the conceits of the other two interests are dominant. The eugenic and technological interests are antagonistic, but in our time they formed an explicit alliance, which is what eugenics really did. Before eugenics was formalized and imposed on the world, there was a genuine conflict between rising industrial technology and the eugenic interest in forcing humanity into livestock. You still see this antagonism play out in the discourse, but the seeming "factions" in the ruling system are more performative. Those in the know are always careful to never attack each other directly, and enjoy sending proxies to kill each other for an alien cause.
It's a complicated theory to explain here, which is why I'm writing. I have to rewrite and I think I'm going to spin off my method and the writing on the state into separate books for brevity, since they go over a lot of material that is well known and I need to make clear my approach before proceeding with the overall view of society. Right now at the rate I'm going the final book would be about 2,000 pages if I go into excruciating detail, so I need to condense some of the explanatory stuff about the method and direct to a summary for those who are super nerdy and into my system.

To go back to the original point; if there is a way to improve the actual health of people in society, I would be open to it. I don't celebrate sickness and I hate being the way I am. The way I am isn't genetic so they're barking up the wrong tree with that. My genes are from the same sort of stock that populate the English aristocracy with a stick up their ass and I know for a fact they don't have any special sauce that makes them living gods. It's a mass delusion. I don't see any point in this level of braying over who has the best pedigree, when it is clear humanity is really fucking stupid and has clear methods to improve living standards and not do this stupid shit that destroyed my whole family and this whole country. Eugenics destroyed America through and through, and it was all for a Satanic lie. Eugenics is a piss poor way to make the antiseptic pure society of beautiful people only they imagine, and the Galtonites' idea of beauty is faggotry anyway. I am a beautiful creature who was marred by their institutional bullshit and the poison put into the youth starting in the 1980s. So are most of the people in humanity. There is no real pressing need to kill off the people. The people were never going to rebel, but that was just a pretext. They simply don't want us and would rather have their Satanic orgy-porgy, and chose to sacrifice everything we would like so that they get their jollies. That's all it was for. Unfortunately, we can't say humanity ever was anything else as a project. So, if we wanted something different, we would have to think of something very new, rather than try to rehabilitate past failures. We can learn from the past to see what clearly doesn't work, like republican ideas of government or the conceits inherent to that form of government, but we're being herded towards a kind of despotism that doesn't allow us to call it despotism and emphasizes the worst aspects of republicanism and despotism combined, which is called philosophical anarchism. It's a damned travesty that all this potential I saw growing up is thrown away so a bunch of Satanic retards can tell us they're gods. It's fucking gay.
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 No.465846

>>465831
Rome wasn't just the social content imagined in one moment - socially and economically the empire shifted over its existence in some big ways, as it grew from just another Italian city-state to this sprawling beast with a US-tier appetite for death before the Principate came about. The army would be rejigged many times and with it the basis for how politics was conducted changed, since Rome was oriented around the legions in one way or another rather than a consistent ideology.

Why people call themselves the successor of Rome is because inheriting imperium is a big fucking deal. It's like apostolic succession, but for the Satan. You don't just start anew with the power of life and death. That's why the eugenic creed knew what to target and what to make sacrosanct and only accessible to eugenics. By claiming the right to control life, eugenics was claiming imperium and the true basis for the law - and as we know, eugenics does not believe in law, and goes out of its way to transgress any law except the law of eugenics, which is the law of Satanism - the will to power gone apeshit. They would need to claim imperium and then insist on absolute control to secure the coup and create the "conditions of eugenics". The choice of Satanism for the eugenic ethos is not accidental - it is the religion most compatible with the exercise of imperium eugenics must assert.
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 No.465848

>>465836
Class had always been understood, but "class struggle" as a going concern is unusual. Classes do not struggle out of some essence. Institutions struggle, and masses of people who are pressed into action by institutions struggle. Classes without institutions to call their own cannot rebel until they form their own institutions and their own base. That is how the bourgeois were able to attain status - they became lawyers and scientists and all the things an early modern state really wants and encourages, and had a revenue stream to feed their activities which favored overseas trade and conquest. If you want that East India Company making ridiculous wealth from over there, you aren't going to get some nobles to do it, because they are invested in their landed estates at home. A merchant class and anyone with the cunning to rise in that world made themselves in that time, and many times the people who rose were nobody in particular. The American aristocracy were basically nobody of note, none of whom would seem selected for greatness. Class struggles weren't always "class struggles". By the time the French monarchy is going to shit, just about nobody, royalist or liberal, believed monarchy was salvageable as it existed. The narrative of Jacobins guillotining royals for a class purge sounds great to a noob, but it's not how it actually happened. The turn against liberal nobles only happened against those it did happen to because the Jacobins were going off the deep end and there were calls to rein in Robespierre. The mob of Paris was motivated because food was unaffordable and the king was gloating about starving out the unworthies because of course he does. They can join Danton's mob to get rid of that asshole, or they can eat cake. It's not like the Jacobins tricked or lied to the people to get them to hate the king. The king conspiring to send a foreign army to slaughter his own subjects pretty much made any doubters acknowledge that fucker needs to go. Then the royal assholes decide to declare war on France because they can't stand the idea of commoners having anything, then get BTFO by the first mass army and really really hate the idea of any mass army.
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 No.465855

File: 1676846185705.gif ( 994.52 KB , 498x187 , commodus_wake_up.gif )

>>465834
>That is not proof at all. All that shows is consolidation, which would have happened in an environment where huge swathes of the population were dying of what was probably smallpox. And let us not forget that Marcus Aurelius had only recently won territories with legions that had since been largely annihilated by plague. There was plenty of good land to be had.
Coloni at the time were free roman citizens. It was their legal status, distinct from the slaves. At the heyday of the empire free citizens farmed their plot of land with some slaves, took part in the municipal life of their polis, fulfilled their municipal duties. You had no such phenomenon as mass bondage of free citizens as coloni.
It must be that free citizens became coloni of some landlord out of the good life, because there was just so much "free fertile land" laying around.. and there was no such phenomena as raider takeovers of the polis lands by landlords and the arbitrary moving of the landmarks that required a special attention of the emperor with a rescript..

>I would think that the influx of slaves and spoils that his father claimed had a greater effect. Conquest always brought about good economic times in the Classical Age. With empires, military campaigns are economics.

By that time the municipal slaveowners didn't need more slaves, they were struggling with their own. It was landed aristocracy who was in a constant state of labor shortage - from this you had incessant whining how "good" emperors should go conquer more barbarians and bring prisoners to toil the landlords lands and images of kneeling barbarians on the coins of the Gallic Empire.

>"Marginal?" The Antonine Plague killed more people than the civil wars did, even by the most conservative estimates. Commodus himself likely lost siblings to it. The plague more than the Germanic tribes had halted Marcus Aurelius' conquests.

The actual numbers are widely disputed.
It's not about how much the civil wars killed, it's about the relations of production and their effects on the social classes and their material position.

>That effectively concerns only how slaves/serfs are traded between lords. The relationship of the individuals themselves to the means of production is the same. Furthermore, slaves are useless without land to work, so both slave-based production and serf-based production worked out to the same combination of violently compelled labor combined with land claimed be way of upper class rule. Strip all of the legal fictions like "ownership" and "duty" away from the material relationships to the means of production, and "feudalism" is just the same machine with a new paint job.

Further into feudalism the land was no longer traded too.
The relationship of the individual is also not the same. In the classical antiquity you had slaves working in a small estate with their owner, or working without owner in a medium estate. Or working in large latifundias that produced more specialized cultures that were more labor intensive and required specialization. Or they worked in a craft workshop. Or they were sent to the cities to work as hired day laborers. Or they were made freedmen by their master, but required by the roman laws to support their patron and his family. I hope you get the drift.

While as a coloni you are tied to your land, not even your landlord can free you from it. You get your individual plot of land and work it individually with your family and pay your landlord with your produce.
If this is not a different relationship, I dunno what else is.

>That harkens back to my point earlier about the distinction between a slaver and an aristocrat being that one operates on rural land and the other operates on urban land. Slaves, being employed in urban environments, had a lot more varied functions to perform than did serfs who only really had rural land to work.

The difference is that large latifundias of the ancient slaveowners mainly produced specialized cultures for the market, while the economy of a feudal landlord is largely naturalized. Obviously with the decline of the polis life and the money economy there was no place for such latifundias anymore.

>How are they not? Both Caligula and Commodus killed rich guys that they didn't like to steal their wealth and give it to the soldiery to garner loyalty. It was the exact same act with the exact same motivations, and I don't imagine that Commodus chose who to terminate with any less than extreme predjudice.

One seem to have killed his personal enemies to finance his construction spree, while the other seem to have a political and ideological program - Hercules, the new golden age, the new founding of Rome, etc.. In other words an ideological program of "renewal"

>Yeah, but killing senators to steal their shit to bribe the soldiery with was not an idea that was conceived during the chaotic reign of Commodus or the Barracks Emperors.

"stealing" implies that they got their property by their own labor. There is nothing wrong in looting the looters.

>Perhaps if you draw a clear distinction between Imperial Era slavers and aristocrats, but I see no reason to do so, especially not before the diocese were established.

It's simple. Nascent feudal aristocracy used colonate as their method of choice to extract the surplus product.
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 No.465857

File: 1676848571733.jpg ( 47.75 KB , 392x500 , do you expect me to read t….jpg )

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 No.465860

>>465857
My reaction to this whole thread. People seem to have nothing better to do.
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 No.465861

The other leftist imageboard censors anything good so as far as I know this is the only game in town. It's a dire situation.
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 No.465866

File: 1676867073740.jpg ( 645.15 KB , 1790x2048 , 1676548006906770.jpg )

>>465860
Well if you want to post nothing but pepes and le heckin soyjackarinos go to 4chan

>ZOMG GUIS WHY ARE YOU HAVING AN INTELLECTUAL CONVERSATION ON A LEFTIST IMAGE BOARD CAN'T WE JUST POST ONE MAN ONE JAR FOR THE 1MILLIONTH TIME?
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 No.465867

File: 1676868076977.jpg ( 237.44 KB , 600x600 , serfsup.jpg )

>>465844
You really have a thing for that LARPer.
>Very ideological, don't you think?
No, it's narcissistic cosplay, which is what he did regularly in public.
>Nah, must be because he is just a madman and thinks he is a literal Hercules or something.
That would definitely appear to be the more likely scenario given how he liked to play at being a gladiator.
>nothing to do with politics..
Nothing about the reign of Commodus suggests that he had any political acumen whatsoever. We are talking about the guy who crashed the Antonine Dynasty.
>>465855
>It must be that free citizens became coloni of some landlord out of the good life, because there was just so much "free fertile land" laying around.
Are we talking about Roman plebs or are we talking about veterans of the legions?
>and there was no such phenomena as raider takeovers of the polis lands by landlords and the arbitrary moving of the landmarks that required a special attention of the emperor with a rescript..
I seem to recall Augustus (or was it Tiberius?) dealing with that little scheme in his day, but he did so by convincing the senate to condemn the offenders so that it would be regared as an act of justice rather than an arbitrary assassination of his own political opponents. That is the way that someone who is good at politics handles such a situation.
>By that time the municipal slaveowners didn't need more slaves, they were struggling with their own.
How long had it been since there had been an actual slave revolt at that point? Two-hundred years? The slavers weren't struggling that badly.
>It was landed aristocracy who was in a constant state of labor shortage - from this you had incessant whining how "good" emperors should go conquer more barbarians and bring prisoners to toil the landlords lands and images of kneeling barbarians on the coins of the Gallic Empire.
Or they could just invite barbarians in like they often did.
>The actual numbers are widely disputed.
That is why I cited the most conservative estimate of about five-million dead which would have been about ten percent of the population of the Empire.
>It's not about how much the civil wars killed, it's about the relations of production and their effects on the social classes and their material position.
Catastrophic demographic changes have a tendency to do exactly that, especially when they most affect specific groups, like slaves, soldiers, and people who live in hubs of trade. The plagues that kept rolling in after the initial outbreak of the Antonine Plague encouraged deurbanization.
>While as a coloni you are tied to your land, not even your landlord can free you from it.
Not in theory anyway. Of course, what is legal theory to a lord on his own land and with his own armed thugs?
>You get your individual plot of land and work it individually with your family and pay your landlord with your produce.
Yep, the farmer keeps what he needs to sustain himself and surrenders the rest.
>If this is not a different relationship, I dunno what else is.
A different relationship to the means of production? If the means of production in question are arable land, then both slave (imagining a slave farmer and not an urban slave) and serf have the same material relation to it–they are compelled by threat of violence to make the land produce both their own subsistence and surplus for its claimant. If we are talking about just physical relationships to the means of production, slaves and serfs belong to the same class.

Also, the arguable classes that were had been discussing were slavers and aristocrats, not their respective subordinates. How would you say the relationships of slavers and aristocrats to the means of production differ?
>One seem to have killed his personal enemies to finance his construction spree, while the other seem to have a political and ideological program - Hercules, the new golden age, the new founding of Rome, etc.. In other words an ideological program of "renewal"
They were both just vanity projects, but at least Caligula made things that people could use later.
>It's simple. Nascent feudal aristocracy used colonate as their method of choice to extract the surplus product.
See, that is just a legal framing of the relationship between an upper class and a lower class. Class is defined by an individual's relationship to the means of production.
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 No.465869

>>465866
Go back, trawny
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 No.465872

>>

 No.466006

File: 1677103700729.jpg ( 591.11 KB , 1920x2417 , Emperor Commodus as a glad….jpg )


>>465867
Ok, I really need to expand on how I view the Roman history in general so you can understand where I am coming from.

First, the basic foundational element of the roman and ancient way of life is civitas - a polis commune. A commune with common polis lands, assembly, magistracies, division of labor by "orders" and all the bells and whistles that come with it. This commune by its very nature produces slavery because to enable expanded reproduction of the polis beyond the family unit and a mutual neighbor help you need non-citizens.
The foundation of the civitas, a citizen who can take part in the public life of the polis (including deciding agrarian policy) - a self-sufficient free farmer.
The polis ideology was such that wealthier citizens were morally required to "take care" of their poorer brethren. From this you have what in general could be called "bread and circuses" and later in the Empire basically basic income for the poorest citizens of Rome.
The poorest citizens of Rome in the course of its history have won some concessions including a say in the decisions of agrarian policy. They got land all around Italy and then the Meditterain.

Long story short, for the last century of the Republic for the large part the Roman state was conducting a program of the populares in its agrarian policy. The Emperors of the first century for the most part continued this program by confiscating the lands of large landowners and redistributing them to the citizens.
Then came the Antonines who were the henchmen of the senate, who branded the previous emperors as "tyrants", who ended the practice of land redistributions, and so you see a rapid growth of large landownership, with the first landowner and the feudal being the Emperor himself (the villas of the emperor were among the first to widely use colonate on their lands), which was a death warrant to the Roman civitas and the roman army and so to the Roman Empire itself as a political entity (which is what happened further down the line).

So in the light of all this, I see Commodus and the later soldier emperors as a reaction (and a belated one at that) to this existential threat to the Roman civitas.

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