m of care – dec 7 23
collapse of antiquity – THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DEBT POLITICS IN GREECE AND ROME – READING MICHAEL HUDSON’S “THE COLLAPSE OF ANTIQUITY” PART 4 – [https://museum.care/events/the-origins-of-modern-debt-politics-in-greece-and-rome-reading-michael-hudson-s-the-collapse-of-antiquity-part-4/]:
In the fourth session we look at how public finance was taken over by oligarchs and how Sparta’s last kings tried and failed at reform. This closes our discussion of Greece as the spotlight turns on a much bigger predator – Rome.
Again we try to apply David Graeber’s framework from Debt – The first 5000 years (mainly chapter 5 and chapter 9 – if anybody wants to check their notes).
Suggested reading is the summery doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BrkeryoR_-gqstFs0WlIBhAFj3pzPwocS4HZBEcGtFI/edit?usp=sharing
(ch 6, 7 on pgs 27-36 of doc)
Suggested further reading are chapters six, seven and eight.
The goal is to have a lively discussion – bring your favorite passage!
Reading materials and more are available in the “The Origins of Modern Debt Politics in Greece & Rome” room. The link is on the right or otherwise closeby depending on the size of your screen.
notes from reading toward bottom of page
notes/quotes from meeting:
ittooituuy
christian: .. and .. and.. and.. diff between tax (in power) and loan (not in power)..
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notes/quotes from reading ch 6,7&8 of 481 pg pdf:
117-180 of left panel pg #’s of pdf
117 (131)
6. Public Finance, from Temples to Oligarchs
Public officials in Homeric times were general assistants such as heralds. Economic life was not yet mone- tized, so instead of being paid, they lived as members of the king’s house- hold (oikos), sharing in whatever war spoils the king might obtain. All who played a role in administering palace affairs, as well as minstrels and other court adherents, ate at the palace oikos table, along with the community’s elders who chose to attend.
need: oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
To the extent that there were obligations for payment, gift exchange was the most important, especially with visitors from afar.
War was the major source of temple treasure, typically a tithe of the booty. For thousands of years Mesopotamian palaces met extraordinary military expenses by borrowing temple silver to pay mercenaries and defray other war expenditures.
119
It was becoming normal practice for generals to carry coin-making equipment with them to melt down booty to pay their troops their share. Most of this wealth was concentrated in the hands of an oligarchy whose leaders sought to minimize its tax liability by curtailing public social spend- ing and privatizing the social and financial role hitherto played by temples as creditors. The 3rd and 2nd centuries BC would see cities rely increasingly on money provided by the wealthy, partly as civic-minded contributions but increasingly as interest-bearing loans.
120 (134)
Recognizing that warfare was a constant *fact of life, cities built up temple hoards during periods of prosperity, to be lent to civic authorities in times of need and restored when the emergency was over. “In framing a constitu- tion,” Aristotle wrote (Politics 2.7 at 1267a), “it is **essential to have regard to acquiring strength for war … A nation’s wealth is part of its strength; for it is essential that there should be resources sufficient not merely for its inter- nal needs but also to meet external dangers.”
*of sea world life
rather **gershenfeld something else law
137 (151)
7. Plato, Aristophanes and Aristotle on Money-Lust, 4th Century BC
Delphi’s warning that lust for monetary silver (philarguria) was the only thing that could destroy Sparta was echoed by Plato, Socrates and other philosophers who accused wealth addiction of leading to greedy behavior by the wealthy that impoverished society at large..t Creditors were singled out for reducing debtors to bondage and taking their land.
rather..maté addiction law.. and missing pieces
Wealth addiction
In contrast to 20th-century price theory assuming diminishing “mar- ginal utility” for each additional unit of a specific consumer good, Greek philosophy saw monetary wealth as being insatiable, becoming ever more addictive. In Aristophanes’ last play, Ploutos (“Wealth,” written in 388), the character Karion observes that one may become over-satiated with food— bread, sweets, cakes, figs and barley—but no one ever has enough wealth..t His friend Chremelos (the root of whose name is chrema, exchange value and hence money-wealth) observes:
always/everything insatiable .. need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
Give a man a sum of thirteen talents,
and all the more he hungers for sixteen.
Give him sixteen, and he must needs have forty, or life’s not worth living, so he says. (lines 189-193)138 (152)
Money-lust and greed are insatiable and hence infinite..t Chremelos says that he loves wealth more than he loves his wife and only son (lines 250-251), but recognizes that: “Our life nowadays can only be described as madness or lunacy. Many wicked men are rich having amassed wealth unjustly, while many others, though scrupulously honest, are poor and hungry”
doesn’t matter what the thing is.. everything insatiable till we org around legit needs
Jean-Pierre Vernant has summarized how Greek dramatists portrayed the greed for money as a disease of the psyche: “Ultimately, wealth has no object but itself. Created to satisfy the needs of life, as a mere means of sub- sistence, it becomes its own end, a universal, insatiable, boundless craving that nothing will ever be able to assuage. At the root of wealth one therefore discovers a corrupted disposition, a perverse will, a pleonexia—the desire to have more than others, more than one’s share, to have everything. In Greek eyes, ploutos (wealth) was bound up with a kind of disaster.”
any form of m\a\p.. insatiable
To illustrate how wealth addiction warps personal character, Aristotle cited the legend of King Midas of Phrygia. Praying to Dionysus that ev- erything he touched would turn to gold, Midas found that he could not eat without turning his food to gold. “What a ridiculous kind of wealth is that which, even in abundance, will not save you from dying with hunger,” observed Aristotle (Politics 1 at 1257b).
all/already not us.. wealth is symptom not cause
Wealth addiction leads to destructive hubris
same song.. goes both ways.. both symptoms of missing pieces
139 (153)
Aristotle contrasted the social instinct for reciprocity with the pleasure of hubristic acts “making others feel one’s superiority by hurting or insult- ing them, and it is more likely to occur among those blessed by the gods of fortune (while lacking moral virtue) …;
actually same song
140 (154)
The hubris of wealth addiction vs. the morality of moderation
144 (158)
The character Blepyros expresses the hope that theft will disappear once citizens are provided with life’s necessities and the means of self-support..t
only if org around legit needs.. so need out of sea world first.. hari rat park law
“Prosperity did not actually stop the wealthy from stealing more and more; on the contrary, they proved to be the biggest thieves,”15 paraphrases one commentator..t As long as the tendency for money-wealth to be addictive and socially de- structive remains, “preventing highway robbery by removing the problems of hunger and cold, cannot … be a panacea for social ills.”
gershenfeld something else law
Characterizing protectors of debtors as “tyrants”
Deeming the poor the “worst classes” (kakoi), Plato had Socrates say: “Wherever you see beggars in a city, there are somewhere concealed thieves and cut-purses and temple robbers and similar experts in crime” (Republic 8 at 552d).
146 (160)
Socrates’ ideal is for legislators to be like good craftsmen: Just as doctors or sea captains seek the well-being of their patients or crew, public officials are supposed to promote the welfare of society as a whole.
Socrates defends his ideal:
The physician, as such, studies only the patient’s interest, not his own. … the business of the physician, in the strict sense, is not to make money for himself, but to exercise his power [to heal] the patient’s body. The ship’s captain, again considered strictly as no mere sailor but in command of the crew, will study and enjoin the interest of his subordinates, not his own. … And so with government of any kind: no ruler, in so far as he is acting as ruler, will study or enjoin what is for his own interest. All that he says and does will be said and done with a view to what is good and proper for the subject for whom he practices his art.
rather.. need to get back to an undisturbed ecosystem: ..’the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
But this ideal is turned upside down in practice, Thrasymachus replies:
..The reality, he says (Republic 1 at 343a-d), is that “to be ‘just’ means serving the interest of the stronger who rules … A just man always has the worst of it. Take a private business: when a partnership is wound up, you same with public officials: Dishonest administrators enrich themselves at society’s expense. So the unjust become happier than the just.
147 (1610
A double standard is at work. “When people denounce injustice, it is because they are afraid of suffering wrong [as victims], not of doing it.”21
Socrates accuses democracy of leading to tyranny, as if there were no alternative
democratic admin as cancerous distraction
149 (163)
Socrates proposes a new ruling class in his own image, without money or land
Socrates found wealth addiction to be the underlying explanation for bad economic relations.
again not deep enough.. not root
150 (164)
Plato’s Apology reports that at his trial Socrates stated that he considered money-making and property a waste his time, diverting him from being useful. He did not accept payment from his students, expressing disdain for the heavy fees that Sophists charged. As he explained (Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 1.13): “It is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honorable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution. … So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom.”..t
cancerous distractions.. 10-day-care-center\ness
Socrates replies that, “because I refuse to take it, I am not obliged to talk with anyone against my will.”
Conversely, Socrates explains, wealthy people are “poor” because their money-addiction makes them feel hungry for more as money becomes an end in itself instead of serving its “natural” function to facilitate exchange. He describes his extravagant friend Critobulus as actually being poorer, if one defines wealth as satisfaction with what one has..t
151 (165)
Socrates: Yes, because my property is sufficient to satisfy my wants, but I don’t think you would have enough to keep up the style you are living in and to support your reputation, even if your fortune were three times what it is.
Considering money-love to be the lowest part of the soul (Republic 9 at 581c-d), Socrates contrasts the pleasure of lovers of economic gain to that of lovers of wisdom (philosophers) or of military victory:
rather.. same song
152 (166)
a “rule of moderation” was to be based on the principle “that poverty consists not in decreasing one’s substance but in increasing one’s greed.”
rather.. from missing pieces
155 (169)
8. Agis, Cleomenes and Nabis Cancel Sparta’s Debts, 3rd Century BC
166 (180)
“a wave of revolutionary enthusiasm such as Greece had never seen,” *headed by impoverished debtors. The Megalopolitan emissary to Macedonia, Cercidas, wrote a poem looking forward to the day when “the **greedy rich will sink into poverty, and the poor … be blessed with a stream of silver.” Attacking usurers, the poem complained that Justice (Dikē) and Order (Themis) seemed not to hear or see the injustices being perpetrated. Where, it asked, are the gods and Nemesis to sweep away the selfish gains that the wealthy have accumulated? A modern translation reads:
**has to be sans us & them ness.. ie: gershenfeld something else law
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be you. 