m of care – nov 2 23
collapse of antiquity – THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DEBT POLITICS IN GREECE AND ROME – READING MICHAEL HUDSON’S “THE COLLAPSE OF ANTIQUITY” PART 3 – [https://museum.care/events/the-origins-of-modern-debt-politics-in-greece-and-rome-reading-michael-hudson-s-the-collapse-of-antiquity-part-3/]:
In the third session we turn from Sparta to Athens and 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
Suggested further reading are chapters four and five.
The goal is to have a lively discussion – bring your favorite passage!
Suggested reading are chapters four and five.
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:
conspicuous philanthropy
christian: drakoff – draconian.. athens premonetary until 6th cent bc.. ch 5 in debt david’s 3 forms: baseline communism, hierarchy, peer exchange.. labor was scarce resource at the time.. not land.. david calls herity: via tradition.. what brought things to head – started selling debtors into slavery david: ‘ripped from social context.. basically die’.. had new religious festivals.. part of that was making fun of the rich.. david would have liked..
christian: like today.. everybody knows the problem.. but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it
or perhaps .. just no one has tried something that’s for all of us
christian: (nika asking about connections of state, wealth and carnival).. took control of religion away and made it part of state.. so instated festival.. moment rich people quit paying.. move back to an oligarchy
nika: on state opposed to oligarchy
christian: i think athens seen as state at time.. w power struggle between democracy (via tyrant or more losely org’d) and oligarchy.. on tyrants
from wikipedia: The English noun tyrant appears in Middle English use, via Old French, from the 1290s. The word derives from Latin tyrannus, meaning “illegitimate ruler“, and this in turn from the Greek τύραννος tyrannos “monarch, ruler of a polis”; tyrannos in its turn has a Pre-Greek origin, perhaps from Lydian. The final -t arises in Old French by association with the present participles in -ant
christian: everybody has to put in democratic reforms to try to get the people on their side.. d basically means widening of the rights of the many
oi.. any form of democratic admin as cancerous distraction.. so rather.. trying to tell the people what side to be on
christian: majority of pop has more access to get more power all the time.. one way you look at this.. maybe.. as it’s bribery.. even getting paid to go to cinema.. do i want fam/class to be more powerful or city to be more powerful.. moves back and forth.. democratic imperialism..
michael: d has all diff meanings.. and many mythologies of d start w athens because had voting.. david says real d is about consensus..
nika: they said could extend powers.. how do they extend? started to get paid? bribes as you said.. allow to stay in power.. so not a d as ruling of majority.. more like minority force share small resources to stay in power.. so more of a aristocracy
christian: if look at david’s concepts of hierarchy and exchange.. doesn’t always have to be these extremes.. meaning of words derive from way they’re use.. it’s not a fixed scale.. extremes on each end
michael: something missing here.. separate political and econ d’s.. in debt – all equal.. become econ peons even though politically equal when have debt.. so prisoners.. does that become a constitutional structure.. this is mh’s argument.. that law developed here.. focused on debt collector politics.. so constitutional d not a real d.. 5000 or 5 make decision depending on political power.. but still.. who can make decision about how money is.. lesson for now.. how do we build our local econ and make our decisions about that.. doesn’t really support what people 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
so sans.. dm et al.. decision making is unmooring us law et al
christian: each layer has driving forces against them.. strata between forces.. but never gets far enough.. but can be a lot worse.. by giving more powers to wider base in society.. have to find a way to pay for it.. and that leads to militarization
christian: ch 5.. have powers they didn’t have before (to elect, to go to war and have arms).. if archan (admin) could be punished for misappropriating public funds.. i rome.. no way to punish you.. where it gets interesting.. start to use money more and more.. catalyst for money was war.. coinage spreads rapidly.. mh says both.. coins driven by war and important to trade.. so would like to ask him about this.. why..
christian: they had a progressive tax system at that time.. wealthier you were.. had to pay for feasts et al.. could just print money there.. so had d-like thing growing based on money.. and as david said.. based on 10k slaves
nika: this is a really bad system.. if our system is rooted there.. need to find other places..
m: david’s never was a west.. from greece and rome because wrote laws to make debt collection permanent
c: get to rome.. greeks look like babies in comparison.. incentive to get as many slaves as possible et al
c: you don’t need coinage for debts.. i think this is where d and mh would agree.. everybody knew the debt you had.. but you couldn’t get out of it
c: to make this possible have to go to coinage and have to have people to accept coinage
c: final details.. before taxes only meant for people defeated in war.. if now put on own elites.. ‘so you’re treating me like i’ve lost.. defeat’.. psychologically you don’t want that.. so conspirings to not have to pay taxes anymore et al
m: p 111 – trap theory.. arising power always in war w existing power.. conflict was between demo and olig
c: then again you have it.. is this d or not.. e could ask him if his defn of d today is diff than d of athens.. he said athens was both d and imperial
c: final quote: ‘d best upheld by affirming decision in private to avoid cancelling debts and ensure enforcement of contracts.. ‘.. which is basically the world trade org.. rome is like athens at its worst on crack
m: so next 5.6.7? missing from discussion.. maybe.. what is it like .. farming situation where originally have debt previous to coinage.. that would be interesting.. historical recored doesn’t usually keep life of farmer written down
c: first thing in ch 4.. what happened in athens before stalin came.. then reforms.. could be sold as a slave
n: so next time 5, 6 & 7 in dec (dec 7).. then jan invite hudson
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notes/quotes from reading ch 4&5 of 481 pg pdf:
97
4. Solon Bans Debt Slavery in Athens, 594 BC
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Thomas Figueira emphasizes that client/patron obligations were the context for early Greek debt and rental arrangements: “Loans were usually in foodstuffs or in seed grain, provisions for life itself. Borrowing was seldom a one-time affair, as marginal farms were repeatedly in need. In this atmosphere, loans were not quantified (in this regard, the absence of coinage is significant) and tended to become open-ended. Thus, a form of bondage was created with the obligations of the debtors being political, religious, and/or fiscal.” As a result: “To be a debtor was not a contractual situation but entailed a castelike status. To lend or borrow was a hereditary role.” In a similar vein, Moses Finley describes the typical margin- al cultivator as “poor and essentially defenseless against bad harvests and famine, against war and its depredations, against the one-sidedness of the law. When his luck was bad his only defense was to put himself in fidem, in the power of the powerful.”
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The Athenian economy was impoverishing most citizens while concentrating land ownership and political control at the top. “An elite of 10-20% of the population controlled sufficient land and labour not to have to work, while the remaining 80-90% of the population [did] not have enough land to survive without additional income.” The poor faced slavery if they did not flee, and the aristocracy feared that civil war might lead to their expropriation and exile, as had occurred in Corinth. It was normal practice in such situations for cities to appoint a single person over their affairs, a referee to act as archon to prevent a populist “tyrant” from mobilizing followers to gain power.
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Like reformers in other Greek cities, Solon’s poetry criticizing the hubris of the wealthy helped establish his reputation as a sage. In Fragment 4 of his major poem, he wrote that the wealthy “do not understand how to hold back their satiety,” despite there being plenty to go around.
The problem, Solon wrote (Fragment 13.71-73), is that wealth is addictive: “There is no apparent limit of wealth laid down for men. Those of us who possess the most seek to double it.” The result is that “excess breeds insolence, when great prosperity comes to men who are not sound of mind”
nika and david on wealth et al
maté addiction law et al
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It is not clear how in practice Solon might have redeemed debtors who had been sold abroad. What is most important to recognize is that he enforced legal recognition of the fact that the status of bondservants was much better than that of outright slaves.
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popular disappointment over him leaving the wealthy with their land intact was so strong that he left Athens for ten years
Aristotle considered three measures to be Solon’s most important steps toward democracy. First was his seisachtheia (banning of debt slavery and cancellation of debts). Second came popular access to the law courts. Establishing the right of all classes to appeal to jury courts for redress solved the problem of aristocratic judges acting arbitrarily. The third reform was to expand membership in the Areopagus Council, which set the agenda for discussion by the popular assembly (Ekklēsia).
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“The genuinely free peasant had no protection against a run of bad harvests, against compulsory army service, against the endless depredations in civil and foreign wars.”
not genuinely free if any form of m\a\p
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Democratizing religion was a key to democratizing laws.
religion = laws = any form of m\a\p
Religious festivals and drama dealt openly with the hubris of the rich and their wealth addiction, frequently treating the elite with derision
maté addiction law et al
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5. From Democracy to the Thirty Tyrants, 508-404 BC
The word dēmokratia, literally “people rule” (demos + kratos), seems to be first documented ca. 462 BC.1 Herodotus associated the word with rule of the demos, plethos (“mass”) or homilos (“crowd”), and with isono- mia (equality under the law, nomos). Athenian babies began to be named Democrates around this time, but no children were given names with the root of oligarchy, olig– (“few”)
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Cities from Greece to Asia Minor shared a political philosophy that wealth was to be used to benefit the citizenry at large. The richest families—in practice, the largest landowners—were obliged to bear the cost of the major categories of civic spending. For Athens these costs were headed by outfitting and maintaining naval vessels, hiring and training choruses for the major public music-drama festivals, and providing oil and other operating expenses for gymnasia (one of the major gathering places for the elite).
Treating wealth as being granted provisionally for its holders to use in the public interest was made compatible with aristocratic values through the prestige it bestowed on those who served as trierarchs, gymnasiarchs and choregoi, especially by allowing them to directly manage the ships, gymnasia and choruses they funded. Down through Roman times a patriotic rivalry existed among the wealthiest citizens to demonstrate their public spirit by competing for excellence in what might be called conspicuous philanthropy, an extension of their own personal creativity. It was an opportunity to gain renown for the liturgy holder’s own trireme, drama or chorus.
any form of people telling other people what to do
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An earthquake in 464 provided Sparta’s helots with an opportunity to rebel (as noted in Chapter 3). Sparta asked for help, and the leading conservative Athen
Cimon’s exile enabled Ephialtes to introduce more radical democratic reforms to break the oligarchy’s monopoly on policymaking.
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thenian expenditures mounted rapidly during the 5th century, above all for the wars with Persia and Sparta, and because citizens began to be paid for public services, in addition to being hired to work on public construction.
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That bailed out the oligarchy’s leaders by paying the debts that The Thirty had run up during their brutal eight months in power. This was done ostensibly to promote concord, but the debt bailout probably aimed at preventing a new wave of violence against the democracy. Ober favorably contrasts Athens’ payment of the debt to “the bad tendency of other democratic governments to confiscate private property,” suggesting that it was aimed at maintaining a good reputation for repayment of loans by showing fiscal responsibility.. the democracy had just met the oligarchs’ demand to be freed from their own responsibility!
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Aeschylus had written in Eumenides (performed in 458): “Not a life of anarchy nor the rule of tyranny: take the middle way endowed by gods.” In practice the “middle way” meant leaving the wealthy with their privileged role and not giving democracy “too much,” ..
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be you. 