Julius Caesar: the lost people's history of the Tribal Assembly?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The first time I wrote about Julius Caesar from the perspective of people's history, I wrote mainly of his radical economic populism:


Land reform, outright grants to the poor, public works and other employment programs for putting plebeians toward productive work, luxury taxes, partial debt relief, recognition of minority religions like Judaism as legitimate, and even a Maximum on Allowable Personal Wealth of 15,000 drachmas (but not one that was subject to populist adjustment by mass democratic means)

Also: http://www.revleft.com/vb/caesarism-marx-wrongi-t112185/index.html

Only today, though, did I notice these comments on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJNAoqy2SRw


There were the tribunes which existed until the Senate completely wiped them out before the civil war broke out. Once Caesar came into power he began shifting power from the Senate to the more democratic Tribal Assembly. There was very little that was democratic about the Senate & it was certainly not the only representational body in existence either before or after the C.War. On the contrary, it was the least representational & Caesar was killed because he was extending the vote.

Things were a little more complicated than that. Caesar had always been of the democratic party. During Sula's tyranny he was arrested for his relation to Gaius Marius & Cornelius Cinna, both famous popularii. His life would be spared only if he publicly embraced the tyranny & married a woman of Sula's choice. This would have placed him close to the center of power. Instead he chose to be executed rather than to denounce the democratic cause. He was spared either because ....

... he bribed the guards & escaped or was saved by the conservatives in his family. Once he was able to return to politics - rather than joining the oligarchs - he allied with Licinius Macer, the tribune, & pushed for democratic reforms & elimination of Sulla's edicts. All this time the Senate was abrogating more power to itself & trying to destroy the tribunes as an institution. In violation of the constitution they made Pompey the sole consul of Rome...

... and under Pompey & the Senate the office of the Tribunes was completely wiped out, disenfranchising the majority of Roman citizens & leaving the Senate solely in control of the government. After Caesar crossed the Rubicon and took power he initiated numerous popular reforms which I can go into if desired, allowed Jews to freely practice their religion and allowed Athens to reintroduce a democracy for the first time in 100 yrs...

... As for the dictatorship, if you want to argue that this would ultimately have turned into a permanent, anti-democratic ruling class, that is certainly possible. History is full of democratic countries who created authoritarian institutions in times of danger only to have those authoritarian institutions destroy democracy even once the threats had been defeated. But Caesar was killed because he was transforming the overwhelming power of the Senate to the far more democratic Tribal Assembly.

If this is indeed the case, then we see here an Anti-Republican political model, going against Benevolent Tyrants. It's not about a social contract between the benevolent tyrant and the masses, since it's clear the benevolent tyrant fails his end of the bargain. It's a social contract between one form of absolutism/autocracy and one form of democracy, with Caesar being a sort of "dictator for democracy."

[Liberal republicanism has always been a means of legitimizing bourgeois oligarchy in the triangle of democracy, "monarchy" (rule-of-one), and "aristocracy" (rule by "the best").]

[Kléber]

Julius Caesar was a populist demagogue who promised free plebeians a greater share of Rome's imperial loot if they would support him against the then-reigning Senatorial oligarchs. He was still a slaveowner who slaughtered POW's of conquered nations in reactionary ritual sacrifices; the most famous of his victims was the brave Vercingetorix. The fact that reactionaries hated him doesn't make him more revolutionary than Obama. The Gracchi and other populist reformers wanted to mitigate the class divide, not abolish it; their goal was a slightly kinder version of the slave empire. Ancient emperors like Akhenaten or Wang Mang, who sometimes get an undeserved revolutionary reputation for expropriating their own vassals, were not communists either. If you want a revolutionary leader from the classical Roman world, look no further than Spartacus.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Comrades will find a Marxist analysis of this period in Rome's history in Michael Parenti's The Assassination of Julius Caesar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar:_A_People's_His tory_of_Ancient_Rome).

[Luís Henrique]

Both Kléber and Jakob are reading modern, capitalist, content into ancient, slavery-based forms. Of course, nothing, except confusion, can come out of interpreting Rome's internal strifes in terms of democracy/dictatorship, proletariat/bourgeoisie, etc. The issues were completely different, the actors were completely different, everything was about something else, like in the joke about the two mental patients who both have never gone to Glasgow, and so had to conclude that their mistakenly thinking they were acquainted to each other should be explained by the idea that "then it must have been other two gentlemen".

Luís Henrique

[S.Artesian]

The Huey Long of imperial Rome. Big deal. Much more akin to a Peron than to a class enemy of system of exploitation. Spare us this praise for noble monsters.

[Dimentio]

The thing with Caesar is not who Caesar was or that he was what we today would class as a war-criminal (which the majority of the ruling class in Rome consisted of), but that he had broad support from the public and acted as an enemy of his own class and therefore was murdered.

Most leaders in history have blood on their hands, even if they don't do anything.

[S.Artesian]

The thing with Caesar is not who Caesar was or that he was what we today would class as a war-criminal (which the majority of the ruling class in Rome consisted of), but that he had broad support from the public and acted as an enemy of his own class and therefore was murdered.

Most leaders in history have blood on their hands, even if they don't do anything.


Exactly. The thing is not to pretend that such a historical configuration producing an individual acting in that capacity has any relevance to the current and future prospects for social revolution.

All of this pining and whining for a Caesar is just another refraction of the antipathy of petty-bourgeois poseurs to the proletariat's revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrades will find a Marxist analysis of this period in Rome's history in Michael Parenti's The Assassination of Julius Caesar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar:_A_People's_His tory_of_Ancient_Rome).

Rosa, I used this book specifically in my programmatic work. The first go at it was only with his economic measures.


The Huey Long of imperial Rome. Big deal. Much more akin to a Peron than to a class enemy of system of exploitation. Spare us this praise for noble monsters.

You're parroting gentlemen's history.


All of this pining and whining for a Caesar is just another refraction of the antipathy of petty-bourgeois poseurs to the proletariat's revolution.

Misconstruing my class background, are we? Who are the only ones that can advocate workers-only voting membership policies as well as more generic politico-ideological independence? :rolleyes:

I just think that is quite compatible with Third World Caesarism / Managed Democracy / Anti-Republicanism / Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie - and tactics such as people's war, Focoism, PDPA-style military coups, and especially a "March on Rome."

[Dimentio]

Exactly. The thing is not to pretend that such a historical configuration producing an individual acting in that capacity has any relevance to the current and future prospects for social revolution.

All of this pining and whining for a Caesar is just another refraction of the antipathy of petty-bourgeois poseurs to the proletariat's revolution.

I cannot speak for DNZ. I do not like ancient Rome because it has any relevance for us today, but because I simply like history.

[Kléber]

Both Kléber and Jakob are reading modern, capitalist, content into ancient, slavery-based forms. Of course, nothing, except confusion, can come out of interpreting Rome's internal strifes in terms of democracy/dictatorship, proletariat/bourgeoisie, etc. The issues were completely different, the actors were completely different, everything was about something else
I didn't say this was "democracy/dictatorship, proletariat/bourgeoisie," in fact I used none of those words, or do you consider class struggle itself to be a childish oversimplification? That postmodern nonsense is basically a pessimistic rejection of the human mind's ability to analyze society and history using dialectical materialism. Take what you are saying to its conclusion, and no one has the authority to write about anything, because nobody has an absolutely omniscient understanding of the world or any aspect of it. The passage of 2,000 years does not change the fact that there was class struggle in ancient times, oppressed people did fight back, and it was against people like Julius Caesar.


The thing with Caesar is not who Caesar was or that he was what we today would class as a war-criminal (which the majority of the ruling class in Rome consisted of), but that he had broad support from the public and acted as an enemy of his own class and therefore was murdered.

Most leaders in history have blood on their hands, even if they don't do anything.
He did not act as an enemy of his own class, least of all consciously; rather he acted as its most far-sighted representative. Caesar wanted to shore up the power of the Roman state by giving the plebes a fairer deal and making them more loyal to the patrician elite, which was tiny compared to the whole population of its empire. He was in favor of higher grain subsidies for the proletarii of the cities but did nothing to give them, or the slaves, political power. Caesar's crimes of empire against conquered peoples can not be washed from his hands any more than a liberal might argue that John F Kennedy was knocked off by the mafia and the far right for trying to clean up the USA's act and is so excused for his dirty attempt to recolonize Cuba.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The passage of 2,000 years does not change the fact that there was class struggle in ancient times, oppressed people did fight back, and it was against people like Julius Caesar.

Marx blindly accepted the gentlemen's history account of Caesar.


He did not act as an enemy of his own class, least of all consciously; rather he acted as its most far-sighted representative.

Caesar's class base of support rested in the common folk serving in the military, not among "far-sighted" patricians.


Caesar wanted to shore up the power of the Roman state by giving the plebes a fairer deal and making them more loyal to the patrician elite, which was tiny compared to the whole population of its empire. He was in favor of higher grain subsidies for the proletarii of the cities but did nothing to give them, or the slaves, political power.

Did you bother to read my original post above listing the radical economic reforms? They're more than mere grain subsidies (i.e., the breads and circuses of the later Roman Empire).

Did you bother to read my original post above mentioning the Tribunal Assembly?


Caesar's crimes of empire against conquered peoples can not be washed from his hands any more than a liberal might argue that John F Kennedy was knocked off by the mafia and the far right for trying to clean up the USA's act and is so excused for his dirty attempt to recolonize Cuba.

But neither Parenti nor I are washing his hands on that front. We merely focused on domestic policy.

[Kléber]

Marx blindly accepted the gentlemen's history account of Caesar.True, but at least he was on the side of Spartacus against the likes of both Cicero and Caesar.


Caesar's class base of support rested in the military, not among "far-sighted" patricians.Every serious Roman leader at that time depended on the military. You needed legions to march on Rome.


Did you bother to read my original post above listing the radical economic reforms? They're more than mere grain subsidies (i.e., the breads and circuses of the later Roman Empire).Yes, and I read Parenti's book.


Did you bother to read my original post above mentioning the Tribunal Assembly?The Tribal Assembly was for plebeians - free Roman landowners who weren't part of the aristocratic ruling families. Workers, slaves and foreigners were not represented.

Julius Caesar did also grant power to free Greek landowners in Athens, but that's not real democracy because slaves, women and national minorities did not have political rights. He also wanted higher grain subsidies for the urban proletariat who were mostly unemployed and dependent on state and private charity, but again, there was no extension of political power to the propertyless, the enslaved, or "barbarians" under Caesar.


But neither Parenti nor I are washing his hands on that front. We merely focused on domestic policy.Domestic and international policy can not be separated. Ironically it is often the plebeians who are more imperialist than patricians, because the big aristocrats want to maintain peace with the neighbors, feast and party, while the poorer landowners want to start wars so they can capture land, slaves and wealth, to become patricians. This was not only true in ancient times. In colonial Latin America the royal bureaucracies granted rights to slaves and indigenous people while the creoles, the colonial-born "middle class" of white landowners, were generally the most racist, favored the most brutal repression of oppressed communities. In the present-day United States, the hegemony of imperialist capital is maintained by reactionary-minded, mostly white petty bourgeois and proletarian citizens who understand they have some slight privilege from living in an imperialist country, and are brainwashed to defend it with fanatical zeal which they direct against immigrants and perceived liberal members of the elite.

[Die Neue Zeit]

True, but at least he was on the side of Spartacus against the likes of both Cicero and Caesar.

Caesar had absolutely nothing at all to do with the suppression of the Spartacus uprising. It was Crassus who suppressed it.


Every serious Roman leader at that time depended on the military. You needed legions to march on Rome.

Except only Caesar marched legions on Rome. What does that say about the class base of support for his rivals, not just Pompey and Crassus?


Yes, and I read Parenti's book.

At least there's someone who can openly disagree with my reasoning for Third World Caesarism (instead of Maoism, Permanent Revolution, or run-of-the-mill Third World authoritarianism) while having read Parenti's book.


The Tribal Assembly was for plebeians - free Roman landowners who weren't part of the aristocratic ruling families. Workers, slaves and foreigners were not represented.

Workers? I know slaves and foreigners were not represented, but for sure the proletarii were represented by some body.


Domestic and international policy can not be separated. Ironically it is often the plebeians who are more imperialist than patricians, because the big aristocrats want to maintain peace with the neighbors, feast and party, while the poorer landowners want to start wars so they can capture land, slaves and wealth, to become patricians. This was not only true in ancient times. In colonial Latin America the royal bureaucracies granted rights to slaves and indigenous people while the creoles, the colonial-born "middle class" of white landowners, were generally the most racist, favored the most brutal repression of oppressed communities. In the present-day United States, the hegemony of imperialist capital is maintained by reactionary-minded, mostly white petty bourgeois and proletarian citizens who understand they have some slight privilege from living in an imperialist country, and are brainwashed to defend it with fanatical zeal which they direct against immigrants and perceived liberal members of the elite.

The petit-bourgeoisie is indeed the most politically unstable class, but that's not the point.

[Kléber]

Caesar had absolutely nothing at all to do with the suppression of the Spartacus uprising. It was Crassus who suppressed it.
My point was that Caesar wasn't a revolutionary.


Except only Caesar marched legions on Rome. What does that say about the class base of support for his rivals, not just Pompey and Crassus?It says that his rivals lost because they couldn't defend the capital. Sulla also broke the "no troops in Rome" rule, was he socialist?


At least there's someone who can openly disagree with my reasoning for Third World Caesarism (instead of Maoism, Permanent Revolution, or run-of-the-mill Third World authoritarianism) while having read Parenti's book.Thanks, well it was an interesting book. Now what exactly is Third World Caesarism?


Workers? I know slaves and foreigners were not represented, but for sure the proletarii were represented by some body.The Tribal Assembly restored by Julius Caesar only represented plebeian (non-aristocratic) citizens. Citizenship was reserved for freeborn adult men born in Rome. In the Athenian "democracy" restored by Caesar, similar qualifications applied.

The proletarians did not have any official representation which was recognized by the Roman Republic or Empire, although mobs of them participated in political events and as a class they sometimes briefly asserted themselves. During Spartacus' revolt, landless poor joined the revolutionary slave army. Years later, the Christian church, in its early utopian communist phase, organized the proletariat of Roman slums into ancient anarchist co-ops. The churches were eventually co-opted by the state; the revisionist priests entered the Roman bureaucracy while the apostolic communist elements were purged. We only know about this because some radical Christians fled to Egypt and stashed their literature at Nag Hammadi before they were hunted down and murdered by assassins of the Roman Pope.


The petit-bourgeoisie is indeed the most politically unstable class, but that's not the point.It was my point. Caesar, like Hitler, realized how useful their anger and ambitions could be. In courting the middle classes and desperate layers of the unemployed, these men were demagogues not revolutionaries.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Thanks, well it was an interesting book. Now what exactly is Third World Caesarism?

You have a Visitor Message.

[Kléber]

This Third World Caesarism is really quite a hodgepodge. It is not the job of communists to rehabilitate imperialist slaveowners or boost bourgeois nationalists. As for Parenti's claim that Julius Caesar represented the proletariat of the slums, I'd forgotten about that, it's completely wrong unless he was joking.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Who said anything about accommodating the "national bourgeoisie" at all? That's Maoism, not the Marxist center of the Second International including Lenin (accommodation of the "national petit-bourgeoisie"). Why didn't you post in that thread itself? :confused:

[Kléber]

Well then I don't see what the difference is, aside from an eclectic bunch of historical fetishes and weird passages that seem to hint at reactionary positions, between Third World Caesarism and old school Marxism or the theory of Permanent Revolution where the proletariat leads the farmers, middle classes and lumpenproletariat against the ruling class.

[Die Neue Zeit]

"Old school Marxism" /= Permanent Revolution

Again... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/peoples-histories-blocs-t142332/index.html)

What's so reactionary about the Third World possibility of "national" segments of the petit-bourgeoisie (sharecroppers, small tenant farmers, urban small business owners, etc.) seizing power on an eclectically "socialist" but explicitly anti-bourgeois platform (hence "national" and not comprador)?

What's so reactionary about the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie incorporating the tactics of people's war, Focoism, PDPA-style military coups (like 1970s Afghanistan), etc. culminating in a "March on Rome"?

What's so reactionary about the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie combining (http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=845):

1) The program of Julius Caesar in people's history;
1) The program of Julius Caesar in people's history;
2) Proudhon's communal power advocacy;
3) Lassalle's state-aided cooperatives project;
4) Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the political influence of organized religion;
5) Putin's "managed democracy" party system but on a decidedly more left orientation; and
6) Lukashenko's state ownership and management over the commanding heights plus executive repression of bourgeois and/or liberal opposition (http://www.revleft.com/vb/backsliding-belarus-eus-t147204/index.html) (hence Caesarism /= Bonapartism) - all added to by Hugo Chavez-style charisma?



[All conditional upon conditions that allow politico-ideological independence for the working class, of course]

[Dimentio]

One day, you'll work for me DNZ.

[RED DAVE]

(1) Caesar led one of the armies that defeated the slave revolt led by Spartacus.

http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/caesar.html

(2) Caesar was an agent of Roman imperialism, including the conquest of Gaul and the cold-blooded murder of Vercingetorix.

Your boy, DNZ, was a smart, demogogic leader of the ruling class. Typical for you that he should be one of your heroes.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

What's so reactionary about the Third World possibility of "national" segments of the petit-bourgeoisie (sharecroppers, small tenant farmers, urban small business owners, etc.) seizing power on an eclectically "socialist" but explicitly anti-bourgeois platform (hence "national" and not comprador)?Because they will institute capitalism, which is rule over the working class. And some of us, at least, are for soicalism, which is the rule of the working class.


What's so reactionary about the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie incorporating the tactics of people's war, Focoism, PDPA-style military coups (like 1970s Afghanistan), etc. culminating in a "March on Rome"?Fabulous that you use a term also use by that great proletarian leader Mussolini. Again, this is capitalism, which some of us oppose.


What's so reactionary about the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie combining:

1) The program of Julius Caesar in people's history;
2) Proudhon's communal power advocacy;
3) Lassalle's state-aided cooperatives project;
4) Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the political influence of organized religion;
5) Putin's "managed democracy" party system but on a decidedly more left orientation; and
6) Lukashenko's state ownership and management over the commanding heights plus executive repression of bourgeois and/or liberal opposition (http://www.revleft.com/vb/backsliding-belarus-eus-t147204/index.html) (hence Caesarism /= Bonapartism) - all added to by Hugo Chavez-style charisma?Because all of this is capitalism, which, as you might remember, you're here at revleft because your against.


[All conditional upon conditions that allow politico-ideological independence for the working class, of course]Because under capitalism, this is impossible. You are positing that a regime that is the enemy of the working class will permit the freedom of the working class to flourish.

Rots of ruck.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

(1) Caesar led one of the armies that defeated the slave revolt led by Spartacus.

"It is believed": This was not mentioned at all in Ted Grant's "gentlemen's history" account of the Roman republic. :confused:


Because they will institute capitalism, which is rule over the working class. And some of us, at least, are for socialism, which is the rule of the working class.

You've got your politics and economics mixed up.


Fabulous that you use a term also use by that great proletarian leader Mussolini. Again, this is capitalism, which some of us oppose.

I'm not referring at all to Mussolini's fascist coup, but to the original March on Rome. You know, crossing the Rubicon and such? :rolleyes:


Because all of this is capitalism, which, as you might remember, you're here at revleft because your against.

Isn't the "transitional" consensus around here the nationalization of the commanding heights plus cooperatives everywhere else? That's outlined in Points 3 and 6, personified in Lassalle and Lukashenko. :glare:

[S.Artesian]

Isn't the "transitional" consensus around here the nationalization of the commanding heights plus cooperatives everywhere else? That's outlined in Points 3 and 6, personified in Lassalle and Lukashenko.

No, that's not the "transitional consensus," since the point of transition is transformation, that is to say actions taken by organs of workers power; class-specific power, not your hodge-podge petty-bourgeois horse on manback junk populist neo-Stalinism.

You are a troll of immense proportions, bigger even than Rosa L.

[S.Artesian]

Has nothing to do with the "length" of the supposed discourse. Has to do with the content-- and the content is that you distort the actual history of events, relations of classes, substance of theories in order to divert every discussion into the paths of your own narcissistic, self-aggrandizing concerns. That's what defines a troll.

And you are that troll.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

SA:


divert every discussion into the paths of your own narcissistic, self-aggrandizing concerns. That's what defines a troll.

You then proceed to divert this discussion onto little old me:


You are a troll of immense proportions, bigger even than Rosa L.

Well, we already know you are a boss-class lackey, so it's not surprising you display reasonably clear trollish tendencies yourself, chief among which is your propensity to label anyone who disagrees with you a 'troll'.

It's called 'projection', I believe.:rolleyes:

[Dimentio]

Sadly, progressive policies have often sometimes needed authoritarian leaders to be able to be implemented.

[graymouser]

This is dangerous nonsense, and has nothing to do with Roman history.

Caesar was not some democrat trying to make the Assembly into the ruling power of the then-nascent Empire. He was an aristocrat trying to outmaneuver his enemies in the Senate by appealing, as a demagogue, to the plebeians and using the Assembly to give sanction to his actions and his increasing titles.

You clearly have no grasp whatsoever of the class questions in Roman politics. The Tribal Assembly was never an instrument of people's democracy; it was more or less a patronage scheme, where the plebeians were dependent upon senatorial patrons and in return gave political support. Caesar, by being the richest man in the dying Republic basically became the patron of the whole lot of them. Of course, this is not a "people's" history; as others have pointed out, it gave not one iota of freedom to the slaves and had no voice for the freedmen. For fuck's sake, even your hero Kautsky understood that Caesar was no democrat (re-read Foundations of Christianity if you're confused).

And this idea that Caesarism is somehow useful in the third world is beneath contempt.

[RED DAVE]

Sadly, progressive policies have often sometimes needed authoritarian leaders to be able to be implemented.Could you go into details? This is a remarkable statement from someone on a website called revleft. Do you have a soft spot in your heart for that grave digger of the Russian Revolution, Stalin? I mean, who's your hero?

RED DAVE

[Dimentio]

I don't have heroes. Neither do I think that political revolutions led by authoritarian leaders would yield much success. The prevalence of such figures is rather a testimony that the people at that point was not ready for any deeper transformative change of the means of production.

[Dimentio]

I don't have heroes. Neither do I think that political revolutions led by authoritarian leaders would yield much success. The prevalence of such figures is rather a testimony that the people at that point was not ready for any deeper transformative change of the means of production.

[graymouser]

I don't have heroes. Neither do I think that political revolutions led by authoritarian leaders would yield much success. The prevalence of such figures is rather a testimony that the people at that point was not ready for any deeper transformative change of the means of production.
My post was aimed at DNZ, not you.

[Dimentio]

I replied to RED DAVE, not you

[Luís Henrique]

I didn't say this was "democracy/dictatorship, proletariat/bourgeoisie," in fact I used none of those words, or do you consider class struggle itself to be a childish oversimplification? That postmodern nonsense is basically a pessimistic rejection of the human mind's ability to analyze society and history using dialectical materialism. Take what you are saying to its conclusion, and no one has the authority to write about anything, because nobody has an absolutely omniscient understanding of the world or any aspect of it. The passage of 2,000 years does not change the fact that there was class struggle in ancient times, oppressed people did fight back, and it was against people like Julius Caesar.

Of course there was class struggle in Ancient Rome. What there was not was a bourgeoisie; a proletariat; any socialist perspective for the downtrodden masses. So class struggle in Ancient Rome was class struggle between other classes, not between proletariat and bourgeoisie; and for different aims, not for either the survival of capitalism or its revolutionary suppression. Any materialist take on ancient Roman history must start from realising this; superimposing modern concepts into it is bogus, and leads to anachronic and a-historic conclusions, such as "Caesar's crimes" or "Caesar's radicalism".

Luís Henrique

[Die Neue Zeit]

by appealing, as a demagogue, to the plebeians and using the Assembly to give sanction to his actions and his increasing titles

That's the gentlemen's history that Parenti fought against in his book.


The Tribal Assembly was never an instrument of people's democracy; it was more or less a patronage scheme, where the plebeians were dependent upon senatorial patrons and in return gave political support.

That's the same liberal criticism of the communal councils and communes in Venezuela, relative to "patronage" by the PSUV and Chavez.


For fuck's sake, even your hero Kautsky understood that Caesar was no democrat (re-read Foundations of Christianity if you're confused).

My original thread asked if Marx himself was wrong on Caesarism. By extension, if Marx blindly accepted gentlemen's history re. Caesar (and he did), then Kautsky's account was wrong also.


And this idea that Caesarism is somehow useful in the third world is beneath contempt.

One of its siblings is the two-stage Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.

[Dimentio]

Why couldn't Julius Caesar be a ruthless imperialist and a warm-hearted populist politician at the same time?

[graymouser]

That's the gentlemen's history that Parenti fought against in his book.
The concept of "gentleman's history" is basically a long ad hominem excuse by Parenti to dismiss anything he doesn't like in ancient and modern historiography. It is of course true that Roman writers represented the aristocracy, but that doesn't validate Parenti's fantasy of Caesar as a man "of the people" or even give a sound concept of what "the people" meant in ancient Rome.

You cannot take the pro-plebeian gestures of the populares and the openly pro-aristocratic stance of the optimates in isolation. The Roman Republic was a slave society growing into a world empire, and the plebeian class that Caesar and the earlier populares based themselves on was increasingly a class subsidized by the ill-gotten gains of imperial war. The underlying question was not the plebeians versus the patricians, but the patrician ruling class's dominance over the slaves and the peasantry of Italy and the new provinces, in which the plebeians mostly played a role in the decaying internal politics of Rome itself.

Honestly, as a Marxist and a student of ancient Roman history (ancient history was my minor in college), I have to say that Parenti's book is embarrassingly bad. If you want to get this period, you'd do much better with Kautsky's excellent Foundations of Christianity.


That's the same liberal criticism of the communal councils and communes in Venezuela, relative to "patronage" by the PSUV and Chavez.
So? The PSUV really is a tremendous, corrupt patronage machine, and not in any respect a workers' party or a revolutionary party. What is going on in Venezuela today is not socialism of any century, but a form of left populism.


My original thread asked if Marx himself was wrong on Caesarism. By extension, if Marx blindly accepted gentlemen's history re. Caesar (and he did), then Kautsky's account was wrong also.
Have you actually read Kautsky's account? It shows a much clearer class understanding of history than your posts here do. I also think that Lenin's quote about the Greek republics ("freedom for the slave-owners") applies in spades to Caesarism.


One of its siblings is the two-stage Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.
You mean the incorrect theory that the Bolsheviks abandoned in 1917?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sadly, progressive policies have often sometimes needed authoritarian leaders to be able to be implemented.


Could you go into details? This is a remarkable statement from someone on a website called revleft. Do you have a soft spot in your heart for that grave digger of the Russian Revolution, Stalin? I mean, who's your hero?

I think Red Dave needs to go back to Political Science 101.

Dimentio wasn't posting about hard-on authoritarian leaders. The mildest authoritarianism comes to the fore when tackling the problem of Bourgeois Federalism. See, FDR had problems passing some of his more progressive legislation against "states' rights" opposition:


Within this “managed democracy” the most obvious element is the National Leader or pan-national equivalent, even if there is no organizational emphasis here. Such role, for purely executive matters, is best described as “neo-patrimonial” in light of historian Yoram Gorlizki’s observation of “patrimonial authority coexisting alongside quite modern and routine forms of high-level decision making” that characterized the late Stalin era. Such role also could move in and out of the presidency like Putin. The presidency itself could have semi-strong veto power, weaker than the strong veto power held by US and Ukrainian presidencies (overridden only upon a two-thirds legislative majority in all legislative chambers), but stronger than merely the one-time ability to ask legislatures to reconsider certain legislation like in Hungary, Italy, and Portugal. For example, questions on war and peace that are addressed by legislatures could be put to a referendum after a presidential veto. Meanwhile, “judiciary reorganization” or the less euphemistic presidential “court packing” of specifically constitutional courts – apart from the nominally independent but regular court system – would facilitate more radical social reforms. Moreover, the transition to full communal power could see the National Leader’s obvious influence on the developing communal power as a bulwark against opposition governments in the municipalities, provinces, prefectures, and federated states. Despite all this power, the president should be subject to legislative confidence, and a National Leader outside the presidency should also be the leading member of a party (all the more so as president).

[Die Neue Zeit]

The concept of "gentleman's history" is basically a long ad hominem excuse by Parenti to dismiss anything he doesn't like in ancient and modern historiography. It is of course true that Roman writers represented the aristocracy, but that doesn't validate Parenti's fantasy of Caesar as a man "of the people" or even give a sound concept of what "the people" meant in ancient Rome.

Julius Caesar was about to eliminate the senatorial class when he was assassinated.


Honestly, as a Marxist and a student of ancient Roman history (ancient history was my minor in college), I have to say that Parenti's book is embarrassingly bad. If you want to get this period, you'd do much better with Kautsky's excellent Foundations of Christianity.

[...]

Have you actually read Kautsky's account? It shows a much clearer class understanding of history than your posts here do. I also think that Lenin's quote about the Greek republics ("freedom for the slave-owners") applies in spades to Caesarism.

Yes I have read Kautsky's account. As for Lenin on Greek republics, Paul Cockshott made that qualification when advocating modern-day demarchy instead of elections.


So? The PSUV really is a tremendous, corrupt patronage machine, and not in any respect a workers' party or a revolutionary party. What is going on in Venezuela today is not socialism of any century, but a form of left populism.

The PSUV is a "petit-bourgeois workers party." It is not a "bourgeois workers party" like Labour. It is not a proletarian-not-necessarily-communist party like the Chartist movement, the parties of the Paris Commune, or the IWCA. It certainly is not a communist workers sect like the Hekmatists.


You mean the incorrect theory that the Bolsheviks abandoned in 1917?

The ironic triumph of 'old Bolshevism' (and the troika) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/ironic-triumph-old-t145495/index.html)

[graymouser]

Julius Caesar was about to eliminate the senatorial class when he was assassinated.
Caesar was willing to make himself the sole ruler of the empire over the Senate. In class terms this was a conflict within the aristocracy - Caesar, by moving to supreme power, was decapitating the Senate politically. This was a natural outcome of the breakdown of power-sharing between the ruling class of the empire that had caused the protracted political crisis of the Republic. Octavian was able to create a solution that gave a vestigial role to the Senate and thereby secure their support. If you seriously think that Caesar's endgame would have been substantially different from Octavian's, you are fantasizing. We are talking about a brutal aristocrat and general whose populism was paper-thin, and you have not dealt with either the problems of the slave system or the empire.


Yes I have read Kautsky's account. As for Lenin on Greek republics, Paul Cockshott made that qualification when advocating modern-day demarchy instead of elections.
Demarchy is a solution to what, precisely? What was needed in Russia was the revitalization of democracy, not appointments by lottery. Randomly appointing people to various offices is the kind of oddball middle-class theory usually dreamt up by groups like the Green Party.


The PSUV is a "petit-bourgeois workers party." It is not a "bourgeois workers party" like Labour. It is not a proletarian-not-necessarily-communist party like the Chartist movement, the parties of the Paris Commune, or the IWCA. It certainly is not a communist workers sect like the Hekmatists.
The PSUV is not a workers' party, in any sense, because it is not based on the working class and its institutions. It is a state party, primarily based upon the Venezuelan state bureaucracy - which remains a bourgeois state. It is in no way based on the petite bourgeoisie, and there is nothing whatsoever scientific about your characterization of it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Caesar was willing to make himself the sole ruler of the empire over the Senate. In class terms this was a conflict within the aristocracy - Caesar, by moving to supreme power, was decapitating the Senate politically. This was a natural outcome of the breakdown of power-sharing between the ruling class of the empire that had caused the protracted political crisis of the Republic. Octavian was able to create a solution that gave a vestigial role to the Senate and thereby secure their support. If you seriously think that Caesar's endgame would have been substantially different from Octavian's, you are fantasizing. We are talking about a brutal aristocrat and general whose populism was paper-thin, and you have not dealt with either the problems of the slave system or the empire.

Re. Julius Caesar vs. Octavian: Again, Julius Caesar would have realized the political Anti-Republic relative to liberal republicanism. Again, this political Anti-Republic is also against the Benevolent Tyrant model. Again, here's why: Julius Caesar would have been the Autocracy, but the empowered Tribal Assembly would have been the Democracy, and no Benevolent Tyrant model likes Democracy. The Senate, representing "Aristocracy" (Oligarchy), would be gone. Any patronage that the Tribal Assembly would have engaged in would have been with Caesar alone, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

Plato's Republic economically plus the political Anti-Republic (as described above) would have been the ideal pre-industrial society, since it took the chattel slave class(es) Haiti to figure things out about political organization beyond mob riots.


Demarchy is a solution to what, precisely? What was needed in Russia was the revitalization of democracy, not appointments by lottery. Randomly appointing people to various offices is the kind of oddball middle-class theory usually dreamt up by groups like the Green Party.

Elections facilitate incumbency and skew "representation" such that "representative" bodies are not statistically representative of the population.


The PSUV is not a workers' party, in any sense, because it is not based on the working class and its institutions. It is a state party, primarily based upon the Venezuelan state bureaucracy - which remains a bourgeois state. It is in no way based on the petite bourgeoisie, and there is nothing whatsoever scientific about your characterization of it.

You just claim it isn't simply because you can't fathom any kind of workers party that doesn't have extensive tred-iunion links.

[graymouser]

Re. Julius Caesar vs. Octavian: Again, Julius Caesar would have realized the political Anti-Republic relative to liberal republicanism. Again, this political Anti-Republic is also against the Benevolent Tyrant model. Again, here's why: Julius Caesar would have been the Autocracy, but the empowered Tribal Assembly would have been the Democracy, and no Benevolent Tyrant model likes Democracy. The Senate, representing "Aristocracy" (Oligarchy), would be gone. Any patronage that the Tribal Assembly would have engaged in would have been with Caesar alone, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

Plato's Republic economically plus the political Anti-Republic (as described above) would have been the ideal pre-industrial society, since it took the slave class(es) Haiti to figure things out about political organization beyond mob riots.
Caesar was the prototype for what Marxists later identified as Bonapartism: a powerful ruler who overcomes the existing state institutions by leaning upon the middle classes to establish their own supremacy.

The supposed power given to the Assembly would have been contingent entirely upon Caesar's authority; thus the Assembly would have been totally dependent upon Caesar personally, and could in no way have represented "democracy' (with or without Random Capitalization). It would have been a captive Assembly, to an even greater degree than the vestigial Senate was under Augustus, incapable of forming anything other than a rubber stamp against Caesar. The plebeians did not have the resources to act independently, with the Tribunate having failed them decades earlier and the fact that Caesar would have been rich enough to crush the mob if they revolted against him. Power in the late Republic was imperial power, based around conquest and the command of the provinces.

Fundamentally Caesar's victory meant the victory of the same social forces that won out under Augustus: a demagogic leader lording it over the aristocracy, who nonetheless ultimately profit immensely from the imperial system. The idea that it could have been transformed into some kind of idyllic democracy is either fantasy or delusion.


Elections facilitate incumbency and skew "representation" such that "representative" bodies are not statistically representative of the population.
Let me ask you something: do you participate in any actual movement work? The way you write, it really seems like you deal primarily in a world of very strange absolutes. The idea of demarchy is just a historical curiosity, like some of the more esoteric theories that Green Party types tend to pontificate about, and there is no way in hell that a democratic socialist movement would ever implement it after the revolution.


You just claim it isn't simply because you can't fathom any kind of workers party that doesn't have extensive tred-iunion links.
The term "petit-bourgeois workers' party" has no meaning. A bourgeois workers' party is one that is organically linked to the workers' movement in some way - typically through the trade unions - but carries a program that accepts, fundamentally, bourgeois rule. The petite-bourgeoisie, particularly, do not have coherent unity or interests as a class, and the idea of a "petit-bourgeois workers party" is totally meaningless, just a random string of shibboleths.

In terms of who the actual composition of the PSUV, its core is not workers at all but the state bureaucracy, which was enrolled...well..bureaucratically. Whole groups of people were basically told they were part of the party. It is controlled not by the unions or any other workers' institutions, but this same bureaucratic layer. As such it cannot be sociologically considered a workers party even in the sense that the bourgeois workers' parties are.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Caesar was the prototype for what Marxists later identified as Bonapartism: a powerful ruler who overcomes the existing state institutions by leaning upon the middle classes to establish their own supremacy.

Caesarism /= Bonapartism. Equating the two was a historical mistake (siding with gentlemen's history) but also a contemporary political mistake for the Third World. That's why Trotskyism has no roots outside of Sri Lanka, as opposed to Maoism (despite its flaws on the "national bourgeoisie").

Bonapartism denies independent working-class organization and also maintains the bourgeoisie. Caesarism as I've defined it seeks to destroy that class, even if it opposes proletarian supremacy (but I'm optimistic that we can at least wring from it politico-ideological independence).


The supposed power given to the Assembly would have been contingent entirely upon Caesar's authority; thus the Assembly would have been totally dependent upon Caesar personally, and could in no way have represented "democracy' (with or without Random Capitalization). It would have been a captive Assembly, to an even greater degree than the vestigial Senate was under Augustus, incapable of forming anything other than a rubber stamp against Caesar.

Not unless the Assembly itself was filled with those who formed Caesar's class base of political and military support. Caesar is just one man, and would have been nothing without that base.

I'm certain that on some key issues the Assembly would have gone along with Caesar, but being just one man, and especially a military commander, even Caesar couldn't handle every single domestic question facing the Roman Republic or its parts.


The idea of demarchy is just a historical curiosity, like some of the more esoteric theories that Green Party types tend to pontificate about, and there is no way in hell that a democratic socialist movement would ever implement it after the revolution.

And every movement that repeats the mistake of elections, magnified especially in a multi-tier council model, will suffer the same fate. Paul Cockshott noted this from his own political activism in past years. Ditto with Kojin Karatani.


The term "petit-bourgeois workers' party" has no meaning. A bourgeois workers' party is one that is organically linked to the workers' movement in some way - typically through the trade unions - but carries a program that accepts, fundamentally, bourgeois rule. The petite-bourgeoisie, particularly, do not have coherent unity or interests as a class, and the idea of a "petit-bourgeois workers party" is totally meaningless, just a random string of shibboleths.

The urban and rural petit-bourgeoisie may not have any radical socioeconomic agenda, but they sure have lots of political potential. Trotsky's strategic mistake in his Permanent Revolution was not recognizing this, which Stalin used effectively to hurl the "contempt for the peasantry" accusation.


In terms of who the actual composition of the PSUV, its core is not workers at all but the state bureaucracy, which was enrolled...well..bureaucratically. Whole groups of people were basically told they were part of the party. It is controlled not by the unions or any other workers' institutions, but this same bureaucratic layer. As such it cannot be sociologically considered a workers party even in the sense that the bourgeois workers' parties are.

How's that different from the so-called "political class" dominating the Labour party?

[graymouser]

Caesarism /= Bonapartism. Equating the two was a historical mistake (siding with gentlemen's history) but also a contemporary political mistake for the Third World. That's why Trotskyism has no roots outside of Sri Lanka, as opposed to Maoism (despite its flaws on the "national bourgeoisie").
Not to be too flip, but you missed Bolivia. For the most part Trotskyism has been stymied, often physically as in Vietnam, by Stalinism and the Stalinists have had a tremendous amount more resources to spread their ideas.

And Caesarism is different from Bonapartism mostly in that it was based upon much earlier forms of class society, slavery and a vast empire, all of which make any attempt to use it as a "strategy" for the Third World some sort of bizarre joke.


Bonapartism denies independent working-class organization and also maintains the bourgeoisie. Caesarism as I've defined it seeks to destroy that class, even if it opposes proletarian supremacy.
There was no bourgeoisie in the Roman Republic, so there is certainly no basis whatsoever for your idea of a "progressive" Caesarism in actual history. The aristocracy was not a bourgeoisie, and was in no way existentially threatened by Caesar.

As for the idea of third world authoritarian "Caesarist" leaders being a viable strategy, rather than proletarian revolution, it is a fundamentally first world chauvinist prescription. Who the hell are you to say that what the third world people need is a benevolent Caesar?


Not unless the Assembly itself was filled with those who formed Caesar's class base of political and military support. Caesar is just one man, and would have been nothing without that base.
If you can honestly say that, you understand nothing of ancient Roman society. Caesar was the richest man in the world. If the plebeian masses of Rome would not suffice, you honestly think he wouldn't have been able to crush them in turn?


I'm certain that on some key issues the Assembly would have gone along with Caesar, but being just one man, and especially a military commander, even Caesar couldn't handle every single domestic question facing the Roman Republic or its parts.
Again, his role would have been fundamentally similar to that of Augustus because the class forces behind Roman society would have been extremely similar. You've done nothing but evade and attempt to deny that fundamental fact.


And every movement that repeats the mistake of elections, magnified especially in a multi-tier council model, will suffer the same fate. Paul Cockshott noted this from his own political activism in past years. Ditto with Kojin Karatani.
Why should I care what Paul Cockshott says? Or Kojin Karatani? The problems with past movements weren't that they had elections, it was mostly with the lack of a revolutionary party, or in the case of the Soviet Union, lack of a world socialist revolution.


The urban and rural petit-bourgeoisie may not have any radical socioeconomic agenda, but they sure have lots of political potential. Trotsky's strategic mistake in his Permanent Revolution was not recognizing this, which Stalin used effectively to hurl the "contempt for the peasantry" accusation.
This is close to repeating the Stalinist lie. Trotsky was quite explicit that the peasantry had potential only if led by the proletariat. The same goes for the urban petite bourgeoisie. None of that makes the idea of a "petit bourgeois workers party" even somewhat coherent, or demonstrates how it could possibly apply to the PSUV.


How's that different from the so-called "political class" dominating the Labour party?
There are no organic or historic links between the Venezuelan working class and the PSUV. There are links between the trade unions and the Labour Party, which are the only reason that socialists can honestly call for critical support to it. We can say of Labour, "This is supposed to be your party, let's see it take up the real interests of the working class." The PSUV has no such claim; it is a cross-class party, explicitly.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Not to be too flip, but you missed Bolivia. For the most part Trotskyism has been stymied, often physically as in Vietnam, by Stalinism and the Stalinists have had a tremendous amount more resources to spread their ideas.

Pardon me re. Bolivia, then. Sri Lanka is the more obvious example.

I took into account the "physical" interaction (nice euphemism there) Third World Trots had to endure when I made my statement. However, I don't think Vietnam was the rule.

The Maoists and official Communists certainly had more resources, but let's look even to Portugal. The ex-Trotskyist Macnair said that the Portuguese workers turned to the official Communists because they had a political program well beyond labour disputes or illusions of growing political struggles out of economic ones.


And Caesarism is different from Bonapartism mostly in that it was based upon much earlier forms of class society, slavery and a vast empire, all of which make any attempt to use it as a "strategy" for the Third World some sort of bizarre joke.

Fine, if you want to be more accurate and precise with words, let's just say "Modern Caesarism" or "New Caesarism" for the new anti-bourgeois politics.



Bonapartism denies independent working-class organization and also maintains the bourgeoisie. Caesarism as I've defined it seeks to destroy that class, even if it opposes proletarian supremacy (but I'm optimistic that we can at least wring from it politico-ideological independence).There was no bourgeoisie in the Roman Republic, so there is certainly no basis whatsoever for your idea of a "progressive" Caesarism in actual history. The aristocracy was not a bourgeoisie, and was in no way existentially threatened by Caesar.

As for the idea of third world authoritarian "Caesarist" leaders being a viable strategy, rather than proletarian revolution, it is a fundamentally first world chauvinist prescription. Who the hell are you to say that what the third world people need is a benevolent Caesar?

In the Third World, the ranks of urban small business owners give the ranks of the proletariat a numerical run for their money. The ranks of the rural petit-bourgeoisie ("peasantry" or otherwise) definitely outnumber the ranks of the proletariat. Moreover, there are the proper lumpenproletariat existing outside the legal wage-labour system (in many of these countries, prostitution is illegal, for example, and ditto with low-level gangster work in the drug trade). Then there are the coordinators in the private sector and in the public sector bureaucracy.

It would be political suicide to assume in arrogance that the proletariat is magically entitled to leading these other classes in a Third World political revolution. That's why there's the "National Petit-Bourgeoisie," the thoroughly anti-bourgeois elements of the petit-bourgeoisie, and their tactics of people's war, Focoism, PDPA-style military coups (see Afghanistan) - and also the figurative "March on Rome."

As long as we can wring from the Caesarist movement politico-ideological independence for the working class in building the inevitable proletarian opposition, the proletariat in the Third World can wait for its turn in the second stage, and I say this as a worker.

The funny thing about this advocacy of Third World Caesarism / Managed Democracy / Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie, btw, is that it's no longer tied to the older question of escaping feudal relations like the old Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry was.


Why should I care what Paul Cockshott says? Or Kojin Karatani? The problems with past movements weren't that they had elections, it was mostly with the lack of a revolutionary party, or in the case of the Soviet Union, lack of a world socialist revolution.

In the days of the pre-war SPD, elections helped breed careerists who had an incumbency advantage.


This is close to repeating the Stalinist lie. Trotsky was quite explicit that the peasantry had potential only if led by the proletariat.

Trotsky was horribly wrong. The peasantry may have had no social potential, but they definitely had political potential irrespective of the political organization of the proletariat.


The same goes for the urban petite bourgeoisie.

It's funny that, in Maoist theory discussions, they defend New Democracy on the same basis that Trotsky does, that somehow the New Democracy is "led by the proletariat."

I'm just being more honest about practice, in that the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie requires proletarian independence but not proletarian leadership.

Sidenote on demarchy: I advocate demarchy as a necessary component of the DOTP itself, not as a necessary component of the Third World Caesarism / Managed Democracy / Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie.


None of that makes the idea of a "petit bourgeois workers party" even somewhat coherent, or demonstrates how it could possibly apply to the PSUV.

In a Caesarian revolution based on the dominance of a managed multi-party system, something like the PSUV would occupy the space of the Party of Order. Just look at its stance on violent video games. It would take the national security apparatus lead in "going Kremlin" on any bourgeois or liberal opposition.


There are no organic or historic links between the Venezuelan working class and the PSUV. There are links between the trade unions and the Labour Party, which are the only reason that socialists can honestly call for critical support to it. We can say of Labour, "This is supposed to be your party, let's see it take up the real interests of the working class." The PSUV has no such claim; it is a cross-class party, explicitly.

Where I'm coming from, one key component of politico-ideological independence is a workers-only voting membership policy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/redefining-membership-political-t146635/index.html). This is a much stronger "link" with the rest of the working class than any tred-iunion affiliation shit.

In fact, the pre-war SPD grew because of this, and the tred-iunion affiliation shit came later in the 1900s.

Labour is as cross-class a party in demographics as the PSUV is.

[graymouser]

DNZ:

I have to note that there is no content about Roman history in your latest reply, and as such I think we've managed to go completely off-topic from, you know, the actual subject of this thread. I'd be interested with pursuing the third world Caesarism concept in a separate thread but I don't want to drag this one completely off-topic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

There was no bourgeoisie in the Roman Republic, so there is certainly no basis whatsoever for your idea of a "progressive" Caesarism in actual history. The aristocracy was not a bourgeoisie, and was in no way existentially threatened by Caesar.

The progressive nature of Caesarism is precisely the existential threat his politics posed to the aristocracy. You didn't address how he allegedly didn't pose such threat.


If you can honestly say that, you understand nothing of ancient Roman society. Caesar was the richest man in the world. If the plebeian masses of Rome would not suffice, you honestly think he wouldn't have been able to crush them in turn?

The notion of Caesar being the richest man in the world contradicts his enacted Maximum on Allowable Personal Wealth of 15,000 drachmas. Now, of course, if you're referring to his access to state coffers to sustain a certain level of lifestyle, like the privileges of Soviet bureaucrats during the Stalin era, then that's another story.

As for crushing in turn, you can only bribe so many.

[Kléber]

Of course there was class struggle in Ancient Rome. What there was not was a bourgeoisie; a proletariat; any socialist perspective for the downtrodden masses. So class struggle in Ancient Rome was class struggle between other classes, not between proletariat and bourgeoisie; and for different aims, not for either the survival of capitalism or its revolutionary suppression.
Again, I never mentioned the bourgeoisie, and I never said that Roman society was capitalist, so I wonder how long you can continue to beat up this straw man. There was actually an urban and mercantile bourgeoisie in the ancient Mediterranean but it was small and had little power. There was a proletariat as well, the term comes from the Latin proletarii meaning propertyless, these were urban workers who mainly inhabited the slums of cities like Rome, and most of whom were perennially unemployed due to the lack of large-scale industry - thus they could not seize control of any means of production and establish new social relations.

The most acute class contradiction in classical antiquity was between slaves and slaveowners. This contradiction continues to the present day on a much smaller scale, the primary contradiction in the world is now between labor and capital, but the struggle against modern slavery is entirely revolutionary. The struggle against slavery is just as old as slavery itself, but it did not become revolutionary at a certain date when socialism became achievable. It was, is and will always be revolutionary for slaves to resist and overthrow their masters - that is why we all stand in the tradition of Spartacus.


Any materialist take on ancient Roman history must start from realising this; superimposing modern concepts into it is bogus, and leads to anachronic and a-historic conclusions, such as "Caesar's crimes" or "Caesar's radicalism".Any materialist take on history must cover the whole of history, not just the last two centuries. It is not some kind of modern prejudice to feel disgust at Caesar's massacres of the Gauls. Even among the literate Roman elite, sentiments were recorded in writing which deplored the inequalities and barbarity of Rome. As the story goes, the populist demagogue Quintus Sertorius decided to rebel after witnessing a delegation of Iberian chiefs get betrayed and murdered by the Roman legions.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The most acute class contradiction in classical antiquity was between slaves and slaveowners. This contradiction continues to the present day on a much smaller scale, the primary contradiction in the world is now between labor and capital, but the struggle against modern slavery is entirely revolutionary. The struggle against slavery is just as old as slavery itself, but it did not become revolutionary at a certain date when socialism became achievable. It was, is and will always be revolutionary for slaves to resist and overthrow their masters - that is why we all stand in the tradition of Spartacus.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=845

Explain then, why it took so long for the chattel slave class(es) to figure out how to organize politically for the long-term (and by "so long," I mean the absence of something long-lasting before the Haiti uprising)?

[Luís Henrique]

Caesarism /= Bonapartism. Equating the two was a historical mistake (siding with gentlemen's history) but also a contemporary political mistake for the Third World.

There isn't, and there cannot be, anything like "Caesarism" in the Third World.

There is no longer slavery, which was what Caesarism was based upon. There aren't de jure aristocracies that could be "abolished" as Caesar intended to do to the senatorial class. Third world armies (and the legions were essential to Caesar's strategy) do not represent the plebs, but rather the bourgeoisie or landed oligarchy.

The left populism we see in countries like Bolivia or Venezuela isn't a form of Caesarism; it is a completely different phenomenon, which must be discussed on its own, not by doing what Marx criticises in the first paragraph of the 18th Brummaire.

Luís Henrique

[Dimentio]

Long live our liberator! GREAT DEAD CTULHU!

[Die Neue Zeit]

There isn't, and there cannot be, anything like "Caesarism" in the Third World.

Comrade Zanthorus called this suggested phenomenon a "Caesar Mark II." (http://www.revleft.com/vb/peoples-histories-blocs-t142332/index.html?p=1974486#post1974486) I'd only counter with the suggestion "Caesar 2.1." :D

I also called it "New Caesarism" or "Modern Caesarism" in addition to "Third World Caesarism."

Besides, Luxemburgists and Trots had/have their "Spartacists." :p


There is no longer slavery, which was what Caesarism was based upon. There aren't de jure aristocracies that could be "abolished" as Caesar intended to do to the senatorial class.

But there are the dispossessed classes on one side and the bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie on the other.


Third world armies (and the legions were essential to Caesar's strategy) do not represent the plebs, but rather the bourgeoisie or landed oligarchy.

OK, so tackling the issue of Third World armies is a big challenge. Nevertheless, one can't claim that the PDPA military coup in 1970s Afghanistan was reactionary.


The left populism we see in countries like Bolivia or Venezuela isn't a form of Caesarism; it is a completely different phenomenon, which must be discussed on its own, not by doing what Marx criticises in the first paragraph of the 18th Brummaire.

I agree with you, but precisely because it fits in my critique that more steps need to be taken in Venezuela especially before I can say that Hugo Chavez is truly emulating the Julius Caesar of people's history. In fact, Alexander Lukashenko is closer to that than Chavez at the moment.


Long live our liberator! GREAT DEAD CTULHU!

:lol:

The first sentence would be applicable to the personality cult of the Caesar figure. The second part, well, not so much. :p

[graymouser]

The progressive nature of Caesarism is precisely the existential threat his politics posed to the aristocracy. You didn't address how he allegedly didn't pose such threat.
The existential threat is a fabrication of a single, remarkably sloppy author (not historian). For instance: Parenti argues that Caesar was appointed imperator perpetuus and not dictator by the Senate. This is abject nonsense - imperator was a title of acclamation by an army, meaning "commander," and was given after a significant victory. The Senate had no power to make Caesar an imperator. (It didn't come to mean "emperor" until over a century after Caesar was murdered.) It did, however, make Caesar dictator perpetuo, which along with Caesar's other titles, effectively turned the dictatura into a monarchy.

Parenti's defense of Caesar as a popularis is mistaken in two important senses. First, the real difference between the optimates and the populares cannot be summed up broadly as a question of program. (The Gracchi did really have a more egalitarian version of Rome in mind, but their vision was drowned in blood.) The optimates acted through the Senate and the populares through the plebeians, and that was the key difference between them. And second, it doesn't adequately account for the stratification of the plebeians. There were a number of rich plebeians in the class of equites who were essentially the nouveaux riches of the fledgling empire - these were the strongest supporters of Caesar's rise to power.

Finally, this is a false conception of the "people." Even if we accepted that Caesar stood for the plebeians, he would not stand for the slaves, the freedmen (liberti) or peasants - who were not generally citizens. The proletarii and the other plebs, including the equites who were the rising class throughout most of the late Republic and the early Empire, represented only a portion of the Roman "people," and generally not the oppressed classes amongst them. The equites were ambitious and had more in common with the aristocrats than the proletarii.


The notion of Caesar being the richest man in the world contradicts his enacted Maximum on Allowable Personal Wealth of 15,000 drachmas. Now, of course, if you're referring to his access to state coffers to sustain a certain level of lifestyle, like the privileges of Soviet bureaucrats during the Stalin era, then that's another story.
The Roman concept of wealth was not limited to drachmas (a Greek and not a Roman unit of currency). Caesar limited cash holdings to 60000 sesterces, but this was simply a measure to prevent hoarding as it did not limit wealth in land, slaves and other holdings. This was a perpetual struggle of the Empire; cash in that period did not function as capital, and large holdings needed to be made as productive as the slave system made possible. So if you were hoarding cash it meant you weren't working slaves to death in the mines and the fields. More than that, the state in 49 BC was having a liquidity crisis. To portray Caesar's law as revolutionary only proclaims your ignorance of Roman history.


As for crushing in turn, you can only bribe so many.
Caesar's power was based on the legions and he had already marched on Rome. It is ludicrous to say he wouldn't have done so again.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The existential threat is a fabrication of a single, remarkably sloppy author (not historian).

He's as "sloppy" (and high in "shock value") as Marx was about "primitive accumulation" (Harvey is more correct about ongoing accumulation by dispossession).


For instance: Parenti argues that Caesar was appointed imperator perpetuus and not dictator by the Senate. This is abject nonsense - imperator was a title of acclamation by an army, meaning "commander," and was given after a significant victory. The Senate had no power to make Caesar an imperator. (It didn't come to mean "emperor" until over a century after Caesar was murdered.) It did, however, make Caesar dictator perpetuo, which along with Caesar's other titles, effectively turned the dictatura into a monarchy.

You'll have to cite the page number.


Parenti's defense of Caesar as a popularis is mistaken in two important senses. First, the real difference between the optimates and the populares cannot be summed up broadly as a question of program. (The Gracchi did really have a more egalitarian version of Rome in mind, but their vision was drowned in blood.) The optimates acted through the Senate and the populares through the plebeians, and that was the key difference between them. And second, it doesn't adequately account for the stratification of the plebeians. There were a number of rich plebeians in the class of equites who were essentially the nouveaux riches of the fledgling empire - these were the strongest supporters of Caesar's rise to power.

The equites weren't the ones swelling the ranks of the Roman military, but the proletarii and peasants.


Finally, this is a false conception of the "people." Even if we accepted that Caesar stood for the plebeians, he would not stand for the slaves, the freedmen (liberti) or peasants - who were not generally citizens. The proletarii and the other plebs, including the equites who were the rising class throughout most of the late Republic and the early Empire, represented only a portion of the Roman "people," and generally not the oppressed classes amongst them. The equites were ambitious and had more in common with the aristocrats than the proletarii.

Parenti conceded the point about slaves, but I'm pretty sure the peasants were citizens (you know, serving in the military to gain citizenship). Maybe he meant "proletarii" in a broader sense: the proper proletarii, the peasants, and the liberti?

[graymouser]

He's as "sloppy" (and high in "shock value") as Marx was about "primitive accumulation" (Harvey is more correct about ongoing accumulation by dispossession).
No, Parenti is far worse in this regard than Marx was as a historian. I find it shocking that anybody takes his book seriously. Its only possible appeal is to use its initial ad hominem attacks on actual historians to justify distortion that borders on falsificationism.


You'll have to cite the page number.
Sure. Page 163. Parenti claims that the Senate made Caesar imperator, not dictator. He is wrong, both in his description of the differences and in the fact that imperator was not a title that the Senate could have conferred upon Caesar - it was only made possible by acclimation from a general's troops on the field. The Senate made Caesar the dictator for life, among certain other titles that effectively ceded power directly to him.


The equites weren't the ones swelling the ranks of the Roman military, but the proletarii and peasants.
Maybe in the ranks, but so what? There was a tremendous class conflict between the plebeian equites who were becoming richer and more entrenched in the state machinery and the patricians who held state power through the Senate. Caesar, although himself a patrician, represented to a significant degree the ambitions of the equites toward greater autonomy and power. They saw their chance with him. Your whole fantasy about the concilium plebis becoming the ruling power in Rome through Caesar falls apart when you understand that the plebs were stratified into classes, and the concilia would have been dominated by the powerful equites and used as a rubber stamp for an absolute ruler just as the Senate under the Emperors was.


Parenti conceded the point about slaves, but I'm pretty sure the peasants were citizens (you know, serving in the military to gain citizenship). Maybe he meant "proletarii" in a broader sense: the proper proletarii, the peasants, and the liberti?
Well, that "broader sense" would be ahistorical and wrong. The proletarii by definition were separate from the peasants, they were literally capite censi, head count, because they didn't own anything. If they had land to farm they wouldn't have been proletarii, now would they?

As for the slaves, if you miss them you miss the whole point on ancient democracy. The proletarii could never have taken on any progressive role as long as there were slaves who could be worked mercilessly, with no avenue for redress of any kind, for only the cost of sustenance (plus a purchase price at the beginning). That's why real leftists consider the Spartacus uprising much more important than any of the penny-ante reforms proposed by Julius Caesar.

This book belongs in the dustbin of history, and as long as you use it in your thinking that's where you'll be headed as well.

[Die Neue Zeit]

So how come Gramsci wrote that "Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism, Napoleon III and Bismarck of reactionary Caesarism"? He was on to something, something that was partially concluded upon only in 2003 and definitively concluded upon only late last year.

[Jose Gracchus]

Gramsci's characterizations are something apart from you offering a Third World left-populist strongmanism (so long as they offer some check-list of requirements) in favor of workers' power, I'm afraid. Furthermore, you seem to implicitly deny the possibility that the models for "Third World Caesarism" you provide perhaps are in essence opposed to your prime condition for it as a progressive option: working class politico-ideological (and organizational, I'm assuming) independence. Third World (and General) left-populism seeks to blunt and turn aside development of the proletariat as a class-for-itself.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Gramsci's characterizations are something apart from you offering a Third World left-populist strongmanism (so long as they offer some check-list of requirements) in favor of workers' power, I'm afraid. Furthermore, you seem to implicitly deny the possibility that the models for "Third World Caesarism" you provide perhaps are in essence opposed to your prime condition for it as a progressive option: working class politico-ideological (and organizational, I'm assuming) independence.

"Organizational" is subsumed under "political." Also, I didn't deny that possibility at all, since each of those models meet only part of my check list. In fact, Lassalle is the one that definitely meets the "working-class politico-ideological independence" criterion, but he wasn't a state strongman.


Third World (and General) left-populism seeks to blunt and turn aside development of the proletariat as a class-for-itself.

I did state at least one key cause of this blunting: not being thoroughly anti-bourgeois (which then basically means being a Bonapartist at best). I think I said this in other threads, but if not I'll state it here: Maoists are the ones best-positioned to adopt this "Third World Caesarism." They need to dump their "national bourgeoisie" and comprador petit-bourgeoisie practice and their baseless "under the leadership of the working class" rhetoric.

Moreover, I also think they're the ones most capable of making sure that the "managed democracy" party system rules above any charismatic strongman hand-waving to the public while intimidating the bureaucracy and judiciary for the sake of "autonomous peasant goals, that is to say, patriarchalism, the setting up of an absolute ruler, a cult of personality whether it's of Lenin or Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe" (Macnair). ;)

[Red Commissar]

So how come Gramsci wrote that "Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism, Napoleon III and Bismarck of reactionary Caesarism"? He was on to something, something that was partially concluded upon only in 2003 and definitively concluded upon only late last year.

I don't have anything to add here but it's useful to see Gramsci's bit on "Caesarism" in the piece from his prison notebooks rather than from that line. I'll provide that bit here for anyone interested:


Caesar, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, Cromwell, etc. Compile a catalogue of the historical events which have culminated in a great 'heroic' personality.

Caesarism can be said to express a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way that a continuation of the conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. When the progressive force A struggles with the regressive force B, not only may A defeat B or B defeat A, but it may happen that neither A nor B defeats the other -that they bleed each other mutually and than a third force C intervenes from outside subjugating what is left of both A and B. In Italy, after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, this is precisely what occurred.

But Caesarism -although it always expresses the particular solution in which a great personality is entrusted with the task of 'arbitration' over a historico-political situation characterised by an equilibrium of forces heading towards catastrophe does not in all cases have the same historical significance. There can be both a progressive and a regressive form of Caesarism; the exact significance of each form can, in the last analysis, be reconstructed only through concrete history, and not by means of any sociological schema. Caesarism is progressive when its intervention helps the progressive force to triumph, albeit with its victory tempered by certain compromises and limitations. It is regressive when its intervention helps the regressive force to triumph -in this case too with certain compromises and limitations, which have, however, a different value, extent, and significance than in the former. Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism. Napoleon III and Bismarck of regressive Caesarism. The problem is to see whether in the dialectic 'revolution/restoration' it is revolution or restoration which predominates; for it is certain that in the movement of history there is never any turning back, and that restorations in toto do not exist. Besides, Caesarism is a polemical-ideological formula, and not a canon of historical interpretation. A Caesarist solution can exist even without a Caesar, without any great 'heroic' and representative personality. The parliamentary system has also provided a mechanism for such compromise solutions. The 'Labour' governments of MacDonald were to a certain degree solutions of this kind; and the degree of Caesarism increased when the government was formed which had MacDonald as its head and a Conservative majority. IS Similarly in Italy from October 1922 until the defection of the 'Popolari', and then by stages until 3 January 1925, and then until 8 November 1926, there was a politicohistorical movement in which various gradations of Caesarism succeeded each other, culminating in a more pure and permanent form -though even this was not static or immobile. Every coalition government is a first stage of Caesarism, which either mayor may not develop to more significant stages (the common opinion of course is that coalition governments, on the contrary, are the most 'solid bulwark' against Caesarism).

In the modern world, with its great economic-trade-union and party-political coalitions, the mechanism of the Caesarist phenomenon is very different from what it was up to the time of Napoleon III. In the period up to Napoleon III, the regular military forces or soldiers of the line were a decisive element in the advent of Caesarism, and this came about through quite precise coups d'etat, through military actions, etc. In the modern world trade-union and political forces, with the limitless financial means which may be at the disposal of small groups of citizens, complicate the problem. The functionaries of the parties and economic unions can be corrupted or terrorized, without any need for military action in the grand style -of the Caesar or 18 Brumaire type: The same situation recurs in this field as was examined in connection with the Jacobin/1848 formula of the so-called 'permanent revolution' Modern political technique became totally transformed after 1848; after the expansion of parliamentarism and of the associative systems of union and party, and the growth in the formation of vast state and 'private' bureaucracies (i.e. politico-private, belonging to parties and trade unions); and after the transformations which took place in the organization of the forces of order in the wide sense -i.e. not only the public service designed for the repression of crime, but the totality of forces organized by the state and by private individuals to safeguard the political and economic domination of the ruling classes. In this sense, entire 'political' parties and other organizations economic or otherwise -must be considered as organs of political order, of an investigational and preventive character.

The generic schema of forces A and B in conflict with catastrophic prospects -i.e. with the prospect that neither A nor B will be victorious, in the struggle to constitute (or reconstitute) an organic equilibrium, from which Caesarism is born (can be born) is precisely a generk hypothesis, a sociological schema (convenient for the art of politics). It is possible to render the hypothesis ever more concrete, to carry it to an ever greater degree of approximation to concrete historical reality, and this can be achieved by defining certain fundamental elements.

Thus, in speaking of A and B, it has merely been asserted that they are respectively a generically progressive, and a generically regressive, force. But one might specify the type of progressive and regressive force involved, and so obtain closer approximations. In the case of Caesar and of Napoleon I, it can be said that A and B, though distinct and in conflict, were nevertheless not such as to be 'absolutely' incapable of arriving, after a molecular process, at a reciprocal fusion and assimilation. And this was what in fact happened, at least to a certain degree (sufficient, however, for the historico-political objectives in question i.e. the halting of the fundamental organic struggle, and hence the transcendence of the catastrophic phase). This is one element of closer approximation. Another such element is the following: the catastrophic phase may be brought about by a 'momentary' political deficiency of the traditional dominant force, and not by any necessarily insuperable organic deficiency. This was true in the case of Napoleon III. The dominant force in France from 1815 up to 1848 had split politically (factiously) into four camps: legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, Jacobin-republicans. The internal faction struggle was such as to make possible the advance of the rival force B (progressive) in a precocious form; however, the existing social form had not yet exhausted its possibilities for development, as subsequent history abundantly demonstrated. Napoleon III represented (in his own manner, as fitted the stature of the man, which was not great) these latent and immanent possibilities: his Caesarism therefore has a particular coloration. The Caesarism of Caesar and Napoleon I was, so to speak, of a quantitative/ qualitative character; in other words it represented the historical phase of passage from one type of state to another type -a passage in which the innovations were so numerous, and of such a nature, that they represented a complete revolution. The Caesarism of Napoleon III was merely, and in a limited fashion, quantitative; there was no passage from one type of state to another, but only 'evolution' of the same type along unbroken lines.

In the modern world, Caesarist phenomena are quite different, both from those of the progressive Caesar/Napoleon'I type, and from those of the Napoleon III type -although they tend towards the latter. In the modern world, the equilibrium with catastrophic prospects occurs not between forces which could in the last analysis fuse and unite -albeit after a wearying and bloody process -but between forces whose opposition is historically incurable and indeed becomes especially acute with the advent of Caesarist forms. However, in the modern world Caesarism also has a certain margin -larger or smaller, depending on the country and its relative weight in the global context, for a social form 'always' has marginal possibilities for further development and organizational improvement, and in particular can count on the relative weakness of the rival progressive force as a result of its specific character and way of life. It is necessary for the dominant social form to preserve this weakness: this is why it has been asserted that modern Caesarism is more a police than a military system.

It would be an error of method (an aspect of sociological mechanicism) to believe that in Caesarism -whether progressive, regressive, or of an intermediate and episodic character the entire new historical phenomenon is due to the equilibrium of the 'fundamental' forces. It is also necessary to see the interplay of relations between the principal groups (of various kinds, socio-economic and technical-economic) of the fundamental classes and the auxiliary forces directed by, or subjected to, their hegemonic influence. Thus it would be impossible to understand the coup d'etat of 2 December [1852] without studying the function of the French military groups and peasantry.

A very important historical episode from this point of view is the so-called Dreyfus affair in France. This too belongs to the present series of observations, not because it led to 'Caesarism', indeed precisely for the opposite reason: because it prevented the advent of a Caesarism in gestation, of a clearly reactionary nature. Nevertheless,the Dreyfus movement is characteristic, since it was a case in which elements of the dominant social bloc itself thwarted the Caesarism of the most reactionary part of that same bloc. And they did so by relying for support not on the peasantry and the countryside, but. on the subordinate strata in the towns under the leadership of reformist socialists (though they did in fact draw support from the most advanced part of the peasantry as well). There are other modern historico-political movements of the Dreyfus type to be found, which are certainly not revolutions, but which are not entirely reactions either at least in the sense that they shatter stifling and ossified state structures in the dominant camp as well, and introduce into national life and social activity a different and more numerous personneL These movements too can have a relatively 'progressive' content, in so far as they indicate that there were effective forces latent in the old society which the older leaders did not know how to exploit -perhaps even 'marginal forces'. However, such forces cannot be absolutely progressive, in that they are not 'epochal'. They are rendered historically effective by their adversary's inability to construct, not by an inherent force of their own. Hence they are linked to a particular situation of equilibrium between the conflicting forces both incapable in their respective camps of giving autonomous expression to a will for reconstruction.


It must be remembered though that due to the way he was writing in prison, he often did a lot of doublespeak and vague references to get by censors. What he really means is sometimes harder to comprehend.

As Quintin Hoare notes in the compilation of the prison works on this section:


As is clear from another note (PP, p.189) this term was suggested to Gramsci by the analogy commonly drawn in Fascist Italy between Caesar and Mussolini. Gramsci pours scorn on the "Theory of Caesarism", on the idea that Caesar "transformed Rome from a city-state into the capital of the Empire"- and by implication on the idea that Mussolini had effected a similar transformation in the status of modern Italy

Before in the introduction Hoare sums up his intent


"Caesarism" for Gramsci, is a concept which does not merely refer to fascism, but can have a wider application- e.g. to the British National Government of 1931, etc.; it is thus not identical to Marx's concept of "Bonapartism", although it is clearly related to it. "Caesarism" represents a compromise between two "fundamental" social forces, but 1. "The problem is to see whether in the dialectic 'revolution/restoration' it is revolution or restoration which predominates", and 2. "It would be an error of method to believe that in Caesarism... the entire new historical phenomenon is due to the equilibrium of the 'fundamental' forces. It is also necessary to see the interplay of relations between the principal groups... of the fundamental classes and the axuiliary forces directed by, or subjected to, their hegemonic influence." Thus, in the specific case of the fascist regime in Italy, the problem, in Gramsci's eyes, is 1. to analyse the "passive revolution" which fascism perhaps represents, and 2. to analyse the specificity of the social forces which produced it- i.e. rejecting absolutely the crude equation fascism=capitalism.

[graymouser]

So how come Gramsci wrote that "Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism, Napoleon III and Bismarck of reactionary Caesarism"? He was on to something, something that was partially concluded upon only in 2003 and definitively concluded upon only late last year.
Gramsci was very rarely "onto" anything - he used oblique language because he was in prison and could not write in straightforward Marxist terms. His "Caesarism" is most probably a substitution for Bonapartism, which is after all the framework in which Marxists understand Napoleon I, Napoleon III, and Bismarck. The point of his writing on "Caesarism" was primarily to critique Mussolini and not to praise Caesar.

Considering the company Gramsci puts Caesar in, you cannot take anything too significant from it; Napoleon I was not a tremendous "progressive" man of history, but rather the original Bonapartist who transformed the French Republic into an Empire.

[Red Commissar]

Yeah, it's important to understand by what he was referring to when he said "Progressive" or "Reactionary" (in my text/translation it is regressive).

A "progressive" Caesarism to Gramsci referred to an instance where a strongman or some political force that comes into a situation where two forces at society, say progressive and conservative, are at odds. This force comes in, resolves the conflict in some manner, and assimilates/merges them. While this is happening a new state is formed, different from the old order.

In this case with Caesar, he set up the stages for the creation of the Empire- which involved a different arrangement than the Republic. With Napoleon I, he came in with the revolution in danger of petering out as the monarchists and republicans, with their conflicts, were causing problems for the future. Napoleon came in here, "reconciled" the two, and essentially created a new state different from the Ancien Regime before.

A "regressive" Caesarism refers to a situation where the force comes into prolong and extend the current state, even if the government changes in some form. In the case of Napoleon III, he came in in the early years of the Second Republic with the conflicts between Republicans and Monarchists becoming pronounced. While Napoleon III created a new Empire, he was essentially continuing the forces that were in play since the July Revolution. Chancellor Bismark was continuing the practices of Imperial German states, albeit on a larger scale, not the creation of a new state like the liberal pan-German nationalists of 1848 had hoped for. In both cases the previous order is extended. Like he points out:


The Caesarism of Caesar and Napoleon I was, so to speak, of a quantitative/ qualitative character; in other words it represented the historical phase of passage from one type of state to another type -a passage in which the innovations were so numerous, and of such a nature, that they represented a complete revolution. The Caesarism of Napoleon III was merely, and in a limited fashion, quantitative; there was no passage from one type of state to another, but only 'evolution' of the same type along unbroken lines.


Now of course we saw some changes here and there, concessions and reforms- but were they really beneficial or just simply unavoidable? In these cases they mainly seemed to be chump change or checked in such a way by the new Caesarism to prevent it from going any further.

However, does this mean that "Caesar" was something to be admired? No. It's a means for Gramsci to look at history. The underlying current in all this is ultimately, like Greymouser said, Gramsci trying to understand the nature of Fascism in Italy. What was Mussolini's role? What was the Fascist Party's role? Was Fascism further developing the previous "state" or overturning it and creating a new one? Note this passage here-


nmn"Similarly in Italy from October 1922 until the defection of the 'Popolari', and then by stages until 3 January 1925, and then until 8 November 1926, there was a politicohistorical movement in which various gradations of Caesarism succeeded each other, culminating in a more pure and permanent form -though even this was not static or immobile."

Those three dates represent important points in Fascism's development in Italy. The first date is when Mussolini was invited into government by the king to head a "national" government after the March on Rome- this coming after the Biennio Rosso and the total bankruptcy of the liberal establishment. The second date is Mussolini's speech following the chaos after Matteoti's assassination and internal disputes within the Fascist party ( which, btw, at the time some were claiming would be divisive enough to mark the end of fascism in Italy), and the third is the date that, after an attempt at his life, Mussolini suspended parliament and issued arrests for deputies and other political figures, including many of those from the PCd'I. In each stage he was forming the new fascist order- but what was the nature of this new order? How and why did it form? This is what Gramsci is aiming for.

You really have to read it with his other notes on history, especially the parts about why Italy developed differently from the rest of Europe, which he attributed to the failure of the ruling classes in renaissance Italy city-states to form a meaningful connection to the masses, a "consent from the governed" . This caused no "economic-corporate" phase to form in Italy which in turn posed problems for the unified Italy which was essentially a crude extension of Sardinia-Piedmont over the peninsula. Gramsci claims it's from this vacuum that what Fascism and precursors found room to grow.

He has an interesting story of PM Francesco Crispi. Crispi was a Democrat of the old "Left, or the liberals that was opposed to the conservative "Moderates". Crispi, despite the hopes of the liberals, did little to advance the liberal cause in Italy but acted in the interest of the ruling establishment. He acted more as an arbiter between the demands of the progressives and the conservatives.

The most famous act of Crispi for socialists was the brutal repression of the Fasci Siciliani- an organization of workers in Sicily who went on strikes to protest working conditions in the early 1890s. Crispi violently reacted against these to restore order and keep the state moving in the Caesarian fashion that Gramsci lays out later. He gave some token reforms, but nothing subnational obviously. He checked the demands of the workers, since too much would have threatened the state he represented. His successor, Giolitti, continued the actions against the Fasci Siciliani (it is also worth noting that Giolitti would return for many terms as PM after this. Notably in 1920-1921 in which he arguably helped cultivate the rise of the Fascist movement to check the Biennio Rosso).

TBH I'm not 100% sure what Gramsci differentiates between Bonapartism and Caesarism. It seems to him to be an issue of mass organizations which the latter apparently has more of than the former. But it's not a defense of Caesarism or Caesar, or painting Caesar in a good light. In regards to Caesarism one can see that with his account of the Dreyfus Affair at the end of that selection and how it was good that a Caesarism was averted. In regards to Caesar itself Hoare provides the note that Gramsci really didn't care much for Caesar beyond his role in history. IMO for this stuff it's easier to find things with Spartacus and the Gracchi.

[Die Neue Zeit]

In regards to Caesar itself Hoare provides the note that Gramsci really didn't care much for Caesar beyond his role in history. IMO for this stuff it's easier to find things with Spartacus and the Gracchi.

Like I said it took decades to find eye-popping things about Caesar. ;)


Considering the company Gramsci puts Caesar in, you cannot take anything too significant from it; Napoleon I was not a tremendous "progressive" man of history, but rather the original Bonapartist who transformed the French Republic into an Empire.

I said Gramsci was merely on to something, not that he made a conclusion. He was woefully wrong to put Napoleon in the same company as Julius Caesar. There is Caesarism and there is Bonapartism. There is no "progressive" Bonapartism, and there is no "reactionary Caesarism" (except in the late first stage where Third World proletarian majorities come up against Caesarean states whose progressive usefulness has been exhausted). One is fine and dandy with having the bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie around. The other, while itself not into proletarian supremacy, isn't.

[Jose Gracchus]

I'm willing to bet there's more "national bourgeoisie" to the Venezuelan Bolivarian regime than Mao's China.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You didn't need to bet anything, comrade. "At least rhetorically" are my three key words with regards to comparing Chavez and Mao. There are times that call for me to be openly critical, but there are also times that call for cynically euphemistic criticism.

[graymouser]

I said Gramsci was merely on to something, not that he made a conclusion. He was woefully wrong to put Napoleon in the same company as Julius Caesar. There is Caesarism and there is Bonapartism. There is no "progressive" Bonapartism, and there is no "reactionary Caesarism" (except in the late first stage where Third World proletarian majorities come up against Caesarean states whose progressive usefulness has been exhausted). One is fine and dandy with having the bourgeoisie and comprador petit-bourgeoisie around. The other, while itself not into proletarian supremacy, isn't.
Are you really trying to make this point based on a literal reading of Gramsci's terminology? Everybody who understands anything about Gramsci should know that his terminology, aside from possibly the term "hegemony," is completely useless because it was generally being used to obscure the underlying concepts and get them past the fascist censors. It's as worthless as the people who prattled on about "praxis" after Gramsci. The "philosophy of praxis" was Marxism, it was simply a code word. Why do you think his term "Caesarism" is something different? In context, it's mostly a cipher for "Bonapartism."

As for Gramsci's characterization of Caesar and Napoleon I, he did have something quite right: both of them ended republics in favor of empires. With Caesar it was because the form of the republic was spent; with Napoleon it was because of the contradictions between the revolutionary classes in France.

By the by, what does this new tack demonstrate about the balance of class forces in Julius Caesar's Rome and Caesar's relationship to it? The argument you advance based on Parenti's book still seems to wreck based on the fact that the plebs were a highly differentiated class and the proletarii were basically a lumpen group because of the existence of a mass of slaves.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I only acquainted myself about Gramsci's "progressive Caesarism" because of a glossary item in Voice of the Turtle. I did this *after* my Third World Caesarism commentary. My point re. Gramsci and Parenti is this:


He was on to something

The gentlemen's history was beginning to be chipped away by Gramsci in his prison cell.


something that was partially concluded upon only in 2003

Parenti did not offer any contemporary political conclusions to his history take.


and definitively concluded upon only late last year

To quote Zanthorus in the "old Bolshevism" thread:

"DNZ is attempting to rehabilitate Kautsky. This thread is about his other crusade though against 'permanent revolution narrowness' or whatever. According to DNZ the job of Communists in underdeveloped countries is to behind petit-bourgeois and peasant based populist parties and advocate the creation of a Caesarism mark II, and everyone who isn't with him is underestimating the politically revolutionary capacity of the peasantry. And yes he has quoted Stalin in favour of this line."

Now:


The argument you advance based on Parenti's book still seems to wreck based on the fact that the plebs were a highly differentiated class and the proletarii were basically a lumpen group because of the existence of a mass of slaves.

And the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and "National" Petit-Bourgeoisie is even more differentiated, because there are various classes.

[Queercommie Girl]

Basically I think there are a lot of parallels between the empires of China and Rome. The economic base is different (slavery vs. landlordism) but the superstructure is similar in many ways. Both were huge bureaucratic empires.

Essentially Caesar is an ancient Roman version of a Bonapartist. I think it's true that he did not just represent the interests of the ruling slavelord class, but on the other hand, he clearly didn't represent the slaves and plebians either. He "floats above" both class blocs and initiated many policies to reduce inequality and curb corruption, i.e. sound rational policies that in the long-term would strengthen the bureaucratic empire of Rome as a whole (instead of just a particular class layer within it). But there is nothing "revolutionary" (even in the reformist sense) about him, because there was no desire, not even a subjective one, of changing the class power balance within the empire. Caesar did objectively introduce many relatively "progressive" policies, but whatever he did, he did it for the good of the empire, not for the good of the "people". He was a statist, even though sometimes left-wing relatively speaking, but not a true populist.

In this he is similar to many emperors in ancient China. For instance, Emperor Han Wudi in the 2nd century BCE also introduced many relatively "progressive" (in the economic sense) policies. Han Wudi, through the bureaucratic state machine, literally forced many big aristocratic landowners to give up their lands to the state, which were then redistributed to the landless poor, thus increasing the number of independent or semi-independent small farmers. He also nationalised the key industries of the Iron Age - the iron and salt mines in China. Public funds were directed to be spent on improving the education system, e.g. opening up more Confucian schools. (There were some cultural imperialist policies associated with this since Confucian schools were opened in the newly conquered Yue areas in southern China and the local natives were forcefully Sinised and turned into Han people) Corruption within the bureaucratic structure was also harshly punished.

Similar policies were practised by many relatively "enlightened" emperors throughout Chinese history. But essentially these were no more than what Putin is doing in Russia today: reducing extreme inequality, curbing corruption, strengthening the bureaucratic structure of the state. These are statist policies that are cross-class in character, aimed primarily at strengthening the state machine itself in the long-run rather than any particular layer within the state. So people like Caesar, Han Wudi and Putin are not elitists, but they are not populists either (let alone "socialists" in any form). They are certainly more progressive than those politicians that solely speak on behalf of the ruling class, (even if it means damaging the objective interests of the state or the nation as a whole), and it is a good thing to recognise it, (I'm not an ultra-leftist and I don't believe that everything that is non-socialist is equally reactionary, "progressive" and "reactionary" is relative) but their "progressiveness" is certainly very limited, from a Marxist perspective.

[Dimentio]

Basically I think there are a lot of parallels between the empires of China and Rome. The economic base is different (slavery vs. landlordism) but the superstructure is similar in many ways. Both were huge bureaucratic empires.

Essentially Caesar is an ancient Roman version of a Bonapartist. I think it's true that he did not just represent the interests of the ruling slavelord class, but on the other hand, he clearly didn't represent the slaves and plebians either. He "floats above" both class blocs and initiated many policies to reduce inequality and curb corruption, i.e. sound rational policies that in the long-term would strengthen the bureaucratic empire of Rome as a whole (instead of just a particular class layer within it). But there is nothing "revolutionary" (even in the reformist sense) about him, because there was no desire, not even a subjective one, of changing the class power balance within the empire. Caesar did objectively introduce many relatively "progressive" policies, but whatever he did, he did it for the good of the empire, not for the good of the "people". He was a statist, even though sometimes left-wing relatively speaking, but not a true populist.

In this he is similar to many emperors in ancient China. For instance, Emperor Han Wudi in the 2nd century BCE also introduced many relatively "progressive" (in the economic sense) policies. Han Wudi, through the bureaucratic state machine, literally forced many big aristocratic landowners to give up their lands to the state, which were then redistributed to the landless poor, thus increasing the number of independent or semi-independent small farmers. He also nationalised the key industries of the Iron Age - the iron and salt mines in China. Public funds were directed to be spent on improving the education system, e.g. opening up more Confucian schools. (There were some cultural imperialist policies associated with this since Confucian schools were opened in the newly conquered Yue areas in southern China and the local natives were forcefully Sinised and turned into Han people) Corruption within the bureaucratic structure was also harshly punished.

Similar policies were practised by many relatively "enlightened" emperors throughout Chinese history. But essentially these were no more than what Putin is doing in Russia today: reducing extreme inequality, curbing corruption, strengthening the bureaucratic structure of the state. These are statist policies that are cross-class in character, aimed primarily at strengthening the state machine itself in the long-run rather than any particular layer within the state. So people like Caesar, Han Wudi and Putin are not elitists, but they are not populists either (let alone "socialists" in any form). They are certainly more progressive than those politicians that solely speak on behalf of the ruling class, (even if it means damaging the objective interests of the state or the nation as a whole), and it is a good thing to recognise it, (I'm not an ultra-leftist and I don't believe that everything that is non-socialist is equally reactionary, "progressive" and "reactionary" is relative) but their "progressiveness" is certainly very limited, from a Marxist perspective.

I advise you to look at Nero. The Gods know why he instituted those policies which he did, but he made a serious attempt to annihilate the aristocracy.

ArnjjQTbXXY

[Die Neue Zeit]

Basically I think there are a lot of parallels between the empires of China and Rome. The economic base is different (slavery vs. landlordism) but the superstructure is similar in many ways. Both were huge bureaucratic empires.

Essentially Caesar is an ancient Roman version of a Bonapartist.

That's exactly what I'm objecting to in my Theory thread which has the main commentary on this. There is Bonapartism on the one hand and Caesarism on the other. Parenti illustrated that it was the attempt to liquidate the senatorial class that led to Caesar's death.


He "floats above" both class blocs and initiated many policies to reduce inequality and curb corruption, i.e. sound rational policies that in the long-term would strengthen the bureaucratic empire of Rome as a whole (instead of just a particular class layer within it). But there is nothing "revolutionary" (even in the reformist sense) about him

I say "Caesarism" re. "Third World Caesarism" because the anti-bourgeois political and economic relations are not presided over by the proletarian demographic minority, but mainly by the urban "national" petit-bourgeoisie and the "national" peasantry.

In the paradoxical combination of autocracy (peasant patrimonialism) and "managed" democracy (petit-bourgeois democratism), the Caesar figure "floats" above the Bloc of Dispossessed Classes and National Petit-Bourgeoisie. Make no mistake, though: he and everyone else would not be Caesarists if they aren't emulating Lukashenko and perhaps going beyond him by committing to the abolition of bourgeois property.

[Queercommie Girl]

^

Caesar did damage the interests of the slavelord ruling class in Rome, but he didn't want to abolish them as a class. So he was a statist, not a populist.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Caesar may not have wanted to abolish the slave system. That doesn't mean he didn't want to extinguish the senatorial class and by extension the patricians. I think it was graymouser here who said that higher-up plebeians owned slaves themselves. A completed Caesarean social transformation would have made the equites to Roman society what the "national petit-bourgeoisie" would become to Third World societies under Caesarean Socialism / Third World Caesarism / etc. Caesar would have stood above the equites and the proletarii (and perhaps even liberti).

[Queercommie Girl]

Caesar may not have wanted to abolish the slave system. That doesn't mean he didn't want to extinguish the senatorial class and by extension the patricians. I think it was graymouser here who said that higher-up plebeians owned slaves themselves. A completed Caesarean social transformation would have made the equites to Roman society what the "national petit-bourgeoisie" would become to Third World societies under Caesarean Socialism / Third World Caesarism / etc. Caesar would have stood above the equites and the proletarii (and perhaps even liberti).


He may have wanted to acquire greater rights for the Tribal Assembly, maybe even making the Tribal Assembly the central government institution of Rome, but I don't think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that he wanted to abolish the Senate completely.

Besides, according to Marxist analysis, the Senatorial elites were only a layer within the slavelord class, not the entire class in itself.

Some plebians did own a few slaves, while many were just independent farmers and small landowners, but the plebians are not a part of the slavelord class technically speaking. They are the "petit-slavelords" (analogous to the petit-bourgeois in capitalist society) Therefore in slavery society where the slave class was very undeveloped (much much more so than the modern proletarian class), the plebians did possess a progressive character to a significant extent. We can't transplant political values of the capitalist-socialist era back to the Iron Age.

However, Caesar was not a politician of the plebian class.

[Die Neue Zeit]

He may have wanted to acquire greater rights for the Tribal Assembly, maybe even making the Tribal Assembly the central government institution of Rome, but I don't think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that he wanted to abolish the Senate completely.

That's based too much on the fact that Augustus kept the Senate around as a farce.


Besides, according to Marxist analysis, the Senatorial elites were only a layer within the slavelord class, not the entire class in itself.

OK, but what I meant there was that Caesar's own measures against the Senatorial elites would have forced him to go up against the patrician class as a whole (assuming this is what you mean by "the slavelord class"). The existence of the patrician classes diverted slaves away from the numerous public infrastructure projects he had in mind.


Some plebians did own a few slaves, while many were just independent farmers and small landowners, but the plebians are not a part of the slavelord class technically speaking.

That's why I distinguished between the patricians and the chattel slave mode of production. The latter isn't dependent upon the former.

[graymouser]

Caesar may not have wanted to abolish the slave system. That doesn't mean he didn't want to extinguish the senatorial class and by extension the patricians. I think it was graymouser here who said that higher-up plebeians owned slaves themselves. A completed Caesarean social transformation would have made the equites to Roman society what the "national petit-bourgeoisie" would become to Third World societies under Caesarean Socialism / Third World Caesarism / etc. Caesar would have stood above the equites and the proletarii (and perhaps even liberti).
Okay, you do realize that the mode of production in ancient Rome was completely different from that in any society on the face of the Earth today, right? I mean, there are some tremendous gaps in understanding here that you could drive a truck through.

First: the equites were not comparable to a "petite bourgeoisie." They didn't stand between a producing class and a ruling class. In terms of personal wealth, a member of the equites could actually be richer than a patrician in the Senate. In fact, the equites are actually the long-term forerunners of the grande bourgeoisie, but in a nascent state. One must remember that the bourgeoisie was not formed from the old aristocracy but from the middle classes, particularly the guilds and the merchants. (Of course, there is still no such thing as a "national petite bourgeoisie.")

Second: the proletarii were not a producing class, and could not have converted themselves into such without an abolition of slavery. In modern class terms they were the predecessors not of the modern proletariat but of the lumpenproletariat; that is, these were the mob, the people who in later centuries were bought with "bread and circuses." They served no productive function in Roman society, and even though they owned nothing and lived in relative squalor, they essentially formed the hangers-on of the higher classes. This became heavily exaggerated because of the tremendous empire that Rome now commanded.

Third: Gaius Julius Caesar never did a damn thing to liquidate the patricians "as a class." His intent was to take state power from the Senate permanently by any means he could. His attempts at land reform were a bid for social peace in Rome; his dramatic maximum on personal holdings was a measure against hoarding that he refused to give teeth by allowing slaves to testify against their masters, so that in effect violations of the law could never have been definitively traced. Aside from the question of personal power his entire program of legal reforms was deeply rooted in the conflicts of the Republic from 133 to 44 BCE, and in Republican traditions. And you still don't seem to appreciate the role of Roman imperialism in all of this.

Fourth: Are we now to be adherents of the "Great Man" school of history? That is, do you seriously expect us to believe that a class could have been liquidated if only one man - Caesar - had not been murdered? Or that class society in his continued rule would have been too substantially different from that under Octavian (Augustus)? There were class dynamics at work, but not of the scale and capability for change that are necessary for your or Parenti's arguments to hold water. The rise of the equites and the inability of the patrician class to rule in its traditional senatorial form were serious problems, but they could not have led to the extermination of the patrician class as such and Caesar never would have taken such a step.

Fifth: While Parenti's book is nominally about Julius Caesar, it is not entirely unfair to consider that given Parenti's actual politics and his considerations of 20th century history, that the book is really a framework for his understanding of Stalin. This is the only way to understand its historical retrojection of a populist dictator back in time to ancient Rome. To the extent that this informs your concept of a "third world Caesar," it is actually a crypto-Stalinist position. I don't use the word to mean that you are a secret Stalinist, but that between Parenti and the CPGB your politics have acquired a very strange and only half-digested form of Stalinism that you don't seem to acknowledge or appreciate.

[Queercommie Girl]

You could say that the Caesarist era was the beginning of the slavery-feudalism transition in ancient Rome. Caesar attacked the interests of the elite layers of the slavelord class, and increased the power of the small landowners.

A similar transition happened in China a few centuries earlier, but Chinese slavery society of the Zhou Dynasty was more primitive than Greco-Roman slavery, so the slavelord class was easier to overthrow and feudalism also emerged earlier.

Another difference is that in China the transition happened internally, within the framework of the Chinese civilisation, like the feudalism-capitalism transition in Europe in recent centuries. But Rome could only transform into feudalism through an external invasion, which was hugely destructive and plunged the European world into centuries of darkness.

Eventually a more advanced form of productive relation did emerge by the late Middle Ages, but it took a long time.

The morale of this for socialist politics today is that although China today is extremely corrupt and oppressive, we must try to have an internal revolution in China, rather than try to destroy the Chinese state from the outside, which would only objectively benefit Western imperialism.

We don't want China to become another Rome, and plunge the East Asian world into another Dark Ages.

[Queercommie Girl]

Fifth: While Parenti's book is nominally about Julius Caesar, it is not entirely unfair to consider that given Parenti's actual politics and his considerations of 20th century history, that the book is really a framework for his understanding of Stalin. This is the only way to understand its historical retrojection of a populist dictator back in time to ancient Rome. To the extent that this informs your concept of a "third world Caesar," it is actually a crypto-Stalinist position. I don't use the word to mean that you are a secret Stalinist, but that between Parenti and the CPGB your politics have acquired a very strange and only half-digested form of Stalinism that you don't seem to acknowledge or appreciate.


While I don't agree with a lot of DNZ's ideas on Caesar, I don't think you can reject him just because he is somewhat of a "Stalinist".

I understand you completely reject Stalinism, but many Marxist-Leninists don't. And you need to live with that.

Personally I don't completely reject Stalinism either. And yes, I say this completely openly, rather than "cryptically". Deal with me how you will.

[graymouser]

While I don't agree with a lot of DNZ's ideas on Caesar, I don't think you can reject him just because he is somewhat of a "Stalinist".

I understand you completely reject Stalinism, but many Marxist-Leninists don't. And you need to live with that.

Personally I don't completely reject Stalinism either. And yes, I say this completely openly, rather than "cryptically". Deal with me how you will.
My problem isn't that DNZ is a crypto-Stalinist, it's that he seems oblivious to the bits and pieces of obfuscated Stalinism that his ideology is picking up. I'm trying to bring that element into the debate, because I think it's germane.

You may not reject Stalin unequivocally, but you should still be able to see that Parenti's view of Uncle Joe lies pretty clearly in the background of his selective reading of Roman history. I'm not talking about Stalin as he was, but the view of Stalin that Parenti has presented - particularly in his book Blackshirts and Reds.

[Dimentio]

Sadly, DNZ's descriptions actually are quite fitting for how socialism have traditionally been established in the Third World (Nasser, Sankara, more military dictators, Chávez).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sadly, DNZ's descriptions actually are quite fitting for how socialism have traditionally been established in the Third World (Nasser, Sankara, more military dictators, Chávez).

Well, it's a matter of learning the right lessons, devising the right strategies, and enacting the right tactics. The PDPA in Afghanistan and Sankara proved that Breakthrough Military Coups can achieve progressive change, but let's not be too one-dimensional here.

[Queercommie Girl]

Workers? I know slaves and foreigners were not represented, but for sure the proletarii were represented by some body.


Actually, according to a Chinese text on Caesar, The Tribal Assembly (or translated into Chinese as the "People's Assembly") did actually include foreigners, such as Gauls, but not slaves.

However, according to the same text, Caesar also freed many slaves and turned them into freemen.

[Queercommie Girl]

As for Gramsci's characterization of Caesar and Napoleon I, he did have something quite right: both of them ended republics in favor of empires. With Caesar it was because the form of the republic was spent; with Napoleon it was because of the contradictions between the revolutionary classes in France.


Caesar and Napoleon I were completely different. Both ended "republics", but the "republics" were of completely different types. The ancient Roman republic was not a progressive force at all. It was an aristocratic republic controlled by the ultra-corrupt Patrician Order, what Chinese Marxists usually refer to as the slavelord aristocracy class.

The slavelord aristocracy was one of the most brutal and reactionary classes that has ever existed in world history. In more primitive slavery societies, like ancient Shang, Inca and the Aztecs, they were responsible for mass human sacrifice and other horrifying practices that even the feudal landlord class would find barbaric, never mind capitalists and socialists. Although Caesar was no "socialist", the fact that he clearly damaged the interests of the slavelord aristocracy class must be a progressive move. In fact, any political force that opposes the slavelord aristocracy must be relatively progressive, whether they are feudal, capitalist or socialist in nature.

The problem with Western liberals is that they only look at the superstructure and not the economic base. Liberals think any kind of "republic" or "democracy" is better than a dictatorship. Genuine Marxist-Leninists focus primarily on the economic base. We should recognise that a plebian dictatorship is more progressive than an aristocratic republic.

When Chinese Marxists look at China's own history, everyone agrees that the transition from slavery to feudalism in China from around 1000 BCE to 200 BCE was a significantly progressive move. In ancient Rome, the Caesarist era was the beginning of a similar slavery-feudalism transition, but the slavery society of the Greco-Roman world was the most developed in the world, so consequently Caesar could not overthrow the patrician (slavelord aristocracy) class as a whole. This is an application of Lenin's "weakest link" doctrine to an earlier stage of human history. In ancient China where the slavelord aristocracy was a much weaker force, their rule was completely broken, and nothing akin to the patrician elites who owned massive numbers of slaves existed in China ever again since the feudal dictatorships of the Qin and Han Dynasties.

[graymouser]

Caesar and Napoleon I were completely different. Both ended "republics", but the "republics" were of completely different types. The ancient Roman republic was not a progressive force at all. It was an aristocratic republic controlled by the ultra-corrupt Patrician Order, what Chinese Marxists usually refer to as the slavelord aristocracy class.

The slavelord aristocracy was one of the most brutal and reactionary classes that has ever existed in world history. In more primitive slavery societies, like ancient Shang, Inca and the Aztecs, they were responsible for mass human sacrifice and other horrifying practices that even the feudal landlord class would find barbaric, never mind capitalists and socialists. Although Caesar was no "socialist", the fact that he clearly damaged the interests of the slavelord aristocracy class must be a progressive move. In fact, any political force that opposes the slavelord aristocracy must be relatively progressive, whether they are feudal, capitalist or socialist in nature.

The problem with Western liberals is that they only look at the superstructure and not the economic base. Liberals think any kind of "republic" or "democracy" is better than a dictatorship. Genuine Marxist-Leninists focus primarily on the economic base. We should recognise that a plebian dictatorship is more progressive than an aristocratic republic.

When Chinese Marxists look at China's own history, everyone agrees that the transition from slavery to feudalism in China from around 1000 BCE to 200 BCE was a significantly progressive move. In ancient Rome, the Caesarist era was the beginning of a similar slavery-feudalism transition, but the slavery society of the Greco-Roman world was the most developed in the world, so consequently Caesar could not overthrow the patrician (slavelord aristocracy) class as a whole. This is an application of Lenin's "weakest link" doctrine to an earlier stage of human history. In ancient China where the slavelord aristocracy was a much weaker force, their rule was completely broken, and nothing akin to the patrician elites who owned massive numbers of slaves existed in China ever again since the feudal dictatorships of the Qin and Han Dynasties.
You seem to be reading some things into Roman history that weren't there: specifically, your use of the term "slavelord aristocracy" and the idea that Julius Caesar did something to impact that class.

It's simply factually incorrect to try and link the patrician class exclusively with slave-holding, or to consider it as having been primarily a wealthier class than the equites. Slave ownership was not limited to nor was it particularly distinctive for the patrician class that ruled through the Senate. In point of fact, the main distinction that the patricians had was that they were the traditional elite, whereas the equites were the nouveaux riches. Plebeians of the higher orders were just as much a part of the slaveholding system as the patricians. It mattered not one whit whether a slave's master was a patrician or a plebeian. So your whole "slavelord aristocracy" model would also have to embrace the plebeians as well as the patricians.

And it's a fantasy to think that Caesar was actually acting against the slave-owners in any way, shape or form. He was really trying to solve the power imbalances between the patricians and the equites by politically disenfranchising the patrician Senate. This was not a "plebeian dictatorship" - while Caesar was a popularis, he was still fully entrenched in the patrician class himself - and in fact Caesar did a tremendous amount to strengthen the Roman slave system by sheer volume. At times of major conquests like Caesar's, there would be such a surplus of slaves that masters would work them to death rather than care for them since it was cheaper to simply buy a new one. Nothing "progressive" about it. Caesar didn't pose a threat to the patrician class in terms of economic activity - slavery and so on - but rather he stood for their political disenfranchisement. At best he would have spread around the ager publicus a bit less unevenly. Everything else is an ahistorical invention of Parenti's.

FWIW, I don't think there was anything particularly progressive about any of the slave societies we've been discussing; I would hope that the Lenin quote about Greek republics in my signature would make that clear, if nothing else. I remain a devoted student of ancient history, it's a subject that fascinates me, but I've never been anything but hyper-aware that slavery made a mockery out of any pretense to democracy in Greece and Rome.

[Queercommie Girl]

You seem to be reading some things into Roman history that weren't there: specifically, your use of the term "slavelord aristocracy" and the idea that Julius Caesar did something to impact that class.

It's simply factually incorrect to try and link the patrician class exclusively with slave-holding, or to consider it as having been primarily a wealthier class than the equites. Slave ownership was not limited to nor was it particularly distinctive for the patrician class that ruled through the Senate. In point of fact, the main distinction that the patricians had was that they were the traditional elite, whereas the equites were the nouveaux riches. Plebeians of the higher orders were just as much a part of the slaveholding system as the patricians. It mattered not one whit whether a slave's master was a patrician or a plebeian. So your whole "slavelord aristocracy" model would also have to embrace the plebeians as well as the patricians.

And it's a fantasy to think that Caesar was actually acting against the slave-owners in any way, shape or form. He was really trying to solve the power imbalances between the patricians and the equites by politically disenfranchising the patrician Senate. This was not a "plebeian dictatorship" - while Caesar was a popularis, he was still fully entrenched in the patrician class himself - and in fact Caesar did a tremendous amount to strengthen the Roman slave system by sheer volume. At times of major conquests like Caesar's, there would be such a surplus of slaves that masters would work them to death rather than care for them since it was cheaper to simply buy a new one. Nothing "progressive" about it. Caesar didn't pose a threat to the patrician class in terms of economic activity - slavery and so on - but rather he stood for their political disenfranchisement. At best he would have spread around the ager publicus a bit less unevenly. Everything else is an ahistorical invention of Parenti's.

FWIW, I don't think there was anything particularly progressive about any of the slave societies we've been discussing; I would hope that the Lenin quote about Greek republics in my signature would make that clear, if nothing else. I remain a devoted student of ancient history, it's a subject that fascinates me, but I've never been anything but hyper-aware that slavery made a mockery out of any pretense to democracy in Greece and Rome.

Well "slavelord aristocracy" is actually a very standard and widely accepted term among Chinese Marxists (not just Maoists by the way) to describe the socio-economic systems of China's high antiquity (4000 - 2000 years ago).

There is nothing wrong with the term itself, but perhaps I've been imposing a Chinese socio-economic category onto ancient Rome?

Admittedly, I know more about Chinese history than I know about Roman history. But according to an introductory text on ancient Rome and Caesar written in China, which is largely from a Historical Materialist perspective, it does state that Caesar was relatively progressive for its time. The text claims:

1) Caesar lived at the end of the Roman republican age, when there was fierce struggle between the "democrats" and the "patrician aristocrats";

2) Caesar came from a famous patrician family, but politically he was close to the plebians. Even when he was young, he dared to directly challenge gross corruption and misconduct in the Roman bureaucracy;

3) Caesar wanted "freedom" for his people. During the time of the Roman Republic, only slavelords and freemen who lived in the city of Rome were counted as actual "Roman citizens", but Caesar expanded "Roman citizenship" to include slavelords and freemen of other Italian provinces, and even Roman provinces outside Italy, such as Gaul. He also freed many slaves and turned them into freemen, even though he didn't abolish slavery as such; In addition, he put an end to the persecution of Jews and people of other minority religions;

4) Caesar increased the political power of the People's Assembly (a Chinese translation of the "Tribal Assembly") relative to the elitist Patrician Senate. Political positions were given to merchants and ordinary workers who were traditionally looked down upon by the patrician elite. Workers were also employed by Caesar to engage in public works programs in Rome itself, such as making the city look more appealing;

5) Caesar increased the amount of political centralisation in the Roman world; bureaucratic posts in Roman provinces (e.g. governors) were now appointed more on merit rather than by the recommendation of the corrupt Senatorial elites. He invited a Greek astronomer to change Rome's official calendar, which became the basis for the calendar most modern nations in the world use today (including China);

6) Caesar was a great military strategist, as well as a great literati. His writings are considered to be some of the best examples of Latin literature;

7) Caesar reduced corruption within the Roman bureaucracy and stabilised the Roman monetary economy;

8) Caesar was murdered by the Senatorial elites who were angry at his policies which significantly reduced their political and economic power.

[Queercommie Girl]

Plus, graymouser, I certainly do not completely write-off the positive values of slavery civilisation. Lenin and Mao said socialists should not completely dismiss the ideas of past civilisations. Both only mentioned feudal and bourgeois civilisation, but it should apply to slavelord civilisation too. The progress of human civilisation from the late tribal era to early slavery was actually a relatively progressive event, just like the transition from slavery to feudalism and from feudalism to capitalism in later centuries. Socialism and communism certainly isn't about "returning to the primitive tribal era". Primitivism is reactionary.

Of all the slavery societies of the ancient world, Greco-Roman slavery reached the highest levels of development. I'm not against Classical Civilisation at all. Indeed, Classical Civilisation is the basis for much of Western culture today. Philosophically, even Marxism itself comes from the intellectual line of Classical Philosophy ---> Enlightenment Thought ---> Marxism. If socialists should learn the positive elements of slavery, feudal and capitalist civilisations, then there is still much to be learned from Greco-Roman philosophy and culture.

[graymouser]

Well "slavelord aristocracy" is actually a very standard and widely accepted term among Chinese Marxists (not just Maoists by the way) to describe the socio-economic systems of China's high antiquity (4000 - 2000 years ago).

There is nothing wrong with the term itself, but perhaps I've been imposing a Chinese socio-economic category onto ancient Rome?
Yeah, that sounds right. I have no problem with the term in Chinese history, which is admittedly not my strong suit, but with its application to Rome or the Mediterranean more gneerally. It's important to remember that in Rome the official classes were based more on heredity than on economic status.


Admittedly, I know more about Chinese history than I know about Roman history. But according to an introductory text on ancient Rome and Caesar written in China, which is largely from a Historical Materialist perspective, it does state that Caesar was relatively progressive for its time. The text claims:

1) Caesar lived at the end of the Roman republican age, when there was fierce struggle between the "democrats" and the "patrician aristocrats";
This is a misreading of the differences between the optimates and populares. Because of examples like the Gracchi - the genuine reformers of ancient Rome - the populares are sometimes mistaken for a more democratic party, but in reality their differences were in terms of tactics and not program.


2) Caesar came from a famous patrician family, but politically he was close to the plebians. Even when he was young, he dared to directly challenge gross corruption and misconduct in the Roman bureaucracy;
That's an overstatement. Caesar, like the Gracchi and Marius, had some attempts at land reform, which was the burning issue of late Republican Rome. That's true; but objectively it was one of those cases where the aristocracy was just being too damn stubborn to do what was needed to ensure social peace in Rome.


3) Caesar wanted "freedom" for his people. During the time of the Roman Republic, only slavelords and freemen who lived in the city of Rome were counted as actual "Roman citizens", but Caesar expanded "Roman citizenship" to include slavelords and freemen of other Italian provinces, and even Roman provinces outside Italy, such as Gaul. He also freed many slaves and turned them into freemen, even though he didn't abolish slavery as such;
Caesar enslaved a million people in Gaul. His attitude toward slavery was unambiguously positive.

As for citizenship, that was part of his legacy. Again, you have to look at these things as pragmatic actions within the context of the Roman Republic. The differences between the Romans and the Italians outside of Rome had come to a head in the Social War a generation earlier. The Italian cities that hadn't revolted were given citizenship after the war; Caesar was finishing the incorporation of the Latins.


4) Caesar increased the political power of the People's Assembly (a Chinese translation of the "Tribal Assembly") relative to the elitist Patrician Senate. Political positions were given to merchants and ordinary workers who were traditionally looked down upon by the patrician elite. Workers were also employed by Caesar to engage in public works programs in Rome itself, such as making the city look more appealing;
The Gentile Assemblies (it's misleading to call them anything else, the Romans were divided into arbitrary groups of families called gens which are sometimes called "tribes" but it's not any ethnic or biological division) were not exactly the democratic organs that popular imagination makes them out to be. Again, you have to consider the class dynamics: the Gentile Assemblies were a poorly organized body composed of several highly differentiated classes. They were simply a counterweight, and with the Tribunes no longer able to effectively create policy after the Gracchi, they were basically a tool for the populares.


5) Caesar increased the amount of political centralisation in the Roman world; bureaucratic posts in Roman provinces (e.g. governors) were now appointed more on merit rather than by the recommendation of the corrupt Senatorial elites. He invited a Greek astronomer to change Rome's official calendar, which became the basis for the calendar most modern nations in the world use today (including China);
Roman bureaucracy outside of the army was small and based on loyalty more than merit. Again, class politics comes into this in a way that a simple anti-aristocratic viewpoint misses; the backbone of the Roman state from Caesar onward were not "merchants and workmen" but the equites, relatively rich plebeians.

The Julian calendar was good but not perfect - it was superseded by the Gregorian calendar because it was slowly losing days. (The Russians used the Julian calendar up to 1917; by then the momentous October 25 was actually November 7.)


6) Caesar was a great military strategist, as well as a great literati. His writings are considered to be some of the best examples of Latin literature;
Well, you can't argue with that on the face of it. Caesar was one of the great imperial conquerors of all time, and students read his Comentarii de bello gallico for its straightforward clarity.


7) Caesar reduced corruption within the Roman bureaucracy and stabilised the Roman monetary economy;
It has to be emphasized that Roman bureaucracy was perhaps a percent of what the Chinese bureaucracy was. They really relied more on the military and local elites to manage the empire than on a native Roman bureaucracy; it existed but it was small and never that splendid. As for monetary policy, the currency was actually fairly stable. Caesar's biggest contribution was to correct a liquidity crisis in 49 BC by putting forward a law from a century or two earlier limiting personal cash on hand.


8) Caesar was murdered by the Senatorial elites who were angry at his policies which significantly reduced their political and economic power.
This has to be looked at in the class conflict between the patricians and the plebeian equites. The patrician class was declining and no longer had the level of unity necessary to lead an increasingly complex empire. The equites were rising, but politically disenfranchised. The solution Caesar sought was to centralize rule in his person, effecting a truce between these classes. His reign had some positive ramifications for the lower plebs, but they weren't the central conflict in his time. Failure to understand this class differentiation gives the false idea that Caesar was on the side of an economically lower social class as opposed to the rising nouveaux riches.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This was not a "plebeian dictatorship" - while Caesar was a popularis, he was still fully entrenched in the patrician class himself - and in fact Caesar did a tremendous amount to strengthen the Roman slave system by sheer volume.


The patrician class was declining and no longer had the level of unity necessary to lead an increasingly complex empire. The equites were rising, but politically disenfranchised. The solution Caesar sought was to centralize rule in his person, effecting a truce between these classes. His reign had some positive ramifications for the lower plebs, but they weren't the central conflict in his time. Failure to understand this class differentiation gives the false idea that Caesar was on the side of an economically lower social class as opposed to the rising nouveaux riches.

There are such political groups as those belonging to existing ruling classes that wish to transform themselves into part of a new ruling class.

Caesar may have been a patrician, but I think he was one of those select few who wanted to implement a new class system and be part of the new ruling class instead of the declining patrician class (or even stand above the new ruling class and the other remaining or newer classes). That is what you call true long-term ruling-class insight, much like the alleged "bourgeois" revolutionaries of the Cuban revolution who threw themselves into the ranks of the "national" petit-bourgeoisie because of American sanctions. This is not what passes for typical "long-term ruling class insight" via reforms and standing above all the classes including the declining ruling class.

[Hence the political if not social potential of the "national" petit-bourgeoisie in the Third World, as opposed to the socially revolutionary but politically-lagging-at-present proletarian demographic minority]