Tiberius Graccus and Land Reform

[RGacky3]

A very interesting situation in the ancient Roman Republic. Tiberius Graccus was a Tribune in 133. Heres a quick summery from wikipedia.



Tiberius Gracchus (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus) was elected tribune in 133 BC. He attempted to enact a law which would have limited the amount of land that any individual could own. The aristocrats, who stood to lose an enormous amount of money, were bitterly opposed to this proposal. Tiberius submitted this law to the Plebeian Council, but the law was vetoed by a tribune named Marcus Octavius (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Marcus_Octavius). Tiberius then used the Plebeian Council to impeach (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Impeach) Octavius. The theory, that a representative of the people ceases to be one when he acts against the wishes of the people, was counter to Roman constitutional theory. If carried to its logical end, this theory would remove all constitutional restraints on the popular will, and put the state under the absolute control of a temporary popular majority.[51] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-Abbott.2C_96-50) His law was enacted, but Tiberius was murdered when he stood for reelection to the tribunate.


The land reform was a type of redistribution of land to the poor and unemployed (much like popular land reform amung latin American socialists).

The Aristocrats were taking land from desperate farmers, kicking out renters, forcing families to sell their land cheaply when soldiers were at war, the big aristocrats put the poor farmers out of buisiness and used slave labor instead of renting out land. (the whole situation reminds of me of the US, outsourcing, forclosures, layoffs, dispossesion and so on).

Interesting thing was he was an aristocratic officer in the army, that got popular by saving the lives of Roman soldiers by giving concessions to the Cartheginians, which pissed of the Senaters and Aristicrats who wanted roman glory or whatever.

He almost made the Roman republic into a proper Roman democracy, after he land reform getting veto'd he essencially used the public assembally power to shut down the entire Roman State and then had Octavius (Basically a shrill of the aristocrats and senate aka Obama) removed through popular vote.

Problem is, he got killed, he got labeled as wanting to be king, which is treason.

What happened next? His younger brother Gius tried to enacy more socialist like land reforms, and reforming the justice system to keep it out of the hands of the aristocrats. In the end .... well .... He got killed too.
However I think this is a great example of revolution through reformism, if the revolution continued who knows, Rome could have been a proper democratic republic.

THe whole system and history of the Roman republic reminds me SO much of the modern United States its scary.

Obviously I am not advocating the strong man theory, or so on, but its just interesting history.

[Dimentio]

All the way to Caesar. The period of 133-43 BC was basically a history of left-wing populists vs right-wing aristocrats.

[Robespierre Richard]

I had a libertarian Latin teacher and he told us that the senators killing Gracchus was actually a display of how committed to freedom the Romans were, not allowing one man to be popular among the plebs and getting more political power lol.

[Revolution starts with U]

Libertarian conceptions of freedom usually entail the freedom of the haves to take everything from the have-nots; and for the have-nots to kiss the ground the haves walk on.
As a gentleman's sig says... Libertarians are utter scum.

[Jose Gracchus]

I had a libertarian Latin teacher and he told us that the senators killing Gracchus was actually a display of how committed to freedom the Romans were, not allowing one man to be popular among the plebs and getting more political power lol.

Are you serious? How could anyone take that away from the most bourgeois history class on the Roman Republic?

[RGacky3]

I had a libertarian Latin teacher and he told us that the senators killing Gracchus was actually a display of how committed to freedom the Romans were, not allowing one man to be popular among the plebs and getting more political power lol.


So democracy actually being democracy, i.e. the plebs decide, is destroying freedom?

Funny how freedom essencially means the Aristocrats rule and Freedom for them to do whatever the hell they want to the plebs.

The Empire was essencially created in an effort to stop the public assembally gaining power.

[Dimentio]

I had a libertarian Latin teacher and he told us that the senators killing Gracchus was actually a display of how committed to freedom the Romans were, not allowing one man to be popular among the plebs and getting more political power lol.

Here is a good episode on him.

rCiEB7p9Efw

Libertarians are really propertarians.

[ComradeMan]

All the way to Caesar. The period of 133-43 BC was basically a history of left-wing populists vs right-wing aristocrats.

Although I agree in part, I think it's anachronistic to talk of "left wing" in this context.

[Dimentio]

Although I agree in part, I think it's anachronistic to talk of "left wing" in this context.

Left-wing is merely a term that came to use from the French Republic and onward. I don't think it's anachronistic, unless you somehow prove that the issue of access to resources did not matter before 1789.

[agnixie]

Left-wing is merely a term that came to use from the French Republic and onward. I don't think it's anachronistic, unless you somehow prove that the issue of access to resources did not matter before 1789.

Yeah, but the proper term here is Populares if we're going to be pedantic ;) - I have a classicist friend who says he's been drifting from center to left lately because the right makes him think of the optimates :p

[ComradeMan]

Left-wing is merely a term that came to use from the French Republic and onward. I don't think it's anachronistic, unless you somehow prove that the issue of access to resources did not matter before 1789.

Indeed, but it does create the illusion that they were leftwing in terms of what many today would think of as being leftwing.

[Dimentio]

Indeed, but it does create the illusion that they were leftwing in terms of what many today would think of as being leftwing.

Oh no. They would never for instance abolish slavery.

But before the socialists became the left, the liberals were the left. And they were pretty much more rightist than today's liberals.

[RGacky3]

Although I agree in part, I think it's anachronistic to talk of "left wing" in this context.

You know what the hell he means.


Oh no. They would never for instance abolish slavery.

But before the socialists became the left, the liberals were the left. And they were pretty much more rightist than today's liberals.

Keep in mind that at that time Rome was'nt dependant on slavery so much, it was only the rich that had slaves, and slaves were actually a negative force against the poor, so many of them were opposed to slavery (simply for economic reasons)

[graymouser]

In some senses, the Gracchi seem to have been a bit ahead of their time, and traditionally have been held up by leftists as having been the best of the politicians of the late Roman republic. It's not accidental that the precursor to modern socialism, Noël François Babeuf, called himself "Gracchus Babeuf." But ComradeMan is correct to note that it's anachronistic to consider them "leftist" in the modern sense.

The problem of the ancient Roman republic was what was called the ager publicus, the massive public farmland that was possessed by the republic as common property. Legally there were strict limits to how much public land a single person could use, but in Rome land was power and the aristocrats had snatched up most of the good tracts of public land for their own use. As Rome's population and power grew, there were more and more plebeians (free citizens below aristocratic rank) with little or no land, who wanted to be free farmers. The huge estates were mostly worked by slave labor, a situation intensified by wars of conquest that enslaved enormous numbers of people, leaving the poorer plebeians dependent upon the aristocrats for handouts.

The social crisis of the ager publicus defined Roman politics for almost a century, as the aristocracy stubbornly held on to the lands they had seized and the pressure of the lower classes rose. This was accompanied by the rising fortunes of the equites, the rich portion of the plebeians, who were getting wealthier but had relatively little say in the formal power structure.

Into this the Gracchi were thrust. Most historians consider Tiberius Gracchus to be the one popularis (these are best thought of as a Roman prefiguration of modern populism) who genuinely had democratic interests at heart. He tried to use the powers of the plebeian Tribune to set policy for the whole republic, which was traditionally the position of the aristocratic consuls. It's interesting to read an account (Alan Woods of Marxist.com did one that wasn't all bad a couple of years ago) of his struggles, which really leveraged the power of the masses of people who were crowded into ancient Rome, but in the long run his radical reforms failed. Tiberius's program was simply one of democratically and accountably apportioning the land. Despite the fact that Tiberius was killed, a version of his reform was still enacted, but intentionally made toothless by weakening the commission that would enforce it.

Gaius Gracchus actually tried to subvert that a decade later, using the commission to create a genuine land reform, and was elected to the plebeian tribune. His reforms were broader and included citizenship for the "Latins," the inhabitants of the rest of Italy that Rome had conquered. Like his brother, his politics got him killed, and after the Gracchi the powers of the tribune were never really used in the same radical way again.

What's interesting is that the Senate was eternally short-sighted. The problem of the ager publicus would not go away, until land reform was forcibly achieved by Caesar at their expense. Similarly the problems of the Latins, contained in Italy but without rights, boiled over into the Social War in 90 BC. This complete unwillingness to deal with the problems caused by the Republic's conquest by any means other than self-aggrandizement caused the senatorial system to increasingly break down, until after the Social War the Senate simply couldn't govern and Roman society went into the political death spiral that ended with Augustus on the throne.

[graymouser]

Keep in mind that at that time Rome was'nt dependant on slavery so much, it was only the rich that had slaves, and slaves were actually a negative force against the poor, so many of them were opposed to slavery (simply for economic reasons)
It wasn't yet the situation it would be after the wars of conquest that consolidated the empire brought millions of slaves into the system, but it's an inaccuracy to pretend that the ancient democracies and republics weren't tremendously corrupted by their slave systems. (Hence the Lenin quote that I have in my signature - true about Rome as much as about Athens.) Rome was a slave society, and republican freedoms meant little while men and women labored in chains. None of the populares had any solution for slavery, even the Gracchi; it was Spartacus who showed at least a glimmer of that vision.

[RGacky3]

The charge that Tiberius Graccus wanted to be king was rediculous, he never did any policies giving himself more power, he was using his political position to shift power from the aristocrats to the plebs, i.e. simply stopping the aristocrats from destroying the pleb power, in other words, just doing his job (representing the plebs rather than the senate).

[graymouser]

The charge that Tiberius Graccus wanted to be king was rediculous, he never did any policies giving himself more power, he was using his political position to shift power from the aristocrats to the plebs, i.e. simply stopping the aristocrats from destroying the pleb power, in other words, just doing his job (representing the plebs rather than the senate).
He used the plebeian masses to radically subvert the traditional senatorial politics of Rome and exiled the other tribune - which was, as you say, a far cry from trying to be crowned king. But for the Senate, which had previously enjoyed more or less unchallenged hegemony, it was much too far. The populares didn't have an alternative system for actually running Rome aside from the tribunician power, since the plebeian assemblies were much too inefficient to actually do it. (It involved a whole gens gathering to elect a bound delegate to an assembly of 35 or so bound delegates, who would then have to vote as instructed.) So any democratic visions the Gracchi had were probably limited to their land reforms and an expanded role of the tribunes, but the latter would have remained fraught with problems.

[ComradeMan]

Ragazzi! I am not attacking the Gracchi, indeed in my old non-OI days I created a user group for which I used the Gracchi as a logo/avatar- all I am saying is that we should be cautious with our use of leftwing/rightwing, that's all.

"It was enough to be the mother of the Gracchi"- speaks for itself.

VIVA ETRURIA!!!!
:lol: