Trump, Brexit, Capitalism and Ancient Rome. We’ve been there before.
It is In the light of the Trump's impeachment looming and the Brexit can being kicked further down the road that I wanted to reflect on the reasons behind the two massive 2016 events and the parallels I am seeing with Ancient Rome. The idea behind this article is that although history does not repeat itself, it does run in certain patterns.
The modern West the way we know it today, with the labor laws, human rights and liberal democratic capitalism formed as a system after WW1, or, rather after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which scared the rest of Europe into action. It is usually noted that the changes that were brought up were made for the working class, which is true, but in part only.
The key target of the reforms was the emerging middle class as a designed counterweight to the young Soviet proletariat project. The reason for it is that any system needs people who are interested in it for it to survive. It was the middle-class shop owner, rentier, skilled laborers, who needed the democracy, rights, the Republic, and relatively free markets too.
The case was further emphasized after WW2 when the Soviets became a symbol of a completely different alternative system, that posed mortal threat to the West and Capitalism.
With the collapse of the USSR, however, we've reached «the end of history». Capitalism, liberal democracy and all that accompanies these ideas has won. There was one global system only.
And as was the case with Ancient Rome, as soon as they defeated Carthage, the long-standing mortal enemy, a rival City that could bring to an end the entire Roman civilization, Rome immediately turned onto itself. Just as the immune system attacks its own body in the absence of external malicious substances.
Rome turned onto itself, slowly, already the strongest unrivaled force in the region, but not yet a ruler of the whole Mediterranean. As Rome grew, so did the riches of the Rich, not constrained by Rome or Italy, for both enrichment and sources of power anymore, no longer waking up at night to the nightmare of the Hannibal's hoards streaming down the slopes of the Alps.
After the last King left Rome for good, The Veii, The Samnites, The Latins and then the Great Carthage were all strong enough to put Rome to an end. So the social cohesion was strong, as any Roman identified itself with Rome in the first place, his class interest coming second.
However, after the True mortal threat was gone, the metamorphosis in the elite-people relations spilled out in the open with the Social war of the Italian cities, fighting for the same rights as the Roman citizens. The demands, that were reasonable at the very least, as the Italian cities were populated by the Romans in all but name, supplied soldiers to the armies of Rome, yet were getting increasingly smaller parts of the spoils. These demands were rejected by the Senate, fearing an influx of the Novus homo(new people) to the political scene, possibly targeting their rights as nobles, challenging their seats in the Senate.
Then, with the Gracchi Brothers, disturbing Rome for at least a generation in their fight against the oligarchs. Followed by Marius and Sulla years of Struggle, ending with the Death of the Republic at the hands of Caesar and Augustus.
The state of the Republic before its collapse was remarkably similar to the one of the modern West, but nowhere so striking as in the USA and the UK, the two empires, that styled themselves after Rome in one way or the other.
In the days of Caesar, All the land in Italy and outside of it was concentrated in the hands of the few wealthy families, the fields were worked by the hundreds of thousands of the slave hands. The deposed farmers and laborers all flocked to the cities, filing brothels, gangs, and armies of beggars, which ultimately lead to the grain dole being the cornerstone of the late republican and then imperial policy.
Julius Caesar, an impoverished noble, came to prominence opposing his class, pushing for the land reforms, which ultimately resulted in the Senate eager to prosecute him, which as we all know led to the legendary crossing of the Rubicon and the consequent death of the 500-year-old republic.
As I mentioned above, Any system lives only as long as there are enough people interested in its existence. Republics and democracies require an extensive middle class of small property owners(small farmers in the case of Rome) and secondly, large swaths of wealth to be distributed evenly among the elite.
If 50% of all the land belongs to a 1000 nobles, they need a Senate to settle the disputes among themselves and also, they, though reluctantly, need the consent of the other 50% of the owners.
That is the recipe for Democracy and the Republic.
By the time of Caesar, 80% of all the land was in the hands of just a few families, the remaining 10% in other impoverished noble's hands and the remaining 10% belonged to the remaining middle-class farmers.
Neither the 80% nobles nor the poor, the proletariat, ex-middle class, outcompeted by the free slave labor and colonial goods, needed the Republic. It did not serve them anymore.There were not enough people who were interested in its existence. And the Republic fell.
It weathered the Veii, the Gauls, the Samnites, and the Latins, it weathered Carthage, the Macedonian and the Syrian wars. It fell after there was no enemy left to fight.It fought and consumed itself.
I am not here to say that the election of Trump and Brexit vote are in any way comparable to the fall of the Roman Republic. We are not there yet.
However, I can not help but notice the striking similarities between the Late Republic and the modern-day West.
The West fell in love with neoliberalism in the mid-80s. We opened up markets, we deregulated. Which is good. Free markets and capitalism are the ultimate wealth creators.
But we also opened up the borders for migrants. We had electricity prices 3-4 times the ones of China. We had environmental and other regulations kill businesses in droves, driving the survivors out of the West. No one was ready for that.
In the UK we saw both major parties, the Tories and the Labour turning from serving the different parts of the now dying middle class to the one serving the ultra-rich and the other serving the ultra-poor.
In the US, the Dem party saw that the mass uncontrolled migration turned sanctuary cities, red and purple states- blue and the Republicans were hypnotized by the neoliberal mantra, also being busy bombing godforsaken deserts thousands of miles away from the US.
Small farmers died out and were bought up by large estates, migrants turned sleepy peaceful cities across America into the War Zones.
The middle class, slowly dying under the simultaneous assault of the sudden globalization and migrants driving down wages, destroying communities, was constantly bombarded with allegations of racism, fascism, white privilege, homophobia, islamophobia, and many other phobias , by the smirking intellectual coastal financial, media and political elites of the Bay Area, Manhattan and the DC In the US and Southern England/London mansion dwelling Westminster M25 bound elite in the UK.
The elite, that felt that they were smart enough to make the decisions, the brunt of which they were never to bear.They had good jobs, unavailable for migrants, they had private schools, free of the latter, and they did not need any border walls, for their estates were behind the walls anyhow. Migrants mowed their lawns, served their coffee and took out the trash.
They got emboldened by the fall of the Soviet Union in the same way the elites of Rome got emboldened by the defeat of Carthage.
The middle class that was to be a counterweight to the Soviet system was no longer needed, so they were to tax it out of the existence. Tax and regulate the businesses that supported the middle class out of the existence too, substituting them with cheap migrants and overseas labor to take away any bargaining power they had left.
The vote for Trump and Brexit was a massive middle finger to Washington, Hollywood, New-York, Westminster and Brussels. The people of the Leave and Trump didn’t care about the consequences, even if there were to be any. They just told the arrogant elites to “go and love themselves”.
The Trump/Brexit voters were the same people who supported the Gracchi Brothers and cheered Marius And the Popularies.
Now, we are still quite far away from the Caesar/Augustus moment in the West, but we are already close to the Gracchi Brothers moment. However, contrary to the popular mythology, the Era of Emperors in Rome, despite the good optics and splendor and the aura of glory did not benefit anyone, neither the common men nor the elites. So instead of the hysteria about Trump and Brexit that we were all unfortunate enough to be involuntary witnesses to, conclusions are to be made. Yet, with the Calls for the impeachment, Brexit revocation, the further EU federalization and yet even louder calls for the open borders, UBI, slavery reparations, More regulations, the Green new deals of all sorts and other fancy words, that are in reality a mere epitaph of the Middle Class yet be carved on it’s tombstone, if any of that to be enacted, hopes are low.
As I already mentioned, it was the lack of a potent enemy, rather than the existence of one, that killed the republic. In the light of the reaction of the elites to the events observed in this article, the hopes are low, but the salvation of the West might come in a form of a common enemy in the face of China.
If that is not to be the case, the West is bound to consume itself.Alas, unlike Rome, I can't see a shining empire coming out of the flames of the old Republic, metaphorically speaking.
The end.
PS:that is a grotesque exaggeration for a stronger dramatic effect, yet the concerns raised in this article do deserve a good discussion. Which I encourage you to produce in the comment section.
Please, do share and comment. I would appreciate your take on the issue. Let me know if you think my analogies are accurate.
It is In the light of the Trump's impeachment looming and the Brexit can being kicked further down the road that I wanted to reflect on the reasons behind the two massive 2016 events and the parallels I am seeing with Ancient Rome. The idea behind this article is that although history does not repeat itself, it does run in certain patterns.
The modern West the way we know it today, with the labor laws, human rights and liberal democratic capitalism formed as a system after WW1, or, rather after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which scared the rest of Europe into action. It is usually noted that the changes that were brought up were made for the working class, which is true, but in part only.
The key target of the reforms was the emerging middle class as a designed counterweight to the young Soviet proletariat project. The reason for it is that any system needs people who are interested in it for it to survive. It was the middle-class shop owner, rentier, skilled laborers, who needed the democracy, rights, the Republic, and relatively free markets too.
The case was further emphasized after WW2 when the Soviets became a symbol of a completely different alternative system, that posed mortal threat to the West and Capitalism.
With the collapse of the USSR, however, we've reached «the end of history». Capitalism, liberal democracy and all that accompanies these ideas has won. There was one global system only.
And as was the case with Ancient Rome, as soon as they defeated Carthage, the long-standing mortal enemy, a rival City that could bring to an end the entire Roman civilization, Rome immediately turned onto itself. Just as the immune system attacks its own body in the absence of external malicious substances.
Rome turned onto itself, slowly, already the strongest unrivaled force in the region, but not yet a ruler of the whole Mediterranean. As Rome grew, so did the riches of the Rich, not constrained by Rome or Italy, for both enrichment and sources of power anymore, no longer waking up at night to the nightmare of the Hannibal's hoards streaming down the slopes of the Alps.
After the last King left Rome for good, The Veii, The Samnites, The Latins and then the Great Carthage were all strong enough to put Rome to an end. So the social cohesion was strong, as any Roman identified itself with Rome in the first place, his class interest coming second.
However, after the True mortal threat was gone, the metamorphosis in the elite-people relations spilled out in the open with the Social war of the Italian cities, fighting for the same rights as the Roman citizens. The demands, that were reasonable at the very least, as the Italian cities were populated by the Romans in all but name, supplied soldiers to the armies of Rome, yet were getting increasingly smaller parts of the spoils. These demands were rejected by the Senate, fearing an influx of the Novus homo(new people) to the political scene, possibly targeting their rights as nobles, challenging their seats in the Senate.
Then, with the Gracchi Brothers, disturbing Rome for at least a generation in their fight against the oligarchs. Followed by Marius and Sulla years of Struggle, ending with the Death of the Republic at the hands of Caesar and Augustus.
The state of the Republic before its collapse was remarkably similar to the one of the modern West, but nowhere so striking as in the USA and the UK, the two empires, that styled themselves after Rome in one way or the other.
In the days of Caesar, All the land in Italy and outside of it was concentrated in the hands of the few wealthy families, the fields were worked by the hundreds of thousands of the slave hands. The deposed farmers and laborers all flocked to the cities, filing brothels, gangs, and armies of beggars, which ultimately lead to the grain dole being the cornerstone of the late republican and then imperial policy.
Julius Caesar, an impoverished noble, came to prominence opposing his class, pushing for the land reforms, which ultimately resulted in the Senate eager to prosecute him, which as we all know led to the legendary crossing of the Rubicon and the consequent death of the 500-year-old republic.
As I mentioned above, Any system lives only as long as there are enough people interested in its existence. Republics and democracies require an extensive middle class of small property owners(small farmers in the case of Rome) and secondly, large swaths of wealth to be distributed evenly among the elite.
If 50% of all the land belongs to a 1000 nobles, they need a Senate to settle the disputes among themselves and also, they, though reluctantly, need the consent of the other 50% of the owners.
That is the recipe for Democracy and the Republic.
By the time of Caesar, 80% of all the land was in the hands of just a few families, the remaining 10% in other impoverished noble's hands and the remaining 10% belonged to the remaining middle-class farmers.
Neither the 80% nobles nor the poor, the proletariat, ex-middle class, outcompeted by the free slave labor and colonial goods, needed the Republic. It did not serve them anymore.There were not enough people who were interested in its existence. And the Republic fell.
It weathered the Veii, the Gauls, the Samnites, and the Latins, it weathered Carthage, the Macedonian and the Syrian wars. It fell after there was no enemy left to fight.It fought and consumed itself.
I am not here to say that the election of Trump and Brexit vote are in any way comparable to the fall of the Roman Republic. We are not there yet.
However, I can not help but notice the striking similarities between the Late Republic and the modern-day West.
The West fell in love with neoliberalism in the mid-80s. We opened up markets, we deregulated. Which is good. Free markets and capitalism are the ultimate wealth creators.
But we also opened up the borders for migrants. We had electricity prices 3-4 times the ones of China. We had environmental and other regulations kill businesses in droves, driving the survivors out of the West. No one was ready for that.
In the UK we saw both major parties, the Tories and the Labour turning from serving the different parts of the now dying middle class to the one serving the ultra-rich and the other serving the ultra-poor.
In the US, the Dem party saw that the mass uncontrolled migration turned sanctuary cities, red and purple states- blue and the Republicans were hypnotized by the neoliberal mantra, also being busy bombing godforsaken deserts thousands of miles away from the US.
Small farmers died out and were bought up by large estates, migrants turned sleepy peaceful cities across America into the War Zones.
The middle class, slowly dying under the simultaneous assault of the sudden globalization and migrants driving down wages, destroying communities, was constantly bombarded with allegations of racism, fascism, white privilege, homophobia, islamophobia, and many other phobias , by the smirking intellectual coastal financial, media and political elites of the Bay Area, Manhattan and the DC In the US and Southern England/London mansion dwelling Westminster M25 bound elite in the UK.
The elite, that felt that they were smart enough to make the decisions, the brunt of which they were never to bear.They had good jobs, unavailable for migrants, they had private schools, free of the latter, and they did not need any border walls, for their estates were behind the walls anyhow. Migrants mowed their lawns, served their coffee and took out the trash.
They got emboldened by the fall of the Soviet Union in the same way the elites of Rome got emboldened by the defeat of Carthage.
The middle class that was to be a counterweight to the Soviet system was no longer needed, so they were to tax it out of the existence. Tax and regulate the businesses that supported the middle class out of the existence too, substituting them with cheap migrants and overseas labor to take away any bargaining power they had left.
The vote for Trump and Brexit was a massive middle finger to Washington, Hollywood, New-York, Westminster and Brussels. The people of the Leave and Trump didn’t care about the consequences, even if there were to be any. They just told the arrogant elites to “go and love themselves”.
The Trump/Brexit voters were the same people who supported the Gracchi Brothers and cheered Marius And the Popularies.
Now, we are still quite far away from the Caesar/Augustus moment in the West, but we are already close to the Gracchi Brothers moment. However, contrary to the popular mythology, the Era of Emperors in Rome, despite the good optics and splendor and the aura of glory did not benefit anyone, neither the common men nor the elites. So instead of the hysteria about Trump and Brexit that we were all unfortunate enough to be involuntary witnesses to, conclusions are to be made. Yet, with the Calls for the impeachment, Brexit revocation, the further EU federalization and yet even louder calls for the open borders, UBI, slavery reparations, More regulations, the Green new deals of all sorts and other fancy words, that are in reality a mere epitaph of the Middle Class yet be carved on it’s tombstone, if any of that to be enacted, hopes are low.
As I already mentioned, it was the lack of a potent enemy, rather than the existence of one, that killed the republic. In the light of the reaction of the elites to the events observed in this article, the hopes are low, but the salvation of the West might come in a form of a common enemy in the face of China.
If that is not to be the case, the West is bound to consume itself.Alas, unlike Rome, I can't see a shining empire coming out of the flames of the old Republic, metaphorically speaking.
The end.
PS:that is a grotesque exaggeration for a stronger dramatic effect, yet the concerns raised in this article do deserve a good discussion. Which I encourage you to produce in the comment section.
Please, do share and comment. I would appreciate your take on the issue. Let me know if you think my analogies are accurate.