The Roman Empire was socialist - Addendum
Separation of art and state
Of all the self-important megalomaniacs found in the academic shamanic class, I loathe historians the most. They are the guardians of historical narratives, not the arbiters of facts. They are responsible for humanity’s failure to learn from its historical mistakes, and they thus through deceit protect the ruling classes.
Tooth and nail will they defend their narratives, as this is their one and only purpose. They do not accept any alternative interpretations of historical events other than their mainstream pseudo-scientific dogma. Blaspheme against those narratives and they will desperately resort to shaming you and threatening your reputation via their fanboy outrage mobs. They will reduce your argumentation down to an “oversimplification” or an “agenda-driven biased analysis” as if those characterizations did not apply to mainstream narratives.
In my caustic and slightly satirical piece ‘The Roman Empire was socialist,’ I made a case for calling a spade a spade: Roman Empire policies were an orgy of collectivist, wealth-redistributing, economy-centralizing authoritarian socialism. I don’t care if I wasn’t clear about which Roman Empire I was talking about, or that certain policies did no apply to certain periods of the empire; that’s nitpicking. A cheating wife is a still cheating wife even if most of the time she’s loyal. So what?
The Roman Empire state applied the same central-government currency-manipulating policies that would later be rebranded as “socialism.” An appeal to definition fallacy does not make the Roman Empire less socialist simply because the term “socialist” hadn’t been coined yet.
I insist on using the term “socialist” because a recent online phenomenon (likely a state-funded psyop) involves droves of insecure young men with unresolved daddy issues deifying and romanticizing the Roman Empire and the obedience to authority it represents. The irony is that these insecure males see themselves as “right-wing,” and therefore anti-socialist. I simply call out their hypocrisy, double standard and failure to be consistent with their weakly held principles.
Others who revere the spirit and art of the Roman era take offense to my characterization of the Roman Empire as socialist. But here’s the thing: high accomplishments during the Roman era did not occur BECAUSE of the Roman state, but DESPITE it. If anything, we would have had better and greater accomplishments had the Roman state not existed, without its wasteful economic interventionism and forceful wealth redistribution. Who is to say otherwise? Anyone saying otherwise has the burden of proof, because the non-existence of a state is the default; the existence is the alternative.
You can indeed separate the art from the artist, the message from the messenger, and so, the achievements of the Roman era from the atrociously socialist Roman state. Those who take my criticism of the Roman state as a dismissal of the art and technical achievements of the Roman era suffer from generalization, which is a symptom of schizophrenia; they associate, and cannot separate one from the other.
Imagine believing that the USSR was good and virtuous because it gave us Solzhenitsyn, space exploration and the beautiful Moscow Metro; or imagining that Hitler’s National Socialist government was somehow good because it gave us jets, rockets and VWs. Being sane means we can disassociate one from the other.
It is similarly ludicrous to take my criticism of the Roman Empire state as a criticism of the achievements of the era. And let’s face it, those achievements did not occur because of the Roman state, since the Roman Empire was running on the fumes of modernity before it. If anything, an inefficient wealth-distributing corrupt degenerate state is a a hindrance to an economy’s full potential, and therefore, it is safe to conclude that art and technology were suppressed by the Roman state’s interventionism, corruption and wasteful wars.
Yes, the Roman Empire was socialist. It’s insane to pretend otherwise.
“Democracy is the road to socialism.”
- Karl Marx
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Interesting perspective:
https://substack.com/@rigbyrigbyson/note/c-60615586
Very interesting. I appreciate your analysis and am in agreement. In a similar vein: want to know who invented communism? It was the Jesuits in the 1600s in the reductions of Paraguay. Enslaved the natives and had them producing handmade goods to Europe at slashed prices to fund their covert empire. Then a couple generations later they helped Marx with the manifesto when he was educated by them. The socialists will never tell you that though because that would prevent their “blame it on the Jews” racket. Although they are connected via Zionism and Jewish Freemasonry (B’nai B’rith). Seriously though, check out the history of the reductions. Nothing is new under the sun, these people have been pulling this scam for a very long time. There is no free lunch, they just keep the slavery out of sight and mind. Today it’s done mostly in China, and if you look into Mao’s rise you’ll see the same actors helping him along (Yale’s 322 and the Jesuits).