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The Collapse of Antiquity
The Collapse of Greece and Rome as Civilization's Oligarchic Turning Point The Collapse of Antiquity , the sequel to Michael's " ...and forgive them their debts, " is the second and latest book in his trilogy on the history of debt. It describes how the dynamics of interest-bearing debt led to the rise of rentier oligarchies in classical Greece and Rome, causing economic polarization, widespread austerity, revolts, wars and ultimately the collapse of Rome into serfdom and feudalism. That collapse bequeathed to subsequent Western civilization a pro-creditor legal philosophy that has led to today's creditor oligarchies. In telling this story, The Collapse of Antiquity reveals the eerie parallels between the collapsing Roman world and today's debt-burdened Western economies. Endorsements Scope The Collapse of Antiquity is vast in its sweep,
512 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2023
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726 people want to read
About the author
Michael Hudson
79 books359 followersMichael Hudson is an American economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator and journalist. He is a contributor to The Hudson Report, a weekly economic and financial news podcast produced by Left Out.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 5, 2023
"Rome never did solve its debt problem, leaving the Empire to suffer the momentum of economic polarization inherited from the Republic. Today's West likewise has not succeeded in coping with debt in a way that saves its economies from polarizing. That similarity and the reason for it—the West's inheritance of Rome's pro-creditor legal philosophy—is the main relevance of Roman history for today's world." (p. 354)
In the prequel to this book ("...and forgive us our debts...") Hudson describes the economies of the Ancient Near East, especially the sacred role that debt forgiveness played in the palatial kingdoms of the day, which was later codified into the Mosaic Laws of Judaism.
In this book Hudson follows this thread further, sculpting an economic analysis of ancient Greece and Rome, again focusing on the important role that debt (and its forgiveness, or lack thereof) plays in society at-large. His argument is that Greek and Roman civilizations inherited interest-bearing debt from these Ancient Near East economies, but not the associated "Clean Slate" (or Jubilee Year) proclamations of debt forgiveness that kept debt dynamics from polarizing the Ancient Near East economies and destroying their civilizations from within.
Because Greece and Rome were at the mercy of oligarchic military interests instead of powerful palace leaders, they had no meta-market force (kingly proclamations, Laws of God, etc.) to occasionally reset an economy that had gotten too polarized for society to function.
Hudson argues that the West wrongly considers itself as beginning in Greece and Rome, not in the Ancient Near East (despite still holding onto Judeo-Christian values). Because of this, we have no modern concept of the debt forgiveness that played such a key role in stabilizing the Ancient Near East economies, and so we now face the same issues Rome faced as its civilization collapsed: namely an increasingly polarized economy and populace.
We (the West) have inherited the same pro-creditor legal philosophy with no ample recourse for debt forgiveness, and this is the cause of all our social ills.
Most of Hudson's ideas are genuinely brilliant and groundbreaking—he has singlehandedly ushered in new fields of study as regards ancient economics—and he synthesizes them from myriad authors from both antiquity (5 pages dedicated to "Ancient Texts" in the Bibliography) and modernity (29 pages for "Modern Works").
You should read this book.
Everyone should.
And all of Hudson's books both in this series and not.
If you do, you'll come away with a better understanding of how the economies of the West really work nowadays—better than you can get anywhere else, and its not particularly close either.
Hudson is a brilliant writer of aphorisms and anecdotes, but his English skills stop there. He DESPERATELY needs a better editor and publisher—this book is better edited than his previous ones, but is still lacking. The book itself is huge and the font is annoyingly large—not to mention that about 20% of the text is gray (the rest black), and that the font itself (and the size of it) occasionally change—all for seemingly no reason, leading one to think it's the accidental fault of a poor editor/publisher.
I would recommend this book to any- and everyone, except maybe schoolmarms and grammar nazis.
In the prequel to this book ("...and forgive us our debts...") Hudson describes the economies of the Ancient Near East, especially the sacred role that debt forgiveness played in the palatial kingdoms of the day, which was later codified into the Mosaic Laws of Judaism.
In this book Hudson follows this thread further, sculpting an economic analysis of ancient Greece and Rome, again focusing on the important role that debt (and its forgiveness, or lack thereof) plays in society at-large. His argument is that Greek and Roman civilizations inherited interest-bearing debt from these Ancient Near East economies, but not the associated "Clean Slate" (or Jubilee Year) proclamations of debt forgiveness that kept debt dynamics from polarizing the Ancient Near East economies and destroying their civilizations from within.
Because Greece and Rome were at the mercy of oligarchic military interests instead of powerful palace leaders, they had no meta-market force (kingly proclamations, Laws of God, etc.) to occasionally reset an economy that had gotten too polarized for society to function.
Hudson argues that the West wrongly considers itself as beginning in Greece and Rome, not in the Ancient Near East (despite still holding onto Judeo-Christian values). Because of this, we have no modern concept of the debt forgiveness that played such a key role in stabilizing the Ancient Near East economies, and so we now face the same issues Rome faced as its civilization collapsed: namely an increasingly polarized economy and populace.
We (the West) have inherited the same pro-creditor legal philosophy with no ample recourse for debt forgiveness, and this is the cause of all our social ills.
Most of Hudson's ideas are genuinely brilliant and groundbreaking—he has singlehandedly ushered in new fields of study as regards ancient economics—and he synthesizes them from myriad authors from both antiquity (5 pages dedicated to "Ancient Texts" in the Bibliography) and modernity (29 pages for "Modern Works").
You should read this book.
Everyone should.
And all of Hudson's books both in this series and not.
If you do, you'll come away with a better understanding of how the economies of the West really work nowadays—better than you can get anywhere else, and its not particularly close either.
Hudson is a brilliant writer of aphorisms and anecdotes, but his English skills stop there. He DESPERATELY needs a better editor and publisher—this book is better edited than his previous ones, but is still lacking. The book itself is huge and the font is annoyingly large—not to mention that about 20% of the text is gray (the rest black), and that the font itself (and the size of it) occasionally change—all for seemingly no reason, leading one to think it's the accidental fault of a poor editor/publisher.
I would recommend this book to any- and everyone, except maybe schoolmarms and grammar nazis.
December 9, 2024
Up there in quality with GEM de Ste. Croix, this text argues that ancient Greek city states and the Roman Republic inherited the practice of charging interest on debt ex oriente lux but not the conjoined practice of debt forgiveness via jubilee. Those who attempted to use political processes to cancel debt and redistribute land were accused of being tyrants in Greece, of seeking monarchy in the Republic, and of being heretics by early Catholicism. The result is acute concentration of property ownership and reduction of almost all people to the status of unfree laborers.
Read
December 5, 2024The sections about Augustine's corruption and his early corruption of the Christian Church were especially compelling. The sources cited in that section I want to dive into more once I have the time. I made an audiobook of this it's available on my patreon
June 11, 2024
Be aware of self-congratulatory hubris.
Great thinkers have all warned us.
Economic determinism, espoused by social Darwinist philosophy, has this sanguine circular reasoning:
It posits that any given society is the result of natural selection favoring policies that successfully maximize productivity and prosperity.
With this Panglossian logic, today’s Western civilization is envisioned as the culmination of past triumphs, tracing lineage from classical Greece and Rome as progressive leaps from the near Eastern palatial economies to Western Europe. Adopting this self-congratulatory perspective, contemporary institutions such as individualism and the security of credit and property contracts are traced back to classical antiquity as flawless, positive evolutionary developments, steering civilization away from what is labeled as “Oriental Despotism”.
Yet, the reality is that Rome’s predatory oligarchies waged five centuries of civil war to deprive populations of liberty, blocking popular opposition to harsh pro-creditor laws and the monopolization of the land into latifundia estates. But the dynamics that drove labor into clientage and ultimately into serfdom have been downplayed by modern historiography that focuses more on Rome’s military conquests and biographies of its leading consuls and emperors than on its struggles over debt and land tenure. The verdict is merciless: What impoverished the population of the Roman Empire bequeathed a creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world.
In the book The Collapse of Antiquity, the author, Michael Hudson, sets out to prove that what impoverished the population of the Roman Empire bequeathed a creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world. Hudson’s verdict is merciless: The pillars of Western Civilization, Ancient Greece and Rome –set the stage for what is happening today: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.
Hudson delves into the perennial clash between creditors and the real economy. He illustrates that unlike some historical traditions that acknowledged the significance of debt pardoning and equitable land distribution, ancient Rome adopted a stringent pro-creditor legal system. This approach led to drastic measures, including the elimination of figures who remotely threatened it, including Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and Jesus. Consequently, the empire descended into a rentier economy, ultimately succumbing to internal dissolution. Unfortunately, contemporary neoliberal establishments in the West persist in defending this futile state framework, despite the adverse dynamics it perpetuates.
The author challenges established perspectives on the demise of the Roman Empire, positing that its decline stemmed from a financial crisis precipitated by an excessive burden of debt, pervasive wealth inequality, and the concentration of economic authority. Drawing parallels with present-day economies, he underscores the hazards inherent in the processes of financialization and the concentration of wealth.
Hudson describes in excruciating detail how Rome, in essence, behaved akin to a failed state, with a plethora of figures such as generals, governors, tax collectors, moneylanders extracting silver and gold through military plunder, tribute, and usury from regions like Asia Minor and Egypt. Yet this Roman wasteland approach has been lavishly depicted in the modern West as bringing a French-style mission civilisatrice to the barbarians – while carrying the proverbial white man’s burden.
Greek and Roman economies ultimately ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies. Does this not resonate with contemporary circumstances? Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy, giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors," today euphemized as the 'security of property rights.' Public spending on social welfare was minimal, aligning with today's political ideology advocating leaving matters to 'the market.' This market, in turn, compelled citizens of Rome and its Empire to rely on affluent patrons and moneylenders for basic needs, while bread and circuses were sustained through the public dole and games financed by political candidates, often borrowing from wealthy oligarchs to fund their campaigns.
The semblance to the current system led by the Hegemon is more than coincidental, according to Hudson. He contends that these pro-rentier ideas, policies, and principles mirror those followed by today's Westernized world, rendering Roman history remarkably pertinent to contemporary economies grappling with similar economic and political strains. Hudson underscores that Rome's own historians, including Livy, Sallust, Appian, Plutarch, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, emphasized the citizens' subjugation to debt bondage. Even in Greece, the Delphic Oracle, along with poets and philosophers, cautioned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned of the major threat to social harmony and society posed by "wealth addiction and its money-love."
Remarkably, this criticism was systematically erased from Western historiography. Hudson notes that very few classicists delve into Rome's own historians describing how debt struggles and land acquisitions were chiefly responsible for the Republic's Decline and Fall. Hudson also reminds us that the barbarians were perennially at the Empire's gate, and Rome was weakened not by external threats but from within, through centuries of oligarchic excess.
It would be impossible to fully cover the precious ideas, but to name a few, I liked the parts where Hudson reminds us how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them. That became an occasion for endowing the wealthiest families with public land when Roman state treated their ostensibly patriotic donations to aid the war effort as restorative public debts subject to repayment. After Rome defeated Carthage, the glitzy set wanted their money back. Yet, the only asset left to the state was land in Campania. The wealthy families lobbied the Senate and gobbled up the whole lot. With Caesar, that was the last chance for the working classes to get a fair deal. In the first half of the 1st century B.C. he did sponsor a bankruptcy law, writing down debts. But there was no widespread debt cancellation. Caesar being so moderate did not prevent the Senate oligarchs from whacking him. After Octavian’s triumph and his designation by the Senate as Princeps and Augustus in 27 B.C., the Senate became just a ceremonial elite. Hudson summarizes that the Western Empire fell apart when there was no more land for the taking and no more monetary bullion to loot Once again, one should feel free to draw parallels with the current plight of the hegemon.
In essence, the lesson drawn from Greece and Rome is clear: creditor oligarchies, in their pursuit of monopolizing income and land through predatory means, inevitably stifle prosperity and growth. Overall this is a good read and it serves as a cautionary tale illustrating how deifying the antiquity, pleonexia, and the long lasting curse of interest-bearing loans being handed out that could not be repaid can erode the fabric of society.
Great thinkers have all warned us.
Economic determinism, espoused by social Darwinist philosophy, has this sanguine circular reasoning:
It posits that any given society is the result of natural selection favoring policies that successfully maximize productivity and prosperity.
With this Panglossian logic, today’s Western civilization is envisioned as the culmination of past triumphs, tracing lineage from classical Greece and Rome as progressive leaps from the near Eastern palatial economies to Western Europe. Adopting this self-congratulatory perspective, contemporary institutions such as individualism and the security of credit and property contracts are traced back to classical antiquity as flawless, positive evolutionary developments, steering civilization away from what is labeled as “Oriental Despotism”.
Yet, the reality is that Rome’s predatory oligarchies waged five centuries of civil war to deprive populations of liberty, blocking popular opposition to harsh pro-creditor laws and the monopolization of the land into latifundia estates. But the dynamics that drove labor into clientage and ultimately into serfdom have been downplayed by modern historiography that focuses more on Rome’s military conquests and biographies of its leading consuls and emperors than on its struggles over debt and land tenure. The verdict is merciless: What impoverished the population of the Roman Empire bequeathed a creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world.
In the book The Collapse of Antiquity, the author, Michael Hudson, sets out to prove that what impoverished the population of the Roman Empire bequeathed a creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world. Hudson’s verdict is merciless: The pillars of Western Civilization, Ancient Greece and Rome –set the stage for what is happening today: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.
Hudson delves into the perennial clash between creditors and the real economy. He illustrates that unlike some historical traditions that acknowledged the significance of debt pardoning and equitable land distribution, ancient Rome adopted a stringent pro-creditor legal system. This approach led to drastic measures, including the elimination of figures who remotely threatened it, including Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and Jesus. Consequently, the empire descended into a rentier economy, ultimately succumbing to internal dissolution. Unfortunately, contemporary neoliberal establishments in the West persist in defending this futile state framework, despite the adverse dynamics it perpetuates.
The author challenges established perspectives on the demise of the Roman Empire, positing that its decline stemmed from a financial crisis precipitated by an excessive burden of debt, pervasive wealth inequality, and the concentration of economic authority. Drawing parallels with present-day economies, he underscores the hazards inherent in the processes of financialization and the concentration of wealth.
Hudson describes in excruciating detail how Rome, in essence, behaved akin to a failed state, with a plethora of figures such as generals, governors, tax collectors, moneylanders extracting silver and gold through military plunder, tribute, and usury from regions like Asia Minor and Egypt. Yet this Roman wasteland approach has been lavishly depicted in the modern West as bringing a French-style mission civilisatrice to the barbarians – while carrying the proverbial white man’s burden.
Greek and Roman economies ultimately ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies. Does this not resonate with contemporary circumstances? Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy, giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors," today euphemized as the 'security of property rights.' Public spending on social welfare was minimal, aligning with today's political ideology advocating leaving matters to 'the market.' This market, in turn, compelled citizens of Rome and its Empire to rely on affluent patrons and moneylenders for basic needs, while bread and circuses were sustained through the public dole and games financed by political candidates, often borrowing from wealthy oligarchs to fund their campaigns.
The semblance to the current system led by the Hegemon is more than coincidental, according to Hudson. He contends that these pro-rentier ideas, policies, and principles mirror those followed by today's Westernized world, rendering Roman history remarkably pertinent to contemporary economies grappling with similar economic and political strains. Hudson underscores that Rome's own historians, including Livy, Sallust, Appian, Plutarch, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, emphasized the citizens' subjugation to debt bondage. Even in Greece, the Delphic Oracle, along with poets and philosophers, cautioned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned of the major threat to social harmony and society posed by "wealth addiction and its money-love."
Remarkably, this criticism was systematically erased from Western historiography. Hudson notes that very few classicists delve into Rome's own historians describing how debt struggles and land acquisitions were chiefly responsible for the Republic's Decline and Fall. Hudson also reminds us that the barbarians were perennially at the Empire's gate, and Rome was weakened not by external threats but from within, through centuries of oligarchic excess.
It would be impossible to fully cover the precious ideas, but to name a few, I liked the parts where Hudson reminds us how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them. That became an occasion for endowing the wealthiest families with public land when Roman state treated their ostensibly patriotic donations to aid the war effort as restorative public debts subject to repayment. After Rome defeated Carthage, the glitzy set wanted their money back. Yet, the only asset left to the state was land in Campania. The wealthy families lobbied the Senate and gobbled up the whole lot. With Caesar, that was the last chance for the working classes to get a fair deal. In the first half of the 1st century B.C. he did sponsor a bankruptcy law, writing down debts. But there was no widespread debt cancellation. Caesar being so moderate did not prevent the Senate oligarchs from whacking him. After Octavian’s triumph and his designation by the Senate as Princeps and Augustus in 27 B.C., the Senate became just a ceremonial elite. Hudson summarizes that the Western Empire fell apart when there was no more land for the taking and no more monetary bullion to loot Once again, one should feel free to draw parallels with the current plight of the hegemon.
In essence, the lesson drawn from Greece and Rome is clear: creditor oligarchies, in their pursuit of monopolizing income and land through predatory means, inevitably stifle prosperity and growth. Overall this is a good read and it serves as a cautionary tale illustrating how deifying the antiquity, pleonexia, and the long lasting curse of interest-bearing loans being handed out that could not be repaid can erode the fabric of society.
May 22, 2023
Michael Hudsonsets presents that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – set the stage for what is happening today : an empire (the USA) reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.
He shows how Greek and Roman economies ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies. And this is what is happening today.
Here is his main point: "“Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors – euphemized today as ‘security of property rights’. Public expenditure on social welfare was minimized – what today’s political ideology calls leaving matters to ‘the market’. It was a market that kept citizens of Rome and its Empire dependent for basic needs on wealthy patrons and moneylenders – and for bread and circuses, on the public dole and on games paid for by political candidates, who often themselves borrowed from wealthy oligarchs to finance their campaigns.”
Rome’s own historians emphasized the subjugation of citizens to debt bondage and warned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned that wealth addiction and its money-love was the major threat to social harmony and hence to society.
Hudson reminds us as well how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them.
This book is good to read, history is going to repeat itself again !
He shows how Greek and Roman economies ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies. And this is what is happening today.
Here is his main point: "“Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors – euphemized today as ‘security of property rights’. Public expenditure on social welfare was minimized – what today’s political ideology calls leaving matters to ‘the market’. It was a market that kept citizens of Rome and its Empire dependent for basic needs on wealthy patrons and moneylenders – and for bread and circuses, on the public dole and on games paid for by political candidates, who often themselves borrowed from wealthy oligarchs to finance their campaigns.”
Rome’s own historians emphasized the subjugation of citizens to debt bondage and warned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned that wealth addiction and its money-love was the major threat to social harmony and hence to society.
Hudson reminds us as well how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them.
This book is good to read, history is going to repeat itself again !
October 24, 2023
Huge fan. First off, this is my second foray into ancient history beyond a smattering of YouTube videos, high school history classes, the passive propaganda of the modern US, and Parenti’s book on Caesar, of which this covered some of the same material.
At times it took a lot of re-reading and keeping up with names but it was well worth it. It fascinates me to no end that 2000+ years ago there was the sort of mundane world of contracts that guided history. Hudson makes a convincing argument that the development of usurious moneylending decoupled from widespread debt forgiveness common to Near Eastern civilizations that preceded Greece/Rome, made antiquity’s grand wealth divide and subsequent slide into serfdom, an inevitability.
The rise of historic “tyrants” were often people that promoted popular debt forgiveness programs by force against the “democratic” rule of an oligarchy that always protected pro-creditor laws.
Beyond the main point of the book I also just found fascinating the material message preached by Jesus in his first sermons; how Sparta ran common mess halls for its citizens who had various amounts of wealth by private lending and how they only were 1/7 the population with the rest as non voters or slaves; how the ancients discussed their own history; and the methods of pillage by expansionist empires looking to conquer and take the spoils often kept in religious temples - to be “borrowed” and melted down into coins to pay mercenaries to loot more etc etc
At times it took a lot of re-reading and keeping up with names but it was well worth it. It fascinates me to no end that 2000+ years ago there was the sort of mundane world of contracts that guided history. Hudson makes a convincing argument that the development of usurious moneylending decoupled from widespread debt forgiveness common to Near Eastern civilizations that preceded Greece/Rome, made antiquity’s grand wealth divide and subsequent slide into serfdom, an inevitability.
The rise of historic “tyrants” were often people that promoted popular debt forgiveness programs by force against the “democratic” rule of an oligarchy that always protected pro-creditor laws.
Beyond the main point of the book I also just found fascinating the material message preached by Jesus in his first sermons; how Sparta ran common mess halls for its citizens who had various amounts of wealth by private lending and how they only were 1/7 the population with the rest as non voters or slaves; how the ancients discussed their own history; and the methods of pillage by expansionist empires looking to conquer and take the spoils often kept in religious temples - to be “borrowed” and melted down into coins to pay mercenaries to loot more etc etc
August 10, 2023
The author presents a compelling case on one of the main reasons for social conflict and collapse, this being the growth of debt which polarizes societies between a ruling oligarchic class and an impoverished majority that falls into some form of peonage or slavery, this fact is not always given the proper relevance by most authors which prefer to not raise issues that would be found inconvenient to the existing ruling classes which rely on similar mechanisms for their privileged position.
A particular element I found interesting is how the meaning of some ideas or movements are completely changed when they gain too much momentum to align with the interests of the powerful, examples are shown with the Greek and Roman aristocracy and when the merger of the roman state and Catholic church occurred, we also see some examples of our times about how some historical elements are suppressed/ignored to prevent some ideas from even being considered that could question the current status quo.
At some point the book becomes a bit repetitive but I attributed this to the fact that the same pattern of events keeps happening over and over again through the ages, which is kind of the point the author seems to be trying to make.
A particular element I found interesting is how the meaning of some ideas or movements are completely changed when they gain too much momentum to align with the interests of the powerful, examples are shown with the Greek and Roman aristocracy and when the merger of the roman state and Catholic church occurred, we also see some examples of our times about how some historical elements are suppressed/ignored to prevent some ideas from even being considered that could question the current status quo.
At some point the book becomes a bit repetitive but I attributed this to the fact that the same pattern of events keeps happening over and over again through the ages, which is kind of the point the author seems to be trying to make.
January 9, 2024
By examining the rise and fall of ancient Greek and Roman empires in economic terms, Hudson showcases a vicious cycle that leads western economies (including contemporary) to collapse:
1. Lower classes don't have a choice, but to incur debt in order to survive (Higher classes incurring debt is also examined in this book).
2. Higher classes strive to control how debt is handled legally, and suppress popular demands using aggressive means (military, religious, assassinations etc).
3. Inequality keeps rising and living conditions of lower classes keep deteriorating, leading to revolts, defections, civil wars etc.
4. In the end the higher classes are left with nothing to plunder, leading to their defection and the collapse of the empire.
A possible solution to this issue, mentioned often throughout the book, is the paradigm of non-western empires cancelling the debts of lower classes (not higher classes) in regular intervals.
1. Lower classes don't have a choice, but to incur debt in order to survive (Higher classes incurring debt is also examined in this book).
2. Higher classes strive to control how debt is handled legally, and suppress popular demands using aggressive means (military, religious, assassinations etc).
3. Inequality keeps rising and living conditions of lower classes keep deteriorating, leading to revolts, defections, civil wars etc.
4. In the end the higher classes are left with nothing to plunder, leading to their defection and the collapse of the empire.
A possible solution to this issue, mentioned often throughout the book, is the paradigm of non-western empires cancelling the debts of lower classes (not higher classes) in regular intervals.
Read
September 3, 2023Marshals powerful evidence that economic oppression, mainly in the form of debt enslavement, had been the major destructive force in the West from Ancient times onwards. He also favors classical economics. Then you get to to the end of the book and find that for Hudson, the model for managing economies correctly is the Chinese Communist Party! So why does he favor classical economics? Because Marx was a classical economist!
Read
February 6, 2025Very good economic history of Greece and Italy, and the economic legacy of the Roman empire protecting the creditors vs debtors. Helps in understanding some of the origins of our current economic order.
January 27, 2024
Somewhat dry prose and can be repetetive at times. But having read it I feel lika I came out the other side with a deeper udnerstanding of antiquity.
March 30, 2025
Excellent detail. Opened my eyes to the effects of the current landscape on how we live today.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews