History and history

History and history

As most anyone who knows anything about history can tell you, the writing of history has undergone many changes over time.  The aim of Herodotus, the 5th century BC Greek "father of history", was much different than that of the modern historian, which is often to provide explanation for historical events and to analyse their relation to the present.  His aim was "to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples; and more particularly, to show how they came into conflict."  Here is the primary aim of the pioneers of history in classical antiquity: to preserve information so that events would not recede into the misty realm of legend.

The oral tradition of history is precisely the story of fact fading into legend and myth.  But, there is a real material base for these misty beginnings.  Writing was known in Mycenaean Greece, but the difficult "linear B" script appears to have been primarily used in the keeping of palace inventories and for the purposes of trade.  The latter is the root of the drive for written language generally; it is no accident that written language appears first around the coasts of the Mediterranean, and reaches darker Europe only in later ages.  The development of the Greek alphabet, through the adoption and adaptation of Phoenician written characters, was the first prerequisite for the writing of history.  The Phoenicians were a civilization that the Greeks had become very familiar with during this period through their colonial and trade expansion.  As Greek society expanded, it adopted many of the more advanced aspects of its neighbors.

Thus began the period of "primitive accumulation" in the keeping of history.  A second prerequisite was, naturally, events worth chronicling.  War is the natural starting point of history - the long seasons of peace were too uneventful to call out for a historian.  As 19th century American historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge beautifully wrote:

 "the greatest of poems would never have seen the light had not Homer been inspired by the warlike deeds of heroes; nor would Herodotus and Thucydides have penned their invaluable pages had not the stirring events of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars impelled them to the task.  Xenophon, Arrian, Caesar, are strictly military historians; and the works of the other great writers of ancient history contain only the rehearsal of wars held together by a network of political conditions influencing these struggles."

The ancient historians were primarily interested in preserving the events of importance, those outside of the mundane and usual; war was usually that break in normalcy.  But war alone was not enough - as Mr. Dodge suggested, war had long been the subject of oral legend and myth, but not necessarily history.  For the Greeks, real history begins with the Persian Wars, and this is important.  It is the event that thrust Greece into a qualitatively higher level of material and political importance.  The terrible menace of Xerxes' invasion marks the point where history in the West separates itself, definitively, from legend.

The task of the classical historians was to collect and preserve.  Herodotus, in his history of the Persian Wars, presents the reader with an incredibly broad range of information; this is quite unusual to the modern student, acclimated as he is to the rules of strict focus and depth of sources.  But, Herodotus was vigorously engaged in the primitive accumulation of historical knowledge; like the adventurers and conquistadors of the late middle ages, he collected and extracted wealth, but his wealth was made of words and stories; upon its base, modern history would one day be built.

The ability to distinguish between truth, legend (half-truth), and outright fabrication was difficult, given the nature of many of his sources, but he made honest attempts in this realm.  Indeed the nature of his work required that he be quite inventive and flexible in his methods of gathering material.

The modern historian is presented with an incredible amount of information and sources.  He will spend a great deal of his time pouring over them, separating and categorizing them.  This does not mean that the role of the chronicler has disappeared - far from it.  But, it is no longer the principle aim of history; explanation and analysis has taken on a very large role.  But, it was only possible because of the long period of accumulation undertaken by the classical historians, even though they may have no known they were doing it.

The higher stage of capitalism has no problem recording events.  High literacy rates (although they are not as high in some places as they once were) and high levels of production in recording instruments and media - from pens and paper to cell phone cameras and internet blogs - have ensured that events are captured from an overwhelming number of sources and views.  The historian has been freed from the chains of simple recording to concentrate on the more sophisticated work of analysis.  And the objective and subjective development of society has also unlocked the mysterious force that drives it, through a social structure simplified by the dominance of only two classes: the struggle of classes at the most basic level of productive and social relations has driven forward the massive shifts from slave society to feudalism to capitalism.

The historian is unfortunately tied to society as it exists.  As capitalism rots and we enter an age of revolution, history serves either one of the classes locked in combat; it is not, as some suppose, above the world it chronicles.  In order to make use of the advances in our understanding of history, it must be viewed in such a way to serve the interests of us workers, we who represent the future.  The way forward can be found in a serious analysis of the past, unlocking the laws of social development.  This is the task of the historian today, which has come full circle from Herodotus: from preservation of the past to a preservation of our future.

Hoplite Heresies: Accounting for the Spartans I/II

This may be the post that actually earns the title of "heresy".  I expect it to be somewhat controversial among the small handful of people who actually read any of this, so please feel free to leave feedback.  In some ways, Sparta is to ancient Greek history what WWII is to modern history - everyone who knows anything about it feels like a qualified expert.  So, I expect to ruffle some feathers merely by challenging the particular conception of the society that is familiar to many who know nothing else about the ancient Mediterannean.  The argument I will be making (briefly) is that the traditional view of Spartan society does not hold up to serious analysis from the standpoint of Historical Materialism.  Sparta was not subject to any different material or class forces than other Greek poleis.  It was not a unique historical entity that managed to stand apart from the core forces driving the rest of classical Greek slave society, while still taking a major role in shaping that world - such a conception cannot explain a thing about the role played by Sparta in the larger trajectory of the Hellenic world.  By relying on some recent scholarship, as well as the Marxist method of historical inquiry, we can demystify Sparta. 

If the average American can name two Greek city-states, they are most likely Athens and Sparta.  The two names have been etched onto the historical memory of the ages.  In popular culture, many know of Sparta and its soldiers from the recent movie "300" or even the many high school and college mascots that bear the name "Spartan".  But this is a rather strange phenomenon when one considers that Sparta has classically been considered an outlier among the Greek city-states; there was something different about the place and its mysterious regimented society.  I have written a few posts now on Greek warfare in which I have mentioned the state and its militant inhabitants many times, but despite their reputation for military excellence, the posts have not focused on them.  It is worthwhile to take a closer look at this city that still looms so large over history. 

In an attempt to keep my posts short, I will present this in two parts.  Anyone interested in my sources need only ask.

Land Ownership and the Land Owning Class

In order to understand anything about the Spartan military record, it is necessary to start with an examination of the social base.  I doubt there is anyone reading this who does not have at least some rudimentary knowledge of the Spartan agoge, or the strict military barracks system that served as both a system of public education and military training.  The tales of taking boys away from their homes, who received education (among other things) from older male lovers, and eating blood soup have remained in steady rotation in high school and college history courses.  So, there would be little point in dwelling on these facts themselves; if one is interested, they can find accounts of the agoge in numerous books and articles.  We are interested in the machinery that made the place what it was - the classes of Sparta and the social and productive relations that bound them.

Was Sparta an extreme outlier in history?  In order to attempt an answer, we will first look at the economic base of Sparta, which is supposed to be so radically different than other Greek poleis.  The productive property in Greece was primarily agricultural land, and the private ownership of this land, worked by slaves, made up the base upon which the large landowners - the ruling class of the Greek world - maintianed their social position of power.  This power extended over the class of small landowners (free peasants), who were engaged in class struggle with their superiors throughout antiquity.  The traditional view, which bases itself largely on the writings of the ancient Roman historians Plutarch and Polybius, holds that the land was equally distributed among Spartiates (full Spartan citizens) by the state.  Some who hold the traditional analysis also claim that the land was owned by the state, and the Spartiate acted as a steward.  This leaves us with an image of a radically egalitarian, even communistic, state with a strong bureaucratic government.  Yet, there are some major problems with this view.

The first issue is that the traditional view is based on evidence from historians writing centuries after the classical Greek period - they knew only what they heard or read in earlier writings.  Sparta traced many of its institutions back to the reforms of a king Lycurgus, who may or may not have been a real person.  Some of the institutions credited to his genius were the agoge, the oligarchic form of government, and the requirement of all Spartan males to eat in communal mess halls.  Most lauded among his reforms was a radical redistribution of land, said to have given each citizen an equal part.  The Spartans of the 5th and 4th centuries spoke of the reforms as a thing of the distant past, and it is likely that the Spartans of later centuries told the same tales about the 5th century.  For this phenomenon, there is some evidence from Athenian orators of the 4th century who spoke of how the "ancients" practiced the arts of war in a way more honorable and fitting of gentlemen - they were only speaking of the Athenians of the 5th century!

Furthermore, the evidence of equal or state owned land from classical Greek historians is slim.  Xenophon, an Athenian aristocrat most known for taking part in the expedition of the 10,000 Greek mercenaries into Persia in 401, was also a great admirer of Spartan society, and wrote a considerable amount about it.  It is noteworthy that in his work Polity of the Lakedaemonians, Xenophon does not mention land ownership a single time.  The work was meant, after all, to draw attention to the Lycurgan reforms that made Spartan social practices different than those of other Greek states.  His view was also that of an insider, not merely an Athenian visitor; he lived in Sparta for years and educated his sons along side those of the Spartiates.  One would assume that such an admirer would want to draw special attention to a system that effectively combats one of the great historical forces throughout the classical period: scarcity and concentration of arable land. 

There are other problems besides the trustworthiness of the historians.  One of these is that there is no evidence of the kind of state bureaucracy necessary for the level of control and record keeping necessary to doll out land and slaves (Hodkinson, 2000).  For instance, the Athens employed 700 magistrates throughout the Aegean and Asia Minor to administer its empire; when Sparta found itself at the head of a large land and overseas empire after the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, it left administration in the hands of a small number of regional governors who wielded a great deal of personal authority.  The empire quickly fell apart (see Xenophon's Hellenika).  This is hardly the picture of a well-oiled bureaucratic machine.

Secondly, and even more damning, is that the traditional model cannot account for the 5th century decline in the Spartiate population (Cartledge, 2009).  If land were doled out by the state and children were garaunteed economic security through such a program of land tenure, then what could explain such a demographic change?  Evidence from Thucydides and Xenophon shows great military reform during the 5th and 4th centuries (more on this in part II) in which non-citizens, mercenaries, and even enfranchized helots found their way into the phalanx alongside full Spartans - this is evidence of considerable social changes.  If there were enough trained citizens to fill the ranks, these reforms would hardly have been considered. 

It seems, rather, that freedom to buy and sell land, a right granted to citizens, resulted in a concentration of property (Hodkinson, 84).  The citizen had certain property requirements in order to retain his citizenship: he had to provide a certain amount of grain and produce to his communal dining mess.  If he were not able to provide his share, he could lose his rights to citizenship.  In fact, Xenophon famously wrote of a conspiracy by what  appears to be a group of former citizens or the children of former citizens to overthrow the Spartan state; of the Spartiates, the head conspirator said that they wished to "eat them raw".  Evidence of such vicious class conflict between large and small landowners is consistent with the class conflict that took place in other Greek poleis. 

Despite the image of the poor, austere Sparta, the Spartiate landowning class was likely very wealthy among the property owning classes of other Greek states.  Unlike Attica (the region dominated by Athens), with its poor and scarce farmland, Sparta ruled over a large dominion of very fertile land.  In fact, the soil likely allowed for two harvests a year.  In light of this, it is easy to understand how the Spartiates would gain great wealth at the expense of Helot labor, and how fierce struggle over land developed.  More on the social effects of this will be discussed in part II.

Another familiar aspect of Spartan society is the above-mentioned Helots, and they are worth considering in some detail.  The population known to us as helots would have called themselves (not too loudly) Messenians - and indeed they were; Sparta had conquered the region of Messenia, known for its fertile land in the late 8th century and subjugated the entire population.  They are commonly referred to as slaves in many history texts, but this label requires some qualification.  The institution of slavery existed in all Greek states, and their economies were largely driven by the employment of slave labor; some of the larger trading cities, such as Athens and Corinth, had slave populations that greatly outnumbered that of citizens. So, there is nothing out of the ordinary in slavery.  Slaves were the personal property of their owners, and productive property - "tools that speak".  There has been a great deal of disagreement regarding the nature of the Helots.  The famous "Marxist" historian de ste Croix considered them to be "state serfs", and others of a more traditional stripe have tended to see them as a type of mass of slaves owned by the state.

The ancient sources are not totally clear on the nature of the Helots.  A reason for the long-held belief that they were somehow property of the state lies, perhaps in Thucydides' and Xenophon's description of the state intervening in their lives and use during the Peloponnesian and Theban wars.  They were subject to use by the state without compensation to their masters, and numbers of them were granted freedom in exchange for military service during both conflicts (Hellenika and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War).  It should be noted that there was precedent for this in Athens, and no one would accuse the Athenian state of collective ownership over its slave population.

In light of the sale and concentration of landed property in Sparta, it would be better to assume that the Helots were the personal property of Spartiates, but subject to state intervention under the law (Hodkinson, 115).  Overall, in review of recent scholarship and ancient sources, and the system of property relations in Sparta is fairly unremarkable in relation to the economic bases of other Greek states.  My conclusions, as well as some further examination of the military and social relations, will be further examined in the next section!

Alexander the Great and the Materialist Method of History

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Classical Greeks did not produce many great generals.  But there was Alexander, who was probably the greatest captain in all of Western history.  After all, who can have claimed to do what he did?  Hannibal? Scipio?  Caesar?  Alexander had probably never even heard of a little Italian state called Rome when he was sitting on top of the vastness of Greece (minus Sparta, who was never included in his Greek conquest), Asia Minor, Egypt, and the expanse from the coasts of the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, and out to the Indus.  All while never having lost a pitched battle.

Heroes and Historical Materialism

A popular liberal reductionist mode of history, championed by people like Howard Zinn, attempts to fight the "big man" theory of history by taking the opposite stance- history was made by the masses of "small" people, and big men were just as brutal, potentially criminal and fallible as anyone else.  Very well; I doubt anyone can seriously disagree with this.  However, it also represents another form of one-sided theory that does not get us a step closer to the truth on its own.  History is still full of Alexanders, Caesars, Cromwells, Napoleons, etc- to write them all off as unimportant war criminals does not answer why they exist in the first place.  The fact of their deeds is more stubborn to do away with, and must be accounted for. 

Furthermore, to judge history by body count will not get one very far.  To write off conqueror as just a bloody killer is to get no further than to recognize part of the definition of a conqueror.  Moralism sounds very nice to many very nice people, but it is much more valuable to have the tools necessary to understand a phenomenon.  And of the book Alexander the Fabulous, reducing the entirety of his accomplishments to his supposed homosexuality...the less said the better.

I have, in a past post, outlined Historical Materialism, the Marxist method of historical inquiry, so I will only briefly outline some aspects of the approach as they affect our subject.  Historical Materialism, by recognizing that history is made, in the last analysis, by the struggle of different historical classes, blows the great man theory out of the water.  However, it does not end there.  There is no mechanical conception of poor vs. rich in some eternal struggle.  Nor does it reduce any political event to the mechanical reaction to economics.  The mode of production- the particular way that men and women interact with one another to reproduce society on a daily basis, like slave society, feudalism, capitalism, etc.- gives a particular character to the social relations that come of it, which helps to explain the sweep of historical events.  Historical materialism recognizes the roles of great men and women, but in a way that is divorced completely from the "great man" theory: as representatives of historical tendencies in times of great change.  

In other words: the characters do not make the changes in society, the changes already occurring in society produce the characters who carry them through.  Just as there are laws of nature, so there are laws of social development.  Although it is somewhat fashionable to take the postmodernist position that "reality is a social construct" and so there is no one objective reality, this represents a massive step backward in historical thought to the emptiness of mysticism and solipsism; we will not waste any time tangled in this bankrupt conception.  However, whereas the laws of nature confront humans as a force that exists with or without them, the laws of social development both confront the individual as a force alien to him (no man chooses the mode of production of the society that he is born into) and also as something that is enacted through the actions of human beings.  So, it is natural that in times where the contradictions at a society's base are causing great social upheaval and change, it is often great characters of history who fill the subjective place of representative of a much wider trend that has already developed.  

There were many men in Greece who were as intelligent, athletic, and wealthy as Alexander.  Likewise, there were many states with considerable military capability (Thebes, Athens, Syracuse)*.  Alexander the man and Macedonia the state were not special on their own, but only as representatives of the bearers of the historical ascendancy of Greek slaves society.  There were reasons that they were well-situated for the role that they would play, though.

Only a King

Macedonia was, to most Greeks, a backward state full semi-barbarous people- they still served a line of kings, after all!  They were scarcely higher on the scale of civilization than the warlike Thracians.  That they would be the state to lead Greece into its long-brewing contest with Persia would have been a silly idea, to say the least.  

There is, though, an interesting tendency for things to turn into their opposite.  Something that once played a progressive role in moving society forward (for instance, slavery), can become a fetter (consider the long decay of the Roman Empire due to the rotting corpse of slave agriculture).  The opposite took place in Macedonia.  The backward state of its economy and political apparatus once ensured its status as a culturally-handicapped backwater, and it would eventually become its strength.  Ultimately, it took a king- namely, Philip II- to build Greece's first truly professional army.  

To back up this statement, it is necessary to look at the state of affairs in Greece, during the latter half of the 4th century.  The Peloponnesian War had devastated the Greek world from 431-404.  It brought a terrible outbreak of plague to Athens, the total ruin of many cities, both on the mainland and in the Aegean, and generally weakened all of the great city states.     The brief period of Spartan ascendancy following the war resulted in a successful, but interrupted, invasion of Persia by the great Spartan king Agesilaus.  The Corinthian War and Theban War that followed reduced Sparta to a second rate power and saw a short period of Theban ascendancy.  By the period of Philip's Grecian campaign, Athens was again the predominant Greek power, although an exhausted one.  

What led to this long nightmare of war among the Greeks?  Ultimately, as Greek slave society grew more productive and the great trading cities of Corinth and Athens became more important in the Mediterranean, the growing economic interests of the states were bound to bring them into conflict.  Military might and trade were intimately connected, as states vied for access to the rich markets of the East and pirates preyed upon unprepared traders.  The conflicts in the economic sphere thus led to a series of draining and destructive wars.  No state, not even the Athenian Empire, proved powerful enough to create a monopoly of trade in the Aegean or Mediterranean, and the struggles ground on.

Inside the states themselves, great contradictions were playing themselves out.  As states grew more prosperous, and, in the case of Athens grew imperial ambitions, it ground against the social relations that had developed in previous periods.  Democracy, for instance, which was itself the product of great class conflict between small landowners, a growing merchant class, and large land owners, required a small geographical state to ensure that citizens could easily travel to the city for voting.  As the representatives of the large landowning class sought, and were pushed by the growth in slave economy to seek, greater political and economic influence throughout the Mediterranean, they were held back by the nature of the small democratic state.  The Athenian empire, although it employed 700 magistrates throughout the Aegean to administer its dominion, was hardly much more than a forced confederacy when compared to the successor kingdoms or the Roman empire.  The political form, balanced on explosive class conflict, was at odds with the demands of the expanding states.  

Traditionally, the Greek states relied on civilian militias for defense.  The fame of the "Marathon men" and the 300 Spartans attests to the effectiveness of the Greek man-at-arms.  However, a major weakness of Greek armies was that the bulk of the phalanx was made up of farmers who needed to be back home by the harvest season.  Indeed, this was a matter of pride and a mark of prestige for the layer of society that had made up the oldest base of citizenry back into the period of the tribal state.  There was a limit to the amount of time that a state could keep such army in the field, a campaign season that coincided with the natural rhythm of agriculture.  

Since the Greek states had a strong agricultural base of production, and one in which even relatively wealthy Greeks worked alongside their slaves in the fields at least for a portion of the year, especially in the period before the 5th century BC, it also ensured that the wars were of a generally limited nature.  States fought over borders and access to farmland or rare grazing land.  There was no military caste in Greece, as existed in the East, whose lives were dedicated to arms.  This, along with the poverty of Greek cities and the agrarian nature of productive property, assured that the model of war centered around short campaigns and aimed at decisive pitched battles.  

The great wars of the 5th and 4th centuries strained this system of war to its limits.  States began employing mercenaries in greater numbers to augment the numbers of available citizens, as well as to overcome their seasonal combat limits.  Incidentally, the mercenaries were available in greater numbers as the growth in population of the 5th century created a larger population of farmers' sons with no hope of acquiring land of their own as large land owners expanded their holdings.  The ease at which Cyrus brought together 10,000 mercenaries in 401 attests to their availability in the wake of the 30 years of the Peloponnesian War.  

Slaves were also filling ranks formerly reserved for citizens - a clear sign of social crisis.  Athens put them to work as rowers and light troops, while Sparta went as far to put enfranchised Helots in the phalanx with full Spartiates.  The great Spartan strategos, Brasidas conducted his campaigns with an army composed almost completely of freed helots and resident aliens.  The conditions demanded a standing army, but the social structure of the Greek city states could not allow for its creation- democracy and oligarchy each rested upon the military traditions of the citizen soldier.  It was left to Philip II, Alexander's father and one of the most brilliant military reformers in history, to accomplish what the southern Greek states could not.  

The Macedonian king spent part of his youth as a hostage in Thebes during the generalship of Epaminondas and learned much from the methods of the greatest Greek military man before the reign of his son.  He took the distilled lessons and advancements of Greek arms and began to build an army upon those principles.  He had a fresh population to work with, unused to democracy or citizenship and unaffected by its political and social traditions.  The citizen soldier spirit that had once made the Greek such a formidable foe had become a fetter on the military development, and thus political development of slave society.  The hoplite was traditionally expected to arm himself and serve without pay- as the economic importance of the Greek cities increased disparity and demanded more military service, this became less possible.  Philip molded the Macedonian peasants into a crack force, armed, trained, and paid full-time by the state.    

In order to pay for all of this, he also had to do something impossible in the other Greek states- take on heavy state debt.  Despite being able to fund some of his projects through the conquest and utilization of Illyrian and Thracian gold and silver mines (a large source of wealth in themselves), Alexander inherited a state heavily in debt to Greek lenders.  No Greek politician, especially those elected to yearly posts by the fickle citizenry, and supported by the frugal large land owners, could have hoped to take on such debt in the name of warfare.

Conquest 

The incredible tale of Alexanders conquests has been well-documented in countless books, and there is certainly no need to recount it in full here.  But, the reasons for his conquests, as well as their success, are, more often than not, attributed to personal ambition or personality quirks.  I cannot think of anything less useful to our purpose- surely, the personality of Alexander can account for plenty of peculiarities, but it is a rare thing, indeed, for a man to conquer the known world because of his great personality.  Alexander's conquests were driven by material conditions in the Greek world.

The first among these conditions was the geography of Greece itself.  The history of Greece is that of colonization and exploration; even a superficial examination of the geography of the mainland will explain such a tendency.  Lord Byron called Greece "the land of mountains and the sea", and these two geographic features dominated the life of Greeks from the earliest days.  A mountainous land with little in the way of arable land, and most of that being of poor quality, even by ancient standards, pushed the sons of Greek farmers to seek other lands in which to claim their own plots.  Since the year 1000, Greek sailors had been colonizing the Mediterranean and Aegean from Spain to Egypt, even as far as the Black Sea.

One can be sure that during the ascendancy of Greek trade and manufacture in the 5th and 4th centuries, this tendency was not reversed- rather, it was accelerated!  The population growth that came with the economic growth put further stress on the small landholders, as land became even more valuable, large slave farmers became richer, and states fought to gain access to the most fertile plains.  We can be sure, by the growth of mercenary service and colonization, that there was an increasing population of Greek men and women with no means to make a traditional agrarian living.  From this, we can begin to trace the origins of the long series of Greek offensives and counter-offensives into Persia;  they were effects of the need for living space and access to arable land.  

Whether they realized it or not (and I am certain they did not), the visions of Persian conquest held dear by Philip and Alexander were the effects of the historical need felt for land over hundreds of years.  The Seleucid empire, the successor kingdom in Syria, actively encouraged Greek immigration, and they do not seem to have had problems in finding willing participants; hundreds of Greek cities were founded throughout Asia Minor in this period.  The rich plains of Asia offered a stark comparison to the mountains of Greece.  The city of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt also saw a great influx of Greek immigrants.  

A second, and more immediate condition for Alexander himself, was driven by debt.  As mentioned above, Philip accumulated a large amount of debt in order to build his military machine, and that had to be paid for.  As Alexander conquered, he secured means to make money.  These ranged from gaining control over important trade cities and routes to that most valuable of ancient commodities: slaves.  When a city refused to enter into cordial relations with Alexander, it was besieged.  Inevitably, the city would fall, and its inhabitants sold, en masse, into slavery, providing Alexander with plenty of cash. 

Over the course of his campaigns, hundreds of thousands were enslaved in such a manner.  This had a secondary effect, though:  as Alexander won the world on the strength of an ascendant Greek slave society, he furthered the interests of slave society by flooding the market with huge amounts of cheap slaves.  

What conditions allowed for success, then?  Chief among them was the above-mentioned ascendancy of Greek society.  Slave society was in a period of strength and growth from the 5th century, measured by the Greek dominance in almost all of the Mediterranean, both economically and socially.  Greek goods could be found in markets from Asia to the dark forests of central Europe, and Greek culture was producing works of science, philosophy, and literature unrivaled by Persia; Eratosthenes, a Greek scholar in the 3rd century, using geometry, measured the circumference of the globe (that had not even been discovered by Greeks yet) with an error of only 2%.  Persia, despite the confusing mix of economic modes of production to be found within its borders, rested upon the core of the old Asiatic mode of production, which saw a strong, centralized state, controlled by various castes, utilize the labor of its subject peasant populations.  

The Persian state had, upon such a system, diverted major rivers, created great systems of irrigation and water travel, and showed the West the first postal service.  Yet, it was being eclipsed by the Greek mode of production in the language of material and culture, and its decent was evidenced by its feeble military showing in the face of Alexander's greatly-inferior numbers.  The empire, along with the whole base of its society was wiped away by the new.

Alexander, in the last analysis, represented the force of historical progress in the character of a man.  Despite all the ink spilled over his personality, if it were not him, another would have taken up this task.  In fact, the Spartan king Agisilaus, at the turn of the 4th century, had also waged a rather successful campaign in Asia, although it was cut short by the outbreak of the Corinthian War.  The long-felt historical needs addressed above made the Greek conquest inevitable, it just happened to be Alexander who finally existed at the right time with the right resources.  To paraphrase Engels, a great man always seems to step up exactly when he is needed.  

*the notable exception of Sparta was due to the devastating defeats that the state suffered at the hands of the Thebans during their post-Corinthian War conflicts.  

The Hoplite Heresies pt.2

This second entry is on the material conditions related to the development (or lack thereof) of the Greek general, or Strategos.  Again, it is primarily a military piece.  All dates are B.C. unless otherwise noted.

The Strategos  

Despite the military dominance of their armies, the Classical Greeks developed very few great captains.  Those that come quickly to mind are Brasidas (a brilliant Spartan commander during the latter half of the Peloponnesian War) ,Epaminondas (the Theban father of modern strategy who led his army to victory over the Spartans in 371), the innovative condottiero Iphicrates of Athens, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and Alexander.  The Spartans, despite their ability to turn out excellent soldiers, produced but two commanders of note: Brasidas, and the controversial admiral Lysander, and both during the latter half of the 5th century, and, significantly both operated in conditions that were uncommon to the traditional heavy infantry base of Spartan operations.  It was left to the Romans to produce strategic leadership in a consistent manner.

The classical phalanx has been romantically referred to as the "armed polis".  This gives us some indication as to its origins, which lay with the development of the ctiy-states themselves.  In the archaic period, the lack of a developed state structure, and so also lacking a military organization, meant that the early Greek commander was the tribal "front fighter".  In order to instill any discipline at all, it was necessary that he lead by example and by feats of personal bravery.  It is notable that the role of the general, or "strategos", did not completely change from the front-fighter, even through the 5th and 4th century.  The strategos continued to fight in the front rank of the phalanx, on the right side place of honor, and there is a long list of generals killed in such action, including the above-mentioned Brasidas and Epaminondas.  This practice persisted despite the growth in strategic and tactical use of combined arms in the latter half of the 5th century.

Strategoi

In Athens, the Board of Strategoi, a body born in the late 6th century, was a government council made up of the ten annually elected strategoi.  It was heavily, if not exclusively, stacked with representatives from the same old aristocratic families.  This will not shock anyone, as politics in general were very much the sphere of Athens' top families; the class nature of Athenian democracy shows itself in the fact that being an elected official was a full-time job with no pay, but not many farmers had enough slaves to completely leave their farm behind for the city through the whole year.  But, it does illustrate the continuing connection between the aristocratic front fighter and the strategos.  Being a politically important position, it was not necessarily the best military minds who were elected to this position, and the genius of the competent was often negated by the common practice of splitting commands between political opponents (see the tragic fate of the Syracuse expedition in 415).

Unlike in the East, war was not the exclusive sphere of a warrior caste.  But, as I noted, the positions of command were nonetheless manned by the sons of aristocracy.  This persisted despite the coming of democracy in Athens.  The aristocracy of large land and slave owners, after all, was the only class in society that was trained in military arts until well into the 4th century.  This situation was in contradiction with the make-up of the phalanx, as the citizen phalanx forced the aristocratic fighters to rely on the shields of the small farmer- hardly conditions in which to win personal glory.

It was also in contradiction with the conditions of battle.  The phalanx relied on discipline and unit cohesion as much as skill in arms.  Sword fighting came into play primarily during retreat or other moments of desperation.  It would be a mistake to call it a useless skill, but it certainly did not carry the value that it did in the Homeric tribal battles of the past.  There were those in Athens who mocked the many trainers who sold lessons on swordsmanship to the wealthy, but this was an important tradition to the sons of the slave owners.  The phalanx did not rely on personal bravery and did not present its fighters with one-on-one combat with which to prove that bravery and skill.  The training of the aristocracy was a holdover from the past and the classical strategos was a transitional position between the tribal front fighter and Roman general.  It was events related to the ascendancy of slave society in the 5th century that would strain the contradictions of the position.

Border skirmishes and world wars

There is an idea that battles between Greek armies were somehow formalized and bound by rules of conduct or traditions.  In the 4th century, Athenian politicians spoke of how the "ancients" conducted war in a more honorable way, with rules and notions of fairness.  In reality, these men spoke of the Greeks of the 5th century, just a few generations removed, and one can provide numerous examples of trickery, ambush, and barbarism both before and during the Peloponnesian War.  This talk is reminiscent of the commonly-heard, and ridiculous, notion that wars in the 19th century were somehow formalized and honorable, etc. etc.   The Greek wars during the 7th and 6th centuries were certainly limited in scope and aim, but that is a different issue.

Mainland Greece, as I have mentioned before, was not known for being a particularly wealthy land.  This is especially true of the Greece of the 6th and 7th centuries, the period in which the phalanx developed.  Corinth stood out as the first major trading city, its unique geography giving it excellent ports on both the East and West sides of the isthmus.  Other than this one Greek city, the major trade cities were concentrated in the East- the Eastern Greek cities of Miletus and Sardis, Egyptian Memphis, and Tyre.  But, it was not until after the Persian Wars that the city states began to grow wealthy and greatly expand their commercial interests.  In a period when sea travel was dangerous due to piracy, foreign war ships, and the limitations of navigational technology, there was no such thing as separation of military and commercial enterprise;  the two were intimately linked to each other, and so also the interest of the state.  After the Persian defeats, Athens, with her newly-built navy went on the offensive throughout the Aegean and southern Mediterranean, clearing the way for Greek ascendance in rapid fashion.

Clauswitz famously wrote that war is a continuation of politics by other means.  The aim in war is, generally, to destroy the ability of the enemy to continue the conflict.  But, the political aims of the combatants give proportion to the means by which the war is fought and propagated.  So, the more limited the aims- the less that the arouse great interest and concern the fate of the ruling class, and the state as a whole- the more likely it is that peace will be sought, and obtained, through avenues other than the annihilation of the military power of the enemy state.  There is a point at which the cost of carrying on the conflict becomes greater than the political object itself.

Before the Persian Wars, the interests of conflict were generally of a limited nature.  Border conflicts, inevitable given the lack of arable land and the agricultural interest of both the small farmers and large slave owners alike, made up the vast majority of warfare between the mainland states.  The Greeks of the Classical Period had no general method of taxation for military expenses.  Funds were secured on a needs basis through a combination of compulsory collection and individual donation and loan.  It was not long before a campaign ate through the available funds.

Neither were there, among the Greeks, standing professional armies.  Each state relied on citizen militias up until the late 4th century, although an increasing use of mercenaries was made from the middle 5th century on.  The men who made up the phalanx, especially in the period before the Persian invasions, were the land and slave-owning farmers of each state.  These citizens were willing to give a limited amount of time for campaigning before they had to return to their fields.

All of the above-mentioned factors conspired to assure that the short campaign, leading up to a pitched battle, dominated the warfare of the 7th and 6th centuries.  There were no formal rules that govern this, merely material conditions.  This point flies in the face of a long historical tradition.  This school can see for themselves the limited nature of Greek campaigns during the archaic period before the 5th century, their tendency toward the pitched battle, and these men can also plainly contrast those practices with the rapid military changes during the 5th century; they come to the conclusion that warfare must have been more ritualized, but then things began to change.  Unfortunately, they are only viewing the superficial aspects of the issue - warfare is rooted in the material interests of the ruling classes of a given society, be they unconscious or not.

Relating this all back to the Strategos: there was little demand for the development of the general as the strategic commander and planner during the early period of hoplite warfare.  It is no accident that the first great Greek generals are born of the later 5th century and the Peloponnesian War; the stakes were higher and concerned access to the wealth of the greater Mediterranean world, rather than the shifting of tiny borders.  This led to myriad changes in the military organization of Grecian armies and fleets, but overall, the situation led to the demand for true generalship.  And when great men are demanded by historical conditions, they tend to appear.

Ultimately, the city states never produced an Alexander, Scipio, or Caesar- the strategos was a transitional position in the development of the Western general.  But, to not understand the material conditions which governed the possibility of that development is to be forced to accept the poor notion of a formalized warfare.  And to accept that is to fall into an idealist trap of either calling the Greeks not naturally inclined toward military genius or lacking a great mind to come up with better ideas in relation to military command- both of these are wrong.

The Hoplite Heresies, pt. 1

This post will be the first in a group of military and historical writings that do not necessarily fit within the scope of "Class Struggle and Classical Greece", but are nonetheless of interest.  None of these are meant to be scholarly works or to exhaust any of the issues.  All dates are understood to be B.C. unless otherwise noted.

The Big Push

Everyone who knows something about ancient Greek warfare is probably familiar with the image of the phalanx, a shield wall bristling with spears, as stout in defense as it was irresistible in offense.  Others may have seen the movie "300" in which the Spartan hoplites (heavily-armed spearmen) demonstrated their method of crashing into the enemy line shield-first, and then using the push to make headway.  Despite the lack of historical value of that silly film, its depiction of the phalanx in combat is, more or less, representative of the mainstream view of classical historians.  This view sees the mass of hoplites advancing at a run with the aim of colliding, shield-first, into the enemy and then the rear ranks pushing with on the backs of their comrades with their shields until one side breaks.  However, the issue of the battle-ending "big push"has been the center of controversy for some time.  What is in question is not IF the Greek phalanx was the most advanced form of infantry unit of its time - this has been settled by the record of Greek military success- it is WHY.

No one alive has ever fought in a phalanx, or any similar military formation.  Everything we know, we owe to the ancient Greek and Roman historians.  The ancient historians, though, are a notoriously difficult and unreliable bunch.  Despite all the wonderful insight and detail that Thucydides and Xenophon- those two who we owe most for our knowledge of classical warfare - provide us with, they tell us very little about the specifics of what went on during the drawing up of the lines, what happened when the march forward began, how signals were given, or, crucially, what happened when those lines of men met.  In the days before history had formed into a discipline, it was not deemed necessary to write about things that were mundane or familiar; the ancient historians, despite their intellect and talent, could not conceive how anyone would find such details of any interest.  Rather, the unusual, special, and exciting were the subject of their chronicles.  In a society with no standing army, all male citizens would have been familiar with the methods of war, either from first-hand experience, from the training ground, or just the stories of their fathers.  It would not be until the reigns of Philip and Alexander that the idea of a professional Greek army would be put into practice.

Marathon

A legacy of this vague treatment of battle conditions is the conception of the push.  Herodotus told us of the heroic Athenian resistance at Marathon (490), the first battle in which a Greek army overthrew the multitudes of  the Persian levies.  The Athenian phalanx lined up facing the beach head held by the Persians, and upon Miltiades signal, began their advance, at a run, across the 1,500 meters between the armies, before meeting the Persian lines.  It is universally recognized that the Athenians did not really run for nearly a mile in hoplite equipment;  the heavy shield, cuirass, helmet, and greaves would have made sure of that.  It is more likely that they ran the last 200-300 meters of the advance, still no small achievement for an amateur army.  Herodotus leaves us with the idea that the Athenians smashed into the Persian lines head-on, presumably with their shields, bowling the lighter-armed Easterners over with their impetuous.    

There are other records of hoplites advancing at a run, but we should not assume that the purpose was to speed towards an impact.  Well-known classical historian Victor Davis Hanson, representing the orthodox view, writes that the hoplites collided at each other at ten miles per hour and then pushed into the back of the men in front of them with their shields.  I will address the pushing below, but as to the pushing, there is another factor on the battlefield that is deadly to soldiers besides other infantry- missile troops.  Few things kill the morale of a body of troops faster than being subjected to prolonged missile fire- take the French at Agincourt for a classic example- and the men in the phalanx were no different in this regard.  The effective range of a bow was around 200 yards.  The Athenians at Marathon were not fools; choosing to run would reduce the time spent under the withering fire of Persian bows.  This seems to explain running toward the enemy, generally.  

As for the pushing into the backs of men in front of each line, this also seems suspect.  Such a tight push would make it impossible, for instance, to retrieve the wounded, or for one to ever get back up once they had been knocked down.  Furthermore, it would make those in the front rank little more than the tip of a battering ram;  no real skill at arms would be required or valued if all they had to do was continue to push forward and stab at whatever appeared before them.  

Paul van Wees makes the point that Xenophon notes a man falling and rising three times during a battle in Hellenica, hardly something that would be possible in a rigorous pushing match.  The Spartan king Cleombrotus, who fell during the fighting at Leuctra (371), was carried to the back of the line by his men.  If he had been at the front of a giant squeeze, his body would be trampled underfoot without the Thebans being kind enough to stop their own push in order that the king of their enemy be taken away; this was hardly in their character.  Of course, there is also no need to be one-sided and suggest that pushing never happened.  It is possible that those in the front line may have utilized a shield push to allow for the second line to strike at their now-pinned and off-balance targets.  This is a qualitatively different push than that suggested by Hanson and his fellows, though.

The phalanx has been called the ultimate shock formation.  By this, it is understood that the "shock" is a physical one, of bodies of men shoving with their literal weight.  I do not buy the idea of shock in this sense.  Ardant Du Picq, a military historian of the 19th century, and veteran of the Crimean War, did not buy the idea of "shock" either.  To him, based on documentary evidence collected from soldier interviews and from his own experience, men run because of mental more than physical force.  Xenophon, the sharpest military mind we know of from this period, believed that a phalanx as shallow as two ranks could hold against a formation a hundred deep, if the discipline were good (see Cyropaedia).  This is an exaggeration, but he is clearly not counting on shields in the back to provide force.  The depth of a phalanx must have provided a shock to the morale of the enemy, such as the sight of the 50-deep left wing of the Thebans at Luectra- it would seem that no matter how many the Spartans killed, their spots would be filled, and the Thebans would feel the moral force of those fifty ranks behind them as well.  

When the evidence is poor and contradictory, as ours is, the historian must draw upon knowledge of other similar modes of battle and human behavior.  Of course, there is always a threat of anachronism and over-generalization when treating this ground, but I feel confident in making some limited comparisons.  To say that the Greeks fought in such a way as suggested by the orthodox view is to say that they invented a historically unique mode of combat.  We know that similar material and social conditions create similar results and conclusions.  Was Greece so insular and unique as to produce a totally alien military?  Hardly.  

The Greeks, being a people forced to face the sea by their very geography, have been in contact with the rest of the Mediterranean world for centuries before the classical phalanx really evolved into what we are familiar with.  There are aspects of Near Eastern warfare evident in earlier Greek warfare, such as the chariot, which certainly was not a home grown invention of the mountainous Greek mainland.  Without going into too much detail, we can throw out the notion that there was some special effect as to create a totally alien form of combat in world history.

Swiss Pikes and Hoplites

The phalanx was a qualitatively higher form of infantry than had been in use in other armies, though.  We can perhaps look to another historical example to better understand its effectiveness: the pike squares of the 15th century AD Swiss Confederacy.  Similar situations create similar conclusions. The men in the pike square were without shield and, in actuality, more similar to the later Macedonian phalanx, but that can be ignored for the general point.  In both the Macedonian phalanx and the pike square, the lack of an arm freed up for the offensive use of a shield limits the comparison to the hoplite phalanx, but it is still the most exact that history provides us with.

  The medieval armies bested by the Swiss pikes were, in a purely military sense, similar to those Persian forces faced by the Greeks in the 5th century.  The men-at-arms (feudal nobility fighting on foot) that made up the core of the medieval infantry force were similar to the military caste that traditionally made up the core of Eastern armies in the ancient world.  Individually they were brave and skilled warriors, but they fought, more or less, as individuals who happened to be in a unit.  The strength in both the armies of Persia and European Feudalism rested in their cavalry, though, and it was precisely this arm that was most easily broken by the abilities of the spearman.  The Swiss pikes, and the Greek phalanx, fought as a unit that happened to be made up of individuals.

Another similarity to be drawn between the Eastern force and the medieval is the primacy of cavalry in the attack.  The cavalry charge is not successful because of some sort of literal shock where horsed trample over men; horses will not run into a stationary object.  If a charge is successful, it is because the men broke the ranks and ran, allowing for the horsemen to ride them down at will.  If the core of the Eastern force was made up of heavily-armed men of the military caste, the mass was of lightly-armed conscripts of varying degrees of reliability and training.  These masses were prone to panic and not armed or trained to stand up to a charge of their social superiors.  The situation was similar in the feudal force.  The horsemen found it difficult, however, to find a way to approach the serried spears of the Swiss squares.  The pike Square eventually became the dominant feature of all European armies into the 18th century AD.

Some Conclusions

Is it so difficult to imagine a similar situation in the early 5th century?  The landscape of Greece did not lend itself to raising horses, so while the aristocrats of the city states certainly kept horses, it never became the jewel of the battlefield as in the East.  Basing itself on a slave economy, Greece was able to free up its citizens (to varying degrees) from the daily toils of menial labor, not just its upper castes, as in Asiatic despotism;  this had an effect on not only its culture, but its mode of war.  The "citizen", rather than the "subject" also gives us an idea of the class balance of power that raised itself precariously on slave production.  The citizen, freed to develop himself physically through athletics and varying amounts of basic military training, while defending the state that he had a stake in, made for a fearsome soldier and a more fearsome mode of fighting- fighting as a unit.

It is a mistake to take a one-sided view of the development of the phalanx; much of the speculation on whether or not the "charge and push" method dominated is also linked to the question of whether or not battle was ritualized or not.  The question will be dealt with in another post, but it is enough to say that there is no narrative model for a "typical" Greek battle in our sources.  Furthermore, to assume that an historically unique mode of combat is responsible for the military victories of the Greeks is to lessen the real historical greatness of Greek civilization: they were the bearers of a higher form of production and upon that, a historically ascendant military model raised itself along with their other achievements.  In short, if the historian abstracts the military from the social, then he is forced into all kinds of strange formulations.  

American Oligarchy: Part 2

Adbusters, the Internet, and Tahrir Square

Starr focuses, in the last part of his book review, on the role of the internet.  He is right to point out that the internet has not become the super-force in politics that some predicted it would be.  There are plenty who still view the internet as some qualitative new change in our "post-industrial society", whatever that means.  Oddly enough, one of these authors seems to actually err too much in the wrong direction, suggesting that the advent of groups like MoveOn have brought about a new era in political advocacy and fundraising.  Very good.  However, this author is again missing the point of the internet- and politics generally.  

The most-searched terms on Google for the last few years have been "socialism" and "capitalism".  This should not surprise anyone, perhaps with the exception of the political scientists writing these books.  The same author who wrote of the new era in online advocacy also seems to view things only in terms of Democrat or Republican;  the top searches are not "democrat" and "republican", millions less Americans voted this year than in 2012, and one didn't hear many defenses of Mr. "Hope & Change" Obama without a quick flurry of excuses for his last four years.  Coupled with this is the phenomenon that these same experts said was impossible- the beginning movements of the American working class.  They are not channeling their energy into the two parties, but into an increase in strikes, walk-outs, and occupations.  This is the American working class that was supposed to be too comfortable, too conservative, etc. etc.  And, of course, we should address the other end of internet politics: the connections of workers all over the world sharing their political experiences.  

When the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions began, they struck like a bolt of lightening from a clear blue sky.  Of course it wasn't, the capitalist crisis is creating pressure cookers of class struggle in every capitalist nation, but the experts cannot see this.  They must find a "real" reason for such a rising.  Many found one in the internet, targeting popular calls for protest on social media sites.  The same was said in America when the Occupy Wall Street movement brought tens of thousands of workers into the streets of New York- it was the call by AdBusters!  

How simple the world must seem to the men and women who come up with this stuff!  At the least, the authors of our articles are not among this crowd that makes the mistake of believing in the magical powers of the internet to bring about revolution.  As I have stated in a previous post, the internet played a part in organizing some of the earlier actions of the revolution, but it was not even a main lever of the process.  First place goes to the objective factors of increased class struggle brought about by the capitalist crisis, factors that posed- and continue to pose- the question of power.  The government shut off the internet in an attempt to quell the rising- they were probably listening to American experts to get such an idea.

Austerity and Elites, or If You Accept Capitalism, You Must Accept its Laws

Mr. Noah writes that we should  "expect a lot of cuts. Plutes are all about slashing government spending. The only categories they wouldn’t cut are infrastructure, scientific research, and education—not coincidentally, the categories of spending plutes benefit from the most."  This is where the author gives us the best glimpse at a truth:  the issue of cuts has little to do with responsibility or living within our means, or anything else- it has to do with class and the demands of capitalism.  During periods such as the Post-War Boom, the capitalists could afford to give workers new benefits and spend on social programs.  They no longer can allow these.  The issue, quite simply, is that this crisis is actually deeper than the Great Depression, and the question of capitalism's survival is being posed.  In such circumstances, there is only one thing that the bourgeoisie can do: CUT!  

Despite their incessant whining, the first offensive of the class war has been launched by the capitalists themselves.  The aggressive cuts in Europe and the creeping cuts in America are not fundamentally different, and Obama has the exact same interest in cutting as Samaras or Merkel.  The capitalist class is not necessarily mean or unkind by nature, they are merely unable to do otherwise, based on the role they play in productive and social relations.  As Mr. Noah wrote, this manifests itself in their culture generally.  

American Oligarchy Part 1

After Reading Paul Starr's article "America on the Brink of Oligarchy", a review of three new books by American political scientists, and Timothy Noah's "What the Super-rich Really Want", I have a number of thoughts and reactions to share.

"Oligarchy", "Plutes", and "Plebes"- Fun with Words

The first thing that one may notice when reading through these two articles is the creative language that the authors have invented to deal with the question at hand.  What is this question anyway?  It is almost hard to tell, actually.  But, we know that it has something to do with money in politics, something to do with disparity and concentration of wealth, something to do with something that way back in the day we used to call "class".  I know the very term is a source of confusion, especially after reading these authors, but we shall expand on this and attempt to give a real working definition for class, first of all.

The words chosen- "oligarchy", "plebes", "plutes"- are all quite entertaining and evoke the most ancient imagery of tyranny and struggle.  Truly, only an academic could come up with such terms- both ironic and dramatic, all at once!  The problem, of course, is that such terms are all quite meaningless as the authors choose to define them.  Timothy Noah actually chooses to define the "plutes"  (shortened and laced with irony) as those whose income is $5 million or more a year, and the "plebes" as the general public, which we can suppose means everyone else.  A common argument thrown at the Marxist method of defining class is that it is "too rigid" and doesn't allow for differentiation between nations and societies (arguments made by those who, naturally, feel no need to actually read Marx).  Well, ladies and gentlemen, see for yourselves how completely arbitrary the bourgeois definition of  class is, how rigid:  the only thing actually separating one class from the other is a grand total of income! 

This simply will not do.  If we are to talk about class in a concrete way, then we must come up with a real definition based in the historical growth of society.  Income tells us very little about anything, about what one does for a living, and how they do it.  In fact, the classical tinge to the words these authors chose says a lot about how useless their definitions really are.  If income disparity were all we had to go off of, then not much really has changed between the Roman Republic and now!  One can simply deduce that there has always been a group of financial plutes and then sink comfortably into some crude maxim on human nature.  In fact, we do know that there were a few differences between Rome and America, but apparently our authors do not seem to think them particularly important when it comes to economy.  

Society has changed many times.  It's not true that there have always just been the haves and have-nots, the rulers and ruled.  Humanity spent the vast majority of its history in classless society of the hunter gatherers and the simple agrarian communities.  Classes, and disparity, only come onto the scene when the level of production is high enough to produce surplus, and hence for a group of people to live off the labor of others. So, the classes in past societies have always been tied to the means and mode of social production- and our Roman "plutes" were the owners of the productive property of slave society, the large slave estates.  Likewise, the American ruling class, the bourgeoisie, are the owners of the productive means of capitalism: the factories and industries connected with large scale production.  

Nor have their interests always been the same.  The SESA study aims to look at how the rich think NOW.  This is fine, but to truly understand the history of this class and the reasoning for its current movements (let's not tread down the crude path of pretending that they all think just alike, either, something the study did not show, and neither does history) one must look at the past of capitalism.  As happened with feudalism and Roman slave society, the bourgeoisie grew gradually within the bounds of  feudalism, which took the form of the contradiction between town and country, the feudal aristocracy and the burghers, the Church and the state.  The bourgeoisie represented the higher stage of production, and thus society generally, and undertook a heroic fight against the decrepit aristocracy- the Cromwell Dictatorship, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution were the events that this class led to crush the forces of the wretched past.  Similarly, the capitalists no longer care for equality and social change, but have become decrepit themselves as capitalism, too, rots on the vine and waits for the next, higher stage of production: socialism.   

Of course, we should still give the men who have undertaken the study under the guise of the SESA their due credit: as they mention, no one has yet undertaken a scientific study of what the rich want.  However, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.  HISTORY has in fact proven many times over what the rich want.  The financing of the White armies in Russia, the bloody reaction of the German Revolution, the cowardly maneuvering of the Republican bourgeoisie during the Spanish Revolution- these all illustrate, in the language of guns, steel, and blood what the rich want: to protect private property from the interests of the workers at all costs.

The Role of the State

Noah notes how the rich are in favor of more cuts in government spending, and Starr notes that the majority of groups represented in Washington are those of business.  This will not surprise anybody.  However, neither author touches on the role of the state itself.  It is not simply that “Because pressure politics relies so heavily on the services of paid professionals, it is a domain that facilitates the conversion of market resources into political advocacy” but that the state itself is an instrument of Capital.  There is a common idea that the state is a sort of body floating about society, and essentially a pure seat for anyone to sit.  This is untrue.  Just as society has changed, so has the state changed with the needs of the ruling class of an epoch;  the state of the Roman Republic could only serve the interests of maintaining slave society in the interests of the slave owners.  And similarly, the modern bourgeois democracy can only serve the interests of capitalism.  This was proven in practice by the experience of workers revolutions themselves.  In the famous example of the Paris Commune, the Parisian workers immediately set to changing the state as soon as they took hold of it.  The same was repeated in the Russian Revolution where the Soviets, the inventions of the workers themselves, proved to be the embryo of a new type of workers state.  

So, it is not merely a matter of getting "our" representatives in Washington, but a much larger process involving, first of all the lack of a political party even based in the working class in America, and the long-proven fact that even with a workers party at the helm of a capitalist state, their hands are bound by the laws of capitalism.  

In Part 2

-"adbusters", the internet, and tahrir square

- more on the state and voting

- austerity and elites, or "if you accept capitalism, you must accept its laws"