A Question for Historians of Any Place but the United States

by Cliopatria

Many years ago, something like the classics club at the Claremont Colleges sponsored a screening of Gladiator. They had free beer, and I lived in Claremont, so I went. Best moment: Derek Jacobi drawing himself up to full height to declare that, as a senator, he must do his duty as the voice of the common man. Who will speak for the people, sir, if not the Roman Senate? There was laughter.

I thought of that moment this week as I laid eyes on the cover of the March edition of Mother Jones, which displays a kind of willfully childlike naivete. The"superrich" and the president of the United States are on opposite sides, locked in a struggle to the very death! This is why Timothy Geithner calls Lloyd Blankfein more often than he talks to anyone who actually works for the government: it's because he wants to taunt his nemesis.

So here's the question: in whatever place and period you study, do you find that the political ruling class was generally aligned with common people in a struggle against the economic elite? Where and when has that happened?

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Mary Fellman - 3/6/2011

I wouldn't agree with this comment at all. Psuedo-Aristotle (or Aristotle, if your tastes lean that way) makes it quite clear that the ruling elite was seldom aligned with hoi polloi in any sense, let alone in an alliance against economic elites. I suppose an argument could be made that the metoikoi were economic but not political elites and that the citizenry was therefore allied against them, but that would be pretty much nonsense.

Professor of Classics - 3/5/2011

In Athens of the 5th century, which was a direct democracy, this is largely the case.

Jonathan Jarrett - 3/4/2011

Well, I'm pleased to have entertained even if not helped, then. Thankyou!

Chris Bray - 3/4/2011

Totally. It's not going so well, but that's what he says he's up to.

Jeremy Young - 3/4/2011

that Hugo Chavez is doing exactly that in Venezuela right now?

Chris Bray - 3/4/2011

W/r/t Charlemagne and his descendants, I think you get at some of the problems of comparison with your epic post above this one, today. It's just so hard to make comparisons about the character and purpose of state power when states are such different creatures in different moments. Counterweights in frontier zones -- not a problem of contemporary domestic governance. I'm inclined to regard the late modern state as an almost purely extractive mechanism, but comparisons and analogies tend to break down pretty quickly. I'm probably asking a question that can't be answered.

Absolutely a joy to read your post today, btw.

Jonathan Jarrett - 3/4/2011

Again, sort of. There's a suggestion that Charlemagne and his descendants responded to Spanish immigrants begging them for land-grants by stationing them in the Catalan and Aragonese frontier zones as sort of yeoman counterweights to a local nobility that the kings couldn't otherwise reign in, in the late eighth century. The guy who's argued this is Cullen Chandler, in his "Between Court and Counts: Carolingian Catalonia and the aprisio grant, 778-897" in Early Medieval Europe Vol. 11 (Oxford 2002), pp. 19-44. Now, I think he's too optimistic and that the policy, if it was there, was short-lived, and have said so in my "Settling the Kings' Lands: aprisio in Catalonia in perspective" in Early Medieval Europe Vol. 18 (Oxford 2010), pp. 320-342. The sort of people we're talking about there may not be 'the common people', in as much as they are sort of like ranchers but with serfs, but they are definitely not nobles like their supposed opponents.

And then, in a tutorial earlier today I was just mentioning Stephen Baxter's argument that Domesday Book was primarily a propaganda exercise to impress William the Conqueror's subjects with his power (see here) and pointing out, as I think he did in the TV programme that web-page supports, that since people came out to the Domesday inquests and testified against the local sheriffs and such like in some places, the middle ruling class may have been part of the intended audience. That might be closer to what you mean but if so, I'm afraid I don't know of anywhere in print that you could cite for it yet. The clip at this web-page has some of Stephen's argument in it.

Chris Bray - 3/4/2011

The court formally rules that externalities are barred from evidence. I'm looking for direct and conscious intent.

Chris Bray - 3/4/2011

I thought of the Khmer Rouge, and also dekulakization. In examples like that, or in the example of the Cultural Revolution, I suppose you get something like a declared alignment of ruling class and the poor, although the people who end up being targeted aren't exactly the du Ponts. And then you get the whole mass murder thing, which is a drag.

Jonathan Dresner - 3/4/2011

The only example that comes to mind immediately is the anti-Zaibatsu (economic combines) elements of Japanese militarism in the 1930s: several chief executives were assassinated. But it was a minority view, as most militarists (and non-militarists, for that matter) saw the Zaibatsu as necessary engines of strategic industrialism.

Oh, and there's the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in which being a descendant of economic elites was grounds for suspicion and reeducation. That's not much help, though....

I suppose, though, anti-colonial movements targetting foreign control of economic resources (India comes to mind, and Argentina's Peronistas) might qualify, but most of them are compromised by ties to domestic economic elites.

Tim Rohde - 3/4/2011

I think the answer to your question depends entirely on whether you're willing to tolerate the idea of externalities or not....