As I understand it some Athenian slaves prospered in business and served
their masters by paying them a certain amount or even buying their freedom.
As for the law, Plato has very mixed feelings about it. Some of the
Sophists for example taught how to make the weaker cause appear the
stronger--an important skill in knowledge production for litigants. Plato
disapproved although his hero Socrates often seems to outperform the
Sophists in this respect in the Dialogues.. In the Republic the laws are to
be kept simple and social order is to be maintained by proper education,
training, and culture. This will obviate the need for complex laws and
wasteful litigation. Of course later, in the Laws for example, Plato opts
for much greater legal regulation..
CHeers, Ken Hanly. . . .
> > Doyle
> Marks remarks need to have certain observations made, for example, Mark
uses
> the word "firm" to describe something that did contruction work in the
> ancient period, but the word firm itself is not what Romans would have
used,
> and it is unclear they would have understood a business as a firm. For
> example see
>
> http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/ancient.htm
>
> "The literate people of antiquity despised "labor" in any form. The law
was
> an honored profession-- it was virtually the only profession, aside from
> war, which was presumed to be a necessity of citizenship for virtually all
> men. Farming and income from land ownership were likewise acceptable, but
> "Trade" was generally viewed as servile and demeaning, incompatible with
> one's dignity (an attitude which lingered to the present century in both
> Germany and England). Artisans and self-employed individuals got middling
> levels of respect, but it was felt that only the lowest class of person
> would stoop to laboring for others for wages. People who needed employment
> could sell themselves into slavery, with the eventual hope of manumission
> and becoming a client of an affluent patron; it was a common practice in
> Roman times. "
>
> source:
> Mike Shupp
> Department of Anthropology
> California State University, Northridge
> 18111 Nordhoff Street
> Northridge, California 91330
>
> e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Doyle
> Hence the conceptual basis for thinking about how a business works is not
> present in the Roman concept of something that did work as Mark uses the
> word firm. That is the typical capitalist understanding of work.
>
> Mike Shupp,
> Peru maintained itself as both slave state and welfare state. The
blessings
> of imperial rule presumably included protection against famine from
> storehouses near each community, kept high on the hillsides so the
peasants
> working the fields would be reminded of the Inca's beneficence.5 Ordinary
> Indians were effectively slaves of the Inca; they could be relocated at
his
> whim, their movement and daily life was regulated by the state, which took
> two thirds of their crops, required them to give labor and military
service,
> and also taxed them to make garments for soldiers.
>
> On the other hand, in a state without money, as Prescott muses, one could
> hardly become poor by dissolute living or market speculation. And the
state
> was generous to those reduced to poverty by age or misfortune-- so much so
> that Europeans were horrified to discover that the ill and infirm were not
> dependent on their children and other kin; this was held ruinous to the
> Christian notions of charity and filial affection. (Prescott 1847 : I 65)
>
> Doyle
> Secondly Mark relies upon statistics reports in ancient times but these
are
> notorious for their lack of planning in the sense of financial effects of
> borrowing and accounting practices that we would be able to understand
now.
> So that the anecdotal nature of the figures, the lack of accountability to
> standards etc is elided in quoting as Mark does above. And understanding
of
> the purpose of making money through a business is absent from the Roman
> concept. See this commentary upon tribute in ancient worlds by Shupp,
>
> Mike Shupp,
> How was this all paid for? Our books are wont to refer to a rather
bloodless
> entity known as "the tributary mode of production", a certain form of
state
> finance rather like taxation, which nominally left the payers independent.
> Let us restore the abstraction to life with other names: Danegeld, Ransom,
> Extortion.
>
> Of our early civilizations, only the earliest Sumerians did not exact
> tribute from an empire. This was merely because they had failed to think
of
> the idea. They had of course looted and demanded reparations from each
other
> as city-states warring for supremacy, but for some reason victors drew
back
> from the notion of installing their own rulers in defeated cities. This
> changed with Sargon of Akkad, who put his own family members into
> governorships and chief priest positions in conquered lands about 2400 BC;
> afterward the Mesopotamians built conventional empires as avidly as anyone
> else.
>
> The Egyptians collected tribute from time to time, but Pharaohs liked to
> have things in their own hands. Tribute requires an entity capable of
> paying. This lets out mobile barbarians, as a rule and requires at least
> sedentary peoples. Surrounded by less-civilized peoples, it was more
> convenient for the Egyptians to simply seize what they wanted. The policy
> provoked some twelve centuries of conflict with their Nubian and Ethiopian
> neighbors. The Chinese seem to have adopted similar practices under the
> Hsia, Shang and Chou dynasties.
>
> The most "innovative" tribute system was that of the Incas, who copied it
> from elsewhere in South America: whole villages were built near the
imperial
> capitals to house artisans carried off from the provinces to work full
time
> to create luxury goods for their rulers. Young girls were taken into
> "convents" to weave tapestries and make other goods for the mausoleum
> temples of deceased Inca rulers; many became short term "wives" of the
Inca
> or his officials, returning to their communities upon retirement, where
they
> were supported in luxury. Each peasant family was expected to labor one
day
> in three for their rulers and one day in three for the benefit of the
> temples; they were to provide additional labor or military service each
> year, and to make garments for the army.
>
> The Incas attempted autarky. To the extent practical, communities were
> self-sufficient or reliant on supplies from imperial stocks. Luxury goods
> flowed upward from producers to the rulers of the state who distributed
them
> to lesser nobility and foreign leaders. Markets were unknown, and trade
> across state boundaries limited. Effectively, tribute was the whole of the
> economy. (Earle and D'Altroy 1982)
>
> The harshest tribute system was probably that of the Romans in the late
> Republican period. Since the state workforce was no larger than that
needed
> for a single city until Imperial times, the tax system was
"Thatcher-ized".
> The Romans called for bids each year, and farmed out the provinces beyond
> Italy to groups of equestrians who promised to return the most to the
> treasury. How these "businessmen" obtained the money was seldom examined.
>
> On top of this extortion, the provinces had to bear the cost of their
> administration. Every Roman sent to govern a province, Cicero quipped, had
> to earn three fortunes: the first to reward the senators who had elected
him
> to the post, the second to bribe jurors at his inevitable trial for
> malfeasance, and the third for himself. On paper, Rome did not resort to
war
> except at the decision of the Senate, but the assorted governors,
> proconsuls, procurators, and their underlings scattered across the Empire
> did not hesitate to "rectify" boundaries at the expense of weaker
neighbors,
> nor to fight and enslave tribes across the borders-- invariably described
as
> "bandits" and "trouble makers"-- who chose inexplicably to dwell where
> silver mines and lush vineyards which ought to belong to Romans had been
> established. Julius Caesar's cold-blooded seizure of independent Gaul was
a
> deliberate and long continued violation of Roman law, but except in scale,
> it was not unprecedented.
>
> Doyle
> Thirdly Mark says that leading Roman families were deeply involved in
trade,
> yet this ignores that that is exactly the limitation of how trade was
done.
> The families organized and controlled trade. The financial system had
> little to do with organizing that. Rather, the families and the way a
> family functioned was what made the trade system work. These heavily
> structured any sort of understanding of what business was in ancient
times.
> thanks,
> Doyle
>
