The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests First Edition (US) First Printing Edition

G.E.M. De Ste. Croix's magisterial historical materialist history of the Greco-Roman world spans nearly fourteen hundred years of history beginning with the Archaic Age (c. 700 B.C.) and ending with the Arab conquests of the Greek Near East, Asia Minor and North Africa. By seeking to understand how issues of class, exploitation and property-relations functioned and perpetuated themselves De Ste. Croix attempts to explain the vast social changes that occurred over the broad expanse of Classical history. The book thus divides itself into two units of four chapters each, the first dealing with theoretical issues behind how classes and economic relationships functioned during the period under investigation, and the second providing a more chronological narrative of the major events and social changes that occurred over that span of time.

Class, for De Ste. Croix and for Marx and Engels, is a social relationship not only to the means of production but one between classes - a relationship based on exploitation. With the development of urban civilization certain members of society take on other roles besides that of economic (i.e. agricultural) producers and these individuals (administrators, soldiers, educators, artists and scientists) must thus be maintained by the labor of the producers in order to fulfill their specialized functions. Exploitation then is the extraction of this 'surplus labor' from one class to the other. Considering the limited surplus the technologically primitive nature of classical economic production was able to produce, Greco-Roman civilization would have been impossible without this exploitation, which took place between the 'propertied' (primarily in land) and 'non-propertied' classes. Exploitation during this era is divided by the author into 'direct individual' and 'indirect collective' forms. The former (rendered from individual to individual) touched upon slaves, serfs, debtors, tenants and wage-laborers, while the latter (exacted by the state from individuals or a whole community) involved taxation, military conscription and compulsory services. These class divisions also corresponded to a separation of society into the 'polis' (the urban city) and its neighboring 'chora' (the agricultural areas and their corresponding villages), with the latter being exploited by the propertied members of the former. While in ancient Greece, 'polis' and 'chora' shared the same culture, in the colonized East the cities were made up of the Greek elite (and the indigenous but deeply Hellenized upper classes) while the 'chora' was made of poor native populations who did not share in Greek culture.

One of the book's central arguments is that while the vast majority of production in the ancient Greek world was done by free producers - small peasants, primarily, but also artisans and traders - who formed the majority of the population (until the great increase in state exploitation circa 300 A.D.), the ruling class extracted most of its surplus from the exploitation of unfree labor in the forms of slavery, serfdom and debt bondage. In the words of the author, "the most significant distinguishing feature of... each `mode of production', is not so much how the bulk of the labour production is done, as how the dominant propertied classes, controlling the conditions of production ensure the extraction of the surplus which makes their own leisured existence possible." There was no bourgeoisie or petit-bourgeois then existing to any significant degree beyond the subsistence level. Any merchant who managed to become financially successful would use his new-found wealth to retire and buy land (which was deemed necessary in order to achieve wealth, status and political power). Wage-laborers were rare and were thought of as little better than slaves.

I suspect that for most readers the most fascinating chapters will be the historical analyses which make up the second half of the book rather than the earlier theoretical ones. 'Part Two' takes us through the Archaic Age displacement of the king and his hereditary aristocracy by the 'tyrant' (most likely propped up by a city's hoplites) as Wealth overtook Nobility as the new true source of power; the pursuant overthrow of the tyrant by the poorer commoners; the glorious birth of Greek democracy, lead by Athens, which allowed all male citizens to rule directly, empowering peasants and artisans to defend themselves against previous levels of exploitation, and the tragic defeat of Greek democracy by the Greek propertied class in alliance with Macedonia and then Rome. While more concerned with the Greek East than with the Latin West the author also analyzes the journey that lead Rome to become mistress of much of the known world. The conflict between patrician and plebeian within the context of a system of patronage-clientship and territorial expansion; the impoverishment of the citizens, growth of slave estates and the decline of the peasantry; and the development of a split among the Roman ruling class which lead to the rise of the reformist 'populares,' the conservative 'optimates' and a series of catastrophic civil wars which lead to the rise of Augustus Caesar ("one of the ablest political figures known to human history") and the Principate. In other of the book's segments, De Ste. Croix fruitfully compares Aristotles' political sociology to that of Marx, investigates the role of propaganda in the class struggle, and later studies the impact of Christianity on the Greco-Roman world.

The most famous argument in this book in undoubtedly De Ste. Croix's Marxist interpretation of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. As Rome's massive territorial expansion began necessarily to slow down a marked decrease in the number of wars bringing in large slave-hauls followed. The propertied class in turn turned to slave-breeding but this was found to be financially prohibitive as it required a great increase in the purchase of female slaves, many of whom could be expected to die in childbirth. Since the surplus labor extracted by the propertied classes derived ultimately from unfree labor, the decline in the availability of slaves led to a significant crisis. The Roman Empire responded by intensifying exploitation of the free population, legally turning free peasants into serfs (people 'enslaved to the land'), vastly increasing taxation on all but the very wealthy, expanding the two-tiered justice system for the upper and lower classes and introducing legal torture and flogging to larger segments of the population, with not even the lower levels of the propertied classes immune from increased subjection. The results were a number of peasant revolts (the Bacaudae mentioned by various ancient sources) and a series of popular defections and instances of co-operation with the 'barbarian' invaders who were thus allowed to eventually conquer most of the Roman Empire. Among the defectors and collaborators could sometimes be found Christian minority sects seeking to flee the chastisement of the 'orthodox' Catholic Church. As the author summarizes his conclusion, "It was, I suggest, the combination of unlimited economic power and political power in the hands of the propertied class, their emperor and his administration which ultimately brought about the disintegration of the Roman empire." A more thoughtful, comprehensive and illuminating study of a civilization could not be asked for.

Turgid

In the first half of this marvellous book, G.E.M. de Ste. Croix explains, using Marxist concepts, the class structure in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. He shows that the three main classes were the slave-owning, land-owning ruling class at the top; the slaves at the bottom; and the mass of small producers (peasants, craftspeople and traders) in between. (Many of the poorest of this last group were probably not much better off than some of the slaves.)

The system was based on exploitation, and Ste. Croix argues that even though slaves were not the majority of the population, their labour, especially on the big rural estates, provided most of the rulers' wealth.

Ste. Croix's view can be contrasted with that of another Marxist historian, Neil Faulkner. Faulkner describes himself as an unorthodox Marxist in that he rejects the traditional Marxist view that Roman society was based on the "slave mode of production". He instead describes it as being a system of "military imperialism", with the ruling class's surplus coming mainly from imperial plunder. (He has also argued that slaves were too diverse to be described as a class.) I am more convinced by Ste. Croix's view that Rome should indeed be described as a slave society, albeit one which of course relied on imperial expansion to provide the slaves.

In the second half of the book Ste. Croix applies the concepts developed in the first half to the history of the class struggle in the Graeco-Roman world. He shows, for example, how Athenian democracy, despite its limitations, was used by the free poor citizens to limit the power of the ruling class. Until..."Greek democracy was destroyed by the joint efforts of the Greek propertied class, the Macedonians and the Romans."

He also puts forward a convincing explanation of Rome's decline and fall. For centuries, Rome had been expanding. But at the beginning of the first century AD this expansion ground to a halt. Ste. Croix argues that the end of Rome's expansion led eventually to its decline.

Conquered provinces were a source of taxation in cash and kind. But they were also a source of slaves, especially during the process of conquest itself. But when expansion ceased, the supply of slaves began to dry up.

Ste. Croix argues that the decline in the number of imported slaves meant that Rome had to increasingly switch to the breeding of slaves. But this method was a more expensive method of providing slaves. Slaves therefore became less profitable for the Roman ruling class, so the rulers, to make up for this, began to increase the exploitation of "free" (i.e. non-slave) peasants.

These free peasants had always been exploited through taxation, but now they were gradually forced down into serfdom. Even the middle classes were squeezed. The bloated imperial bureaucracy was very costly to support. This worsening of the position of the free peasantry meant that they became indifferent to, or even welcomed, barbarian incursions. In some areas there were defections to the barbarians or peasant revolts. The Empire lost its backbone.

Of course, there were many other factors involved. For example, there was the strife and civil wars caused by provincial generals seeking the Emperor's crown. But it does seem that in the long run Rome could not stand still. It thrived on conquest: when that stopped, it had to squeeze the people within its boundaries harder and harder. Although the final collapse was a long time coming, the end of expansion marked the beginning of the end.

I don't agree with everything that Ste. Croix says: for example his view that women in the ancient world could be defined as a "class". But overall I strongly recommend this book. It is essential reading for anyone who has a serious interest in either the ancient world or Marxism, or both.

Phil Webster.
(England)

In the annals of Marxist historiograph, I believe this book could and should be ranked among the modern classics, that's to say on the same level as, e.g., Isaac Deutscher's Trotsky biography. Sainte-Croix uses and applies Marxist concepts in order to get rid of vulgar quasi-Marxist interpretations and notions about the Ancient world such as "merchant capital", "Roman and/or Greek middle class" and the like. In passing, he has submitted conservative historiography to a throughly critique. By so doing, he has sorted the wheat from the chaff and held the field almost solely for the last twenty-five years. Unfortunately, he has not come to grips which postmodern historiography proposing a non-class, anti-marxist interpretation to Ancient history, such as Paul Veyne's _Bread & Circuses_ (in its way, a work to rival Sainte-Croix's). But then, something had to be left for posterity to do, isn't it?