[HN Gopher] Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
___________________________________________________________________
Roman slaveowners were the first management theorists?
Author : smarm
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-02-06 20:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| user249 wrote:
| Slaves were the first labor strike organizers
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that this kind of attitude, far from being an
| abberation, is _exactly_ how the ruling class thinks of us.
| atdrummond wrote:
| First management theorists or first recorded management
| theorists? I feel like there are similarly (or nearly as)
| advanced cultures in this approximate era for whom we
| unfortunately have significantly less recorded material - and
| often what we do have was created by other civilizations (such as
| Rome itself or Greek city-states) who interacted with said
| people. These persons surely had theories of management for their
| assets, which undoubtedly would include slaves and indentured
| servants.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I wonder why Xenophon's _Oeconomicus_ didn't qualify as
| management theory. That's exactly what it is, and it dates back
| to classical Athena.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Thanks - I wanted to cite Xenophon but couldn't decide if it
| was Oeconomicus alone or whether one could argue that the
| Lacedaemonion Politeia includes an assessment of Spartan
| economic management with regards to their Helot-based
| economy.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You always need to assume "recorded". Humans have been around
| for 300,000 years and evidence for more complex culture and
| technology goes back about 60,000.
|
| People have always been as smart as they are, and getting other
| people to do work for you is probably the second or third
| oldest profession. I'm sure some ancient chieftain of a long
| forgotten tribe expounded on management theory eons ago.
| usrusr wrote:
| A semantic pedantry argument could be made that recorded
| material is what separates the theorist from the practitioner.
| Easily countered of course by remarking that records getting
| lost over the course of a few millennia shouldn't make a
| theorist less of a theorist.
|
| Personally, I'm fine with adding an implicit "that we know of"
| to every "first".
| pohl wrote:
| Oral traditon is a kind of lossy recording on oddly volatile
| media.
| usrusr wrote:
| Thanks for addressing the glaring hole I suspected my
| argument might have, PR accepted!
| kqr wrote:
| Also surprisingly robust!
| https://www.sapiens.org/language/oral-tradition/
|
| See also how many cultures have a flood myth that's of
| similar age but seemingly arose independently.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > These persons surely had theories of management for their
| assets, which undoubtedly would include slaves and indentured
| servants.
|
| Yes, exactly. I'm sure the Egyptian pharaohs who built the
| pyramids a thousand years earlier had some theories regarding
| management.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| I'm really pretty sure they did. In fact I'd go one step
| further and say a lot of Old and Middle Kingdom society WAS a
| peculiar kind of management theory. Those pyramids weren't
| built by slaves either. There is plenty of managerial advice
| in their literature. They even invented the careers-advice
| text... (be a scribe, my son; it's indoor work with no heavy
| lifting)
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Neolithic humans made constructions that took a staggering
| amount of manpower over a very prolonged time. The story of
| how such things come to be is complex and has many variations
| over place and time. There's no "first management theorists"
| just humans and human society learning and evolving as it has
| since before we were even human.
|
| I find the concept of this article not just pointless but
| somewhat obnoxious in projecting a conceptual parallel
| between roman aristocratic slave holders and modern
| employment relations. Both have their pathologies but we
| shouldn't blend them into one category imo.
| wins32767 wrote:
| "And just as a household needed slaves, so companies need staff.
| Permanent employees, like slaves, are far more desirable than
| outsourcing to outsiders. The Romans thought external contractors
| could never be relied on like members of the primary social
| group. They failed to turn up when instructed to, took liberties
| with their fees and, taking little pride in their work, carried
| out their tasks shoddily. With slaves, however, who were
| stakeholders in the system, the Romans could be sure that work
| would be carried out as they wanted it."
|
| I'm not sure this is a helpful paragraph for convincing people to
| learn from Roman management practices.
| tdeck wrote:
| A lot of the employer's benefit to hiring external contractors
| stems from the ability to sidestep labor laws (e.g. benefits,
| minimum wage, overtime, etc...). In a society where you're just
| allowed to own slaves that calculus looks a bit different.
| 627467 wrote:
| This. And/or not helpful in convincing people to work for a
| salary.
| dopamean wrote:
| I actually thought for a second this was a joke.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Slaves who worked in Roman households were effectively a
| highly-skilled and educated minority, who could indeed hope to
| earn enough to buy out their freedom. It goes without saying
| that this was not a meaningful possibility for the vast
| majority of slaves, who were forced to work under far more
| strenuous conditions.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yep, they were basically the tech/finance/etc... workers of
| the time, in that they had the opportunity to buy their
| financial freedom.
| gregallan wrote:
| Is this an attempt at humor? If so, it fell flat for me.
| Tech and finance workers are some of the most highly-
| compensated people in the world today. Comparing them to
| Roman slaves, who were considered property, had no freedom
| of movement, and were subject to brutal corporal
| punishment, shows a callous disregard for the real human
| suffering occurring around the world.
| version_five wrote:
| GPs point is that under "capitalism" everyone is
| effectively a slave - working on someone else's terms,
| and it's only a few elite jobs where you really make
| enough to potentially buy your way out of the system.
| It's an opportunity that people working in a coffee shop
| or something don't have.
|
| (Edit- well nearly, the GP clarified his post in a
| sibling post)
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yes, this is essentially what I meant.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's not what I'm saying. I'm making a relative
| comparison - tech and finance workers are to the average
| worker in the world what the intellectual or the higher
| household slaves in Rome were to the average. By the way,
| those slaves had freedom of movement and, especially
| later in Roman history, some legal protection, as well as
| in many cases the right to work for a wage outside of the
| purview of their masters.
|
| I am trying to underlie the fact that we have many
| privileges and the ability to change social strata
| compared to the average working person, which is an
| interesting parallel. Of course even Roman slavery was
| horrible.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > "With slaves, however, who were _stakeholders_ in the system,
| "
|
| "With slaves, however, who's stakes were forcibly held by
| others in the system," FTFY
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Household slaves could buy their freedom from their masters.
| Then they became freedmen, still allied and somewhat
| subordinated to their former masters, but their children were
| already full Roman citizens.
|
| The prospect of manumission was a huge incentive for the
| slave to work harder and smarter. Some freedmen became very
| rich. The slaveowners could theoretically renege on their
| promise, but rarely did so, because they would lose the
| profit of their slaves believing them and working harder.
|
| Romans were pretty Machiavelistic when it came to incentives.
| Their methods usually worked, even though they could hardly
| be described as morally sound.
| nerdponx wrote:
| "Skin in the game" though it might be, these enslaved
| individuals only became stakeholders by force, and not by
| choice. I think the analogy to business is still act, but
| with a bit more of a sinister connotation.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Well it was kind of a social contract, and it was primarily
| the Greek slaves who achieved manumission, starting from a
| position of parity in cultural and racial perception (we're
| speaking purely in terms of their status in the
| Mediterranean as a people with greatness, with the legacy
| of a great history which in general is the consequence of
| being conquerors), and usually an advantage in most
| intellectual matters. In the intellectual the Roman shone
| in oratory, law, civil engineering, and others I forget.
| There are many where the Romans were considered the best.
| But Greek language was of greater prestige in the highest
| circles of Rome, for instance the last words of Gauis
| Julius Caesar were in Greek, tutors had to be Greek, and
| Greek slaves played, under working conditions enviable even
| by many Americans in the 21st century, an essential part in
| the production of the Aeneid, which was the equivalent of
| the time of a major motion picture, and which involved
| extensive cryptography. Cryptographic techniques of the
| time were used to conceal its true message for thousands of
| years, while ensuring there was enough fidelity in the
| whole work to ensure the message could be conveyed. What
| this meant in practice is the Greeks serving Virgil had to
| count sounds in verses by applying certain rules to the
| characters, and count with absolute certainty. Coming full
| circle, for such great undertakings that required such
| great secrecy to conceal the message from the Emperor the
| slave's loyalty could really only be bought with the sound
| promise of freedom.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| was there a pricing structure for buying one's freedom, or
| was it up to each master?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Once I saw this great documentary called _A funny thing
| happened on the way to the forum_. It does a great job of
| explaining the system and structure, and with colorful
| characters at that!
| foobarian wrote:
| There was an advancement ladder, starting with individual
| contributor levels from junior to senior, moving on to
| roles with more responsibility starting with principal to
| senior principal. The last levels were the director and
| senior director levels, after which you crossed into the
| freedom levels with two letter titles. /s
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Household slaves could buy their freedom from their
| masters. Then they became freedmen, still allied and
| somewhat subordinated to their former masters, but their
| children were already full Roman citizens.
|
| And that may not have been the perk it's sometimes made out
| to be:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
|
| > However, the master could arrange that slaves would only
| have enough money to buy their freedom when they were too
| old to work. They could then use the money to buy a new
| young slave while the old slave, unable to work, would be
| forced to rely on charity to stay alive.[62]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Oh yes, slavery sucks regardless of time and place. And
| we haven't even touched the fate of non-household slaves.
|
| Agricultural slaves, much more numerous than household
| slaves, had back-breaking work, but at least somewhat
| survivable.
|
| Slaves sent to the mines or to the galleys (rowing ships)
| rarely survived for more than three years. It was
| basically a delayed death sentence.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You aren't the only person making this mistake but don't
| assume Roman slavery was like American chattel slavery. Roman
| slavery was still slavery and still had abuses but it was not
| "slavery till death, for all your generations". Nor were
| slaves mere physical labor. Slaves often ran businesses,
| engaged in basically white collar work, and often times were
| skilled craftsmen who exceeded their masters skill.
| Majromax wrote:
| > Nor were slaves mere physical labor.
|
| Some slaves were not mere physical labour. However, many
| famers and miners were still enslaved people, worked in far
| more brutal conditions without the hope of manumission.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Some slaves were not mere physical labour. However,
| many famers and miners were still enslaved people, worked
| in far more brutal conditions without the hope of
| manumission.
|
| Yes, exactly. For instance, slaves would be disfigured to
| prevent escape:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome:
|
| > As most slaves in the Roman world could easily blend
| into the population if they escaped, it was normal for
| the masters to discourage slaves from running away by
| putting a tattoo reading "Stop me! I am a runaway!" or
| "tax paid" if the slaves were owned by the Roman state on
| the foreheads of their slaves.[65] For this reason,
| slaves usually wore headbands to cover up their
| disfiguring tattoos and at the Temple of Asclepius, the
| Greek god of healing, in Ephesus, archeologists have
| found thousands of tablets from escaped slaves asking
| Asclepius to make the tattoos on their foreheads
| disappear.[66]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| harostrat wrote:
| It's yet another attempt to whitewash European human rights
| history and pretend it's the source of everything good, bet the
| author have positive opinions about Nazi Germany too.
|
| Romans created their empire through genocide and slavery. It was
| so bad that multiple rebellions happened that were joined by
| hundreds of thousands of slaves, and those rebels preferred to
| kill themselves or starve to death than return to "nice" Roman
| slavery.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| But what about the Eqyptians? It took management skills to
| organize the army which built the pyramids and the infrastructure
| of that time.
| daenz wrote:
| This brings the idea of modern work much closer to slavery, minus
| the physical cruelty. It also brings up uncomfortable taboo
| questions, like if some people actually desire to be the slaves
| of a benevolent master.
| marricks wrote:
| I also heard most of our concepts of property law were built of
| the Romans, in particular slave owning Romans who viewed people
| as property. Puts a pretty dark light on our whole system if you
| ask me, started form a bad seed.
| jrm4 wrote:
| A thing we still need to work on when we tell history: We need to
| further distinguish Roman slavery from American Chattel slavery.
|
| Roman slavery is more like a permanent version of "Indentured
| Servitude" that we learned here in the states, aka how poor white
| kids could make it in e.g. Revolutionary times.
|
| And not much at all like the "Slavery" that looms bigger in our
| heads, primarily race-driven and -- this is perhaps the biggie --
| "chattel oriented;" i.e. not only are you owned forever, so are
| your kids, who may be sold at will etc.
| vondur wrote:
| Not entirely true. If you were one of the unfortunate slaves to
| be sent to work in the mines, it was basically a death
| sentence. Also, the Romans had 3 different large scale slave
| rebellions (called the Servile wars of which Spartacus was
| among them) I'm imagining that there was a very small minority
| of the slave population could earn enough money to purchase
| their freedom.
| ncphil wrote:
| There really weren't any practical differences between Roman
| and American slavery, at least from the slaves point of view.
| The owner had the absolute power of life or death over their
| slaves, and exercised it brutally (corporal punishment was
| common, as were family separations and executions). Few
| slaves in ancient times ever saw freedom except by escape,
| the same was true for those in the American South. The main
| difference is in where slaves came from. Most Roman slaves
| were the spoils of war, while American slaves were the spoils
| of criminal enterprise: although it could be argued that the
| Roman way of war _was_ criminal enterprise. Up into the late
| 19th century, peasants in feudal or emerging capitalist
| societies like Tsarist Russia or pre-unification Italy didn't
| have it much better. The estate owner had near absolute
| control over those who worked his land, and the owners wealth
| was in part measured by how many souls he had under the yoke:
| just as that of the Roman or Southern aristocrat had been.
| ancode wrote:
| Seems the same to me idk
| GoodJokes wrote:
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| This seems like a twisted sickened version of American
| exceptionalism to position American slavery as exceptional
| worse than all other slavery, to maintain a monopoly on
| injustice.
|
| It would be abhorrent to imply that American slaves were
| privileged because they had enough stability to become married
| or have children, in contrast to victims of Siberian gulags or
| Roman slaves worked to death in mines.
|
| Like all of history, some people may have had better conditions
| than others, but on the whole anyone who could be classified as
| a "slave" throughout history suffered atrocities.
|
| Slavery in all forms is violation of human rights, regardless
| of how history views it.
| bsedlm wrote:
| could I take this to argue that modern management theorists are
| current-day slave owners?
|
| /joke
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Didn't the Roman empire ultimately fall because of slavery? The
| article seems like it's trying to teach something about modern
| management through it though.
|
| I'm also getting a real sarcastic vibe from the tone of the
| writing, so I can't tell if it's maybe meant to be satirical?
| Like what's up with this ending quote: _Everyone knew where they
| stood then - even if, sometimes, that was in the line for
| crucifixion._
| GoodJokes wrote:
| quantified wrote:
| Management theorists for managing slaves and servants. Take the
| lessons you want from that.
|
| But, that's why the majority of us are called "wage slaves", I
| guess. Hoarding of wealth by the owning class helps keep everyone
| else needing to work for cheap, simpler economy to have workers
| take care of their own housing and food in exchange for the
| needed money.
|
| I doubt they were the first. This is just history being written
| by those who write it down, pre-written-historic is not pre-
| social (though writing expanded the social groups you could
| theorize about.)
| aluminussoma wrote:
| I was taught that management theory sprung from army management.
| These were the first organizations that required coordinating
| very large groups of people - in the life or death situations of
| war, and in the brutal monotony of peace.
|
| I doubt that there were enough slaveowners or slaves in charge to
| contribute anything substantial to the management profession. It
| is an interesting tale in today's sentiment of antiwork.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's one thing the Romans did pretty good.
| enduser wrote:
| It depends whether you consider drafted soldiers to be free.
| lkrubner wrote:
| The dates here are far too late for the title to be accurate.
| Especially when they are talking about the 1st century BC. This
| after the end of the Warring States period in China, in 221 BC.
|
| One reason that the Chin were able to win the Warring States
| period is because they invented the concept of "total war",
| including the concept of every aspect of the economy being
| maximized so as to maximize the output for the war effort. The
| rulers of Chin ended up nationalizing quite a bit of the
| productive land, and then pressuring the appointed managers to
| maximize output, and those managers, in turn, maximized pressure
| on the peasants to maximize output.
|
| A difficult but fascinating book about the political debate of
| the Warring States period:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936166755/
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| What an elaborate essay, equating modern wage-earners with slaves
| and measuring them by utility. It seems to be recruiting the
| reader to the 'slave-master' mindset.
| ummonk wrote:
| Wow, management theorists have more to answer for than I thought!
| britch wrote:
| What a strange piece.
|
| Putting the reader in the master's perspective certainly is a
| choice.
|
| It fails to investigate that almost anyone in its ostensible
| audience of corporate managers is both a "master" and "slave"
| (mangers have managers).
|
| An incredibly grim takeaway as well. It acknowledges the
| exploitation in both systems, but doesn't ask you to do anything
| about it or interrogate it deeper. There's no way that you're
| being exploited, just the poor saps that work for you. It's not
| wrong to exploit, just honest.
| quocanh wrote:
| You definitely have to be opened minded in order to read this.
|
| I can see how this could be offensive or distasteful but from a
| purely academic point of view it's interesting to see that a
| master-slave relationship was more than a contractual
| relationship. Leadership was just as important in that
| relationship as it is in a manager-employee relationship. And
| although we have since abolished slavery, we will always need
| leadership skills.
|
| If your mind is open and is able to understand nuance (able to
| keep similar concepts separate amid complexity) then you can
| learn from history and take lessons from the masters (bad
| joke).
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| Think about the risks! Anything your slave does that damages
| other people's properties or causes them to lose life or limb
| is _your_ responsibility.
|
| Those poor masters.
|
| Seriously, anything that attempts to be 'open minded' about
| slavery starts off on the wrong premise: that there are
| useful lessons to be learned there about human interaction.
| It's a well that is so thoroughly poisoned that it is
| probably better to stay away from it lest you be infected.
| quocanh wrote:
| You're twisting my words. No one is arguing "for" slavery
| here.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| There is merely a step away from arguing for 'wrongthink'
| as a policy. Ideas should be examined, thoroughly and
| openly. Staying away does the opposite to the goal you may
| want to achieve.
|
| Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially troubling
| on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on
| rational/logical discourse.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Suggesting that ideas can corrupt is especially
| troubling on HN, which is supposed to be more focused on
| rational/logical discourse.
|
| But they can.
|
| Religion, racism, terrorism, fascism: they are all ideas
| that can corrupt, and some people are more susceptible to
| this than others. If you find that you are at the end of
| your wits and unable to find one more source for
| management advice to the point that you have to turn to
| the masters of slaves of a few thousand years ago I think
| you should simply stop looking because nothing good can
| come of that.
|
| Ideas do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in a timeframe
| as well as what was considered locally acceptable and
| those conditions all but ensure that anything that you
| think you might learn is going to be very hard to apply.
|
| We study history to avoid repetitions, not to see what
| particular item certain despicable people from the past
| had to say.
|
| For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive manufacture
| by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A. Hitler,
| marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a start-up
| by Elizabeth Holmes.
|
| Those are books I can do without.
| bckr wrote:
| > If you find that you are at the end of your wits and
| unable to find one more source for management advice to
| the point that you have to turn to the masters of slaves
| of a few thousand years ago
|
| I think you've interpreted the article as some kind of
| prescriptive document modeled on slavery.
|
| This isn't Business Insider. It's Aeon.
|
| If anything the article comes across as critical of
| modern management by way of being too similar to Roman
| slave management.
|
| But it's more interesting than that. It's a look at how
| Roman slavery was a very complex system, much different
| from the way we popularly imagine "Slavery" (with a
| capital "S")--AKA American chattel slavery.
|
| I think that your revulsion is coming from a very
| beautiful place, _and_ that you 're a bit out of step
| here. We can rightly revile chattel slavery, and despise
| the thought of ancient slavery, and also be curious about
| it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "For an encore: Sex tips by rapists, explosive
| manufacture by suicide bombers, vegetarian cooking by A.
| Hitler, marketing tips from J. Goebbels and how to run a
| start-up by Elizabeth Holmes."
|
| I understand that you wrote it in jest, but isn't
| Goebbels studied precisely due to the nature of marketing
| ( propaganda ) he employed? I personally find it
| interesting. Why does association work so well? Why does
| it automatically follow that if Hitler wrote an
| absolutely spectacular vegan recipe that basically cures
| cancer, it is automatically off limits to everyone?
|
| Before you answer, note that Americans brought some
| actual Nazi scientists after WW2(operation paperclip).
| Should US have done without?
| jacquesm wrote:
| The US (and Russian, by the way) appropriation of German
| scientists and Nazi party members post WWII is certainly
| controversial and there are plenty of people who strongly
| believe that they should have stood trial in Nuremberg
| instead of being given a new job with plenty of perks.
|
| As Tom Lehrer wrote:
|
| "Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's
| apolitical. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where
| they come down? That's not my department, " says Wernher
| von Braun."
|
| The sarcasm dripping of those words is hard to replicate
| without hearing it sung, I recommend the original:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
| robgibbons wrote:
| In contrast to the satirical lyric by Tom Lehrer, here's
| an actual quote attributed to von Braun:
|
| "The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the
| wrong planet." -- Wernher von Braun remark to a colleague
| after the first V-2 rocket hit London (September 1944),
| as quoted in Apollo in Perspective: Spaceflight Then and
| Now (1999) by Jonathan Allday, p. 85
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think it is safe to assume that Von Braun was never
| under any illusions as to on what planet his rockets were
| going to come down and what was going to be the result of
| that.
|
| So even if Tom Lehrer took some artistic license I think
| he's on the money.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| But, in your opinion, was it the right thing for US to
| do? Say you are Truman. You are responsible for US and
| how it fares on the world stage. What would be the right
| thing to do? Show trials in Nuremberg will satisfy the
| public. Useful heads and knowledge at the very least
| would be prevented from going to Russia, where who knows
| what they would work on. If Braun was truly apolitical,
| history timeline could have easily changed.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Utilitarian arguments and ethics rarely go together well,
| hence 'realpolitik'.
|
| What my opinion is on the matter is irrelevant, history
| has run its course and here we are.
|
| We're well into 'old man lost his horse' territory now,
| of course you never know what the utility of a particular
| event is in the longer term. The doctor that saves the
| baby's life may well have caused a mass murderer to live
| a long and productive life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| We are just two random people on the internet discussing
| things passed.
|
| One never really knows what the action is going to
| ultimately accomplish, but if the opinion on that
| particular matter is irrelevant, why is the following
| opinion relevant:
|
| "Those are books I can do without."?
|
| If the history has ran its course, does it matter?
| bobthechef wrote:
| evan_ wrote:
| you actually have to be close-minded to read this favorably,
| an open-minded reading would be to consider the "slaves" as
| people whose rights are being violated
| quocanh wrote:
| Close/open-mindedness isn't about being morally
| wrong/right. It's about holding a vile idea in your head
| long enough to see its various facets. To study it and
| understand it.
|
| Openmindedness here means being able to understand that
| slavery is wrong at the same time you study what it reveals
| about the human condition. To be clear, no one in this
| thread has argued that slavery was good. If you think that,
| then maybe it's a sign that you're not separating subtle
| ideas well enough.
| evan_ wrote:
| If you "[hold] a vile idea in your head" but only look at
| the aspects of the vile idea that would benefit you then
| you've chosen to ignore a pretty huge facet of the idea.
| quocanh wrote:
| Yep. You got it. And I would go further - not just ignore
| but reject. That's what is meant by separating ideas. You
| find what is orthogonal and keep what is useful.
| fallingknife wrote:
| All cultures have differing views on rights. So any culture
| will have elements that I see people whose rights are being
| violated. I guess I will have to avoid reading anything
| about them, unless the author takes an appropriately
| moralistic and judgmental tone, of course. I have to assume
| that I am right and everybody else is wrong. It's the only
| way to be open minded.
| evan_ wrote:
| Wow, when you pretend I said something completely
| different than what I actually said, it sounds really bad
| fallingknife wrote:
| > you actually have to be close-minded to read this
| favorably, an open-minded reading would be to consider
| the "slaves" as people whose rights are being violated
|
| People who agree with you are open-minded. People who
| don't agree with you are close-minded.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Well, there was nothing contractual about this relationship:
| you have no contract with your property.
|
| A related rant. Being a wage worker is historically strictly
| better than being a peasant, as you can go wherever and leave
| your employer whenever you want; being a peasant was also
| strictly better than being a slave, since you're not
| property, are tied to a place (and cannot be just moved
| wherever), have legal personhood and duties limited by public
| law. That people like to conflate all this muddles actual
| historical progress and also prevents people from real
| analysis and improvement of their situation. I don't think
| that the current situation of wage workers will be something
| accepted by people long term, assuming civilization
| progresses. But to deconstruct the bad parts of social
| machinery they need to understand it beyond slogans,
| otherwise they can be made content with different slogans.
| /rant
|
| In a sense, the free person's (and therefore, often a
| master's) perspective is the only one relevant to the present
| inhabitants of First/Second World countries. You are
| emphatically not a slave, can have no remotely close
| experience and can only cultivate memories for ethical
| reasons. That being said, I don't think there is anything to
| "learn" from ancient managers of slaves either, because
| hopefully you can never be in that sort of situation.
| Romanticizing of slave and peasant relationships also exists,
| and is obviously BS, although not something that people are
| tending to push openly with the current swing of cultural
| pendulum.
| bckr wrote:
| > Being a wage worker is historically strictly better than
| being a peasant... being a peasant was also strictly better
| than being a slave
|
| What's next? Shall we unite the concept of citizenship and
| the concept of economic freedom? Perhaps with something
| like a citizen's dividend? A freedom dividend you might
| say?
| beerandt wrote:
| Slaves were often given the job of overseeing other slaves.
|
| There are some interesting incentives and punitive practices
| that come into play, but I don't think they're applicable to
| the comparison being made.
| balutdev wrote:
| edit:
| [deleted]
| wrboyce wrote:
| Of a similar vein, I can heartily recommend the book How to
| Manage Your Slaves by Marcus Sidonius Falx.
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manage-Slaves-Marcus-Sidonius-Trilo...
| throwhauser wrote:
| What a bizarre essay. It has a _Modest Proposal_ vibe, but since
| "Poe's law" is a thing now, I can't tell if it's satire or not.
|
| Morality is conspicuously absent, but I'm concerned that devoting
| any thought to this counts as taking the bait.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Indeed. This reads suspiciously like something out of George
| Fitzhugh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh
| api wrote:
| In the mid to far future we will look back upon the concept of
| "human resources" the way we look back on slavery today.
|
| I'm not a Marxist BTW. I just think we are slowly evolving toward
| a society in which equals interact economically on equal terms.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I'm already looking at it that way. the concept of a company
| recruiting various agents under its name, the concept of
| managing cohorts of humans to extract most value from them,
| elaborating organisational structures with
| promotion/termination schemes, the whole thing is a form of
| modern slavery.
|
| - We are born with a certain social position - Many can't make
| ends meet - We are talked into thinking each can escape his
| fate and rise, if he work hard at it - Only a few get entirely
| liberated - The liberated are examplified as role models -
| Those are the top don't need to perform any work - They spend a
| good chunk of their time making sure their position isn't
| threatened - The owners are free to trade their ownership, and
| they often do
|
| No need to be Marxist to view the system as inherently rigged
| and work out a way to escape it in favor of independent trading
| relationships with one another,with no agency as intermediary.
| netcan wrote:
| I wonder about early bronze age (eg Egyptian old kingdom)
| "management theories."
|
| IDK if I'm right, but I feel like the Roman era is not so
| different from the current era, or at least near-modern eras.
| They had accounting, greek philosophy, a legal system, insurance
| companies and a class hierarchy that was a lot like later
| periods...
|
| In the early bronze age, money doesn't even exist. Many other
| social constructs that we take for granted were probably also
| missing. I feel the same way about pre-colonial mexico. Large,
| hyper-urban societies that were institutionally completely
| different from us. I suspect the "god king" thing might play
| roles that we have a hard time imagining.
|
| You can drop in "staff" in place of "slaves" and this reads
| totally legibly to the modern mind. That's because the Romans
| were a lot like us. I don't think that means everyone was.
| petesergeant wrote:
| This is a confused article.
|
| > Most Romans ... thought cruelty to slaves was shocking
|
| but also
|
| > did not hesitate to punish their slaves, and to punish
| brutally. Floggings, crucifixions, torture by means of the rack
| and breaking the legs with iron bars would all be carried out in
| public to maximise the impact on the observers. Or a slave's
| children might be sold off, never to be seen again.
|
| ... so, not that shocking?
| [deleted]
| xeromal wrote:
| For anything historical, you really need to objectively put
| yourself in the context of the people you're looking at.
|
| Rome had cruelty laws for how to treat slaves. I'm not an
| expert but perhaps if the slave did their job then floggings,
| torture, and crucifixion were illegal, but were allowed if they
| broke the law.
|
| People will look back and probably think US execution is
| terrible and cruel while currently, a large portion thinks its
| acceptable. Heck, they may think we're cruel for eating meat or
| running over crickets with our tractors. We just don't know
| what lense we'll be judged by yet. We should afford the same
| understanding for past peoples while not condoning it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| This works to an extent. You have to be careful to make sure
| you aren't just softening history with a "product of their
| time" argument.
|
| A good example is US slavery. You might mistakenly fall under
| the understanding that slavery was just a common and well
| accepted practice. Yet, from the founding of the US and
| earlier it was HIGHLY controversial.
|
| You can't just take the perspective of the slave owner, you
| must also consider that abolitionists have been around at the
| same time periods.
|
| It's complicated and messy, but, IMO, entirely right to
| condemn slavery and slave owners as a modern reader. Just as
| you'd condemn someone running a con or a ponzi scheme in the
| same era.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| How is "product of their time" in any way softening it? If
| your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have
| niceness kicked out of you early on. And Roman life could
| be very brutish. One of the things we inherited from them
| was the word decimation, which came from a punishment of
| picking every tenth person to be put to death ( usually
| used for soldiers or uncooperative city ).
|
| It does not soften it. It just explains it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > How is "product of their time" in any way softening it?
| If your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have
| niceness kicked out of you early on.
|
| I don't know enough Roman history to really say if
| "product of their time" works that way. But I do know
| enough about US history and figures where "product of
| their time" is meant solely to excuse horrendous
| behaviors.
|
| That was more my point. You do have to be careful
| applying today's morality against yesterday's figures.
| However, you also have to be careful that you aren't
| using "it was a brutal time" as an excuse for yesterday's
| atrocities.
|
| Was everyone calling for decimation or was this a tactic
| meant to shock the enemies? Did everyone agree with it or
| were there critics?
|
| We know of the extremes of roman culture, but was that
| because historians needed to paint them as the extreme?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I had to think about it a little before I posted. Part of
| me is perfectly willing to superimpose my cultural norms
| ( how US dealt with 9/11 and integrated it into its
| history being an example of that ).
|
| I am just interested in history of Rome. If a Roman
| expert could chime in, it would probably be best since it
| is just a speculation on my end. In other words, I am no
| expert.
|
| That said, while I am willing to believe that propaganda
| effect alone was probably worth the trouble ( not to
| mention the unpractical nature of killing your own troops
| ), it is difficult for me to believe that the concept
| would have survived this long without..uhh.. reinforcing
| it.
|
| I did find some interesting sources, but I think this
| conversation[1] covers it well from several angles
| including ones you suggested.
|
| In other words, I think it is possible.
|
| [1]https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/26019/how-
| common...
| xeromal wrote:
| It works the further out a historical event goes. US
| slavery is still very recent compared to Roman slavery.
| Once 1000 years has passed from the US slavery, historical
| takes will probably be different from what we have now.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Fair point.
|
| I'm more advising caution due to my background as an
| exmormon. "Product of their time" is used frequently by
| mormon apologists to excuse the racist or predatory
| behaviors of the founders of the religion. I also see it
| used for excusing the actions of the founding fathers or
| confederate generals.
|
| When I see someone say "we can't judge the romans for
| their actions" my mind instantly goes to thinking "Well,
| what are their peers saying?" I think it's fair to judge
| them based on how their peers judge them. Maybe that's
| completely missing from the historical record (again, not
| a roman historian), but something that I think everyone
| should keep before taking the mental shortcut of "product
| of their time".
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > my mind instantly goes to thinking "Well, what are
| their peers saying?"
|
| The classical Greek and Romans were _incredibly_
| civilized by the contemporary standards of their
| vicinity. Basically _everyone_ was keeping slaves back
| then, but the Romans were pretty unique in not
| sacrificing infants to Baal or Moloch, and not collecting
| the severed heads of their enemies as trophies of
| mindless cruelty. And even the whole slave-holding thing
| was in the process of being slowly reformed over
| centuries, thanks to the ascendance of Stoic philosophy
| with its ideal of equal God-given dignity for all humans
| - which by the way was ultimately a key influence on
| Christianity, and an important contributor to its early
| spread within the Roman elite.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It was both a common and well accepted practice and highly
| controversial. They are not mutually exclusive, e.g.
| abortion.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > It was both a common and well accepted
|
| Slavery was not common. There were few slave owners and
| the populations of slavery states was minimal. Slavery
| was, by it's nature, very expensive. Only the very
| wealthy owned slaves. You had to be able to house the
| slaves and have work for them to be productive (or enough
| capital that productivity didn't matter).
|
| In fact, before the cotton gin, slavery was on it's way
| out because not enough people could afford it. The gin
| made it possible to harvest and process mass amounts of
| cotton without specialized training.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Not true that there were only a few slave owners.
| https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/8.1...
| cogman10 wrote:
| > So, according to the Census of 1860, 30.8 percent of
| the free families _in the confederacy_ owned slaves. That
| means that every third white person in those states had a
| direct commitment to slavery.
|
| This is probably quibbling over numbers, but I'd point
| out that we are talking about 30% of the white people in
| states that had slavery. Not 30% of the population at
| large.
|
| The states with slavery were underpopulated. The total
| population of the US in the 1860 was 31 million and the
| slave states had a population of 12 million (most of
| those slaves).
|
| 300k out of 31 million is, IMO, a few. Even if they are
| highly concentrated in a few states.
|
| None of this really negates what I was saying. Owning
| slaves was expensive and only the wealthy could afford
| them. The fact that 30% of white people in slave states
| were wealthy enough to own slavery isn't a contradiction.
| kerblang wrote:
| > the slave states had a population of 12 million (most
| of those slaves).
|
| In 1860 only two states had more slaves than free
| citizens, South Carolina & Mississippi, and by a slim
| margin.
| retrac wrote:
| Cruelty that's pointless (as they saw it). The Romans had
| little issue with crucifying dissidents, torturing slaves,
| executing the innocent fellow comrades of deserting soldiers,
| and beating their children into compliance. But they saw such
| cruelty as _useful_ , serving a higher purpose (social order
| and discipline, mostly).
|
| If you want an analogy, today, most people have no problem
| farming animals to raise them for meat. There's a lot of
| cruelty inherent in the process, but we do try to take steps to
| reduce it. And if you outright _enjoy_ the wails of pain from
| the cow as you beat it needlessly on the way to the
| slaughterhouse, there 's something wrong with you. Just as to
| the Romans, beating your slaves and sometimes making an example
| might be necessary, but a slaveowner who took a little too much
| pleasure in it was morally suspect. It's telling that Roman
| histories are full of allegations of the capricious torture and
| rape of slaves by prominent figures. While some of these
| accusations are probably true, they are generally of a
| slanderous nature intended to tarnish the reputation of the
| accused.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Slavery and "slaveowners" are such a loaded terms that it is
| almost impossible to have rational discussions about them. Many
| instantly equate "slave" to recent versions of slavery in US
| history. But the definitions used throughout history are
| remarkably varied. A Roman household slave was not the same as an
| African slave in a US cottonfield.
|
| One very interesting line of thought is whether modern soldiers
| are enslaved. US caselaw has two exceptions for the 13th
| amendment: Prison labor and military service. Why are they not
| slaves? There is no logical reason beyond the courts says they
| aren't. The concept of forced labor by people who are not "free"
| remains a cornerstone of modern society. We are not as far away
| from the past as we sometimes like to think.
| ralfd wrote:
| That is an interesting question. One difference I can think of
| is that (US) Politics is courting the military vote.
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