Nationalism and Culture (71 page)

They have tried to justify the word "misuse" by explaining that it must not be taken to mean an arbitrary misuse in defiance of morals, but merely as indicating the unlimited control of the owner over his possessions. That is an empty, meaningless distinction, which merely serves to accentuate the sacredness of property, and by which the pleasure of possession is neither destroyed nor disturbingly affected. The owner may let his fruit rot on the trees, he can sow his fields with salt, he can pour the milk of his cows on the sand, he can convert a vineyard into a desert, turn a park into a vegetable garden, quite at his own pleasure. Is this all misuse, or is it not? In every consideration of property use and misuse are hidden together. ^°

Who accords to property such power must necessarily rate the worth of a man very low. This is shown especially in the Roman law of debt and in the position given to the head of a family. According to the law of the twelve tables a creditor had the right to hail a debtor before the court and, if no one would go security for him or assume his debt, to sell him into slavery. If several creditors had claims to present against the same debtor, then the law gave them the right to kill him and cut him in pieces. The simple objective fact of the debt was decisive, and no con-

^ Memoir en, 1854.

^^ P. J. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la frofriete ou recherches sur le frincipe du droit du gouvernement. Paris, i 840.

siderations of humanity could be urged against it. The right of possession of an owner stood above the life and freedom of a man.

One finds the same pitiless feature also in Roman family law. The head of the house held power of life and death over the members of his family. He could expose a child at its birth or sell it into slavery j he could also pass judgment of death on any of his dependents. On the other hand, a son could make no complaint against his father, since he was regarded merely as the father's bondsman. This dependence he could end only by founding a household of his own, which he could do only by his father's permission. Hegel, himself an unreserved advocate of the authority principle, remarks strikingly: "For the harshness which the Roman suffered from the state he was compensated by the harshness which he exercised in his family—serf on the one hand, despot on the other. This constituted the greatness of Romej its peculiarity was harsh insistence on the unity of the individual with the state, with the law of the state, with the mandate of the state." ^^

The whole criminal law of the Romans was one of deliberate brutality and barbarous cruelty. One could object that cruelty in the imposition of punishment was at that time the general custom j but what gives its peculiar tone to the Roman law of punishment is the circumstance that here, too, every detail was patterned on reasons of state, and every human consideration regarded with cold indifference. Thus in a long series of cases children could be punished for the faults of their parents j about which the wise Cicero placidly remarks: "The harshness that punishes children for the misdeeds of their parents grieves me, but still it is a wise provision of our laws, for by it the father is by means of the strongest of all bonds, by means of the love that he feels for his children, bound to the interest of the state."

These provisions and some others were in later times made milder, but the inner core of their nature was not changed. What was the lot of a slave under such a system of laws is easily guessed. The slave was completely without rights and was, indeed, hardly regarded as human j at best he was thought of as one who had been human. The slightest disobedience, the slightest insubordination, or even things for which he was not responsible at all, were requited with bestial vengeance. Such an unfortunate might have his tongue torn out, both hands chopped off, his eyes put out, boiling lead poured down his throat j after such unspeakable tortures he might be nailed to the cross or thrown to wild beasts to be devoured—all this by the unquestioned right of the master.

The admirers of the Roman state idea make every effort to overbalance the lack of any deep feeling for culture among the Romans, which even they are compelled to recognize, by unstinted praise of the "spirit of

^^ Philosofhie der Geschichte.

Roman legislation" which', regarded as a work of art, they find actually astounding. But against this, even, there is much to be said. No less a man than Theodor Mommsen in his Rotnische Geschichte passes the following judgment on Roman law:

Men are accustomed to praise the Romans as the people especially endowed for jurisprudence and to regard with astonished admiration their exxellent systems of laws as if it were a mystic gift from heaven, perhaps chiefly to spare themselves some of their shame at the contemptible status of their own laws. A glance at the incomparably shaky and undeveloped Roman criminal law should reveal the untenability of these muddy notions even to those to whom it seems too simple to say that a healthy people will have healthy laws; a diseased people, diseased ones.

Onl\ such a state could arrive at so completely developed a system of militarism. Militarism and a military establishment are not the same thing, although the existence of a standing arm}- is to be regarded as the first prerequisite of militarism. Militarism is to be appraised first of all as a psychic condition. It is the renunciation of one's own thought and will, the transformation of man into a dead automaton guided and set in motion from without, carrying out blindly every command without being conscious of his own personal responsibility. In one word, mditarism is the meanest and most degraded form of that slave-spirit raised to the status of a national virtue which despises all the rules of reason and is devoid of ail human dignity. Only a state like the Roman, where man was valued merely as a mechanical part of an all-assimilatmg machine, and brutal force was esteemed the highest principle of policy, could brmg about such a'cruel distortion of the human mind and so lay the foundations of the shameful system that still lies like a mountain weight on the peoples and is even today the deadly foe of all higher cultural development. Militarism and Roman law are the inevitable results of the "Roman idea," that conception which is today confusing minds more than ever. No revolution has thus far been able either to chain the "Roman idea" or to cut the cord that binds us to a long-vanished past. For the Greeks, the institutions of their communal life were a means to an end. In Rome, the state was an end in itself 5 man existed for the sake of his institutions, whose slave and vassal he was.

Much has been written about the downfall of the Roman empire, and every conceivable explanation of that gigantic collapse has been brought forward. Some see the cause in the "over-refined culture," others in the utter neglect of morals. Nowadays one school has much to say about a "subversion of the soul of the race"—whatever this empty phrase may mean—and tries hard to represent the decline of Rome as a "race catastrophe"—though in this, the fact that Rome itself issued from a

so-called "racial chaos," which this did not prevent the Romans from playing their historic part in world history to the end, is deliberately overlooked. Yet the actual causes of the downfall of the Roman empire are much more clearly apparent than are those of most other historical events. If one examines all the details of this gigantic collapse without allowing oneself to be misled by artificially constructed preconceptions, one must reach the same conclusion as the English historian. Gibbon: "The wonder is, not that Rome fell, but that the downfall was so long delayed." But even for this delay there is an explanation: the Roman state machine was so strongly constructed and men were so universally convinced of its unshakable stability that it, so to speak, ran itself and overcame all obstacles for a long time after its foundation had quite rotted away. Rome was the victim of its own blind power mania and its inevitable accompaniments. Ceaselessly, in deluded blindness the leaders of the Roman state strove to extend the boundaries of their dominions, and no means was for them too brutal or too revolting. They themselves released the catastrophe that was one day to overwhelm them.

The fabulous prodigality of the privileged classes at the time of the downfall, the unscrupulous exploitation of every people, the complete demoralization of public and private life, were not the results of a physical racial degeneration, but the inevitable consequences of that cruel insatiability which had thrown an entire world into chains. The end of such a policy was necessarily complete disruption of all social life.

The might of Rome ground to powder everything that came in contact with it, without distinction of people or race. Even the Nordic peoples showed themselves in this matter incapable of resistance, and their "Germanic blood" afforded them no protection against the universal corruption of a system of oppression carried to the bitter end. At best they could only get the cruel machine temporarily into their own hands, and, doing this, they became at the same time its unconditional slaves and were ground up in its pitiless cog-wheels just as all before them had been.

The signs of the downfall were clearly recognizable in the time of the republic. The empire was only the heir of the republican war policy and brought it to its full expansion. So long as it was concerned with the subjugation of the small populations on the Italian peninsula there was little profit in it for the conquerors, for Italy was a relatively poor country. But the old conditions were fundamentally changed after the Second Pyinic War. The enormous riches which flowed into Rome led to the development of a gigantic capitalistic robber-economy which completely destroyed all the foundations of the old social structure. Salvioli, who followed every ramification of this system to its last details, convincingly describes its consequences:

After the splendid victories which opened Africa and Asia to the Romans the realm attained its widest expansion. Especially out of Asia, that fairyland of art and industry, that high school of luxury and taste, that unquenchable source of advancement for farmers-of-state and proconsuls, the most pitiless and brutal force squeezed a stream of gold and silver. This did not cease to drench Italy till the source itself was exhausted. The treasures which had been accumulated in the Orient, in Gaul, in the whole world, and those which the miner's craft still produces today, all were poured together into Rome as spoils of war, as tribute, as the fruit of plundering, and as taxes; all the other parts of Italy received their share, even if a modest one, of the general prosperity. Rome became and remained for some c&nturies the great market for metallic wealth. A raging transport of power-lust and avarice had seized upon this simple warrior-peasant people, so that it measured the fame of its commanders by the quantity of gold and silver which they brought to their triumphal processions. And these made it their practice to bleed conquered peoples white and to sell to allies the favor of Rome at the highest price they could get. To this avarice nothing was any longer sacred; right and reason were shamelessly trodden into the mud. King Ptolemy of Cyprus was known to be the possessor of a well-filled state treasury and of royal ceremonial vessels; so a law was promptly passed which gave the Roman Senate the right to inherit from a wealthy "ally" during his lifetime. The Senate regarded the treasures of all the world merely as Roman private property, the conquered could not call a penny their own. . . . This colossal stream was not allowed to flow in quite without interruption; victorious commanders, proconsuls and tax-farmers, who were all hungry for the riches of conquered kings and peoples, saw to this. Thousands of traders and adventurers followed the legions, paying cash for the booty which had been divided among the soldiers and taking from the conquered countries anything the commanders might have left.-^^

Thus arose that disastrous regime of speculators and chiselers whose sole purpose in life was gain, and w^ho strove to extract a profit from everything without caring in the least what the consequences were. The most shameful usury developed into a murderous system which, slowly perhaps, but surely, must at last undermine the very foundations of the collective economic life. There arose great capitalists and capitalistic stock companies which farmed from the state the collection of taxes from entire countries and provinces. This saved the state much labor and vexation, but the last drop of blood was pumped out of the veins of the countries that fell into the claws of these vampires, for they spared nothing that aroused their avarice. In the same way they farmed the departments of the state and the mining enterprises from the government; they supplied the legions with the necessary equipment, and constantly amassed greater capital; they organized the slave trade on mercantile principles and supplied the

^^ J. Salvioli, Der Kafitalismus im Altertum. Stuttgart, 1922, p. 26.

great works with their human material j in a word, they were always there, if there was profit to win.

The virtuous men of the republic participated in these robberies with the utmost complacency and amassed great fortunes as usurers, slave-dealers or real estate speculators. Cato, who in our schools is still honored as the personified virtue of ancient Romanism, was in reality a shameless hypocrite and cold-blooded usurer, to whom no means was too reprehensible for furthering his selfish ends. He sounded, one might say, the correct note for his time when he coined the saying: "It is the first and most sacred duty of man to make money"! Plutarch puts into his mouth as his very last utterance the characteristic words: "The business of the conquerors pleased the gods, but the business of the conquered pleased Cato." Still, Cato constituted no exception among the "virtuous Romans" of his day. Even the famous tyrannicide, Brutus, whom tradition clothes with all the trimmings of strictest uprightness, was quite as heartless a usurer as Cato and thousands of others, and his business practices were often of so questionable a character that even Cicero, that undefeated attorney of usurers and speculators, avoided looking after his affairs in court.

By far the most important cause, however, that helped to seal the doom of Rome was the ruin of the small landholders, who had been the strongest bulwark of Roman superiority. The constant and successful wars forced the small peasantry, hungry for foreign riches, ever farther along that dangerous road which has thus far always been the fatal road of the conqueror. The crushing of the Etruscan cities in the north and the conquest of the Grecian colonies in the south of the peninsula had already powerfully stirred the avarice of the Romans. Then, when they first successfully waged war in the out-land and began to pursue a world policy, everything else followed of itself. A world policy and a prosperous peasantry are things which in the long run cannot be reconciled. The peasant who husbands his farm is grown into the soil that he tills. Continuous war, with the uninterrupted withdrawal of thousands of men from husbandry, must in the course of time work ever more disastrously. A system under which twenty-five out of every hundred men were from the seventeenth to the forty-fifth year of their age always under arms must inevitably lead to the downfall of the ancient peasant husbandry. Moreover, the state had openly raised the trade of robbery to a policy, and this accumulation of wealth by force seemed to the peasants more profitable than the tiresome tilling of the soil. So the peasant gradually became estranged from the land. During the long wars the Roman peasantry slowly bled to death. Contemporary writers even assert that by the end of the Second Punic War Rome had lost half of its earlier population. Along with this, small landholding moved more and more swiftly toward