>historians: the Byzantine Empire was LITERALLY ROMAN
<literally atheist "anti-fascist" westoids: nuh-uh, the Pope from 1200 years ago said it wasn't, so it wasn't
When Papal propaganda way past its political expiration date from 1200 years ago continues to affect the brains of people today who are neither Catholic nor ᴉuᴉlossnW-aligned, I must ask if I have been a fool all along, for thinking the truth ever mattered.
>>2669284Who cares
Eastern Rome if you want to be that kind of person was itself crushed by Arab invasions a few centuries after the west fell. What made Rome culturally relevant wasn't roman soul but the fact that they were the biggest and richest empire in Europe for a very long time. Byzantium didn't have that kind of resources and it shows even if they do have some relevant achievements. Western Europe was a relatively more rich part of the world as early as the 11th century. The last few Byzantine scholars were running over to Italy before Constantinople fell because they were a poorer country.
I will never understand people who glorify the Byzantines as Eastern Rome as if it meant anything. Like
>>2669369 said, by the time Western Rome fell (and I would say even slightly before then) whatever made Rome "soulfully" relevant was long dead, in the modern era the Byzantines have absolutely no bearing, effect or any lessons to teach besides it being just another Medieval state shithole.
>>2669369Dude, the exact opposite. The East was richer. That's why they outlasted the West. That's why they were jealously stereotyped as "decadent". They bribed the Huns. They bankrolled puppet emperors in the West. They fought off the Vandals after the West failed and Carthage fell. The East was way richer because of trade. The wealth of the West was tied in land.
>>2669492>Medieval state shitholeWhile the medieval West was ruled by warrior-kings who had to travel to eat because they couldn't even collect tax and feed themselves properly, the East continued to have a professional army paid in tax money. The East is the shithole?
>>2669543…Yes? Who gives a flying fuck about what Western Europe was doing at this time, it's meaningless, retarded, braggadociousness.
Constantinople was the largest city in the world between the 5th and 7th centuries, with an estimated population of half a million, and even in the 15th century still among the largest.
Rome fell after the battle of austerlitz
The Ottoman Empire was LITERALLY Roman as well btw
Rome fell with the Republic lmao
>>2669626Rome fell with Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
>>2669597>>2669619>>2669654I know you people are shitposting but do you think historians are also shitposting or are correcting an error that originates from first Papal propaganda, then German imperialism. The capital moved to Constantinople. The Senate moved to Constantinople. The Roman legal system continued unhindered. It's like saying, if a country is conquered partially and moves its capital, it ceases to exist. That's not how states work and that's what the historians are pointing out. It's a vibes argument nowadays to consider Byzantium an "alien" entity, not supported by the historical record.
>>2669668First the capital moved to Ravenna, and personally I don't subscribe to the "western Rome was conquered" bit of propaganda. Power merely changed hands. Hell, the first non-roman Roman emperor was Trajan in 98AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoric_IThe structure of Roman society lived on through the west, despite claims that it fell, with the patronage system creating what we know as feudalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome >>2669668The point is that "Rome" is mostly a pointless distinction. There is no transcendental roman soul. Was there any non-Rome that controlled all of western and southern Europe at the same time? You bet historians would be all over that shit but the closest we got was the Napoleonic and Hapsburg empires that didn't last long. Sure it's an interesting point but no one but Orthodox monks cares. Even Greeks larp as Hellenes and not Romanoi.
Having a peasant become emperor is based, and they did it multiple times (and they were competent too!). Also commendable attempts at religious harmony
My fav tidbit is that racing chariots teams had a massive influence on politics. Imagine if the political parties were just literal sport teams supported by different families of the ruling classes.
>>2669697>>2669701Manorialism was a historical accident. Rome had landlords since at least the Republic. Many famous Roman figures you can name were in fact landlords. Being a landlord was lucrative. But Rome was a Res Publica. A public affair. A state. A manorial realm is… historically unprecedented as far as I'm aware. It's awkward and inefficient, and probably would never arise in "usual" conditions. You have a loose network of villages controlled by a warlord, with each village mostly feeding itself, rather than exporting for redistribution, or exporting for trade. The warlord travels from village to village to feed himself. This is, indeed, the collapse of a state. It almost resembles the steppe nomad subjugation of Slavic tribes, with the difference being that in the case of manorialism, the subjugated stay in place rather than occasionally joining to raid, and their "chief" is the landlord in cahoots with the warlord.
When people say "collapse of Rome", they're picturing an apocalyptic event. In reality, it was gradual enshittification.
>>2669756Manors are essentially very small city states. But unlike actual city states they were not completely independent when they had to pledge to a larger political entity. And just because that larger political entity had to periodically bring a small army around to basically collect taxes in the form of food doesn't mean it wasn't a state.
>>2669709How is historical accuracy a pointless distinction? You're the only one here referencing "soul" (vibes), not a category historians care for. And by the way, the modern Greek identity was constructed by the British, Greek-speaking people (who were forcibly assimilated into various Balkan nations and were not necessarily "Greek" ethnically) had been calling themselves Rhomaioi long past the fall of Byzantium, they were called Rum (meaning Romans) under the Ottomans, and they had practically forgotten about Ancient Greece until the British.
>>2669782What is the difference between banditry and a state?
>>2669818There is no real difference beyond a larger state calling the smaller state bandits. If they get large enough and defeat the other state they become the ones who call other small states bandits instead
https://ancientwarhistory.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-zhu-wen-a-tyrants-path-from-bandit-to-emperor/ Thank god Rome didn't survive to this day, we would have retarded chinese-type nationalism about muh civilization state.
Byzantards are as an embarrassing as wehraboos
>>2669509Yeah. Everything in the East (Byzantines, Persia, India, China) was richer whereas Western Europe was dirt poor. It was quite the opposite of today.
>>2669887t. barbarian who eats with his hands and not forks like a civilized Roman
>>2669369>Western Europe was a relatively more rich part of the world as early as the 11th century.Firstly, to be clear to readers here unfamiliar with the historiography, the Western half of the Roman Empire, even from the Republican period, was the poorer half of the Empire. It remained the economically stagnant part of the Empire until it collapsed in the late 5th century, and it remained extremely economically backward thereafter until the maybe 10th century, when trade in the West began to recover thereafter. Even with the "rebound" of the Medieval West, the Eastern Mediterranean was still much wealthier. Basically, until Early Modern period (ca. 16th century), the closer you were to trade with India and China, the more wealth you were. Western Europe remained a real economic backwater in the world economic system until well into the 2nd millennium.
>>2669632Rome fell when Romulus felled Remus. The wrong brother won. It never began.
>>2669863Just a correction. Early medieval warlords did not "collect taxes". There was nothing to collect. They had nowhere to transport the food, there was no central hub, there were no conditions for proper logistics. They literally would eat on the spot then move on to the next place. "Itinerant/peripatetic kingship" is the term. Literally traveling just to eat.
>>2669668I think it's a Ship of Theseus problem, but the move to Constantinople accelerated, or maybe just represented, certain irreversible changes in the Empire that were already happening. It's been a long time I've thought about the topic so this I probably will be missing a lot:
1) Decline of the Latin language and culture in the East. I know the Eastern Empire had always been Greek and its administration and elite culture were even conducted in Greek to some extent, but tmk Latin was still encouraged and promoted as a prestige language or was spoken bilingually by Greek elites who wanted to work in the Roman state and military. The decline of Latin marked a loss of what we see as some sort of "Romanness".
2) Christian autism: As Christianity moved gradually over many centuries from a fringe religion to the state-religion, it morphed to work hand in glove with the state apparatus. At a certain point, with full Christianization, you get centuries upon centuries of Christological controversy. If you read any Byzantine history, the first centuries are dominated by civil wars and fierce ideological/sectarian conflict over the nature of Christianity. In turn, the Christians' conquest of state power eventually colonized, so to speak, people's minds with Christian ideology, and so the new ideology also prompted them to in turn to start to mold the social and cultural order according to the religion. To put it more concretely, you have iconoclasm, which led to the destruction and prohibition of images throughout the Byzantine Empire, which was totally contrary to traditional Greco-Roman traditions of figurative imagery and statuary. And the social prohibitions also killed stuff like depictions of nudity and led to increasingly repressive anti-Jewish legislation throughout the Byzantine Empire, which wasn't really a thing in the pre-Christian Roman Empire (the earlier Romans hated Jews for rebelling and not paying lip service to the Roman gods, but I don't think it was personal and they were willing to tolerate it. Christian emperors didn't put up with that.)
3) Increasingly hierarchical and authoritarian society. I could go on but I am gettting tired. But, basically, from the 3rd Century onward there is some sort of shift from the Emperor as a bureaucrat to Emperor as godhead, and this corresponded to a greater shift in society toward hiearchy, domination, etc. etc. I am not sure if this is some Enlightenment Era retcon, but I believe I have read that this shift came after the Crisis of the 3rd Century and the increasing militarization of Roman society, as well as stagnation in the Western Roman Empire, among many other economic and social factors that I cannot remember. But the shift to Byzantium happened when it did because the Western Roman Empire, while always economically weaker, became even less dynamic economically and more underdeveloped as time went onward, with pottery and textile manufacturing, among other industries declining and an agrarian economy dominating.
Why do you care about drunk pedophiles? That’s all any society ever is
Kill all historians, burn all books, tear down every “historical” artifact, it’s all dirty, all tainted, all pedophile
>>2669914Horrible invention.
>>2669957Try wearing a skirt in winter, see how you feel
>>2669709>Was there any non-Rome that controlled all of western and southern Europe at the same time?Charlemagne did a nice job briefly, albeit without most of Spain or Southern Italy. While "Renaissance" is thrown around for a lot of eras, the Carolingian Renaissance did some genuine good for the preservation of Classical Culture and made some good work standardizing script and education, creating educational institutions, increasing literacy, copying a shit ton of Latin texts and correcting them, without which we would have lost a lot of latin texts.
>>2669492 I always thought the most interesting thing about the Byzantines is that they kept the imperial bureaucracy while the rest of Europe was going into early feudalism.
>>2669951"Authoritarian" yet I'm guessing anyone in here would rather live in Byzantium than anywhere West where "might makes right" was the norm and not even monks were spared from random violence. It was a shitshow.
Their obsession with "correct" Christianity came down to inheriting the debate culture of Greeks. The Papacy did not like this (one of the causes of the Schism). Shit, now that I think about it, it now makes sense why my extended family thinks it's cool to rage about politics at get-togethers while for you Westerners that's a "you don't talk about that at the dinner table" thing. We inherited the debate autism from the Greeks.
>>2669935Alright, the phrase "collect taxes" was too limited. A more accurate description of a state is it can "use force on a population and therefore can impose control over local resources." That can include collecting coins, metals, wood, livestock, food or anything else.
>>2669975Arguably it entered "early feudalism" with crisis of 3th century.
ITT: "communists" arguing about history using exclusively bourgeois idealist categories.
>le culture
>le form of government
>le seat of government
>le imperial power projection
>le self identification of Greek peasants in the 19th century
The real change you're all looking for was that the mode of production in Byzantium shifted from slavery to the Asiatic mode of production.
>>2670371>Asiatic mode of production.Can I get a quick material analysis on this one?
this isnt even a difference in opinion
these are 2 separate political entities. youre a retarded historically illiterate chud
>>2670371The "Asiatic mode of production" is a myth. Also societies with slavery were not all the same "mode of production" either. Read actual cutting edge historical writing instead of 19th century myths.
>>2670402The historians are the historically illiterate chuds? I think you're the retard here bucko.
>>2670404marx himself says that the transatlantic slave trade upheld capitalism. this cannot be recognised in a strict view of modes of production - the same way there are more slaves today than ever in history.
>>2670413I mean it goes further than that. Pre-bronze age collapse palace economies are not post-bronze age collapse Greek city-states (which had their own differences) which are not Persia and Rome and others.
>>2670394it's a 19th century idea that has no basis in reality, byzantium was also not a "slave society" a nebulous term used because they simply didn't know what the roman economy functioned like, the roman economy was more or less a protocapitalist economy that was sacrificed for feudalism
>>2670394 It's the most understudied idea in Marx's model of historical development because vulgar Marxists wanted to fit every non-western society into the western model instead of doing their own material analysis, while pomotards got offended about the word "asiatic" and dropped the concept entirely. The AMP is an initial exploration, it's basically Marx saying "yo the modes of production of India and China are clearly more similar to each other than they are to European slavery/feudalism, we really gotta do some further analysis here" and then cue 150 years of Marxists doing nothing.
There's three main points to the AMP
1. The form of property is, at the level of the legal superstructure, that all the land belongs to the sovereign, but in fact communal forms of property reign, with the state having relatively weak control over the internal relations of production of the agrarian productive units.
2. The state is the one that organizes the exploitation and distribution of the surplus product. You don't have an aristocratic class whose private ownership of the MoP means that the rents are privately seized, rather you have a consolidated bureaucratic system that organizes taxation according to a central plan. The "despotism" of the rulers is propaganda of bureaucratic servants with aristocratic consciousness angry that they can't seize the surplus product for themselves.
3. The most fundamental concrete use of the surplus product was not in fact just the luxury consumption of the exploiting class, but maintaining and expanding irrigation works. In this sense it is argued that a highly centralized state bureaucracy is a historical necessity arising from the underlying material conditions of production.
Byzantium dropped slavery just like western Europe, which expressed itself at the level of the ideological superstructure as le epic Christian moral condemnation. But there was no collapse of the centralized bureaucracy, so the MoP changed to the AMP, while in western Europe the successor Germanic military aristocracy wrestled control of surplus value extraction.
Considering that the development towards imperial despotism and christianity predate the "Byzantine era", we can say that the seeds of the AMP were already present in the late Roman period
>>2670404
>societies with slavery were not all the same "mode of production" eitherBro still hasn't understood the concept of abstracting the concrete form to grasp the underlying essence. Modern Pomo retardation in academic history irrationally fears the concept of a generalizing category because "MUH NUANCE AND COMPLEXITY". Every society must have its own snowflake unique microhistory impossible to compare to others or you're doing evil historical metanarrative.
Slave societies had differences yes, wow, insane, they were still predominantly slave societies. There were slaves in ancient India and China, we know, nobody denies this, the AMP was still predominant. There's still actual literal slaves in the modern world, but the MoP is imperialist capitalism because it's the predominant one
<In all forms of society there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others. It is a general illumination which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity. It is a particular ether which determines the specific gravity of every being which has materialized within it.Read actual cutting edge 19th century historical materialism instead of bourgeois pomo idealist myths
>>2670445Where to even begin.
No, rejecting the "Asiatic mode of production" is not the same as rejecting "Big History".
No, Byzantium and "Rome proper" before it had private property. It was embedded in Roman law. In the Late Antiquity before the "collapse" you had huge privately owned plantations. As mentioned before, many famous Roman figures were literal landlords. Not just rural, but urban, owning literal apartment blocks that they would rent to laborers. Marcus Licinius Crassus, richest man in Rome in his time, had a private fire brigade. Fires were common in Roman apartments, so he would send his fire brigade and tell the owners that if they do not sell to him, he would not put out the fire.
No, Byzantium precisely DID NOT rely on irrigation to feed itself. Irrigated agriculture was the feature of Egypt and North Africa. And even "Rome proper", outside of Egypt and North Africa, did not rely on irrigation to feed itself. The majority of Roman territories used rain, because in the majority of Roman territories, it rained.
Neither Byzantium nor Western Europe "dropped slavery". It continued to exist (and the "barbarian" tribes practiced slavery long before that). It was just no longer as massive or "dominant" if you prefer, precisely because of a combination of manumission and lack of conquest. Slaves were no longer dirt cheap (or free if you're kidnapping the losers in battle).
Also, Byzantium had a literal aristocrat class called the Dynatoi.
>>2670497
>I clarify that there's a dialectical relationship of concrete differentiation in the abstract category>You continue to believe that the category is an undialectical monolithic undifferentiated blobWhat I'm trying to convey is that it is a pomo strawman of Marx's model to claim that when he says "slave society" he means "LITERALLY NOTHING OTHER THAN SLAVERY THERE'S NO WAGE WORKERS THERE'S NO FREE PEASANTRY THERE'S NOTHING ELSE LITERALLY ONLY SLAVES IF YOU FIND ME A SINGLE NON-SLAVERY FORM OF EXPLOITATION THIS THEORY IS ENTIRELY INVALIDATED"
Early modern Europe had a bunch of MoPs side by side, slavery with feudalism with merchant capitalism with industrial capitalism with free peasantry, all interacting with each other in complex ways and determining the unique structure of the historical moment. Reread the quote i gave, a predominant mode of production doesn't preclude others from existing, but it determines their particular historical expression. Feudalism WAS predominant throughout the whole period, until the contradictions between the emerging capitalist mode of production and the social relations of the feudal mode of production became too acute. Same thing happened with slavery in the south of the US where it was in competition with northern capitalism. MoPs coexist side by side, but you can abstract from this by paying attention to the predominant mode of production over a given period, in order to grasp the historical flow of progress. At this higher level of abstraction, we can say that society "dropped" feudalism/slavery for capitalism as a shorthand of the underlying complex inter-MoP dynamics to illustrate historical development.
You're dropping all of this epic nuance on me thinking that my retarded modernist metanarrative will collapse because i said "slave society" but Rome had paid laborers and that i said "AMP" but Byzantium had a feudal aristocracy. I'm telling you Marx understood this, the nuance is not being ignored and swept aside, it is being abstracted to focus on the broader picture of historical progress
<Neither Byzantium nor Western Europe "dropped slavery". It continued to exist (and the "barbarian" tribes practiced slavery long before that). It was just no longer as massive or "dominant" if you prefer, precisely because of a combination of manumission and lack of conquest. Slaves were no longer dirt cheap (or free if you're kidnapping the losers in battle).This is not a rejection of Marx's model, this is literally Marx's model. You're literally arguing for a material explanation as to why the slavery mode of production lost its predominance over the feudal one and thus historical progress flowed from one MoP to the other. You're arguing with a strawman of Marx while agreeing with the actual Marxist theory. If you think about the categories undialectically you start splitting hairs because slavery still existed and therefore it is not "strictly" no longer a slavery mode of production, and before that there were non-slave forms of exploitation so there was also no "strict" slavery mode of production, therefore the abstract category can't possibly exist and there's no generalizations you can make about history and there's no flow of progress and there's only vibes and the differences between "Rome" and "Byzantium" are actually to be found in secondary superstructural factors that are actually symptomatic of the abstract category of "predominant mode of production" which you wish to excise from the historical analysis
In the same way you think the predominance of the AMP precludes a Dynatoi class from existing, when in fact this class was literally a bureaucratic servant class that "feudalized" over time as their posts became hereditary, it literally arose from the AMP in much the same way that from the demise of slavery arose feudalism. Most of the history of Byzantium is the centralized AMP bureaucracy trying to reign in the feudal aristocracy.
<Irrigated agriculture was the feature of Egypt and North Africa.Welp, there's your answer to the questions you're proposing me. What was the literal agricultural heartland of the empire once conquered? Egypt and North Africa, What territories were taxed by the empire in a manner reminiscent of the AMP? Egypt and North Africa, What is then the underlying reason for the emergence of AMP-like characteristics in the imperial era? Egypt and North Africa, Guess which territory's conquest by the Vandals was the literal material reason the west collapsed, while the other territory was kept by the Byzantines, thus causing one to "switch" to feudalism and the other to retain AMP? Egypt and North Africa, Guess what happened after Egypt was conquered from Byzantium? The feudal-like theme system arose.
>>2670587>Early modern Europe had a bunch of MoPs side by sideand not today?
>>2670591 I already addressed this
>>2670445
>There's still actual literal slaves in the modern world, but the MoP is imperialist capitalism because it's the predominant one >>2670587You claimed that Byzantium shifted to the "Asiatic mode of production". But you also claim Egypt is the basis now.
Do you know when Byzantium lost Egypt? In the 7th century.
So by your own logic, the transition from "Rome proper" to Byzantium was a move
away from the "Asiatic mode", not towards it.
You're also muddying the definition of "Asiatic mode of production" now. What is the purpose of using the term if Byzantium fails the two primary criteria: 1) tax-funded irrigation, and 2) state monopoly of land? "Multiple competing MoPs" is just a hand-wave to avoid admitting the definition doesn't fit.
The Dynatoi were functionally the continuation of the Roman Nobilitas. They cannot be "feudalized bureaucrats" because their land ownership
precedes the office. Furthermore they
bought land. Byzantine Emperors passed laws to stop Dynatoi from buying up peasant villages. You cannot buy land if the state already has a monopoly on it. The existence of a private land market is a fatal contradiction.
>>2670408retarded nationalists ≠ historians
greece ≠ rome
cry
>>2670897Famous Greek nationalists like J.B. Bury, Dame Averil Cameron, Chris Wickham, Peter Brown and John Haldon (Haldon and Wickham explicitly identify as Marxist historians)
I'd mention Anthony Kaldellis but the poor man has Greek heritage, he is therefore, essentially (pun intended) a nationalist by blood, in your chauvinist worldview
Greek nationalists of the 19th century, spurred by the British, hated Byzantium. The modern Greek nationalist identity was carved on "muh Athenian democracy, bedrock of Western civilization". Today Greek tourism is funded by Western lovers of Ancient Greece, and the Greeks are quick to pander with souvenirs and references in tourist towns and traps. But ask the "simple, uncouth, probably genetically different from Plato and therefore inferior" (according to the tourists) modern Greeks what was their actual "peak", chances are they will answer, the Eastern Roman Empire.
Great Western chauvinism. Not even once!
>>2670687>1) tax-funded irrigation,Not needed to meet the definition as they can use Corvee labour.
>and 2) state monopoly of land? Nobility are the state. Their ownership of land is state ownership of land.
>>2670897Eastern Rome was ruled by Roman emperors. It was a continuation of Roman government. The people called themselves Romans. The name Byzantine Empire was only used to refer to Eastern half of the Roman Empire starting from the 18th century by European historians.
Also it's capital is now in Turkey not Greece.
>>2669978>"Authoritarian" yet I'm guessing anyone in here would rather live in Byzantium than anywhere West where "might makes right" was the norm and not even monks were spared from random violence. It was a shitshow.I guess I mean the ability of the state to exert control over religious and social life to a degree not seen in the Roman Empire. Could be wrong. I am not saying the West was better or the East was worse, I was only trying to say why Byzantine doesn't have the same sense of "Romanness" and seems more foreign or distinct than the "Classical" image we have of the Roman Empire.
>Their obsession with "correct" Christianity came down to inheriting the debate culture of Greeks. It really was worse because debate wasn't allowed because there was only one "right" answer in the minds of the partisans of one or another doctrine.
>The Papacy did not like this (one of the causes of the Schism).The schism happened for political reasons as much as theological reasons, though, right? The pope did not accept that he was subordinate to the byzantine hierarchy, but since Rome had collapsed as a city it was hard to assert this claim for many centuries unless as powerful patron among the barbarian kingdoms could support his claim with force.
>it now makes sense why my extended family thinks it's cool to rage about politics at get-togethers while for you Westerners that's a "you don't talk about that at the dinner table" thing. We inherited the debate autism from the Greeks.What a dumb generalization. This is hardly unique to some "Greek debate culture" that can be traced from antiquity.
>>2670445>we really gotta do some further analysis here" and then cue 150 years of Marxists doing nothing.I think they have honestly, it's just that these findings haven't been really propagated widely because they are found in reading a bunch of history books.
The rightful successor to the Roman legacy was the Tsardom of Muscovy.
>>2669923Byzantium didn't have the eastern mediterranean after the Arab invasions. It had Anatolia and a part of the Balkans. It was no longer rich enough for anyone except Orthodox monks to care about today. You can argue about the details but historical materialism says that practice is the criterion of truth, and in practice not even Russians care about Byzantine culture.
>>2669509And then almost all of eastern mediterranean was turned into a different world with a different heritage and a different script. It's disingenuous to even call it "the east" because it's so small compared to "the west" that only lost Spain and then recovered it. "The west" may have fallen earlier but it wasn't 80% gone from the perspective of christian europeans two centuries later and then completely occupied by the Ottomans for hundreds of years. People say shit like "the east didn't fall as hard" yeah it didn't fall, it was eliminated entirely to the extent that some guys from Britain could apparently do anything with Greek nationbuilding.
>>2670972Are you now saying "corvee labor = Asiatic mode"? Also, if the Dynatoi "were the state", their land would revert to the state upon death. It didn't, it went to their children. The legal system differentiated Fiscus (state property) and Oikos (private property). Furthermore, under this ridiculous assumption that they "were the state", who was the state taxing? Itself? Who was the state fighting to restrict? Itself?
>>2670987The "Asiatic mode of production" is literally rejected by historians, ones who explicitly identify as Marxist included.
>>2671032It is rather funny that you think richness = cultural relevance. Byzantium was so rich it could bribe Western mud-kings with "luxuries" and make them feel special while the "luxuries" were actually laughable for the Byzantines. A middle-class peasant in Byzantium had a standard of living that was unimaginable to contemporary Western mud-kings. And with regards to the Russians, the Cyrillic script and Orthodox Christianity aside, the whole shtick of Russian Tsars was claiming to be successors of Constantinople. The Russian double-headed eagle is a Byzantine imperial symbol (guess what other countries have the double-headed eagle motif). I mean you're not necessarily wrong that the average atheist Russian doesn't care much for Byzantium, but the lack of a "soft power" like Hollywood promoting interest in it… might have something to do with it. As for the British, they could do whatever they wanted, because the Greek national identity (like pretty much all national identities) is artificial to begin with. Many Greeks have non-Greek ancestors, many Turks have Greek ancestors, etc.
>>2671053>Are you now saying "corvee labor = Asiatic mode"?No, I'm saying taxation isn't necessarily part of the theoretical definition of AMP. Taxation or corvee labour, either method can be part of it.
>if the Dynatoi "were the state", their land would revert to the state upon death. It didn't, it went to their children. Nobility inherit their position in the state. The land is part of their position. This is not contradictory.
>The legal system differentiated Fiscus (state property) and Oikos (private property).Analysis of statehood goes beyond what medieval legal theorists thought of their own society or how they classified their own positions. Their de-facto control over resources, such as land, through direct control over military violence enacted on the population is what gives them their position in the state not some made up laws that they ignored half the time or overthrew the emperor the other half of the time.
>who was the state taxing? Itself? Who was the state fighting to restrict? Itself?Yes, states can have internal battles over resources, who gets what position or what Nobles are allowed to do on their lands vs kings or emperors were allowed. Just take a look at the Holy Roman Empire. They were one of the most fragmented and fractious states in the world, yet they were still technically one state.
>>2670687 (YTA btw) Homie i cannot sit here all day explaining to you what an abstraction is until it clicks for you. You're taking the categories I'm proposing and leaving absolutely no room for nuance in them, when the point of Marxist modes of production is expressly that they flow and change and interact in historically specific ways.
I'm claiming IN FULL that Byzantium was a predominant AMP with a tendency towards feudalism, exacerbated by the loss of Egypt. According you you, it's either has to be 100% AMP forever for all eternity throughout its entire history or it cannot be AMP. I'm literally begging you to learn how to think dialectically.
<So by your own logic, the transition from "Rome proper" to Byzantium was a move away from the "Asiatic mode", not towards it.Yes that's literally what i said when i mentioned the AMP-ization started in the late empire. I still argue it was predominantly AMP for most of its history because the state remained the largest landowner and principal exploiter of the surplus product of the empire, and because the "feudalization" was very clearly never as complete as it was in western Europe, for instance the Holy Roman Empire's hyper feudalization, France's vassals literally becoming kings of another realm, or Poland and England which developed whole ass aristocratic parliament systems to institutionalize feudal privileges. Maybe it was by the late empire once the latin conquerors messed everything up.
<Byzantine Emperors passed laws to stop Dynatoi from buying up peasant villages. You cannot buy land if the state already has a monopoly on it.You should critically analyze what you're saying yourself. WHY are the emperors trying to get the aristocracy to stop buying land? Because they want the centralized bureaucratic system to be the one that determines land ownership. It's the bureaucracy-aristocracy conflict i mentioned earlier, you're continue to agree with what I'm saying while pretending you're not.
>>2671185>No, I'm saying taxation isn't necessarily part of the theoretical definition of AMP. Taxation or corvee labour, either method can be part of it.If you were paying attention to the discussion you would notice that "irrigation" is the important part, not "tax-funded". You can even argue that corvee labor itself is a "tax". Either way pointless for the purpose of the discussion, nobody is confused by what is meant by "Asiatic mode of production". The point is Byzantium didn't rely on irrigation to feed itself.
By the way, you are literally arguing that Byzantium wasn't "Asiatic" by equating it to the HRE, just from a different direction.
>>2671221>You can even argue that corvee labor itself is a "tax". Some schools of thought specifically define the term tax to mean only collection of coinage. I was being very specific if this was your point of contention.
>The point is Byzantium didn't rely on irrigation to feed itself.The main point of the other anon made was that their control of Egyptian Nile qualified and when it lost control it slowly shifted to a more feudal system.
>you are literally arguing that Byzantium wasn't "Asiatic" Marx just used India as an example and thus called it Asiatic. But that doesn't mean it's only found in Asia. It can be argued AMP existed in Mexico under the Aztecs.
>>2671032>It was no longer rich enough for anyone except Orthodox monks to care about today. You can argue about the details but historical materialism says that practice is the criterion of truth, and in practice not even Russians care about Byzantine culture.That isn't what I was arguing in the post. Some of your facts were incorrect. I don't care whether the Byzantines are relevant or not.
> It had Anatolia and a part of the Balkans.And Constantinople, an extremely strategic location at the nexus of trade between the East and West. That alone made it a very wealthy empire. And the Balkans and Anatolia were still very rich compared to the West.
>>2671053The idea of the Asiatic mode has been at the center of a lot of scholarly debate among historians in the 20th century. Even if it was fundamentally wrong it spurred a lot of research which has brought a lot of rich historical detail about the various empires of the Eastern Mediterranean such as the Byzantines and Ottomans.
>>2670980To claim the Byzantines didn't have a debate culture is to ignore the entirety of the Ecumenical Councils and the Corpus of Patristic writings.
The fact that political violence existed doesn't negate the existence of debate. They wrote something like thousands of texts concerning the most obscure details of theology, why the fuck would they bother if partisans "just" murdered each other as you imagine?
Claiming there is no continuity with Ancient Greek philosophy is factually incorrect; the Byzantines spoke Greek, read and preserved the texts of Plato and Aristotle, and used Greek philosophical terms to write the Nicene Creed. Orthodox Christianity as we know it today didn't emerge in a vacuum, it was forged through centuries of intense debate. What does Orthodoxy mean? "Correct belief". You do not arrive at the "correct belief" by never asking questions.
Why was the Papacy different? Ironically, because it was more "authoritarian". The Pope says X, X is now the law. Done. And technically speaking, for the Papacy, questioning theology IS politics, because questioning theology is questioning the power of the Papacy. See Protestantism.
And yes, they genuinely cared about religion. Modern atheist projection of religion as a mere cynical political lever is considered historical revisionism.
Regarding the claim of debate culture of antiquity influencing people today, well, while I'm sure the "passion" of modern Balkan people is more complex than that, need I remind you that we are in a thread pointing out that Papal propaganda from 1200 years continues to influence the brains of literal atheists.
>>2671669Yes, I am aware of all of that. The West did the same shit with Boethius or Aristotle in the central middle ages. Theological debate was not limited to the Byzantines nor is it uniquely "Greek". Anyone can take Aristotle and Plato and incorporate them into their own philosophy, as the Arabs did with their own theology and philosophy.
>>2671729>Claiming there is no continuity with Ancient Greek philosophy is factually incorrectWhere did I make this claim. Ancient Greek philosophy was the basis of knowledge of all Mediterranean Civilizations, including in the West and Arab conquered lands. Ibn Sinna was born in Central Asia, grew up on the eastern ends of the Samanid Empire, and was studying translations of Aristotle in libraries in what is modern day Afghanistan and Iran. The Byzantines did not have a monopoly on Greek learning and ways of thinking.
>Orthodox Christianity as we know it today didn't emerge in a vacuum, it was forged through centuries of intense debate.Yes, no shit. But those debates were also fraught with politics, intrigue, regional rivalries, and lots of bloodshed. You had iconoclast emperors who took the throne through military coups and anti-iconoclast emperors who also violently killed iconoclasts. At a certain point, though, the debate stopped or fizzled out and one interpretation was more or less imposed by force.
>And yes, they genuinely cared about religion. Modern atheist projection of religion as a mere cynical political lever is considered historical revisionism.I never said they didn't. But it's also massive cope and seethe to think that religious questions were just issues of doctrinal interpretation, and not also about court and regional politics. That is 100% pure idealism. People cared about religious questions, but they absolutely were many times just a sublimation of real world political and economic issues. To deny that is just plain wrong.
>>2671740>>2671729You started by claiming Byzantium was anti-debate. I don't even know what you're talking about anymore, nobody mentioned or denied that the West/Arabs made use of Aristotle. The point is, did they have debates or were they "authoritarian", no, they had debates, they not only had debates, they were state-sponsored, and they literally relied on councilar consensus to resolve questions, the PAPACY was/is "authoritarian".
I don't even know how many examples there are of Byzantines doing politically self-destructive things because of their beliefs. Too many to list. They literally believed their souls would be damned if they held the wrong beliefs. Pure idealism? Yes, they literally engaged in "pure idealism". Shocking to the 21st century bourgeois mind, not any less true.
>>2671780>You started by claiming Byzantium was anti-debate.It was, once the christological conflicts ended in the 9th century and the iconodules won out.
>I don't even know what you're talking about anymore, nobody mentioned or denied that the West/Arabs made use of Aristotle.Because there is no such thing as greek debate culture. There is a classical heritage inherited from Athens, and at a certain point it wasn't "Greek" anymore.
>authoritarian", no, they had debates,There is a difference between debates which are settled with violence and debates with more benign outcomes.
>the PAPACY was/is "authoritarian"The papacy also had the same shit. Papal supremacy ("authoritarian" pope as deposer of kings wasn't really a thing until the Gregorian reforms in the 11th century and peaked with Innocent III. In the early middle ages the Pope was just the most prestige. You also had movements like Conciliarism in the 14th and 15th century, which did promote "debate." But it's a moot point because much like in the byzantine church, doctrinal issues were also debated within the confines of the church establishment for centuries upon centuries. I could easily write a list of medieval theologians in the West from the early to late medieval period, indicating a degree of scholarly freedom and innovation of doctrine that I do not believe is comparably found in the Byzantine East.
>they were state-sponsored, and they literally relied on councilar consensus to resolve questions, the PAPACY was/is "authoritarian".This uygha doesn't know about caesaropapism. The Emperor controlled the Byzantine church. "State-sponsored" is another way of saying "puppets of the emperor" lmao. The church could and did oppose him if he pushed things too far, but he still had massive authority to appoint patriarchs, and he had the final say on doctrinal issues.
>They literally believed their souls would be damned if they held the wrong beliefs.I did make the earlier argument that Byzantine's Christianity did shape the society top to bottom in culture and society etc. etc. but at the end of the day beliefs only restrain human behavior so much in the realm of high politics, trade etc. etc. which is amoral. The whole medieval period is a story of the mismatch between what people were writing about their beliefs and how they actually acted in practice. That is why, for example, Machiavelli's "The Prince" was shocking, because before him you had these retarded "mirror of princes" manuals that said "just believe in god do charity, and be religious and your realm will be peaceful lmao" when reading just about any life of a medieval king or emperor shatters that illusion in an instant.
>>2672130>9th centuryThe Hesychast dispute was in the 14th century. Either way, your claim was factually wrong. You're moving goalposts now.
Caeseropapism is as far as I'm aware rejected by modern Byzantine scholarship as an oversimplification or even outright 18th century Protestant myth.
>State-sponsored is another way of saying puppets of the emperor lmaoBack then, theology was analogous to "science". Divine favor was a "national security" concern. You wouldn't call scientists funded by a government "puppets", that's retarded.
>MachiavelliDo you understand why the Byzantine populace rejected the Union of Florence, rejected help from the Pope against the Ottomans? "I prefer to see the Muslim turban in the midst of the city than the Latin mitre". They preferred Ottoman rule precisely because they could not stand Catholic doctrinal subjugation. The Ottomans meanwhile were tolerant of their specific strain of Christianity. Point being, they literally revolted because they refused to give up their religious beliefs. Thereby "sacrificing" Byzantium. Thereby accepting the burden of Ottoman taxation as non-Muslims, the kidnapping of their children into slave soldiers, etc. If your "materialism" cannot account for spiritual self-interest ("pure idealism" as you call it) when examining history, your "materialism" is actually just physicalism, and it is contradicted by the record.
>>2669955>the lamest form of moralism of all peoples and timesGo back to reddit please.
>>2672423>Thereby "sacrificing" Byzantium. Thereby accepting the burden of Ottoman taxation as non-Muslims, the kidnapping of their children into slave soldiers, etc. If your "materialism" cannot account for spiritual self-interest ("pure idealism" as you call it) when examining history, your "materialism" is actually just physicalism, and it is contradicted by the record.Tf am I reading. This is a child's understanding of history. Byzantium wasn't the sacrificial lamb of European history so the West could survive. And the Byzantines merging with the West wouldn't have done jackshit to prevent Greek-speaking lands from being conquered into the Ottman Empire.
>Thereby accepting the burden of Ottoman taxation as non-MuslimsThis is Greek nationalist copium. The Greeks weren't oppressed under the Ottomans except as Christians.
>the kidnapping of their children into slave soldiersThe children were levied from communities as a kind of forced conscription. There weren't Muslim slave raiders kidnapping children in the middle of the night. The system took the Christian children, converted them to Islam and trained them for military or bureaucratic service. They were given pay and influence and many ascended to the top of the Ottoman state. It was a twisted system by our standards, sure, but it wasn't brutality for brutality's sake. And, anyway, Muslims were recruited into Janissary corps eventually and many families wanted their children trained. You also had Muslim converts have secret correspondence or connection with the families from which they were taken, so it wasn't a total severance of family connection. Also, part of the reason why the Janissaries declined in quality is when they made it a hereditary title that would be inherited instead of a pretty effective meritocratic system lol
>>2672596You're basically just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks now.
.Byzantium wasn't the sacrificial lamb of European history so the West could survive.
Nobody said this. This is your projection.
>And the Byzantines merging with the West wouldn't have done jackshit to prevent Greek-speaking lands from being conquered into the Ottman Empire.I don't even know what you're talking about at this point. But I have a sneaking suspicion it is irrelevant to my point.
>This is Greek nationalist copium. The Greeks weren't oppressed under the Ottomans except as Christians.Again, projection. The Ottomans (and Arabs, since it's literally Islamic law, jizya) levied an extra tax on non-Muslims. These people were worse off materially as a result. This is a FACT.
>There weren't Muslim slave raiders kidnapping children in the middle of the night.… Nobody said this either. Doesn't change that "forcibly recruiting" (to use Wikipedia's phrase) a child is synonymous to kidnapping.
>>2672423>Do you understand why the Byzantine populace rejected the Union of Florence, rejected help from the Pope against the Ottomans? The populace didn't make those decisions. The Orthodox Church wanted to keep it's own power which required being separate from Catholics.
>>2672596>And the Byzantines merging with the West wouldn't have done jackshit to prevent Greek-speaking lands from being conquered into the Ottman Empire.A united European front against the Ottoman empire might have done something to save Byzantines given the right circumstances and if they got lucky with winning enough battles. Fun alternate history idea.
Byzantium in effect contradicts the linear historical development model. That is, they preserved their productive forces, unlike the West, and furthermore, they "skipped" serfdom (at least until the Dynatoi won much later). So the "oh yeah the standard of living went to shit but hey the serfdom over slavery thing is technically progress, that's dialectics" model doesn't fit.
>>2671191I want to reply to you honestly but I don't even know what to write. Do you want me to pull sources proving that private property was not "legal fiction"?
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