Friends, Romans, Countrymen: We Are Ages Apart

Tuesday 26 October 2010

by: Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed

Friends, Romans, Countrymen: We Are Ages Apart
Ominous comparisons between the United States and ancient Rome are common, but misplaced. (Photo: Lonnie Schlein/The New York Times)

The United States is not ancient Rome - we are not Romans, and they were not Americans.

In an Oct. 2 column in The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman quotes a passage from Lewis Mumford’s “The Condition of Man,” a book about the decline of ancient Rome and its parallels with the United States’s situation today.

Mr. Friedman reports that he got a chill down his spine when he read that in Rome, “Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword — as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks.”

This comparison is a common trope, and I don’t have any problem with Mr. Friedman’s using it. But I do think we should be aware that Roman society was very different from all modern equivalents. When someone draws morals from Rome’s decline, the realities of ancient times rarely enter into consideration.

As it happens, I recently read Adrian Goldsworthy’s book “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower,” and what I really appreciated was the author’s refusal to modernize ancient Rome and its concerns. Mr. Goldsworthy’s basic thesis is that civil wars brought down the empire, Rome’s strength sapped by an endless series of uprisings as local commanders tried to seize power.

And these civil wars, crucially, were not about ideology, or nationalism, or any of the things we might try to project onto the ancients; they were about personal ambition, pure and simple.

In that case, how did the empire ever have a golden age in the first place? It was partly luck — a series of pretty good emperors, for example — and partly because a series of childless emperors adopted competent men as their heirs.

But also (and here’s where Mr. Goldsworthy gloriously disregards political correctness and is willing to see that world as it was) stability depended largely on the lack of meritocracy in leadership.

As long as members of the privileged, wealthy old senatorial families were the only contenders, the game was relatively limited and stable. Once the seemingly pointless role of the hereditary aristocracy had eroded completely, Roman society became a deadly free-for-all.

So, can we draw some analogies with the United States?

Well, I suppose that the ruthless politics and the decline of the old establishment bear some similarities. But if the United States is in decline — and we are, we are! — we’re declining in our own way, and not the Roman way.

Backstory: A Decline Foretold?

The United States Labor Department released a report on Oct. 8 that had long been dreaded by economists: it showed that hiring has slowed and that local governments have laid off workers at the fastest rate in 30 years. In addition, 14.8 million people are unemployed, and just weeks before the November midterm elections, when political parties could be promoting different plans for restarting the troubled economy, Congress is at a stalemate.

This data gives ammunition to those who draw comparisons between the United States and a former global superpower: ancient Rome.

Some readers of Roman history argue that the current financial crisis is the result of a sort of decay quite similar to that which brought down the Roman Empire. Seemingly greedy bankers, sleeping regulators, self-serving politicians and hapless citizens all play a part in this scenario, in which Lehman Brothers was only the first of many dominoes to fall.

In some ways the comparisons are apt. In his book, “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower,” published last year, British historian Adrian Goldsworthy suggests that Rome’s bloated bureaucracy and the greed of its leaders so undermined the public good that collapse was inevitable. While tribal invaders delivered the final blow, he explains, Rome’s internal decay was so extensive that its eventual conquest was easily accomplished.

Mr. Goldsworthy discourages simple comparisons, however. He points out that the fall of the Roman Empire took place over several centuries and involved numerous critical failures and assaults. At the heart of its slow demise were the many civil wars that divided the empire.

That Rome’s decline took a long time and had many hard-to-identify causes is cold comfort, though, for the many Americans still reeling from the financial mess and simply looking for a way to pay their bills.

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Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed page and continues as a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2008.

Mr Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes, including "The Return of Depression Economics" (2008) and "The Conscience of a Liberal" (2007).

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Comments

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Another uneasy parallel is

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 09:05 — Anonymous (not verified)

Another uneasy parallel is that the U.S. is saddled with the same otherworldly, irrational, absolutist religion as the Roman Empire was in its final centuries. Gibbon maintained it played a decisive role in Rome's decline, and many would say it's doing the same here.

Watching America's

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 09:15 — Chip (not verified)

Watching America's intellectual class play catch up is amusing. No mention of, Michael Rostovtzeff

I have to agree with Anon

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 09:44 — MR (not verified)

I have to agree with Anon 14:05, in that there's an X-factor that is the core reason America is falling like Rome did. It's not religion IMO but I do agree it is a mesh of absolutism, cronyism/nepotism, international lawlessness & omnipotence. America is the proverbial bull in the china shop that is the rest of the world.

The ad that said, THIS SPACE

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 10:06 — Anonymous (not verified)

The ad that said, THIS SPACE NOT FOR SALE.

That, was genius. Gave me shivers.

I'll see if i can't scrounge up a few dollars and send them in.

People generally confuse the

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 10:15 — Anonymous (not verified)

People generally confuse the Fall of Rome (meaning the fall of the western part of the empire) with the fall of the Roman republic, which is quite another matter, leading as it did to centuries of Imperial splendor (and horror).

In a certain sense, Rome never fell: its legacy includes the living dead weight of both Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, which continue to oppress the world to this very day.

But they did not have to

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 11:09 — Vic Anderson (not verified)

But they did not have to contend with overpopulation and the swift Environmental COLLAPSE it portends, EITHER!

The religious absolutists

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 12:02 — Anonymous (not verified)

The religious absolutists are the foot soldiers of the plutocrats.

They're kept all worked up over stem cells and zygotes but could care less about healthcare, the environment, unnecessary wars, torture, poverty, injustice, and inequity.

Do they forget how Jesus said it's harder for a rich man to enter the "Kingdom of Heaven" than for a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle?

It's all surreal.

In the last days of Rome,

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 12:46 — Kevin Schmidt (not verified)

In the last days of Rome, they drank water tainted with lead, which precipitated their demise.

Today in the last days of the USA, not only do most Americans drink toxic water, but they also eat toxic factory farm food and chase it down with toxic pharmaceutical drugs as they breath the toxic air.

Is it any wonder we have such deluded people like the angry Teabaggers and hypocritical religious fundamentalists who are so easily led to the slaughter, again?

I do not think I agree with

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 12:47 — OA (not verified)

I do not think I agree with this article's reasoning. Some of the comparison between Rome's fall and America's condition is too rigid and literal. This type of analysis involves discovering hidden patterns and then comparing them. It is not competent to try to compare specific details like the article seems to imply . This methodology requires some level of abstraction.

- OA

The difference is that this

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 17:19 — Anonymous (not verified)

The difference is that this IS a democracy. Sadly, the people who are most responsible for keeping it sound are more and more selfish, ignorant, and greedy. It's not just the Koch Brothers and their greed. They can't sell us their BS without so many people out there willing to buy it.

America is collapsing from

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 17:43 — Johnathan Mann (not verified)

America is collapsing from the effort of one political party so engulfed in ideology that truth and facts don't stop its momentum. America has fought hard throughout its history for laws, regulations and protections for the middle class. Congress was given and ordained the power to promote the general welfare and now this party, the Republican Tea Party will tear this down.
How can we get anything done to help this country when one party's biggest concern is to defeat the president. Mitch McConnell the Republican senate minority leader said today, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

There’s the real Republican ideology! To hell with the economy, to hell with unemployment, to hell with the deficit, to hell with the middle class, to hell with the country, the most important thing we want is to win!

Are we only pawns to them in their quest for power? Do they care more about politics and winning than restoring our country? Do we really want these unpatriotic bastards back in control?

Mr. Krugman writes that

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 18:37 — William MacAdams (not verified)

Mr. Krugman writes that Lewis Mumford's “The Condition of Man” is "a book about the decline of ancient Rome and its parallels with the United States’s situation today." This is inaccurate since Mr. Mumford's book was published in 1944. Mr. Mumford died twenty years ago.

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 18:38 — William MacAdams (not verified)

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 18:40 — William MacAdams (not verified)

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 18:43 — William MacAdams (not verified)

Anonymous(15:15) made a good

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 18:53 — Per Fagereng (not verified)

Anonymous(15:15) made a good point about the end of the Roman Republic, which was something of a budding democracy. It was replaced by the Roman Empire, which fell for many reason, one of them being over-extension. That should ring a bell with us.

Another factor was that those responsible (the rich and the military) had such a stranglehold on power that there was no way to fix things. That should ring another bell.

So Professor Krugman blames

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 20:27 — Anonymous (not verified)

So Professor Krugman blames the demise of THE ROM to bloated "bureaucracies"! I had thought better of his opinions. I now know I was wrong. Did some corporate interest weigh in on him? I will still read Paul Krugman's opinions, though, as they always make a lot of sense to ME.

Mr Krugman wrote that the

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 22:12 — Lisa Hall Bates (not verified)

Mr Krugman wrote that the article by Mr FREIDMAN used Mumford's book to draw parallels. You have it wrong, William MacAdams

Krugman is as bad an

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 23:37 — Sargam (not verified)

Krugman is as bad an historian (and propagandist) as he is an economist. The golden age of Rome was made possible by its republican form, which preceded the empire (a shift followed by the US). And it was brought down by an entitlement mentality, just as America has today. Additionally, by stretching its army too thin, especially in occupying present -day Iraq.

Its minor uprisings and coup d'etats were merely a result of the resulting demoralised state.

Thanks for this challenging

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 23:40 — Grandpa Damon (not verified)

Thanks for this challenging and informative article.
Obviously our dialectical process is more rapid than that of the ancient Romans.
Our Republic was replaced by our Oligarchy a mere 150 years ago, when a railroad lawyer named Lincoln stole the election of 1860...
Has an erstwhile Republic ever succeeded in re-establishing itself, after being supplanted by Oligarchy?

I have to disagree with your

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 00:47 — Ernie (not verified)

I have to disagree with your statement that the reason that Rome fell was different from our own decline, where you said that Rome failed due to "civil wars, crucially, [which] were not about ideology, or nationalism, or any of the things we might try to project onto the ancients; they were about personal ambition, pure and simple."

I would say that any arguments based on ideology, or nationalism, or anything else are simply means to disguise the real reasons for the factions in our country today: personal ambition, pure and simple.

Draw all the comparisons you

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 10:50 — Marty Lee (not verified)

Draw all the comparisons you like between ancient Rome and the United States. After all, history is an interpretive narrative. As such it represents itself in at least three ways, aesthetically (in the choice of a narrative strategy), epistemologically (in the choice of an explanatory paradigm), and ethically (in the choice of a strategy by which the ideological implications of a given representation can be drawn for the comprehension of current social problems).

Thus,

America is Rome reincarnate. Like the Roman empire, the American empire is vastly powerful and unfathomably corrupt. Like Rome, America imposes her civilisation upon an ungrateful world. Like Rome, America needs bread, circuses and philosopher-statesmen to forestall and yet to hasten her demise.

Lou Marinoff --The Philosophers' Magazine, Summer 1998

i was hoping krugman would

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 16:23 — mikedelic (not verified)

i was hoping krugman would include some thoughts on chalmers johnson's work comparing the u.s. with rome especially vis a vis the concept of the collapse of empire as a result of economically unsustainable military expansion. it seems very relevant to his chosen subject and involves the kind of macroeconomic concepts that krugman is very well-versed in.

Professor Micheal Hudson

Thu, 10/28/2010 - 16:18 — mcthorogood (not verified)

Professor Micheal Hudson inspired Eric Janszen to write his book, "The Postcatastrophe Economy". Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich's financial advisor.

Since the 1980's, the Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) economy has decimated our industrial base. The current administration has been trying to resuscitate the FIRE economy, without a reality-based vision for the future.

We are protecting our national (read energy) interests around the world and pay with paper printed by the Fed. How long will foreign countries continue to accept paper, when we are unable to repay our debt?

Will you stop with the

Thu, 10/28/2010 - 17:42 — Scott ffolliott (not verified)

Will you stop with the empire rhetoric, please? The U S of A is a half-assed empire that can do little more than blow-up itself. Its people are overworked and their wages pilfered for profits for their “betters.”

There are no easy and simple solutions to the quagmire that its economics has created. China is not the problem. Islam is not the problem. The Middle East is not the problem. Latin America is not the problem, Immigration is not the problem.

America and Americans are the problem. One out of four Americans are out of work and unable to make their way in the world. What will the Americans do? Wallowing in self-pity and blaming the least of us for their troubles, as they are wont to do is what they have been doing. What they will do to change it? Nothing is my bet.

I direct the good professor

Thu, 10/28/2010 - 19:59 — marty weiss (not verified)

I direct the good professor to an article published in the NYTimes,
"Pirates of the Mediterranean",
which describes the immensely costly effort
to subdue a small number of pirates.
The ever money-centered military
brought Rome to it's knees.
No less than Helen Keller
has told us "..there is no security in nature.."
Either we have an open and prospering society
or a gated and dying one.
Here I point out that the cultures which
survived Rome and Kubla, and Alexander
did so by simple living on earth,
without banks or military.
They persist to this day.

People will continue to

Mon, 11/01/2010 - 04:22 — Ken Hall (not verified)

People will continue to prosper, but in different modalities.