The End of the Past

"Schiavone is intrigued by the same question, but posed here (in the area of classic studies) with respect to the Roman Empire. Michael Rostovtzeff was, in fact, the first to ask the question: why did Roman civilisation, which contained many elements of modern capitalist and market economy, not develop straight into a commercial capitalism of the medieval Florentine type? In other words, why a detour of some ten centuries? It’s a very reasonable question. You can’t blame the Barbarian invasions because if the Roman Empire had developed further it would have been sufficiently strong to prevent the invasions. Inequality. Schiavone’s answer is that the main culprit was the existence of slave labour. Most of the slaves in Rome were the product of military conquests. Slaves were relatively expensive, meaning that they could produce output above their own subsistence, but they were not sufficiently expensive to encourage the use of labour saving, and thus more technologically productive, techniques. Slavery, as argued already by Marx , was the key reason why ancient societies could not go past a certain level of economic development (even if they knew of some technologies – most famously the steam engine invented in Alexandria). They developed well enough to know how to use slaves but didn’t develop sufficiently to make it profitable to replace them with machines. Thus, in a key Marxian formulation, social relations limited the development of the forces of production. I do. I believe slavery was an institution that was efficient perhaps in the short term but in the long term it really prevented development of efficiency. Schiavone is the link in the big question of Western Europe vs China and he provides an economic explanation for the Roman Empire’s lack of development. Schiavone says that slavery made any labour, any useful work, seem unworthy of the upper classes. So there was the economic element to which you refer is more cultural. The upper class did not see that there was any value in material production, except for agriculture. So, the economic plus the cultural argument means that slavery made Rome unable to develop."