Book V of Aristotle’s Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies – which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to “take the multitude into their camp” and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history.
Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts – always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders (“tyrants” to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state.
Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies. This did not reflect egalitarian or liberal political convictions as such, but rather a desire for better security for their loans. As James Steuart explained in 1767, royal borrowings remained private affairs rather than truly public debts. For a sovereign’s debts to become binding upon the entire nation, elected representatives had to enact the taxes to pay their interest charges.
By giving taxpayers this voice in government, the Dutch and British democracies provided creditors with much safer claims for payment than did kings and princes whose debts died with them. But the recent debt protests from Iceland to Greece and Spain suggest that creditors are shifting their support away from democracies. They are demanding fiscal austerity and even privatization sell-offs.
This is turning international finance into a new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest in times past: to appropriate land and mineral resources, also communal infrastructure and extract tribute. In response, democracies are demanding referendums over whether to pay creditors by selling off the public domain and raising taxes to impose unemployment, falling wages and economic depression. The alternative is to write down debts or even annul them, and to re-assert regulatory control over the financial sector. [emphasis added]
Read the rest at CounterPunch
Debt Slavery – Why It Destroyed Rome, Why It Will Destroy Us Unless It’s Stoppedby Michael Hudson
4 comments:
" a new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest in times past: to appropriate land and mineral resources, also communal infrastructure and extract tribute."
WOW!
Tom, You have to be a moron not to be able to see this equivalency... right in front of their noses...
Unbelievable.... it is as you sometimes say: same-o same-o
Results the same, tactics change.
Resp,
From Hudson: "The fall of the Roman Empire demonstrates what happens when creditor demands are unchecked."
If "Rome" really fell, or perhaps look at it that the then prevailing govt "authority" fell, then why do we find ourselves in this same predicament now here almost 2,000 years later?
With the repeated pattern of these same economic outcomes played out over, and over, and over again throughout the history of the west as Hudson points out here.
Was the operative "authority" really 'Rome'?
Has the true "authority" of this age of the west ever really fallen?
Resp,
"Was the operative "authority" really 'Rome'?
Has the true "authority" of this age of the west ever really fallen?"
I'd advise not to explain by design that which can be explained by stupidity. However, if you are a fan of conspiracy theories, you'll appreciate Joseph P. Farrell. He's an unbelievably erudite (Oxford PhD) conspiracy theorist who's more or less in paradigm with his economics (and, to his credit, free of the anti-Semitic crazytalk all too common in the genre). His Babylon's Banksters is a doozy:
Joseph P. Farrell outlines the consistent pattern and strategy of bankers in ancient and modern times, and their desire to suppress the public development of alternative physics and energy technologies, usurp the money creating and issuing power of the state, and substitute a facsimile of money-as-debt. Here, Farrell peels back the layers of deception to reveal the possible deep physics that the “banksters” have used to aid them in their financial policies.
http://gizadeathstar.com/purchase/
"You have to be a moron not to be able to see this equivalency... right in front of their noses..."
I think that the people on the periphery, especially the Greeks, get this loud and clear. They are actually calling it "the Fourth Reich."
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