A Lesson from History

"Make your soldiers rich and do not bother about anything else ... I have been everything and it is worth nothing."

 

Roman Emperor Septimus'  advice to his sons and dying words in York in Britannia after expensive victories against the Scots in 211 AD. [He was the last Roman emperor for 80 years to die in bed.]

 

History of civilization

In 25 startling pages and 30 minutes of reading, Will Durant recounts the spasmodic convulsions of civil authority in the Roman Empire from the death of Commodus to the abdication of Diocletian [193-305 AD]. During one 35 year period alone, 37 men were proclaimed emperor [by various factions] then almost immediately deposed [primarily through murder and often by the same faction that made the proclamation]. As anxious attempts to secure and concentrate power and wealth by Senate elites, the emperor and the military complex collided in sordid schemes, incestuous intrigues and brutal betrayals, the once established rule of law [on which the pax romana rested] drowned … repeatedly struggling to the surface only to disappear again beneath the heaving waves. Private life and public order collapsed into a volatile cocktail of fragile arrangement or overwhelming enforcement as both private and public infrastructure disintegrated [the former from uncertainty and the latter from neglect].

The overview

Reading this panoramic overview provides almost no realistic understanding of how the day by day [generation by generation] experience must have felt … swinging both violently and gradually back and forth between hopes and fears for over a century. And yet by seeing it from above … compressed in retrospect … the skilled observer [like Durant] can confidently conclude that it was indeed a transformation … a metamorphosis … a collapse … from one thing into another.

The collapse

Here, according to Durant, are a few of the things through which the collapse passed:

• swings to and reactions against moral degeneration and new religions
• simultaneous, side-by-side growth in elite extravagance and common poverty
• uprisings by malcontents within and attacks by aggressors without
• growth of non-citizen military expense, power and intervention
• accumulating arguments for absolute executive power
• dislocation of established industry, labor and trade [internal and external]
• resort to unprecedented currency debasement as heavier taxes became impossible
• inflation ruining the middle class and investment capital without relieving the poor
• de-urbanization and re-ruralization … leaving slums behind.

The result

The 100 year collapse, according to Durant, led to the following under Diocletian who was elevated to power by the military in 282 and abdicated [to grow cabbages] in 305 ... only to watch Rome descend into civil war.

• the movement of real power from Rome [which was in economic and moral decay even though government appeared to go on there as usual] to Nicomedia,
• an agreement with 3 co-elites to divide the sprawling empire into 4 parts … creating a “divided but absolute monarchy in which each law of each ruler was issued in the name of all 4 and was valid for the entire realm”
• a complete reformation of government into a hereditary [not meritocratic] and extensive bureaucracy resulting in
• a “centralized state which considered local autonomy, like democracy, a luxury … and excused dictatorship”
• the substitution of central planning for private enterprise and markets
• hereditary laws binding laborers and their households to specific state sponsored lands, enterprises and trades/guilds even if/as underlying resource ownerships were transferred among elites and bureaucrats … causing Labor in Rome to move “from slavery thru freedom to serfdom”
• reestablishment of precious metal coinage guaranteed by weight and purity [retained in parts of the Empire until 1453]
• unprecedented levels and ruthless collection [including torture of family members] of taxes
• which were necessary because “as yet the state had not discovered the plan of public borrowing to conceal its wastefulness and postpone its reckoning”
• but which caused an epidemic of property abandonment and emigration by people desperate to avoid their taxes and the severe penalties for non-payment.
  

The retrospective

And finally, according to Durant, this is history's look back at Diocletian’s actions:

• 50 years of anarchy were ended
• harsh enforcement of strict rule by executive order prevailed
• basic stability was restored to industry and security to trade
• internal dissent was crushed and external enemies were held in check
• central bureaucracy replaced local autonomy
• the population became a non-meritocratic, hereditary feudal caste society
• central planning and taxes replaced liberty and enterprise
• Diocletian was called “Father of the Golden Age” by his contemporaries … as Constantine prepared to take center stage.
  

The rhyme

Mark Twain claimed that “history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. Any rational observer that can and will step back and close his eyes cannot help but see outlines of a collapsing American middle class democracy presciently writ large in Durant’s historical observations of this tumultuous period. Diocletian's advent as a stern dictator was "needed" because "Rome's citizens had lost the fortitude to rule" themselves. And yet, even in the dictator's brutality there are remarkable signs of sound civil thinking.

• He worked to restore the reliability of the debauched common currency in a bold move that stood for over a millenium in parts of the Empire. This was no easy task, since nearly all the currency in circulation when he arrived was debased to varying degrees.
• We are told today that returning to sound money which [ala Bretton Woods] is guaranteed in "weight and purity" is not an option ... but, as you can see, that is simply not true. Where there is a will [even a dictatorial one] there is a way.
  
• He made no excuses for openly collecting the taxes needed to fiscally maintain his extensive bureaucracy ... and did not attempt to "hide" its glaring flaws from public view. Harsh but honest.
• He realized a corrupted state could not reform itself but needed a strong outside force to restrain its excesses and restore order without mercy.
  

The difference

However, there is one major difference between Diocletian's Rome and Biden's America. America, from the beginning under Alexander Hamilton, learned how to manipulate [but never repay] public debt combined with [and utimately taking the virtual form of] a debauched fiat currency

• to finance and hide her massive bureaucracy's waste and corruption
  
• by concealing the ruthless, de facto collection [via legalized monetary counterfeiting] of heavy taxes from anyone [citizen or not] who held her currency
• and by so doing to “postpone her reckoning”
• until “by her sorceries were all nations deceived and in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” Rev 18

If Rome had technological access to the power of such financial sorcery, it might never have needed a Diocletian to rescue it from itself ... until rescue was no longer possible. And if there was no Diocletian to rescue Rome ... there might never have been a Constantine ... and the entire course of history in the West would be very different.

The question

As Diocletian obviously understood, with great power comes great responsibility. While we cannot know if or who will someday write history’s chilling chapter on “The Collapse of the American Empire”, we can know that

• it is not without precedent or warning
• it will require the surrender of ... local autonomy to central authority … liberty to dictatorship ... individual enterprise to central planning ... because "the people" are no longer able to rule themselves
  
• it will institutionalize a feudal caste society and bureaucracy
  
• it might have been prevented by [or even ultimately involve] an unthinkably painful but absolutely necessary and historically proven return to a sound currency guaranteed in both "weight and purity" and the transparent collection of taxes to restore both confidence and justice to our dealings with one another across accounts, borders and years
• it will be merciless in its retrospective recount of what will then be the completely obvious and tragically avoidable causes of America's irreversible collapse.
  

Can we afford to return our currency to a precious metal standard and collect our taxes honestly and openly as Diocletian did?   Can we afford not to?