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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

> Ceasar was a ruler for the people.

...or as we'd say today, a typical "populist". I don't think there were any genuinely "good guys" among the Roman political elite just by process of natural selection. Politics in Rome was a cut-throat business, and much closer to an oligarchy or mafia state than what we understand today as a "republican democracy". I have no doubt that Caesar only had his own political advancement in mind with the ultimate goal to become an autocratic ruler when he pretended to care about the "people".

PS: all my own opinions of course, formed by reading the usual sources :)

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As another "fan" of Caesar, I agree with this take. There's much to be appreciated about Caesar when looking at his strategies, tactics, politicking, etc. He was absolutely brilliant. But that was all born on the backs of using and abusing people (sometimes Roman, sometimes the people Romans conquered). This isn't unique to him and is just emblematic of Rome at the time, and its attitude towards itself, towards conquering, and towards non-Romans. To appreciate Caesar requires a certain amount of separating the artist from the art, and knowing that the good he did was more a means to and end rather than an end in-and-of itself.

Were there any famous or powerful Romans we might consider more liberal/progressive by modern standards? People who didn't believe in wantonly enslaving and plundering and conquering, or exploiting populist rhetoric, or otherwise abusing people. People who made reforms without ulterior motives (or at least with benevolence and empathy as some of the genuine motives).

(One can argue there aren't many powerful people like that even in modern times, but I can at least think of a few. Just wondering about Roman history, though.)

I thought the Gracchi brothers[0] might be an example of what you're looking for, but a quick skim of the wikipedia page (it's been almost two decades since I read their history properly) suggests that even they weren't examples of this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi_brothers

> ...or as we'd say today, a typical "populist".

Or indeed, as they'd have said then, kind of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimates_and_populares

(Populares weren't always populists, but they were inclined to be, and Caesar was both)

To start ask what is populism? From Google:

> a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

I find the more educated you are (read: elite) the less you like populism. Funny that.

Populism is a mixed term. But historically, it involves using majoritarianism to accumulate power and defeat systemic checks. It’s successful in the short run and damning in the long.

Explaining to a starving orphan (or more pointedly: veteran legionnaire) that they can’t have food because of the constitutional system of consular veto is basically unwinnable, which is why that situation is checkmate: if you fight for principles you’re heartless, and if you fight for what seems right you must become a dictator. Roman politics, by the late Republic, has reached this level of gridlock and imbalance where the only factions were a conservative establishment unwilling to accept any change and a populist wing populated with strongmen.

Put another way, Sulla and Caesar failed where Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR succeeded.

The "norms of the Republic" were constantly violated to enrich the elites of Rome, it was only when Ceasar violated them for the people was it a problem. It's a tale as old as time, sort of like low interest rates, it's a party until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation.

> The "norms of the Republic" were constantly violated to enrich the elites of Rome, it was only when Ceasar violated them for the people was it a problem

There are high norms and low norms. (My terminology.) Low norms range from basic corruption to which sexual orientation is in vogue. High norms subvert how power is wielded. Equating these two is page one of populism. (You have a broad point in that crossing the Rubicon was a generational affair by Caesar’s point. But nobody was happy about it when Sulla did it either.)

> until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation

This cannot be a serious reading of the data. Wages rose precipitously for a decade [1]. Even during the pandemic, while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates. When inflation started rising, rates remained low because the Fed thought it transitory. It’s only when it surged that the FOMC stepped in. The Fed was not only fine but thrilled with rising real wages.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/

> while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates.

Investors have been walking away with more and more of the productivity since about 1970 or so. Young people are less likely to own a home due to insane asset price increases during that time and the fed kept lowering rates in spite of this. They raised interest rates specifically to prevent a "wage price spiral" but had no problem with the price spiral around housing because wages weren't going up as well.

If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway. The modern young professional class lives in overpriced apartment blocks, a lot of them don't even own a car. The iPhone doesn't make the mandatory two income household with no assets lifestyle equivalent to what we had previously.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG

> If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway.

CPI speaks to price levels. It says nothing about standards of living, just cost. Nobody argues that if you were on the winning team, life in the 50s wasn’t great. Naturally, if you poll folks from different backgrounds, that rose tint fades a bit. Unfortunately, we don’t have fine-grained economic statistics from the 50s to today.

If wages are up and CPI is accurate why are living standards down?

> wages are up and CPI is accurate why are living standards down

Living standards are not down over ten years. Statistically and, for me, anecdotally. I’m making no comparison over lifetimes because we haven’t been collecting e.g. real median household income over that interval.

Fortunately, it’s beside the point. You alleged “wages start[ed] to tick up then all of the sudden” rates were raised. That’s untrue. Wages were rising for a decade, including precipitously through the pandemic, before we did anything about it.

When economists say standards of living are higher they mostly mean life expectancy has increased and we have iPhones.

Go around at talk to some of the young people you know, are they willing to trade a few years at the end of their life and their iPhone to get out of student debt and own a home?

> When economists say standards of living are higher they mostly mean life expectancy has increased and we have iPhones

This is incorrect.

> talk to some of the young people you know

We’re paying down our debt and buying homes. We’re more stretched than our grandparents were at our age, but our objective quality of life is far superior. I wouldn’t give up modern telecommunications for a bigger house.

You own nothing and you are happy?

> You own nothing and you are happy?

I own assets and am happy. (The home owning is often a source of stress that competes with my happiness.) The last ten years saw my prospects increase materially. I’ve also noticed as much in my friends with more blue-collar jobs. Statistics show a similar trend: broad gains with pockets of instability.

That's an overly reductive definition. Alistair Campbell defines it to include a deliberate turning "the people" against "the elites" and to exploit the ensuing discord.

It's an important part that this isn't a genuine concern, it's 100% manufactured by the populist for their own benefit. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, two populists, are both very much part of the "elite" they claim to rage against.

It's also important that this is done specifically to cause social problems they can exploit. They have no intention of actually fixing the problem they "identify" and will continue to blame new "elite" groups to obtain or maintain power.

Instead of turning the people against the elites, you might more accurately describe it as mobilizing popular anger as a political force.

Obviously this is dangerous to those in power, and is therefore demonized by them.

Your last paragraph is simply wrong: populists have effected major development and social change. Huey Long in Louisiana is a good example.

> mobilizing popular anger as a political force.

> Obviously this is dangerous to those in power

This is a disgusting falsehood and I genuinely think you need to be ashamed of yourself for saying things like this. This "popular anger" is regularly directed against the most powerless in society. Look at the demonisation of LGBT+, ethnic minorities, refugees, Jews and traveller communities to name just a few.

To hold any notion that this "only a danger to those in power," you'd have to completely ignore huge swathes of recorded history. You'd also have to completely ignore the actual examples I gave of populists like Nigel Farage. The man who right now makes his career out of demonising refugees drowning in the English Channel.

I think you mentally inserted 'only' into that sentence.

Yes, certainly populists can be dangerous to all of those groups, as can elites. Political violence is certainly not limited to populists: indeed their contribution is small in historical terms.

> certainly populists can be dangerous to all of those groups

This is why you should be ashamed: that use of the word "can."

Populists always target vulnerable people. They're the easiest groups to direct public anger without fear of reprisal against themselves.

> indeed their contribution is small in historical terms.

You then follow up with this gem. This, again, is to completely ignore multiple genocides that populists directly caused. Simple example: The Holocaust.

The label is in itself mildly interesting, because if looked at from a different perspective, then populist simply means democratic ( popular, because that is what people want ). Amusingly, it is not that dissimilar to how liberal works ( in itself, the word is not 'bad', but it was made 'bad' ).

> populist simply means democratic ( popular, because that is what people want )

Democracy is what the people want. Majoritarianism is blindly doing what most people want. Populism involves majoritarianism, and both imply the failure of democracy. (This happens fast in a system of elections with no checks and balances.)

> Democracy is what the people want. Majoritarianism is blindly doing what most people want.

Is democracy what most people want or just the people?

> democracy what most people want or just the people

People, broadly. (And unfortunately, ambiguously.)

It is not what most people want, that’s majoritarianism, a known failure mode for democratic systems. The majority voting to execute the 10% whose views they don’t believe in is fine, electorally, but bankrupt, democratically.

I think what JumpCrisscross is saying here is democracy is what the people are _supposed_ to want.

> what JumpCrisscross is saying here is democracy is what the people are _supposed_ to want

No, it’s not.

> Democracy is what the people want.

Um, what? "The people" is not a single entity, and does not "want" things. Individual people want things. So if democracy is "what the people want", then democracy does not exist.

> "The people" is not a single entity, and does not "want" things. Individual people want things. So if democracy is "what the people want", then democracy does not exist

Congratulations, you’ve found the fatal flaw in millennia of thinking on the topic.

What “the people” want is unknowable. That is the point and paradox. Democracy is a system for balancing individual wants against individual needs, enabling each majority while protecting every minority. It’s a system of trade-offs which eludes poetic summation. It dies when we get caught up in word play over pragmatic concerns, or when someone claims to speak singularly for what “the people” want.

> Democracy is a system for balancing individual wants against individual needs, enabling each majority while protecting every minority.

In other words, as I said, democracy does not exist--since no actual system has ever actually done these things.

> democracy does not exist--since no actual system has ever actually done these things

It exists as much as Newtonian gravity. It’s an ideal because we’re defining it in its idealised form.

Political systems aspire to sets of ideals. Some emphasise stability; their leaders are Machiavellian. Some aspire to democratic ideals. Democracy per se is a simplification, as all political systems must be to fit into a textbook, but that doesn’t make it less real. Just difficult to summarise.

It’s a deep debate beyond a quip or HN comment. I wasn’t trying to define democracy, just delineate it from majoritarianism, with which it’s unfortunately commonly confused.

> Political systems aspire to sets of ideals.

They claim to, but I have yet to see one that actually does, except for the Machiavellian case you mention, where the leaders are quite open about the fact that they're looking out for their own interests and let the chips fall where they may as far as the impact on anyone else. If you can call that an ideal.

> It’s an ideal because we’re defining it in its idealised form.

Even if I take your idealized form as you state it and put aside my previous objections, when I ask myself what kind of system in human history has actually come closest to doing what you describe, what I get is an ultra-libertarian free market system with a government that is as weak as possible--at any rate, in which any government that exists does not have a monopoly of force and cannot expect to enforce its edicts against people that disagree with them. Historical examples include Saga period Iceland and some of the American colonies in the late 1600s and early to mid 1700s, before the British decided to tighten up on the colonies after the French and Indian War.

In other words, if your ideal really is "democracy" as you describe it, historical experience shows that governments take you away from that ideal, not towards it.

> Caesar only had his own political advancement in mind with the ultimate goal to become an autocratic ruler when he pretended to care about the "people".

Oh, exactly like 90% of modern politicians then...

> exactly like 90% of modern politicians

Roman politics, one could even say culture, had a fundamental flaw in equating military competence with political savvy. (Our modern analog is commercial and governance.)

Sulla and Marius and Pompey and Caesar personally raised armies, legitimately and then otherwise. This gave every Roman commander a practical veto unthinkable in modern politics.

Actually, I think it could be said that Pompey did it illegitimately before he did it legitimately (legitimately meaning: with the support of the sitting government in Rome), raising troops in support of Sulla's invasion force. Of course, legitimacy is a bit strange in the Sulla-Marius years.

> don't think there were any genuinely "good guys" among the Roman political elite just by process of natural selection

Cicero comes pretty close. Would also note that Sulla, despite being awful, eventually gave up the title of dictator after enacting constitutional reforms. (Naturally, the killing his political opponents bit backfired.)

Cicero invented the conspiracy of Catiline, had Roman citizens put to death without trial, and was a warrior on the side of the oligarchy (the Optimates) all his life, despite the fact that they despised him.

Sulla was a reactionary mass murderer.

In the end, through Caesar, the Populares won, despite decades of political killings on behalf of the Optimates to defend their theft of public land.

> Cicero invented the conspiracy of Catiline

The “extent of the exaggeration is unclear and still debated; most classicists agree that the conspiracy occurred as broadly described – rather than being a Machiavellian invention of Cicero's – but concede that its actual threat to the republic was exaggerated for Cicero's benefit and to heighten later dramatic narratives” [1]. Think: Giuliani invoking 9/11 at every turn of conversation.

> had Roman citizens put to death without trial

The Senate let him by passing the SCU [2]. He was quelling a rebellion and Rome had no jails. Again, not unblemished good guy, but given the circumstances, within the shadow of doubt.

> literally appointed and was a warrior on the side of the oligarchy (the Optimates) all his life

This is a callous reading of his policy views. He advocated for stability. He wasn’t Roman patrician elite, and had experienced what political instability in Rome meant in the countryside. He had loose alignment with Rome’s conservatives, but in a pragmatic way, and was on good terms with Caesar and even Octavian.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catilinarian_conspiracy

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_consultum_ultimum

The Cicero-Giuliani comparison is hilarious, and not bad at all now that I think about it.

Re SCU and the Conspiracy: that the SCU was first used against the Gracchi tells you something about its political motivations. The Senate was always a bastion of the Roman plutocracy. Also the SCU has been retconned, somewhat, by Cicero's partisans. It was invented late, during a bitter class war, and certainly doesn't count as one of the ancient traditions of the Roman republic.

Most Roman historians were knights: most classical historians were gentlemen. This profoundly shapes our view of Roman history.

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