this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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The modern examples fundamentally misunderstand the premise, the empire didn't collapse, Syrians and Iraqis had less violent places to go, what if they hadn't? tbh no idea what the fuck happened in Somalia that warrants some investigation. I don't like referring to the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia as an empire but as examples of societal collapse and reorganization that does not support this essay's thesis at all...
WRT Rome, the Black Death, dynastic changes in China, well it's really easy to argue this point when you just shrug off massive mortalities and assume disappearing populations successfully resettled in the hills. For the egyptian example of commoners becoming 'richer', there are many examples of decreasing material sophistication in collapse periods. i find it hard to justify life being qualitatively 'better' for a commoner in sub-roman societies losing access to clean water, stone buildings with tiled roofs, roads, quality ceramics, utinsils, etc., and it's not like obligations of tax disappeared, they just might've paid less to smaller strongmen
I think the difference between this and these historic ones is that the empire didn't really "collapse", it was taken over and looted.
Another factor here is that the soviet union was actually beneficial to the people and existed for the people, these other empires? Parasitic.
It seems logical to me that a state that has progressed on from class struggle might be a significant outlier to this theory. The soviet union wasn't parasitic unlike the class arrangements of these other empires. Its collapse did not result in wealth redistribution in the people's benefit, but to their detriment, the wealth of the people was redistributed to the new parasitic ruling class rather than from the ruling class to the people.
is it really accurate to assert that exploitative empires were not 'looted'? yes much portable wealth from elites was taken which we shouldn't count, but things like the grain dole, large scale irrigation, the grand canal in china, do effect general welfare imo
To an extent yes but the digitisation of currency compared to physical things probably plays a significant role in the efficiency of the looting. Physical looting is going to spread out much more than modern financial looting.
yes I think there's something to those modern lootings being more comprehensive, and perhaps permanent because it was secured in the empire rather than stored locally.
it's certainly not 1:1 i just want us to calibrate our thinking around imperial collapse not as a force of nature or good thing, but an issue to be fought over and win popular support about
The big thing to remember is: those werent things owned by the slaves within the empire or the subjugated tribal peoples within and on the empire's borders. Those were the things the slaves were exploited and the natives dispossesed for Roman citizens to enjoy.
For the people who are not the beneficiaries of urbanism (the rural masses, the poorest strata of urbanites who are legally not allowed to leave their work) they do not notice e.g. the quality ceramics disappear bc they never had them (and in fact, they may now work less bc either their master is dead, lost their legal control or simply can no longer access the fine goods he was forcing them to work for anymore).
A very important thing to remember wrt roman britain is also that the roman part was the most settler-colonial of all rome's settlercolonies. The collapse of roman britain so rapidly is in large part bc of wealthy romans fleeing the sinking ship as their supply networks of wine and olive oil and the like dried up. Wrt big stone buildings, the fact of the matter is people dont tend to want massive dwellings if a) they spend most of their time outside anyway and b) have to clean and maintain it themselves instead of having servants.
Wrt sanitation especially, it must be pointed out that sanitation only becomes an issue if you have massively concentrated populations (i.e. cities). That is what creates the massive pollution and extraordinary demands for food and water that require complex infrastructure.
We should be very wary of taking "decreasing material sophistication" for "decreasing quality of life for the workers producing the sophisticated materials (and the workers supplying them with food). Usually in empires and class societies generally "labour produces wonderful things for the rich—but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces—but for the worker, hovels."
You are mistaking 'quality' as meaning expensive or exclusive. The normal Roman ceramics that ordinary people in the empire ate off and carried water in was higher quality than post-Roman examples. In Britain's case they literally stopped using pottery wheels. Having well made vessels for cooking, storing, and transporting is a direct material concern for poor people.
It shouldn't be assumed that the loss of an imperial figurehead ushered in much masterlessness, where rural roman elites remained so did their tyranny. The foederati kingdoms did not oppose slavery and often made romans second-class, roman poor went from having less protections than the rich to having even fewer than other types of poor people.
You also shouldn't interpret stone buildings as a rich class signifier or oversized. Poor people did and still do live in stone (though my bad leaving out brick, those were important too and also declined in quality).
on sanitation, like there still were people in urban concentrations, they just stopped having clean water. That's not good!