Marxist History- Rome

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

del

[Dromikaites]

Since you have a thesis to write and since you provided that list of 10 Marxist key ideas I assume you plan to write that thesis basing your analysis on those 10 tools.

So my advice is to keep in mind my objections.

Each of the objections either shows a major shortcoming of that key idea or something even more serious - uselessness (like in the case of points 9 and 10) or downright error (like in the case of point 6 - wrong because the same suprastructure can actually exist on top of many relations of production).

So where does that leave you, in practice?

As far as I am concerned, it is perfectly OK to investigate the material conditions of any period you want to analyse (technology, production factors, production relations, etc).

But instead of imagining they explain anything, you should then investigate the 4 key "software programs" running in each period for which you had determined the "hardware".

Those 4 key software programs you should identify are:

1) The solution of the resource allocation problem. In other words, identify how the production units (small farms, large land properties, merchants, artisans, etc.) were deciding on allocating the various production factors at their disposal. Also check how the State was taxing each of those production units, because that was influencing the decisions of everybody down the line;

2)The way one decided to enter into the dominant type of production relations or into the alternative types of production relations coexisting with the dominant one. Again it is expected that the State policies would influence that decision. You need to identify how;

3) The way key decision-makers analyzed the situation and decided the "big moves" at critical points in time. For instance how sultans decided to introduce new taxes or how to reform certain aspects of the functioning of the Ottoman state;

4. The overall theory of the functioning of the State during each period. Many decisions are "automatic" within the framework set by the "theory about the functioning of the State". For instance killing the Sultan's brothers made sense until the theory changed. Likewise, a lot of decisions which encouraged or prevented industrialization were made without too much deliberation since in the framework of concepts of that time they seemed "obvious".

If you would pay attention both to the hardware and to the 4 key pieces of software then you would produce something a contemporary decision maker can use as a case-study, inviting him/her to perform a similar analysis of the contemporary situation.