Anarchy, Statelessness, and Social Experimentation in the Graeco-Roman World
Radical Antiquity
Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings
Christopher B. Zeichmann
Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745350394
Christopher B. Zeichmann teaches history and religious studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, with a focus on the military in Roman-era Palestine and biblical interpretation. That might not sound like an obvious place to go for ideas about radical political thought. But that first impression is the result of a century or more of work by propagandists on both the left and the right. For those on the right, the ancient world is a repository of great classical inspiration; it is, after all, the origin of ‘western civilization.’ For those on the left, the ancient world can be an easy object for critique: all that patriarchy, imperialism and other assorted oppression. Thus, in Citizens to Lords, Ellen Meiksins Wood read political texts through a Manichean binary, in which the person you have probably heard of (e.g. Plato) is bad and hierarchical, while someone else who is less well-known (e.g. Protagoras) is good and democratic. That filters down. My ten year-old daughter can’t tell you much about Aristotle’s influence on Marx, for instance, but she sure does know that Aristotle thought some people were natural slaves.
But this approach to the ancient world makes it easy for those on the right to argue that their preferred politics are with age because they are normal and natural. And of course if hierarchy, inequality and oppression are natural features of societies, then we cannot avoid them without catastrophic consequences: Stalin, or Hitler, for instance. That argument will not convince anyone already on the left or liberal-left to embrace inequality, but it can be very compelling for large numbers of young people who are so far undecided, and quite rightly primed to think of nature as something that needs defending.
The quickest and easiest way to show that what we call human nature isn’t natural at all is to show how varied human societies have been over time. Zeichmann’s book describes a number of attempts by ancient people to live outside of the hierarchies, polities and empires familiar from old textbooks. His argument, which is compelling, is that ‘radical conceptions of democracy were in wide circulation’ in the ancient world, from the British isles in the north-west, to Persia in the south-east. And we can learn from these ancient communities lessons for our own attempts at democracy, self-governance and freedom (5).
The Greek term anarchia, which he translates as ‘cooperative leaderlessness’, is the radical idea behind Radical Antiquity. This is not exactly modern anarchism, but the parallels are strong. The people in his case studies intentionally rejected the state as a form of governance. Some of them wanted to conserve their own forms of political organization. Some raised religious objections to state interference in their lives. Some hoped to create something new after the state, rather than resisting its imposition or creation.
Zeichmann argues that these communities intentionally did without ‘a leadership structure capable of concentrating power in a handful of political offices’; that they ‘structured power in a way that prevented their officials or governing councils from coercing others’; and that they tried ‘to create social forms which were free of hierarchy’, including slaveries, patriarchies, citizen privilege and plutocracies. They sought to ‘ensure freedom’, egalitarianism and open, responsive institutions (18-20). Radical Antiquity includes six full-length case-studies, and three shorter, rather more speculative ‘interludes.’
Zeichmann’s first case study is the slave community at Thurii, which formed during the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE). There were virtually no calls for the abolition of slavery in the Roman world, and to the best of our knowledge enslaved people did not conceive of themselves as a class with common interests. There were, though, slave revolts. The Third Servile War was ‘largely an ethnic rebellion’ (27), in which escaped slaves settled in the town of Thurii, putting into place a new, radically democratic political order. The written sources on this community are almost all hostile, but Zeichmann reads them against the grain to suggest that the community at Thurii banned money, rejected leadership and banned sexual violence. Zeichmann argues that the ban on money was based on a sophisticated rejection of imperialism, conquest and the exacerbation of social inequality; that leaderlessness aligned with radical democratic theories of justified leadership; and that the ban on sexual violence also tied in to anti-imperialism, given the association of empire with sexual power.
The second case study is of two radical Israelite communities, the Therapeutae and Essenes. Both groups renounced private property (including property in slaves), and embraced strict asceticism. The Therapeutae separated men and women in their communities; the Essenes simply excluded women altogether. Both groups practiced a form of communism and rejected inequality. They both paid close attention to the interpretation of their scriptures, and developed ways of understanding that diverged quite markedly from those of the more established rulers of the temple at Jerusalem. They also separated themselves from the Temple’s centralized power structure, so their spiritual practices had strong political implications.
Leaderless communities also appeared in philosophical communities. The Cynics rejected the usual Greek stress on citizenship and proclaimed themselves ‘cosmopolitans.’ They claimed to follow nature and virtue rather than state-created civil laws and norms, including the norms that coded class in terms of shame. Norms of sexual behavior could be seen as mere social conventions, so Diogenes famously masturbated whenever the urge struck, no matter where he was, or who was around, because that is what nature directed him to do. He was also charged with defacing money, because coins have no more intrinsic value than a pebble. As Zeichmann understands them, the Cynics’ wanted a political system open to all, rather than one that excluded women and slaves.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter deals with the Mazdakism of the Sasanian Empire. This politico-religious doctrine preached sexual libertinism (for men). But it also developed into a call for communism in property. Khosrow, the king at the time, may have supported the Mazdakites for a time, though the sources are complex and difficult to follow. Eventually, the Mazdakites rebelled, and were put down. Nonetheless, their ideas and practices had serious consequences. Khosrow ‘attempted to mitigate unrest by appropriating and watering down Mazdakites’ populist solidarity’, or, put more positively, the revolt ‘furthered egalitarian and anti-state movements in the early Islamic world’ (122, quoting Touraj Daryaee).
Zeichmann’s book is aimed at a popular audience, and reads smoothly. Unfortunately, it also shows signs of over-simplification. For instance, Zeichmann quotes a passage from the poet Ferdowsi to show how Mazdakites ‘talked about injustice’ (119). In the poem, Mazdak asks what should happen to a passerby who denies food to a starving man. The ‘Mazdakites responded by declaring that the man who refuses to help the starving man commits a crime,’ Zeichmann tells us. But the person who says this in Ferdowsi’s poem is the king, who is thus convinced that he should allow Mazdak to distribute grain free of charge from the state’s granaries. This hardly makes the same point.
Other arguments are more misleading, and seem to show the influence of Woods’ binary logic. When Socrates argues that philosophers should not make money from teaching, Zeichmann claims, he was ‘really saying that only the independently wealthy could be legitimate philosophers’ (100). This seems odd, given that elsewhere in Plato’s dialogues Socrates tells us that everyone is able to learn philosophy, and goes to great lengths to show that wealth, knowledge and power should never be conflated. But the well-known figures were mostly bad.
And the less well-known figures must be good. Zeichmann suggests that when we see Cynics having sex or masturbating in public, we must remember that ‘these were not juvenile acts of rebellion’ (90). Rather, they were serious critiques. Similarly, the elitism of radical, less well-known religious sects – including the Donatists – is underplayed. Zeichmann claims that the Therapeutae did not engage in ‘an elitist exclusion of less educated people’; rather, their ‘ritualized reading [was] essential to their group identity and group purpose’ (72). Surely, something can be a juvenile act of rebellion as well as political critique, and activities essential to group purpose can often also be elitist and exclusionary.
Then, Zeichmann’s attempt to tie the Therapeutae and Essenes to queer communities leads to the slightly chilling claim that ‘in a queerer society – in a more ethical society – we would no longer depend upon personal relationships’. As what follows implies, this is not meant to mean that, in a queerer society, we could just avoid personal relationships and have our care dispensed by a depersonalized bureaucracy. Instead, we would no longer be forced to depend on non-chosen familial relations for care (73). But that is hardly the same thing as not depending upon personal relationships.
These tendentious arguments are the result of trying to fit ancient communities into modern categories. It is not enough, for Zeichmann’s imagined readers, that a group of enslaved people tried to organize themselves outside of the imperial hierarchies, or that a group of Israelite radicals rejected the Temple bureaucracy. They must also be inclusionary, radical, sex-positive feminists, who practice mutual aid and seize the means of production. But there is little evidence for this, and the more that Zeichmann tries to impose modern theories on ancient actors, the less convincing the book becomes.
Nonetheless, this is a stimulating, enjoyable read, and should do a lot of good. Radical Antiquity will encourage many students and laypeople to learn about the less well-known, more radical movements and communities of the ancient past, and help us all to recognise that there is nothing ‘natural’ about hierarchy, oppression and inequality. If, on the other hand, we want to learn from people in the ancient past – or from history in general – we cannot turn them into mirrors of our own theories and positions. Rather, we need to recognize just how different people were in the past, and how deep and fascinating those differences are.
J. D. Evans teaches at New York University in DC. He is working on a book about the theoretical foundations of critical theory.