Contrary Notions
Page 35
About ten years after Tiberius’s death, his younger brother, Gaius Gracchus, a people’s tribune, left his home on the fashionable Palatine Hill to live among the poor near the Forum. After he put forth his reform legislation, “a great multitude began to gather in Rome from all parts of Italy to support him.” Gaius won “the wholehearted devotion of the people, and they were prepared to do almost anything in the world to show their goodwill.” 101 But he too, along with some 250 of his supporters were killed by the senatorial oligarchs’ death squads in 121 B.C.
After the Gracchi were assassinated, public acknowledgment of their existence was officially proscribed. The oligarchs were intent upon expurgating the collective historical memory. Yet the populace continued to commemorate the brothers. Plutarch offers a moving vignette: “The people were cowed and humiliated by the collapse of the democratic cause, but they soon showed how deeply they missed and longed for the Gracchi. Statues of the brothers were set up in a prominent part of the city, the places where they had fallen were declared to be holy ground, and the first-fruits of the season were offered up there throughout the year. Many people even sacrificed to the Gracchi every day, and worshipped their statues as though they were visiting the shrines of gods.”102
In 62 B.C. another popular leader, Catiline, was hunted down and killed along with others in a northern province by an army under orders from Rome’s leading consul of that day, none other than Cicero. A few years later, the plebs adorned Catiline’s tomb “as formerly that of the Gracchi, with flowers and garlands,” writes Mommsen.103 As far as can be said, the people never offered memorial tributes to Cicero, Cato, Sulla, Catulus, Brutus, Cassius, or any other prominent senatorial oligarch.
In 70 B.C. and again in 67, 66, and 64, radical tribunes packed the assemblies and launched demonstrations and electoral campaigns by mobilizing the collegia, those guilds of freedmen, slaves, and free poor. Such mass actions were enough to cause the Senate to pass a decree dissolving all but a few of the more innocuous collegia, depriving the popular movement of its key organizations.
In all, the proletariat played a crucial but much ignored role in the struggle for democratic policies. They showed themselves to be neither a mindless mob nor a shiftless rabble but a politically aware force capable of registering preferences in accordance with their interests, able to distinguish friend from foe. That their efforts have been deemed worthy of little more than passing condemnation is but a further reflection of the elite biases shared by ancient and modern historians alike.
We hear that we must avoid imposing present values upon past experience, and we must immerse ourselves in the historic context under study. But few present-day historians immerse themselves in the grim and embattled social experience of the Roman commoners. If anything, they see the poor—especially the rebellious poor—through the prism of their own elitist bias, the same bias shared by ancient historians. In the one-sided record that is called history, it has been standard practice to damn popular agitation as the work of riffraff and demagogues.
The common people of ancient Rome had scant opportunity to leave a written record of their views and struggles. Still, what we know of them suggests that they displayed a social consciousness and sense of justice that was usually superior to anything possessed by their would-be superiors. The anonymous masses, upon whose shoulders stood such great reform leaders as the Gracchi, come down to us most usually as a disreputable mob.
They who struggled against formidable odds with the fear and courage of ordinary humans, whose names we shall never know, whose blood and tears we shall never see, whose cries of pain and hope we shall never hear, to them we are linked by a past that is never dead nor ever really past. And so, when the best pages of history are finally written, it will be not by princes, presidents, prime ministers, or pundits, nor even by professors, but by the people themselves. For all their faults and shortcomings, the people are all we have. Indeed, we ourselves are the people.
NOTES
1. As quoted by Kenneth Harris in New York Times Book Review, 27 April 1997.
2. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment (Books in Focus, 1981), xi, 197.
3. For a more extensive discussion, see Michael Parenti, History as Mystery (City Lights, 1999), especially chapter four.
4. Theodore Roscoe, The Web of Conspiracy: The Complete Story of the Men Who Murdered Abraham Lincoln (Prentice-Hall, 1959, 1960), ix.
5. Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? (Random House, 1961), 12–13.
6. Henry Charles Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages: Its Organization and Operation (Citadel Press, 1961), 5.
7. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, The Promised Land of Error (Vintage, 1979). The original Inquisition record from the Vatican Library is cited by Le Roy Ladurie as: Jean Duvernoy (ed.), Le Registre d’Inquisition de Jacques Fournier, evêque de Pamiers (1318-1325), 3 vols. (Toulouse, 1965).
8. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, 246.
9. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, xi, 317, 321, 333. In 1334 Bishop Fournier was elected Pope of Avignon under the name of Benedict XII.
10. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, 231, 243.
11. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (Oxford University Press, 1965).
12. Jean Anyon, “Ideology and United States History Textbooks,” Harvard Educational Review, 49 (August 1979): 361–364.
13. Publisher’s Note to C. Osborne Ward, The Ancient Lowly (Charles H. Kerr Cooperative, 1907), v.
14. Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism (published by the author, n.d. [c. 1920]); John Ahouse, Upton Sinclair Bibliography (Mercer & Aitchison, 1994), ix; Upton Sinclair, The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), 223.
15. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (MacMillan, 1966); also Daniel Brandt, “Philanthropists at War,” Name-Base News Line, no. 15 (October–December 1996).
16. Ellis Goldberg, “Bookstores Have Their Own Censorship,” Guardian (New York), 15 March 1989.
17. Charles Willet, “Librarians as Censors,” Librarians at Liberty, (CRISES Press), June 1995.
18. R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution (International Publishers, 1935), 124.
19. Quoted in Daniel Guerin, Fascism and Big Business (Monad Press/Pathfinder Press, 1973), 33.
20. Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle (Henry Holt, 1986), 47.
21. Among the thousands of books that deal with fascism, there are a few that do not evade questions of political economy and class power. Most of the information that follows is from: Gaetano Salvemini, Under the Ax of Fascism (Howard Fertig, 1969); Guerin, Fascism and Big Business; James Pool and Suzanne Pool, Who Financed Hitler (Dial Press, 1978); Palmiro Togliatti, Lectures on Fascism (International Publishers, 1976); Franz Neumann, Behemoth (Oxford University Press, 1944); and Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution.
22. This is not to gainsay that cultural differences can lead to important variations. Consider, for instance, the horrific role played by anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany as compared to fascist Italy.
23. William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters (Harvard University Press, 1963); Sidney Fine, Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State (University of Michigan Press, 1956).
24. Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais, Labor’s Untold Story (United Electrical, 1972), 202, 215.
25. Lloyd Gardner, Safe For Democracy, The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913–1923 (Oxford University Press, 1984), 170, 180;William Appleman Williams, “American Intervention in Russia: 1917–1920,” in David Horowitz, ed., Containment and Revolution (Beacon Press, 1967), 62.
26. Gardner, Safe For Democracy, 198–200.
27. Quoted in William Appleman Williams, “American Intervention in Russia: 1917–1920,” in David Horowitz (ed.), Containment and Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 36, 38, 42–43, 61; Gardner, Safe for Democracy, 161.
28. Quotations from Gardner, Safe For Democracy, 133–
134, 148, 151.
29. Both Wilson quotations from Williams, “American Intervention,” 61 and 57 respectively.
30. Gary Grayson’s diary, quoted in Gardner, Safe For Democracy, 242.
31. Gardner, Safe For Democracy, 242.
32. Christopher Dobson and John Miller, The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow (Atheneum, 1986), 64.
33. Dobson and Miller, The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow, 239–240.
34. Dobson and Miller, The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow, 189–190.
35. Michael Sayers and Albert Kahn, The Great Conspiracy, The Secret War Against the Soviet Union (Proletarian Publishers, 1946) chapters 6, 7, 8 and passim; Dobson and Miller, The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow, 23, 248, 270. For a more complete account of White Army atrocities, see George Stewart, Thc White Armies of Russia (Macmillan 1933).
36. W.W. Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover (H. K. Fly 1932), 255, 260–267; also B. M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia (Hoover Institution Press, 1974), 34, 37, 215.
37. John Hamill, The Strange Career of Herbert Hoover under Two Flags (William Faro, 1931), 298–300.
38. For the Nixon and Reagan statements, see Dobson and Miller, The Day they Almost Bombed Moscow, 200.
39. Arthur Landis, Spain, The Unfinished Revolution (International Publishers, 1975).
40. Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy (Dell, 1983).
41. See Jacob Oser’s essay in Judith Joel and Gerald Erickson, eds., Anti-Communism: The Politics of Manipulation (Marxist Educational Press, 1987)
42. See herein selection 36, “Fascism, the Real Story.”
43. For a superb history of the politics behind Munich, see Clement Leibovitz, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal (Les Editions Duval, 1993).
44. See Will’s columns in the Washington Post, 16 November 1986, also 21 May 1987.
45. A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (Hamilton, 1961), 262.
46. Well demonstrated by Leibovitz, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal passim.
47. Clive Ponting, 1940: Myth and Reality (Ivan R. Dee, 1991), 50.
48. John Newsinger, “Churchill: Myth and Imperialist History,” 56–57; and Clive Ponting, Churchill (Sinclair Stevenson, 1994).
49. Kim Philby, My Silent War (Ballantine Books, 1968), 101.
50. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (World Publishing, 1959), 168–69. On how Truman reneged on the Yalta agreements, see Diana Shaver Clemens, Yalta (Oxford, 1971).
51. Quoted in Bert Cochran, The War System (Macmillan, 1965), 42–43.
52. Mose Harvey, “Focus on the Soviet Challenge,” lecture recording, Westinghouse Broadcasting, 1964.
53. Churchill quoted in Matthew Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army Reappraised,” International Security, 7, Winter 1982–83, 110.
54. Satish Arora and Harold Lasswell, Political Communication: The Public Language of Political Elites in India and the United States (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969).
55. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army . . . ,” 115 and the official US reports cited therein; see also Tom Gervasi, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (Harpercollins, 1987).
56. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army . . . ,” 117–19, 125.
57. D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins (Doubleday, 1961).
58. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army . . . ,” 134.
59. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army . . . ,” 134.
60. Melvin Leffler, “The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–48,” American Historical Review, 90, Feburary 1985, 363–64.
61. Cicero, To Atticus i.16,11 and i.19,4; To His Friends, XI.7.1; Philippics, II.116 and VIII.9.
62. To Atticus I.16 and VIII.3; and Cicero’s For Flaccus 15–18, and To His Friends VII.1.
63. To Atticus I.19,4; II.6.
64. Polybius, Histories vi.56
65. Asconius Pedianus, commentary on Pro Milo, in his Orationum Ciceronis.
66. Appian, The Civil Wars, I.59 and II.13; Plutarch, Cato the Younger XXVI.1–2.
67. For these and other such negative labeling, see the writings of John Dickinson, P.A. Brunt, Matthias Gelzer, Cyril Robinson, Dero Saunders, Zwi Yavetz, John H. Collins, J. F. C. Fuller, and others too numerous to list.
68. H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero (Methuen, 1963), 30, 32, and passim.
69. Theodore Mommsen, The History of Rome, (Meridian Books, 1958) 23, 48, 73–74.
70. Christian Meier, Caesar (Basic Books, 1982), 41, 151.
71. In a talk before the Washington Press Club carried on National Public Radio in 1988. Stone had just authored The Trial of Socrates (Little, Brown, 1988).
72. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961) 228–229.
73. Sallust, Epistle to Caesar II.5,7.
74. Appian, The Civil Wars II.120 and i.59 respectively.
75. Juvenal, Satires X.77–81.
76. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, 235; Mumford, The City in History, 229.
77. Dickinson, Death of a Republic, 331.
78. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, 85 and 120.
79. Alan Cameron, “Bread and Circuses, The Roman Emperor and his People,” Inaugural Lecture, King’s College, 1973, quoted in G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Cornell University Press, 1981), 371.
80. Mumford, The City in History, 229, 231, 233–234.
81. On the importance of the organized spectacles, see Roland August, Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games (Routledge, 1994).
82. Juvenal, Satires III.159; Casson, Everyday Life in Ancient Rome, rev. ed., 100; and Stewart Perowne, Caesars and Saints (W. W. Norton, 1962), 86.
83. Casson, Everyday Life in Ancient Rome, 104.
84. Suetonius, Augustus 44.
85. Tacitus, Annals I.76.5.
86. Dio Cassius, Roman History XLIII.23.
87. Pliny, Natural History VIII.7.20–21; Dio Cassius, Roman History XXXIX.38; Cicero, To His Friends VII.1.
88. Dio Cassius, Roman History XLIII.24.
89. George Rudé, The Crowd in History, 1730–1848 (John Wiley & Sons, 1964), 199–201, 210.
90. P.-O Lissagary, History of the Commune of 1871 (International Publishing Co., 1898 [1876]), 382–465, 499–500; and Graham Robb, Victor Hugo (W.W. Norton, 1997), 466-469.
91. Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (Oxford University Press, 1970), 82–85.
92. Rudé, The Crowd in History, 30, 45, 55–56, 60–61, 68, 178, 189.
93. See Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America, passim; also herein selection 12, “Racist Rule, Then and Now.”
94. On the occupations of freedmen in ancient Rome, see Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic, 137; Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (University of California Press, 1988), 19; and Jérôme Carcopino Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Yale University Press, 1940), 179–180. Cicero allows that there were shopkeepers among Clodius’s followers, but he labels them criminals.
95. Cicero, To Atticus XIII.44,1.
96. Appian, The Civil Wars I.116.
97. Tacitus, Annuls XIV.42–45.
98. Plutarch, Caesar VIII.3–4. Also note Ste. Croix’s comment in The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, 353.
99. Zwi Yavetz, Plebs and Princeps (Oxford University Press, 1969).
100.Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus XXI.2–3.
101.Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus VIII.1–2,5; and Gaius Gracchus VIII.1–2,5 and XII.1.
102.Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus XVIII.2. The people also erected a bronze statue to Cornelia, with the inscription: “Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi”: Gaius Gracchus IV.2–4.
103.Mommsen, The History of Rome, 488.
INDEX
ABC, 12
AFL-CIO, 205
abortion, 125
abortion clinic violence, 108
absentee ballots, 66, 68
academia: repression in, 40–60
acid rain, 99
adultery: punishment for in Iran, 126
advertisers: media influence, 11
Afghanistan, 127
U.S. bombing of, 287
See also Taliban
African Americans
fear of Bolshevism and, 356
rights, 84–85, 86
voting and, 67–68, 74
Agent Orange, 173, 174
agribusiness, 103–104, 178
agricultural productivity: Eastern Europe, 280
air pollution, 92, 98
Al-Qaddafi, Muammar, 299
Al-Qaeda: alleged links to Iraq, 302
Albanians, 292–293
refugees from NATO bombings, 295–296
Alfonso, Carlos, 317
Alito, Samuel, 83
Allen, George, 73
Allende, Salvador, 195
Allied invasion of Russia (1918–1920), 354–359
alternative culture, 250
alternative energy, 103, 104
American Broadcasting Company, 12
American Institute for Free Labor Development, 205
American Political Science Association, 52
Amerika, 358
anarchists, 190, 193, 250
Andrew White and, 43
Ancient Lowly, The (Ward), 339
Ancient Rome, 366–383
Anglo-American Establishment, The (Quigley), 340
anticommunism, 44–45
Allied invasion of Russia and, 354–359
Eastern Europe, 285
Germany, 347
Italy, 198–199
leftists and, 190, 286
NATO and, 196–197
antiwar movement, 172
Anyon, Jean, 338
apathy, 182
Appian, 367
Arab states, 309
why their people see U.S. as enemy, 319–320
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 92
Argentina, 217
arms race: fear of socialist revolution and, 366