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Secessio plebis
- basdp 8y agoUh yeah.. cool? What makes it relevant for HN?
- dang 8y agoThere's a long tradition on HN of people posting unexpected Wikipedia submissions for intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- baq 8y agoWhat is relevant for HN?
- jghjg 8y agoBetter than posting about the meme language or JS framework of the week.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y agoNever know when you might need to start an insurrection. "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (from Robert Heinlein’s character Lazarus Long.)
- elyseum 8y agoPower to the people!
- person_of_color 8y agoIf only SW engineer "plebs" could band together and strike to demand recognition of their profession like doctors and lawyer
- Fnoord 8y agoYeah, it is interesting how that didn't happen at Theranos or Google (with the "killer drones" recently). For the former case, I'd like to refer to the book Bad Blood. For the latter, 12 people from Google resigned over that issue. The massive privacy issues occurring, Uber debacle, NSA debacle, or how about Microsoft in the '90s? IBM before that? I guess the tech sector workers get divide & conqueror-ed.
- Semiapies 8y agoWhich is exactly what happened to the plebians. They spent a couple centuries periodically having these revolts, and eventually they ended up "represented by" a few rich plebian families more tied to the patricians than to their supposed class, while pretty much nothing changed for the actual common people.
- arethuza 8y agoSounds remarkably like the transition the UK's Labour party went through to become "New Labour".
- pjc50 8y agoThe origin of Labour in the first place was "Fabian" (after Fabius the Delayer) socialism, in opposition to revolutionary socialism. Incremental change as opposed to kicking over the table.
- arethuza 8y agoI was particularly thinking of the backgrounds and quality of people in Attlee's cabinet and compare that with the today's politicians.
- golergka 8y ago> or Google (with the "killer drones" recently) It's because you assume that every software engineer has the same political opinion as you on that matter. In reality, there are people who could consider working on "killer drones" their patriotic duty and are ready to accept low compensation just because they feel they make the world a better place doing it instead of just selling ads. I know such people personally both from US and other countries as well, eager to work for military and intelligence agencies of their respective countries, from NSA to 8200 to FIS. You may not agree with their political opinions and I respect that, but denying existence of such people is just plain stupid.
- John_KZ 8y agoI think it's terrifying how sooner than later the plebians won't even have that miniscule amount of power because all the work that needs to be done will be automated with machines they have no control over.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoCapitalism is basically over at that point when there's like 80% unemployment because most jobs are automated. The idea of your survival based on a job is a terrible idea anyway. I can't wait until this happens because then people will get serious about income inequality and have to figure out how to properly distribute the wealth that the machines create.
- jghjg 8y agoOne can dream.. But We are talking in the incorrect place. A thread about steve jobs or the new Iphone will get 500 replies, not this one
- maxxxxx 8y agoGet ready for some serious upheaval and misery though. The powerful won't give up anything without being forced and people revolt only when pushed really far.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoThat sounds like a recipe for a true neo-Luddite movement (as opposed to the more common hyperbolic use of the term Luddite to mean someone who engages with technology less than we might expect).
- Shaddox 8y agoThis is a very interesting social phenomena and I'm glad someone randomly linked to it since I never heard of it. I imagine the effectiveness of it stood in the fact that cities were self-sufficient. Since cities are no longer self-sufficient, a protest like this in the modern age would be meaningless. All the plebs of New York could leave the city and nothing would change, except that some patrician would get richer by exploiting the plebe that chose to partake in this (or punish it).
- vezycash 8y ago>I'm glad someone randomly linked to it since I never heard of it. Didn't know there was hn.postRandomLink() feature. I would have used it. :)
- dmurray 8y agoThe last garbage workers strike in New York lasted two weeks before the city caved.
- Angostura 8y agoBut did it have any actual effect on the modern-day equivalent of the patricians? I imagine they just took a private jet to Monaco until it blew over.
- olefoo 8y agoOur society is much more complex and populous than Rome was at that time. Sure the idle rich could and did vacate but it's hard and expensive to move the massive investment in social infrastructure that any organisation that feels a need to be in New York City has made.
- palerm 8y agoThis. Most modern strikes affect other working class people instead of the "1%" (?) they are supposed to be targeting.
- mreome 8y ago
- monetus 8y agoOn the other side of the coin, the machinations to divide and defeat the interests of the plebeians were horribly fascinating. Beware the promises of a Drusus. In my mind, the failures of the gracchiae seem to echo for hundreds of years until Rome itself was sacked. Granted, the gracchiae were fighting for the latins, but the lack of compassion shown to visigoths undoubtedly played a role in the impetus behind their uprising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Livius_Drusus_(consul) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Livius_Drusus_(consul) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Gracchus#Senatorial_Response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Gracchus#Senatorial_Resp... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi
- woodruffw 8y agoI'll be that guy: Gracchi is already plural (-ī is the plural masculine nominative for the singular Gracchus). You can also see in in their gens: they're each Sempronius, so the family is gens Sempronii ("the Sempronius clan", "the family of the Semproniuses").
- monetus 8y agoYa that's what I thought too, but I heard a few people say gracchiae and just followed the leader, wondering why the name turned feminine. You think gracchiae could be referring to the whole lineage or something?
- woodruffw 8y agoThe whole lineage would be just gens Gracchi, I think. It's made a little complicated by the fact that the Gracchi weren't a real gens, just a plebian/low-patrician branch of the Sempronii. Grammatically I'd represent that as Gracchī Seproniōrum ("the Gracchi of the Sempronii"), but I have no idea if that's idiomatic. Caveat lector!
- groovy2shoes 8y agoThe -i in gens Sempronii is the singular genitive in this case ("the clan of Sempronius" or "Sempronius's clan"). Good ol' inflexional paradigms :)
- emmelaich 8y agoInteresting to see people's take on this. Before reading it I assumed it was some sort of explanation of Trump. Which is not disabused by the article. Not to say I'm in favour or the current POTUS's policies or manner. Possibly related - "a secessio meant that all shops and workshops would shut down and commercial transactions would largely cease." reminds me of John Galt.
- s_kilk 8y ago>> reminds me of John Galt Except the John Galt thing is based on the fantastical notion that a "creative" withdrawing from society would bring everything to a grinding halt. The secessio plebis is the withdrawal of labour power, a general strike.
- emmelaich 8y agoHmm, maybe. But I think the typical labour back then was not as an employee but as a independent concern. And they were pretty much the creatives of the day.
- ggm 8y agoAfter the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? Bertolt Brecht https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Lösung https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Lösung
- bb101 8y agoFor anyone interested in this, the Roman Empire series on Netflix is very good. Presented in a mini-series format, the primary characters, events and dates end up sticking in one's mind. Crassus's death at the hands of the Parthians is particularly brutal but some may say he deserved it after crucifying 6,000 men, one every 10 yards, on the road to Rome.
- maze-le 8y agoI found it to be pretty sensationalist and ripe with historical inaccuracies. Senators with beards in full military attire in the senate house is only the most obvious one. The portrayal of most costumes is not accurate. Rome itself was not yet the city of marble depicted in the series (that came 50-150 years later). The interviews with historians are interesting, and they are are not wrong per se. The problem here is more that the content its very curtailed and not detailed enough.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoIt should be noted that Roman history of this period is highly mythologized. Rome was sacked in 389, and it is commonly believed that most of the records from before that date were destroyed during the sack. This would make the earliest source possible come from a century after the major events, and our primary source, Livy, was using those sources three more centuries later. Our current versions of these events are likely based on populari politician's recreation of the events, then further altered to promote the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
- bb101 8y agoThe Arabs had translated many Greek and Roman works into Arabic, and then these were translated back into Latin by monks hundreds of years later during the time of the crusades. So not the original works, but not anecdotal either. https://aeon.co/ideas/arabic-translators-did-far-more-than-just-preserve-greek-philosophy https://aeon.co/ideas/arabic-translators-did-far-more-than-j... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Classics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Clas...
- boomboomsubban 8y agoYou're talking about events nearly a millennium after the ones being discussed. Rome had no great influence in 389 BC, and it's incredibly unlikely that the Persians maintained copies of those records.
- jacobush 8y agoIs your OP speaking of BC? Not clear to me, total ignoramus.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoYes, it is written about the article linked.
- bhritchie 8y agoI was just reading a history of the Hellenistic world, and something like this seems to have been common in towns in Ptolemaic Egypt, and functioned as the main check on otherwise rapacious taxation.
- monetus 8y agoMind if I ask what you were reading, or if you have any recommendations for Egyptian/Greek/Persian history?