1 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

Economy, Society & Politics in

Mesopotamia and in Ancient
Greece

Markus Grass, November 2015

2 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

INHALT

Debt - The first 5,000 Years .............................................................................................................................................. 3

On the Experience of Moral Confusion ............................................................................................................................ 3

I. Early Civilizations - Mesopotamia: Cruelty and Redemption ............................................................................................. 5

Money and Credit ............................................................................................................................................................. 5

Debt Crises, Clean Plate Edicts & the Law of Jubilee ....................................................................................................... 6

II. The Axial Age - Debt Crises in Ancient Greece .................................................................................................................. 8

Die Geburt der Politik in der antiken Polis....................................................................................................................... 8

Wars, Debt Crises and the Invention of Coinage ............................................................................................................. 9

Debt Crises and Democracy ............................................................................................................................................ 10

The Military-Coinage-Slavery Complex .......................................................................................................................... 12

Money & Morals, Debts & Ethics... ................................................................................................................................ 14

Tasks - Part 1 ................................................................................................................................................................... 15

Tasks - Part 2 The Axial Age and Debt Crises in Ancient Greece ................................................................................ 15

Tasks - Part 3 ................................................................................................................................................................... 17

Wirtschaftliche Veränderungen als Grundlage gesellschaftlichen Wandels ....................................................................... 17

Machtstrukturen und Herrschaftsformen zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart ......................................................... 17

Material 1 - Quelle............................................................................................................................................................... 17

Material 2 - Quelle............................................................................................................................................................... 18

Material 3 - Quelle............................................................................................................................................................... 18

Material 4 ............................................................................................................................................................................ 18

Tasks - Part 4 ................................................................................................................................................................... 19

Machtstrukturen und Herrschaftsformen zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart ......................................................... 19

Material 5 ............................................................................................................................................................................ 19
3 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

DEBT - THE FIRST 5,000 YEARS

David Graeber, "Debt - The First 5,000 Years",

published in 2011.
David Graeber was born 12 February 1961 in New York.
He is an American anthropologist and political activist
who is currently professor of anthropology at the London
School of Economics.
Graeber's parents were self-taught working-class
intellectuals. Graeber's father Kenneth fought in the
Spanish Civil War. As a student, Graeber did
anthropological work in Madagascar, writing his doctoral
thesis on the continuing social division between the
descendants of nobles and the descendants of former
slaves.
Graeber was an assistant professor of anthropology at
Yale University from 1998 to 2007, although Yale
controversially declined to to renew Graeber's contract .
Pointing to Graeber's highly regarded anthropological
scholarship, his supporters claimed that the decision was
politically motivated, as Graeber had been involved in
political activism, including the protests against the World
Economic Forum in New York City in 2002.
Well-known anthropologist Maurice Bloch called for Yale
to rescind its decision saying that "His writings on
anthropological theory are outstanding. I consider him the
best anthropological theorist of his generation from anywhere in the world. His book "Debt – the first 5,000
Years" was published in 2011, the German translation "Schulden - die ersten 5000 Jahre" was published in 2012.
Graeber has been studying the origins and the history of social inequality. Speaking about why he wrote a book
about debt, Graeber remarked: The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and what they did to countries in the
Global South—which is, of course, exactly the same thing bankers are starting to do at home now—is just a
modern version of this old story. That is, creditors and governments saying you’re having a financial crisis, you
owe money, obviously you must pay your debts. There’s no question of forgiving debts. Therefore, people are
going to have to stop eating so much. The money has to be extracted from the most vulnerable members of
society. Lives are destroyed; millions of people die. People would never dream of supporting such a policy until
you say, “Well, they have to pay their debts."

ON THE EXPERIENCE OF MORAL CONFUSION

If history shows anything, it is that there's no
better way to justify relations founded on violence,
to make such relations seem moral, than by
reframing them in the language of debt - above all,
because it immediately makes it seem that it's the
victim who's doing something wrong. Mafiosi
understand this. So do the commanders of
conquering armies. For thousands of years violent
men have been able to tell their victims that those
vicitims owe them something. If nothing else, they
"owe them their lives" (a telling phrase) because they
haven't been killed.
Third World debtor nations are almost
exclusively countries that have at one time been
attacked and conquered by European countries -
often the very countries to whom they now owe
money. In 1895, France invaded Madagascar,
disbanded the government of Queen Ranavalona
III, and declared the country a French colony. One
of the first things General Gallieni did after
"pacification," as they liked to call it, was to impose
heavy taxes on the Malagasy population, in
part so they could reimburse the costs of having
been invaded, but also, since French colonies were
4 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece
supposed to be fiscally self-supporting, to defray the
costs of building the railroads, highways, bridges,
plantations, and so forth that the French regime
wished to build. Malagasy taxpayers were never
asked whether they wanted these railways, bridges,
and plantations, or allowed much input into where
and how they were built. To the contrary: over the
next half century, the French army and police
slaughtered quite a number of Malagasy who
objected too strongly to the arrangement (upwards
of half a million, by some reports, during one revolt
in 1947).
It's not as if Madagascar has ever done any
comparable damage to France. Despite this, from
the beginning, the Malagasy people were told they
owed France money, and to this day, the Malagasy
people are still held to owe France money, and the
rest of the world accepts the justice of this
arrangement. If the "international community" does
perceive a moral issue, it's usually when they feel the
Malagasy government is being slow to pay their
debts.
But debt is not just victor's justice; it can also be
a way of punishing winners who weren't supposed to
win. The most spectacular example of this is the
history of the Republic of Haiti - the first poor
country to be placed in permanent debt peonage [=
Schuldknechtschaft]. Haiti was a nation founded by
former plantation slaves who had the temerity not
only
to rise up in rebellion, amidst grand declarations of
universal rights and freedoms [in the course of the
French Revolution in 1789], but to defeat
Napoleon's armies sent to return them to bondage.
France immediately insisted that the new republic
owed it 150 million francs in damages for the
expropriated plantations, as well as the expenses of
outfitting the failed military expeditions, and all
other nations, including the United States, agreed to
impose an embargo on
the country until it was paid. The sum was
intentionally impossible (equivalent to about 18
billion dollars), and the resultant embargo ensured
that the name "Haiti" has been a synonym for debt,
poverty, and human misery ever since.
[...] Now, it's true that, throughout history,
certain sorts of debt, and certain sorts of debtor,
have always been treated differently than others. In
the 1720s, one of the things that most scandalized
the British public when conditions at debtors'
prisons were exposed in the popular press was the
fact that these prisons were regularly divided into
two sections. Aristocratic inmates, who often
thought of abrief stay in Fleet or Marshalsea as
something of a fashion statement, were wined and
dined by servants and allowed to receive regular
visits from prostitutes. On the "common side,"
impoverished debtors were shackled together in tiny
cells, "covered with filth and vermin," as one report
put it, "and suffered to die, without pity, of hunger
and jail fever."
In a way you can see current world economic
arrangements as a much larger version of the same
thing: the U.S. in this ca se being the Cadillac debtor,
Madagascar the pauper starving in the next cell -
while the Cadillac debtors' servants lecture him on
how his problems are due to his own
irresponsibility.
And there's something more fundamental going
on here, a philosophical question, even, that we
might do well to contemplate. What is the difference
between a gangster pulling out a gun and demanding
you give him a thousand dollars of "protection
money," and that same gangster pulling out a gun
and demanding you .provide him with a thousand-
dollar "loan"? In most ways, obviously, nothing. But
in certain ways there is a difference. As in the case of
the U.S. debt to Korea or Japan, were the balance of
power at any point to shift, were America to lose its
military supremacy, were the gangster to lose his
henchmen, that "loan" might start being treated very
differently. It might become a genuine liability. But
the crucial element would still seem to be the gun.
There's an old vaudeville gag that makes the
same point even more elegantly - here, as improved
on by Steve Wright:
I was walking down the street with a
friend the other day and a guy with a
gun jumps out of an alley and says
"stick 'em up." As I pull out my
wallet, I figure, "shouldn't be a total
loss." So I pull out some money, turn
to my friend and say, "Hey, Fred,
here's that fifty bucks I owe you."
The robber was so offended he took
out a thousand dollars of his own
money, forced Fred to lend it to me at
gunpoint, and then took it back
again.
[...] For thousands of years, the struggle
between rich and poor has largely taken the form of
conflicts between creditors and debtors - of
arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest
payments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession,
restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of
vineyards, and the selling of debtors' children into
slavery. By the same token, for the last five
thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular
insurrections have begun the same way: with the
ritual destruction of the debt records - tablets,
papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have
taken in any particular time and place. (After that,
rebels usually go after the records of landholding
and tax assessments.) As the great classicist Moses
Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all
revolutionary movements had a single program:
"Cancel the debts and redistribute the land."
5 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

I. EARLY CIVILIZATIONS - MESOPOTAMIA: CRUELTY AND REDEMPTION

"We will buy the poor for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals." (Amos)

MONEY AND CREDIT

Money was not the product of commercial transactions. Money was created by bureaucrats (= temple
officials and priests) who developed a system of accountancy in order to keep track of resources and to
calculate debts (rents, fees, loans...) in silver. Merchants were among the few people who did actually use
silver in transactions; but even they did much of their dealings on credit.
The Sumerian economy (in Mesopotamia) was dominated by vast temple and palace complexes. These were often staffed by
thousands: priests and officials, craftspeople who worked in their industrial workshops, farmers and shepherds who worked
their considerable estates. Even though ancient Sumer was usually divided into a large number of independent city-states, by
the time the curtain goes up on Mesopotamian civilization around 3500 B.C., temple administrators already appear to have
developed a single, uniform system of accountancy - one that is in some ways still with us, actually, because it's to the
Sumerians that we owe such things as the dozen or the 24-hour day. The basic monetary unit was the silver shekel. One
shekel's weight in silver was established as the equivalent of one bushel of barley. A shekel was subdivided into 60 minas,
corresponding to one portion of barley - on the principle that there were 30 days in a month, and Temple workers received two
rations of barley every day. It's easy to see that money in this sense is in no way the product of commercial transactions (as has
been claimed by some Historians and Economists). It was actually created by bureaucrats in order to keep track of resources
and move things back and forth between departments. Temple bureaucrats used the system to calculate debts (rents, fees,
loans...) in silver. Silver was, effectively, money. And it did indeed circulate in the form of unworked chunks, "rude bars" as the
Economist Adam Smith had put it. But opposed to popular ideas about money circulating on markets, in this case the silver did
not circulate very much. Most of it just sat around in Temple and Palace treasuries, some of which remained, carefully guarded,
in the same place for literally thousands of years. It would have been easy enough to standardize the ingots (= Silberbarren),
stamp them and create some authoritative system to guarantee their purity. The technology existed.

A map of ancient Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C.

6 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

Yet no one saw any particular need to do so.

One reason was that while debts were
calculated in silver, they did not have to be
paid in silver – in fact, they could be paid in
more or less anything one had around. Peasants
who had to pay tribute or tax to the Temple or
Palace, or who owed money to some Temple or
Palace official, seem to have settled their debts
mostly in barley, which is why fixing the ratio of
silver to barley was so important. But it was
perfectly acceptable to show up with goats, or
furniture, or lapis lazuli. Temples and Palaces
were huge industrial operations – they could find
a use for almost anything. In the marketplaces
that cropped up in Mesopotamian cities, prices
were also calculated in silver, and the prices of
commodities that weren't entirely controlled by
the Temples and Palaces would tend to fluctuate
according to supply and demand.
But even here, evidence suggests that most
transactions were based on credit. Merchants –
who sometimes worked for the Temples,
sometimes operated independently – were among Cuneiform script (= "Keilschrift") is one of the earliest known forms of
the few people who did, often, actually use silver written expression, first emerging in Sumer in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C.
in transactions; but even they mostly did much of Cuneiform documents were written on clay tablets, by means of a blunt reed
their dealings on credit, and ordinary people for a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving
rise to the name cuneiform (= "wedge shaped"). The vast majority of cuneiform
buying beer from "ale women", or local documents were financial in nature.
innkeepers, once again, did so by running up a
tab, to be settled at harvest time in barley or
anything they might have had at hand.

DEBT CRISES, CLEAN PLATE EDICTS & THE LAW OF JUBILEE

Especially in years of bad harvests some kind of debt crises developed and became common in Mesopotamian societies and
later in the Persian Empire as well as in the early Hebrew
kingdoms and in ancient Greek city states. Some farmers
became indebted to rich neighbors or to the temple or to
wealthy moneylenders in the towns, they would begin to [SOURCE] Some were there who said, "We have mortgaged our
lose title to their fields and to become tenants on what lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of
had been their own land, and their sons and daughters the dearth." There were also those that said, "We have borrowed
would be removed to serve as servants in their creditors' money for the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and
households, or even sold abroad as slaves. In the case vineyards. "Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our
of complete insolvency, the debtor himself might children as their children: and, we bring into bondage our sons
lose his own freedom as well. In the book of Nehemia, and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are
one of the books of the Old Testament, some evidence brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to
is found about how debt crises were dealt with in ancient redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards." And I
civilizations. Nehemia was a Jew born in Babylon in the was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. Then I
5th century B.C. who was appointed by the Persian King consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers,
as governor of his native Judaea. He also received and said unto them, "Ye exact usury, every one of his brother."
permission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that had And I set a great assembly against them.
been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar more than two
Nehemia – Governor of Judaea in the 5th century B.C.
centuries earlier. In the course of rebuilding, sacred texts
were recovered and restored. In a sense, this was the
moment of the creation of what we now consider
Judaism. When appointed as governer of Judaea, Nehemiah quickly found himself confronted with a social crisis. All around
him, impoverished peasants were unable to pay their taxes; creditors were carrying off the children of the poor. His first response
was to issue a classic Babylonian-style clean plate edict – having himself been born in Babylon, he was clearly familiar with the
general principle. All non-commercial debts were to be forgiven. Maximum interest rates were set. At the same time, though,
Nehemiah managed to locate, revise, and reissue much older Jewish laws, now preserved in Leviticus, which in certain ways went
even further, by institutionalizing the principle. The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all
debts would be automatically cancelled in the Sabbath year (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished
in bondage owing to such debts would be released.
7 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

Freedom, in the Bible, as in Mesopotamia, came to refer above all to release from the effects of debt. Over time, the history
of the Jewish people itself came to be interpreted in this light: the liberation from bondage in Egypt was God's first, paradigmatic
act of redemption. The historical tribulations of the Jews (defeat, conquest, exile) were seen as misfortunes that would eventually
lead to a final redemption with the coming of the Messiah – though this could only be accomplished, prophets such as Jeremiah
warned them, after the Jewish people truly repented of their sins like carrying each other off into bondage or worshipping of false
Gods. In this light, the adoption of the term by Christians is hardly surprising. Redemption was a release from one's burden of
sin and guilt, and the end of history would be that moment when all slates are wiped clean and all debts finally lifted when a great
blast from angelic trumpets will announce the final Jubilee. If so, redemption is a matter of destroying the entire system of
accounting. In many Middle Eastern cities, this was literally true: one of the common acts during debt cancelation was the
ceremonial destruction of the tablets on which financial records had been kept. This act was to be repeated, much less officially,
in just about every major peasant revolt in history.
When people in ancient civilizations thought about money, some might have thought about their tab at the local ale-house, or,
if they were a merchant or administrator, of storehouses or account books. For many, though, what was likely to come to mind
was the selling of slaves and ransoming of prisoners, corrupt tax-farmers, mortgages and interest, theft and extortion, revenge
and punishment, and, above all, the tension between the need for money to create families, to acquire a bride so as to have
children, and use of that same money to destroy families – to create debts that lead to the same wife and children being taken
away.
One can only imagine what it meant, emotionally, to a father in a patriarchal society in which a man's ability to protect the
honor of his family was everything. Yet this is what money meant to the majority of people for most of human history: the
terrifying prospect of one's sons and daughters being carried off to the homes of repulsive strangers to clean their pots, to be
subject to every conceivable form of violence and abuse, possibly for years, conceivably forever, as their parents waited, helpless.
Technically, daughters taken in debt bondage were not, if virgins, expected to be sexually available to creditors who
did not wish to marry them or marry them to their sons. But even as laws protected them, fathers must often ha ve
had little means to protect them or cause those laws to be enforced. Clearly this was the worst thing that could happen to
anyone – which is why, in the parable, it could be treated as interchangeable with being "turned over to the jailors to be tortured"
for life. And that's just from the perspective of the father. One can only imagine how it might have felt to be the daughter. Yet,
over the course of human history, untold millions of sons and daughters have known (and in fact many still know) exactly what
it’s like.
What's striking about the historical record is that in the case of debt crises, debt was considered a moral issue, a matter of right
and wrong. Why was it that officials like Nehemiah were willing to give such sympathetic consideration to their complaints?
Some have suggested practical reasons: debt crises destroyed the free peasantry, and it was free peasants who were drafted into
ancient armies to fight in wars. No doubt this was
a factor; clearly it wasn't the only one. There is no
reason to believe that Nehemiah, for instance, in
his anger at the usurers, was primarily concerned Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
with his ability to levy troops for the Persian king.
Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to
It is something more fundamental. What settle accounts with his servants. As he began the
makes debt different is that it is premised on an settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was
assumption of equality. In the Old Testament case, brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered
that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold
debtors were able to marshall a particularly to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him:
powerful moral argument – as the authors of "Be patient with me," he begged, "and I will pay back every-
Deuteronomy constantly reminded their readers, thing." The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt,
were not the Jews all slaves in Egypt, and had they and let him go.
not all been redeemed by God? Was it right for a But when that servant went out, he found one of
his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed
population of liberated slaves to go about enslaving him and began to choke him. "Pay back what you owe me!" he
one another's children? Contemporary language of demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him:
social justice, our way of speaking of human "Be patient with me, and I will pay you back." But he refused.
bondage and emancipation, continues to echo Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until
ancient arguments about debt. he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had
happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their
Analogous arguments were being made in master everything that had happened. Then the master called
similar situations almost everywhere in the ancient the servant in. "You wicked servant," he said, "I canceled all
world: in Athens, in Rome, and for that matter, in that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you
have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?"
China – where legend had it that coinage itself was In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured,
first invented by an ancient emperor to redeem the until he should pay back all he owed."
children of families who had been forced to sell
them after a series of devastating floods. Through
most of history, when overt political conflict
between classes of poor and rich did appear, it took the form of pleas for debt cancellation – the freeing of those in bondage, and
usually, a more just reallocation of the land. What we see, in the Bible and other religious traditions, are traces of the moral
arguments by which such claims were justified, usually subject to all sorts of imaginative twists and turns, but inevitably, to some
degree, incorporating the language of the marketplace itself.
8 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece
II. THE AXIAL AGE - DEBT CRISES IN ANCIENT
GREECE
DIE GEBURT DER POLITIK IN DER
ANTIKEN POLIS
Im antiken Griechenland gab es mehrere hundert
Stadtstaaten (city states), das waren Gemeinden
oder Städte und ihr Umland mit oft nur wenigen
hundert km2 Fläche. Der rund 2500 km2
umfassende Stadtstaat Athen mit geschätzt
200.000 Bewohner_innen wurde erst im Laufe des
5. Jhd. vor Chr. zur bedeutendsten griechischen
Polis (Stadtstaat). Dafür gab es u.a. folgende
Gründe:
 Das Silber: Die reichen Vorkommen von
Kupfer, Blei, Zink und Silber, die in den
Bergwerken von Laureion abgebaut wurden.
 Die Perserkriege: Die Siege des Athenischen
Heeres und der mit den Einkünften aus dem
Silberbergbau finanzierten Athenischen
Kriegsflotte gegen das persische Heer
zwischen 490 (Marathon) und 480 v. Chr. Die
Athener befreiten die griechischen Kolonien
an der Küste Kleinasiens (heutige Türkei) von
der Oberhoheit der persischen Könige.
Die Kriegsführung und die politische Macht
waren lange Zeit in den meisten griechischen poleis
(Stadtstaaten) Sache des Adels (= Aristokraten).
Insbesondere in der Frage des Krieges gab es aber in
vielen Stadtstaaten demokratische
Mitbestimmungsrechte der Bevölkerung. So stimmten
in Sparta alle Teilnehmer der Wehrversammlung, also
der Versammlung aller wehrpflichtigen Bürger (=
Hopliten) über Krieg oder Frieden ab. Schließlich
waren sie es, die ihre Bauernhöfe und damit ihre
wirtschaftliche Lebensgrundlage verlassen und in den
Krieg ziehen mussten. Wie war die Situation in Athen
vor den Perserkriegen? Sklaven und Frauen waren
ohne politische Mitbestimmungsrechte. Das aktive
Wahlrecht (= Stimme in der Volksver-sammlung)
und das passive Wahlrecht (= Wählbarkeit für alle
Staatsämter) in Athen war den vermögenden
männlichen Staatsbürgern vorbehalten, über Krieg
oder Frieden stimmten alle Wehrpflichtigen ab. Die
Wehrpflichtigen mussten je nach Vermögen als
schwerbewaffnete Reiter (als Teil der Kavallerie) oder
als Hopliten (Fußsoldaten der Infanterie) in den
Krieg ziehen, wobei sie für die Kosten der
Ausrüstung, der Waffen (und des Pferdes) selbst
aufkommen mussten.
Besitzlose und Lohnarbeiter (Theten) waren bis
zu den Perserkriegen zwar die Teilnahme an der
Volksversammlung erlaubt, sie waren aber de facto
von politischer Mitbestimmung ausgeschlossen.
Nachdem Theten als Ruderer auf den Kriegsschiffen
eine wichtige Rolle bei der Besiegung der Persischen
Flotte gespielt hatten, wurde ihnen mit der Bezahlung
von Taggeldern unter Perikles (5. Jhd.v. Chr.) die
Teilnahme am politischen Leben ermöglicht.
Athen erkämpfte sich im attischen Seebund,
einem Militärbündnis mehrerer griechischer Städte,
im Laufe des 5. Jahrhunderts die führende Stellung
und kassierte Geld von den Bündnispartnern im
Gegenzug für die Garantie, sie im Kriegsfall zu
verteidigen. Mit den Einnahmen wurde u.a. der Bau
des bekannten Stadttempels auf der Akropolis
finanziert.
Ökonomie: Das Wort Ökonomie (economy)
stammt vom griechischen oikos, dem Wort für Haus.
Die Wirtschaft in griechischen Stadtstaaten war
zunächst in viel geringerem Ausmaß als heute auf die
Produktion für den Verkauf der Produkte als Waren
(commodities) auf dem Markt ausgerichtet.
Ursprünglich gab es überwiegend sogenannte
geschlossene (= autarke) Hauswirtschaften. Dort
wurde auch mithilfe von Sklavenarbeit auf Äckern
und Weiden sowie in der Werkstatt der Eigenbedarf
an Nahrungsmitteln, Kleidung und Geräten
hergestellt. Der Anbau von Oliven und Wein und die
Produktion von Olivenöl und Wein waren nur den
größeren Betrieben möglich und erst mit der
Entwicklung des Handels rentabel. Der Überschuss,
der nicht von der eigenen Hauswirtschaft konsumiert
wurde, wurde auf dem Markt verkauft. Im Falle von
Athen waren dies v.a. Wein und Oliven. Mit den
immer zahlreicher werdenden Kriegen erhielten auch
der Handel und die Geldwirtschaft immer größere
Bedeutung.
Händler und auch Handwerker in Athen waren
mehrheitlich sogenannte Metöken (metics), das
heißt "Mitbewohner", die aus anderen Teilen
Griechenlands nach Athen eingewandert waren. Sie
waren zwar verpflichtet, Abgaben und Steuern zu
bezahlen, nahmen im Notfall auch als Hopliten an
Kriegen teil. Aber sie waren ohne politische
Mitspracherechte. Insbesondere für die Aristokraten
galten die Tätigkeiten von Händlern und
Handwerkern ("Banausen") als wenig ehrenhaft, für
sie kam nur die Leitung landwirtschaftlicher
Betriebe und natürlich die Kriegsführung als
standesgemäße Tätigkeiten in Frage.
9 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece
WARS, DEBT CRISES AND THE INVENTION
OF COINAGE
In the history of money, one event stands out
above all others: the invention of coinage.
Coinage appears to have arisen independently in
three different places, almost simultaneously: In
northern China, in the Ganges river valley of
northeast India, and in the lands surrounding the
Aegean Sea (=Ancient Greece), in each case,
between roughly 600 and 500 BC. Why it
happened in this way is a historical mystery.
For some reason, in Lydia, India and China,
local rulers decided that whatever longstanding
credit systems had existed in their kingdoms were
no longer adequate. They began to issue tiny
pieces of precious metals and to encourage their
subjects to use them in day-to-day transactions.
The world's first coins appear to have been
created within the kingdom of Lydia, in western
Anatolia (now Turkey), sometime around 600
BC.
These first Lydian coins were basically just
round lumps of a gold-silver alloy had been
heated, then hammered with some kind of
insignia. Greek cities on the Anatolian coast soon
began to strike their own coins. From there, the
innovation spread and states everywhere started
issuing their own coinage. In both India and
China, we can observe the same pattern: invented
by private citizens, coinage was quickly
monopolized by the state. However, since in each
of the three areas there was a plethora of tiny
states, this meant that each ended up with a wide
variety of different currency systems.
Gold, silver, and bronze - the materials from
which coins were made – had long been the
media of international trade; but until that time,
only the rich had actually had much in their
possession. Most precious metals were simply
stockpiled in temples, in ingot form. During the
Axial Age, all this began to change. Large
amounts of silver, gold, and copper were
dethesaurized, as the economic historians like
to say: Treasures were removed from the temples
and houses of the rich and placed in the hands of
ordinary people and began to be used in everyday
transactions.
Why and how did this happen? The single
most important factor appears to be war. Bullion
predominates, above all, in periods of generalized
violence and warfare. There's a very simple
reason for that. Gold and silver coins are
distinguished from credit arrangements by one
spectacular feature: they can be stolen.
A debt is, by definition, a record, as well as a
relation of trust. While credit systems tend to
pre-dominate in periods of relative social peace,
or across networks of trust - whether created by
states or, in most periods, transnational
institutions like merchant guilds or communities
of faith - in periods characterized by widespread
war and plunder, they tend to be replaced by
precious metal.
Someone accepting gold or silver in exchange
for merchandise need trust nothing more than
the accuracy of the scales, the quality of the
metal, and the likelihood that someone else will
be willing to accept it. Thus, constant warfare
was a powerful impetus for the development of
market trade, and in particular for market trade
based on the exchange of precious metal, usually
in small amounts.
Surely, war and plunder were nothing new.
The Homeric epics, for instance, show an
obsessive interest in the division of the spoils.
True, but what the Axial Age also saw – again,
equally in China, India, and in Greece – was the
rise of a new kind of army, made up not of
aristocratic warriors and their retainers, but of
common people trained as soldiers (in Greek:
hoplites). The period when the Greeks began to
use coinage was also the period when they
developed their famous phalanx tactics, which
required constant drill and training of a
considerable number of hoplite soldiers. The
results were so extraordinarily effective that
Greek soldiers were soon being sought after as
mercenaries. But an army of trained mercenaries
needs to be rewarded in some meaningful way.
Allowing each a tiny share of the plunder does
seem an obvious solution.
These new armies were, directly or indirectly,
under the control of governments, and it took
governments to turn chunks of metal into
genuine currency.
The main reason for this is simply scale: to
create enough coins that the people could begin
to use them in everyday transactions required
mass production on a scale far beyond the
abilities of local merchants or smiths. Of course
we have already seen why governments might
have incentive to do so: the existence of markets
was highly convenient for governments, and not
just because it made it so much easier for them to
provision large standing armies. By insisting that
only their own coins were acceptable as fees,
fines, or taxes, governments were able to
establish something like uniform national
markets.
Around 500 BC, just about every Greek city-
state was producing its own coins as a mark of
civic independence and it did not take long,
before coins were in common use in everyday
transactions as they were used to pay soldiers, as
well as to pay fines and fees and payments made
to and by the government.
10 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

DEBT CRISES AND DEMOCRACY To forestall future debt-crises, the Greeks would
turn to a policy of expansion, shipping off the
When studying European classical history we children of the poor to found military colonies
can immediately detect striking similarities overseas. Before long, the entire coast from
between Athens - with its far-flung naval empire Crimea (the peninsula in the Black Sea) to
built during the Persian wars in the early 5th Marseille was dotted with Greek cities (= colonies)
century BC - and Rome. In each city, history connected to their "metropolis" (= "mother city")
begins with a series of debt crises. The Greek by trade.
word "crisis" (κρίσις) literally refers to a In brief, we might say that these conflicts over
crossroads: it is the point where things could go debt had two possible outcomes. The first was
either two different ways, it is a point where a that the aristocrats could win, and the poor
decision has to be taken. In Athens, the debt remain in bonded servitude, become "slaves of
crisis culminated in Solon's reforms of 594 BC. the rich" - which in practice meant that most
By the sixth century, in Greek cities, the people would end up clients of some wealthy
agora, the place of public debate and communal patron. Such states were generally militarily
assembly (= Ekklesia), also doubled as a ineffective.
marketplace. One of the first effects of the The second was that popular factions could
arrival of a commercial economy was a series of prevail, institute the popular program of
debt crises, of the sort long familiar from distribution of lands and safeguards against debt
Mesopotamia and Israel. "The poor," as Aristotle bondage, thus creating the basis for a class of
put it in his Constitution of the Athenians, free farmers whose children would, in turn, be
"together with their wives and children, were
enslaved to the rich." What he appears to have
meant was that in harsh years, many poor farmers Wages and prizes in Athens (5th century BC)
fell into debt; as a result they ended up as bonded
serfs. Some were even sold abroad as slaves.
This led to unrest and agitation, and also to
demands for clean slates, for the freeing of those
held in bondage, and for the redistribution of
agricultural land. Revolutionary factions emerged,
demanding amnesties and in a few cases it led to
outright revolution. In Megara, a city near
Athens, a radical faction that seized power not
only made interest-bearing loans illegal, but did so
retroactively, forcing creditors to make restitution
of all interest they had collected in the past.
In other cities, populist "tyrants" promised to
abrogate agricultural debts. And many Greek
cities were, like Athens, at least for a while taken
over by populist strongmen, "wise refomers" like
Solon or tyrants like Peisistratos, who swept into
power partly by the demand for radical debt
relief.

The solution most Greek cities ultimately

found was adopting legislation
 limiting the amount of agricultural land,
one person could own
 and abolishing debt bondage altogether

Solon also made changes to the constitution of the

city-state:
 All Athenian citizens were admitted into
the "Ekklesia", the popular assembly.
The assembly discussed and passed laws.
 All Athenian citizens could serve as
jurymen in courts.
1 Drachme = 6 Obolen
11 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

free to spend much of their time training for war

and actually going to war.
City-states developed endless ways to
distribute coins, not only to soldiers, sailors, and
those producing arms or outfitting ships, but to
the populace generally. Governments paid jury
fees or fees for attending public assemblies.
In Athens - after the rule of Perikles in the 5th
century BC - every citizen without income was
paid two oboles a day. At the same time, insisting
that the same coins served as legal tender for all
payments due to the state guaranteed that they
would be in sufficient demand that markets
would develop even further.
With all the progress of democratic
constitutions, we should bear in mind that it were
the Greek colonies that served as conduits for a
lively trade in slaves. And it was not the least
because of a sudden abundance of chattel
slaves1, in turn, that made the transformation of
the nature of Greek society possible. First and
most famously, it allowed even citizens of modest
means to take part in the political and cultural life
of the city and have a genuine sense of
citizenship.

Solon (640-560 BC) Perikles (495-429 BC)

According to Aristotle, Solon (Σόλων) legislated for all Athenian citizens to be admitted into the
Ekklesia, the popular assembly, and for a court to be formed from all the citizens. By giving
common people, even the poorest ones known as the Thetes, the power not only to elect officials but
also to call them to account, Solon appears to have established the foundations of a democratic
politeia in Athens. The Thetes were manual workers who served in the army as auxiliaries or as
rowers in the Navy that was to be built during the Persian Wars.
Pericles (Περικλῆς) was elected strategist (military commander) by the popular assembly ten times
leading the Athenian Navy during the Peloponnesian War. Athens succeeded in building a naval empire
that had control over vast parts of Ancient Greece.
Pericles promoted a social policy that is judged by some contemporary historians as "radical".
Civil servants, as well as all citizens who served as jurymen in court, chosen by lot, were paid fees –
two oboles a day. All citizens were allowed to watch theatrical plays without paying. His most
controversial measure, however, was a law of limiting Athenian citizenship to those of Athenian
parentage on both sides, so that metics (migrants living in Athens with non-Athenian parents)
remained without political rights.

1
Chattel slavery, so named because people are treated as
the personal property, chattels, of an owner and are
bought and sold as commodities, is the original form of
slavery. When taking these chattels across national
borders it is referred to as human trafficking.
12 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

THE MILITARY-COINAGE-SLAVERY comrades on foot.

In 333 BC the Macedonian king Alexander -
COMPLEX being acclaimed by the hoplites assembly as
leader of the army - set out to conquer the
Already during the period of democratic rule in
Persian empire. He had borrowed much of the
Athens, it was slavery, that made all the
money with which to pay and provision his
economical, political and philosophical progress
troops, and he minted his first coins, used to pay
possible. Enormous numbers of people were
his creditors and continue to support the money,
being enslaved in many of the wars, and, of
by melting down gold and silver plundered after
course, many slaves ended up working in the
his initial victories over the Persian king.
mines, producing even more gold, silver, and
However, an expeditionary force needed to be
copper. The mines in Laurium near Athens
paid, and paid well: Alexander's army, which
reportedly employed ten to twenty thousand
numbered some 120,000 men, required half a ton
slaves. The historian Geoffrey Ingham called
of silver a day just for wages. For this reason,
the resulting system a “military-coinage
conquest meant that the existing Persian system
complex” – though it would probably be more
of mines and mints had to be reorganized around
accurate to call it a military-coinage-slavery
providing for the invading army; and ancient
complex. Anyway, that describes rather nicely mines, of course, were worked by slaves. In turn,
how it worked in practice.
most slaves in mines were war captives.
In the fourth century BC it was the
Macedonian king Philipp II. who had conquered
Alexander the Great - as well as later the
most of the Greek city states. Ironically, the rise
Romans - basically continued the work begun by
of the Macedonians to the greatest military power
the Persian kings, destroying the power of the
of their time - making them able to control all of
"great trading nation" of the Phoenicians. The
Ancient Greece - was made possible by the fact
Phoenicians were considered the greatest
that they had adopted the Greek way of arming
navigators, merchants and bankers of antiquity.
even the poorest peasants and giving them the
They were also great inventors, having been the
title "pezhetairoi" meaning companions or

Alexander the Great's empire and the Hellenistic civilization

The Hellenistic civilization - representing a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East and the
Middle East was sparked by the conquests of Alexander the Great. The term "Hellenistic" itself is derived from Ἕλλην
(Héllēn), the Greeks' traditional name for themselves. The Greek language became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic
world and Greek culture, religion, art and literature still permeated Rome's rule, whose elite spoke and read Greek as well as
Latin.
13 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

first to develop both the alphabet - later taken

over by the Greeks - and the abacus. The
Phoenician trading fleet is said to have travelled
on the Atlantic Ocean as far as to the Ivory Coast
and Nigeria. Yet for centuries after the invention
of coinage, they preferred to continue conducting
business as they always had, with unwrought
ingots and promissory notes. Phoenician cities
struck no coins until 365 BC. Carthage, the great
Phoenician colony in North Africa that came to
dominate commerce in the Western
Mediterranean until it was defeated by the
Romans, did so when forced to pay Sicilian
mercenaries; and its issues were marked in
Punic, "for the people of the camp." A picture showing slaves working in a mine -
In the extraordinary violence of the Axial Age, around 600 BC - in the city state of Corinth.
being a "great trading nation" like the
Phoenicians rather than, say, an aggressive
military power like Alexander's Macedonia or
later Rome was not, ultimately, a winning
proposition. The fate of the Phoenician cities is
instructive. Sidon, the wealthiest, was destroyed
by the Persian emperor Artaxerxes III after a
revolt in 351 BC.
In 332 B.C. the Phoenician city of Tyre was
destroyed after a prolonged siege by Alexander
the Great: ten thousand died in battle, and the
thirty thousand survivors were sold into slavery
and presumably most of them ended up working
in mines. One can see how this process might
feed upon itself. Alexander dethesaurized the
gold and silver reserves of Babylonian and
Persian temples, the security on which their old
credit systems were based, and insisted that all
taxes to his new government be paid in his own
money. The result was to "release the
accumulated specie of century onto the market in A Tetradrachmon coin (4th century BC).
a matter of months," something like 180,000
talents, or in contemporary terms, an estimated $
285 billion. After Alexander's death his empire
didn't last, Hellenistic successor kingdoms were
established by Alexander's generals, from Greece
to India, employing mercenaries.
14 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece
MONEY & MORALS, DEBT S & ETHICS...
In Athens, the growth of commercial markets
and the erosion of archaic thought resulted in
extreme moral confusion. The language of money,
debt, and finance provided ways to think about
moral problems. Much as in Vedic India, people
started talking about life as a debt to the gods, of
obligations as debts, of debt as sin and of vengeance
as debt collection. Yet if debt was morality - what
was one to make of the fact that money also seemed
to encourage the very worst sorts of human
behavior?
It is from such dilemmas that modern ethics and
moral philosophy, as well as modern political
thought, begin. I think this is true quite literally.
Plato's famous work "Republic", (in Greek
Πολιτεία, Politeia) is a product of fourth-century
Athens and probably the first piece of literature in
the field of political science.
In his book, Plato tries to inquire the concept of
justice by narrating the life and the thoughts of
Socrates, probably the founder of a philosophy of
ethics. The book begins when Socrates visits an old
friend, a wealthy arms manufacturer, at the port of
Piraeus. They get into a discussion of justice, which
begins when the old man proposes that money
cannot be a bad thing, since it allows those who
have it to be just, and that justice consists in two
things: telling the truth, and always paying one's
debts.
Plato (Πλάτων 424 - 348 BC) argues that ideas are the
ultimate reality. Plato insists that ideas exist in some divine
domain beyond material existence. In his famous work
"Republic" (in Greek Πολιτεία, Politeia - in German it is
translated as "Der Staat") he features his teacher Socrates (469-
399 BC) and inquires the idea of justice. It's not surprising
that this issue weighed on Plato`s mind. He had taken an ill-
fated sea cruise and wound up being captured and offered
for sale on the auction block at the slave market in Aegina.
However, Plato had luck. A Libyan philosopher of the
Epicurean school, one Annikeris, happened to be in the
market at the time. He recognized Plato and ransomed him.
Plato felt honor-bound to try to repay him, and his Athenian
friends assembled twenty minas in silver with which to do
so, but Annikeris refused to accept the money, insisting that
it was his honor to be able to benefit a fellow lover of
wisdom. Plato went on to use the twenty minas to buy land
for a school, the famous Academy.
Aristotle (Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristoteles 384 - 322 BC) was a
student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His
writings cover many subjects, including physics, biology,
poetry, theater, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, economics and
politics.
The proposal is easily demolished. What,
Socrates asks, if someone lent you his sword, went
violently insane, and then asked for it back
(presumably, so he could kill someone)? Clearly it
can never be right to arm a lunatic whatever the
circumstances.
Polemarchus, the friend’s son, carries on the
arguments: clearly his father hadn't meant "debt"
in the literal sense of returning what one has
borrowed. He meant it more in the sense of giving
people what is owed to them; repaying good with
good and evil with evil; helping one's friends and
hurting one's enemies.
Demolishing this one takes a little more work:
Are we saying justice plays no part in determining
who one's friends and enemies are? If so, wouldn't
someone who decided he had no friends, and
therefore tried to hurt everyone, be a just man? And
even if you did have some way to say for certain
that one's enemy really is an intrinsically bad person
and deserves harm, by harming him, do you not
thus make him worse? Can turning bad people into
even worse people really be an example of justice?
At this point a Sophist, Thrasymachos, enters
and denounces all of the debaters as milky-eyed
idealists. In reality, he says, all talk of "justice" is
mere political pretext, designed to justify the
interests of the powerful. And so it should be,
because insofar as justice exists, it is simply that: the
interest of the powerful. Rulers are like shepherds.
We like to think of them as benevolently tending
their flocks, but what do shepherds ultimately do
with sheep? They kill and eat them, or sell the
meat for money.
Socrates responds by pointing out that
Thrasymachos is confusing the art of tending
sheep with the art of profiting from them. The art
of medicine aims to improve health, whether or
not doctors get paid for practicing it. The art of
shepherding aims to ensure the well-being of
sheep, whether or not the shepherd (or his
employer) is also a businessman who knows how
to extract a profit from them.
Just so with the art of governance. If such an
art exists, it must have its own intrinsic aim apart
from any profit one might also get from it, and
what can this be other than the establishment of
social justice? It's only the existence of money,
Socrates suggests, that allows us to imagine that
words like "power" and "interest" refer to
universal realities that can be pursued in their own
right, let alone that all pursuits are really ultimately
the pursuit of power, advantage, or self-interest.
The question, he says, is how to ensure that
those who hold political office will do so not for
gain, but rather for honor. Socrates eventually gets
around to offering some political proposals of his
own, involving:
 philosopher kings
 the abolition of marriage, the family, and
private property
15 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

TASKS - PART 1

1. Demokratie in Griechenland
Vergleiche die Darstellung der Entwicklung der Demokratie im Buch GO!5 auf Seite 138-139
mit der Darstellung in diesem Text auf den Seiten 10-11: Welche Informationen sind in
beiden Texten vorhanden, welche fehlen in einem der beiden Texte?

2. Alexander the Great's Empire

a. Military-coinage-slavery-complex: Explain the meaning of this concept and give reasons,
why Alexander the Great’s empire can be seen as an example for a military-coinage-slavery-
complex.
b. Who were the Phoenicians? Explain, why it was not a winning proposition to be a great
trading nation during the Axial Age.

TASKS - PART 2 THE AXIAL AGE AND DEBT CRISES IN ANCIENT GREECE

a. Kreuze an, ob die Aussage zutreffend (Richtig) oder nicht zutreffend ist (Falsch)!
b. Korrigiere die falschen Aussagen, sodass daraus zutreffende Aussagen werden!

1. Die Einkommen aus dem Silberbergbau spielten keine wesentliche Rolle für die Richtig Falsch
Finanzierung der Athenischen Kriegsschiffe im 5. Jhd v. Chr. O O

2. Nach den Siegen der Athenischen Kriegsflotte gegen die persischen Streitkräfte (480 v. Richtig Falsch
Chr) verlor der persische König die Oberhoheit über die griechischen Kolonien an der O O
Küste Kleinasiens (heutige Türkei).
3. Die Theten (= besitzlose Staatsbürger Athens) spielten als Ruderer auf den Richtig Falsch
Kriegsschiffen im Krieg gegen die Persische Flotte keine Rolle mehr im Gegensatz zur O O
Zeit des Trojanischen Krieges.
4. Den Theten war vor dem 5. Jahrhundert die Teilnahme an der Volksversammlung in Richtig Falsch
Athen nicht erlaubt. O O

5. Unter Perikles (5. Jhd v. Chr.) wurde den besitzlosen Staatsbürgern durch die Bezahlung Richtig Falsch
von Taggeldern (= 2 Obolen für den Besuch der Volksversammlung) die Teilnahme am O O
politischen Leben ermöglicht.
6. Für 2 Obolen konnte man auf dem Markt in Athen einen Tintenfisch ODER zwei Stück Richtig Falsch
Ziegenkäse ODER sechs Äpfel kaufen. O O

7. Für 2 Obolen konnte man eine Eintrittskarte für das Theater kaufen. Richtig Falsch
O O

8. Das Wort Ökonomie kommt vom altgriechischen Wort oikos (= Haus). Richtig Falsch
O O

9. Ursprünglich war jede Hauswirtschaft weitestgehend autark, d.h. es wurde der Richtig Falsch
Eigenbedarf an Nahurungsmitteln, Kleidung und (Arbeits-)Geräten hergestellt. O O

10. Händler und Handwerker in Athen waren mehrheitlich sogenannte Metöken (metics), Richtig Falsch
das heißt "Mitbewohner", die aus anderen Teilen Griechenlands nach Athen O O
eingewandert waren.
11. Die Metöken mussten keine Steuern bezahlen, hatten aber im Unterschied zu den Richtig Falsch
männlichen Staatsbürgern auch keine Mitsprache bei der Volksversammlung. O O

12. Noblemen lived their lives in pursuit of honor. Honor could be gained by looting Richtig Falsch
treasures or capturing people. (Take a look at the source “Odysse des Homer” in O O
GO!5 page 102!)
16 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

13. Parts of the treasures carried off as loot were awarded as prizes for retainers (= Richtig Falsch
followers). (Take a look at the source “Odysse des Homer” in GO!5 page 102!) O O

14. Coinage was first introduced in the 6th century BC independently in three different Richtig Falsch
places: China, India, and in the lands surrounding the Aegean Sea (=Ancient Greece). O O

15. Precious metals had been stockpiled in ingot form (= Barren) in temples. Richtig Falsch
O O

16. These treasures were "dethesaurized" - that means they were removed from the Richtig Falsch
temples and used to produce coins. O O

17. Gold and silver are also called "bullion". Richtig Falsch
O O

18. A new kind of army using the phalanx tactics was made up of a large number of Richtig Falsch
common people trained as soldiers (= hoplites). O O

19. The "phalanx-armies" developed at the same time when the Greeks began to use Richtig Falsch
coinage. O O

20. Credit systems (for instance Mesopotamian debt records) tend to dominate in periods Richtig Falsch
of relative peace, or across "networks of trust." O O

21. Bullion (and coinage) predominate in periods of generalized violence and warfare. Richtig Falsch
O O

22. Constant warfare was a powerful impetus for the development of market trade, and in Richtig Falsch
particular for market trade based on the exchange of precious metal. O O

23. Markets made it much easier for governments to provision large armies, as soldiers Richtig Falsch
could buy everyday necessities with the money they received as payment. O O

24. Governments were able to produce enough coins so that the people could begin to use Richtig Falsch
them in everyday transactions. O O

25. Most governments accepted different currencies to pay fees, fines, or taxes. Richtig Falsch
O O

26. Around 500 BC, only two Greek city-states had their own currency, issuing their own Richtig Falsch
coins as a mark of civic (= städtisch) independence. O O

27. The Greek word "crisis" (κρίσις) literally refers to a crossroads: it is the point where Richtig Falsch
things could go either two different ways, it is a point where a decision has to be taken. O O

28. Bondage (= bonded servitude) is the condition of being under the total control of Richtig Falsch
someone else working for them as their serf. O O

29. One possible outcome of a debt-crisis was: The poor citizens remain in bonded Richtig Falsch
servitude, becoming "slaves of the rich". O O

30. Another possible outcome of a debt-crisis was: Popular factions prevail and institute a Richtig Falsch
program of distribution of lands and safeguards against debt bondage. O O

31. Only free farmers were drafted into ancient armies to fight in wars. Richtig Falsch
O O

32. Very few Greek cities adopted legislation limiting the amount of agricultural land, one Richtig Falsch
person could own and abolishing debt bondage altogether. O O

33. Solon freed all Athenians who were in debt bondage as well as Athenians who had been Richtig Falsch
sold abroad as slaves. O O

34. According to Solon's constitution, all Athenian citizens were admitted into the Richtig Falsch
"Ekklesia", the popular assembly and to serve as jurymen in courts. O O

35. Alexander the Great's army, which numbered some 120,000 men, required half a ton of Richtig Falsch
silver a day just for wages. O O
17 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

TASKS - PART 3

WIRTSCHAFTLICHE VERÄNDERUNGEN ALS GRUNDLAGE GESELLSCHAFTLICHEN WANDELS

MACHTSTRUKTUREN UND HERRSCHAFTSFORMEN ZWISCHEN VERGANGENHEIT UND

GEGENWART

AUFGABEN

1. Erkläre, wie es zu Schuldenkrisen (debt crises) in den Gesellschaften der frühen Hochkulturen
(Mesopotamien) kam und wie sich diese Krisen auswirkten.

2. Explain how the clean plate edicts and the Law of Jubilee dealt with the debt crises in
Mesopotamia.

3. Debt crises in Ancient Greece:

 What does the term "crisis" literally mean?
 Account for the two possible outcomes a debt crisis could have.
 Explain the solution that was found to deal with the debt crisis in Ancient Athens.

4. Sum up how Solon accounts for the causes of he debt crisis in Ancient Athens (= Material 1).
Erörtere dabei auch, wie sich die Quelle (= Material 3) hier einordnen lässt.

5. Sum up how Solon justifies his measures dealing with the debt crisis. (= Material 2)

6. Diskutiere unter Bezugnahme auf den Text "Bonded Labor today" (= Material 4) sowie unter
Bezugnahme auf die Darstellung "Verschuldung und Verarmung von Bauern in
Entwicklungsländern" (= Material 5), wie sich Schuldenkrisen heute auswirken können.
Erörtere dabei auch, inwiefern sich die Darstellung von Solon auf gegenwärtige soziale und
wirtschaftliche Verhältnisse in Beziehung setzen lässt!

MATERIAL 1 - QUELLE

Solon (600 v.Chr.)

Ihre große Stadt (=Athen) durch Unverstand zu stürzen, sind die Bewohner selbst gewillt, von Geldgier
übermannt, im Bund mit Unrechtsdenken bei des Volkes Führern! [...] Denn sie verstehn die Gier, sich voll
zuschlagen, nicht zu zügeln, nicht die vorhandenen Freuden still zu würdigen beim Mahl. In Reichtum
schwelgen sie, ergeben ungerechtem Tun, von götter- und gemeinschaftseigenem Besitztum nichts
verschonend stehlen sie in Raffgier [...] und machen auch nicht halt vor Dikes [= Recht, Gerechtigkeit]
heil'gem Fundament - die schweigend ansieht, was geschieht und was davor geschehen, doch mit der Zeit
unweigerlich erscheint und Strafe bringt.

Das greift jetzt nach der ganzen Stadt als unfliehbarer Wundbrand, und in den schlimmen Stand der
Schuldknechtschaft gerät sie schnell [...] von den Armen gelangen viele in ein Land, das ihnen völlig fremd,
für Geld verkauft, in Fesseln voller Schmach gebunden ... So kommt das Unglück der Gemeinschaft heim
zu jedem einzeln, des Hofes Tore halten es nicht länger willig ab [...]

Dies ist die Lehre, die's mich treibt Athens Volk zu verkünden: Unglück im Höchstmaß bringt der Stadt die
Missgesetzlichkeit, die Wohlgesetzlichkeit jedoch macht alles schön und passend und legt beständig um die
Ungerechten rings ihr Band, macht Rauhes glatt, hemmt Überdruss, bringt Frevel zum Verschwinden und
lässt verdorren die Blüten, die Verblendung stetig treibt, sie richtet grade krummes Recht, und übermüt' ge
Taten mildert sie ab, beendet der Entzweihung Ränkewerk, beendet Zorn, der hartem Streit entsprang -
und durch ihr Wirken ist alles bei den Menschen passend und vernunftgemäß.
18 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

MATERIAL 2 - QUELLE

GO! 5 Seite 140:

Solon „Mein Werk“

MATERIAL 3 - QUELLE

Die Verkaufstricks der Getreidezwischenhändler in Athen

"Der Ankläger: Das Gesetz verbietet jedermann in der Polis, mehr als 50 Scheffel Getreide
aufzukaufen. [ ... ] Der Aufsichtsbeamte berichtet, dass sich die Zwischenhändler im
vergangenen Winter beim Getreideankauf gegenseitig überboten. [...] Er habe ihnen geraten, mit
der Konkurrenz Schluss zu machen, weil er glaubte, dass er den athenischen Käufern nur nützen
könne, wenn sie zu einem möglichst vernünftigen Preis kaufen könnten; die Händler dürfen
beim Wiederverkauf nicht mehr als eine Obole pro Scheffel aufschlagen. [ ... ] Wenn ihr das
Kom gerade am nötigsten braucht, raffen sie es zusammen und weigern sich zu verkaufen. Wir
sind schließlich froh, wenn wir es für einen gepfefferten Preis kaufen können."
Lysias, Gegen die Kornverkäufer 22 , Übersetzung von U. Treu (Leipzig 1983)

MATERIAL 4

Bonded Labor Today

Yesterday 40,000 people donated over $1,000,000 in fewer than 12 hours to help Fatima end bonded
labor. The fundraiser currently sits at almost $1,400,000. There were no perks offered. No ‘reward levels.’
This was motivated by nothing more than genuine compassion and a desire to empower a woman who’s
devoted her life to freeing people trapped in modern slavery. Thank you so much. Fatima has prepared a
statement that I will post shortly.

I want to conclude this series with a story that will show you the character of the person you’ve just
empowered. This is one of thousands of anecdotes that reveal a person who is more committed to
humanity than to her own safety or comfort:

Recently a family trapped in bonded labor got in touch with Fatima. They told her that they could not
escape their owners, and that the girls in the family were being sexually abused by the owners. Fatima
immediately jumped in her car and drove to the kiln in the middle of the night. She told the family to run.
The owners woke up and began to fire guns. The family reached the car, but the youngest girl—only four
years old--- had fallen down and been captured.

For three months the child was missing. Fatima went to court and begged for intervention, but the police
kept insisting that they’d searched the kiln, and no child could be found. “I couldn’t sleep,” explains
Fatima. “Every night I laid in bed and could think about nothing but this young girl in the hands of her
brutalizers. I stayed awake all night thinking about how I could rescue her.”

Fatima recruited several other laborers to help her. Dressed in rags, they went to the kiln and pretended to
be workers. They spent several days searching. They couldn’t find the girl anywhere. But from the owner’s
house, they heard constant crying. They went back to the court and demanded that the house be
investigated. The girl was found. But for weeks, she would not eat, talk, or cry. Fatima eventually learned
that every time the girl would cry for food, the owner would beat her.

(Lahore, Pakistan)
Source:
https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos/a.102107073196735.4429.102099916530784/105
7400687667364/?type=1&fref=nf (8. August 2015)
19 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece

TASKS - PART 4

MACHTSTRUKTUREN UND HERRSCHAFTSFORMEN ZWISCHEN VERGANGENHEIT UND

GEGENWART

AUFGABEN

 Account for the art of governance according to Plato's "Republic" (= as it is presented in the
chapter "Money and Morals, Debts and Ethics")
 Sum up the different viewpoints on democracy Herodot presents in his “Verfassungsdebatte” (=
GO! Page 142)

Discussion:
 Explain what the terms “justice” and “democracy” mean according to your opinion.
 Do you think the present society, the economic and social relations in the world are just? Explain
your viewpoints on this issue.
 Does the political system in Austria today meet your demands on democracy? Explain your
viewpoint on this issue.
 What are your proposals for a just and democratic society?

MATERIAL 5

Aus: Susan George, Nigel Paige, "Welternährung für Anfänger" (Hamburg 1982), S. 90-97
20 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece
21 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece
22 Economy, Society & Politics in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Greece