The senate was the key decision-making body of the Roman republic, basically an extremely exclusive lifelong club. There were no ways to work within the system: Livy and Dionysis of Halicarnassus attributed what early victories were made by the poor to riots and demonstrations. The rulers of republican Rome succeeded in professionalizing politics, in making it less personal. In parallel, the poor lost their sense of community power, and very often community concern, at the center of this growing military-bureaucracy. It’s easy to see the classical difference between democracies and republics - in one the masses act, in the other they are acted for. But among representatives they occasionally find a champion. Around 135 B.C. Tiberius Gracchus was elected a tribune of the people. He was unusually sensitive to his role, and risked a great deal to try to repair the lot of the poor Roman citizen. Tiberius prepared legislation and proposals for the approval of the open popular assembly that were traditionally considered the territory of the senatorial elite, a strategy for power redistribution that modem radical politicians might pursue. He had the assembly vote to remove from office tribunes in the pockets of the rich. He passed reforms to redistribute lands to the peasants, lands that had been taken by the rich to create plantations farmed with the new slaves from Carthage. For his trouble Tiberius was clubbed to death by a mob of senators. Gains Gracchus, Tiberius’ brother, was later elected tribune and pursued the same course - but he managed to create a serious problem for the elite of the Roman state by passing laws to remove the senate from complete power over the judicial system. He was assassinated by senate interests, and the city plunged into increasingly violent stmggles for power until Augustus established himself as Rome’s first Emperor. The popular romantic notion that the senatorial republicans were in some way the ‘ ‘good guys’ ’ versus dictators and emperors, must be displaced with the evidence that it was the republican patricians’ resistance to democratic reform, both urban and rural, that led to the destruction of stable city politics and eventually to Imperial rule. Medieval Tensions Around the 5th century, with the final collapse in western Europe of the Roman empire and its formalisms and codes, came the widespread community reassertion of informal local custom. Custom was both locally distinctive and unwritten. Throughout the middle ages political, legal and economic systems were flexible: indeed those three aspects were never considered individually. It was not until just before the early modem period in Europe, an era we associate with the Renaissance, that rigidity, formality and statecraft began again to seriously take hold of daily life. Informal custom and local common sense were the primary guides for people in the middle ages, a time of unusually pervasive collective mle. This does not mean that an egalitarian ideology prevailed: a loose hierarchy was generally accepted as natural. But anyone with power had to Page 36 Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Volume XIV, Number 2 consult and come to agreement with their community. The basis of these communities were assemblies, either town assemblies where everyone could make themselves heard, or assemblies of nobles or representatives meeting with a king. The idea of hierarchy wasn’t much questioned as long as the people in power acted responsibly, and as long as it was possible to check corruption. If rulers overtaxed those who provided their food, they might starve, so there were strong and deeply felt social obstacles to abuse. When there was abuse, it was eonsidered the duty of those below to get rid of the abuser, despite lower social rank. It was at this time when we first see the word ‘commune’ take on its radical connotations: communities asserted themselves against the rising nobility. With population increases leading to a strengthening of the formality of lordships and kingdoms in the 13th century, we see an increase in charters declaring town rights. These were typically explanations of existing custom presented to the nobility. Gradually the habit of consulting with the community at large gave way to government by committee, where not only did people need to evaluate their trust in nobility, but also their trust in representatives attending various, nearly invisible, small meetings. The transition to “committeeism” was a subtle one, and though it surely seemed natural, it allowed bureaucracies to organize decision-making without involving the public. The movefrom assemblies to committees surely seemed natural^ but it allowed the state to more easily affect political outcomes. Yet even in these growing states popular pressure could easily assert itself Many communities and groups were easily organized in medieval times, through the informal 12th century guilds of family, friends, parish or craft, as well as through the more formal alliances of later centuries. There was no topic truly outside an organized community’s domain: justice, public ownership, economic restrictions, parish priests, or revolt. When decisions were made, strong unanimity was most highly regarded, compromising consensus was accepted if unanimity was impossible, and voting was considered a distasteful necessity on occasion. Overall their cooperative decisions were successful in keeping harsh domination in check. In prehistoric times, towns like Catal Hiiyiik survived because they represented advantageous cooperation, and the same can be said of many medieval towns and cities. But if their neighborhoods were run by conflicting crafts or families, the cities needed to form complex government to deal with internal conflict. Otherwise they would not continue to enjoy the benefits of communal living. Sometimes these actions led to further erosion of communal custom. In Italian communes a town leader, the podestd.
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