Latifundia and Municipia - Once More

As Robert L. Heilbroner predicted in his "The Decline of Business Civilization" (1974, “historian of the future”), to reduce everything to making money as much and as fast as you can will destroy civilized standards. We are watching this.

This, in turn, leads to institutional failure, which is underway already and speeding up with each passing day.

The entire business reminds me of my history professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, a Dr. Sella, from Italy, who taught a course on the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Rome became “municipia,” read large urban corporate enterprises, and “latifundia,” large rural corporate enterprises. The massive scale of the “municipia” and “latifundia” alienated more and more people because it exploited them, and for this reason they withdrew their loyalty to the system. It is hard to remain loyal to slavery.

People began to “drop out.” Their opinions, votes, voices no longer mattered. The people began to stand aside. It in effect it was no tougher living under barbarian rule than Roman rule. In fact, the barbarians were not as thorough, ruthless, systematic in their exploitations as the Roman government had become.

This is when the early Church Fathers began to withdraw to the “desert,” to the “edges” of the system to watch its fall in some modicum of peace and safety. We might say Ireland and Canada today for “edge” or “desert.”

History is repeating. Our version of the “latifundia” and “municipia” corporate exploitation is going to cause more and more people to give up on it. Institutional failure follows. If the system wants to destroy itself, there is nothing you or I can do about it - except get out of the way as best we can – to live in a modicum of peace.

There. You gave me the reason to write down some thoughts that have been floating in my head of late. Look to the early history of the Church, its “desert fathers (mothers)” who preserved the “seed corn” of what matters for better days. This is still possible.