Reading about the actual history and government of Sparta is a hilarious exercise in proving Marxist dialectical materialism is the superior science.

Sparta is one of the most heavily mythologized ancient civilizations. A lot of this stems from the scarcity of sources, and since the sources we do have are universally rich assholes who wanted an exclusionary oligarchy as their ideal government with contempt for the filthy hoi polloi, they are mostly biased in favor of Sparta's system.

But Sparta declined into self-destruction because of the immutable structural force of - get this - class struggle :curious-marx:

The gist is that Spartan society was a tiny minority of landed citizens (spartiates) ruling over an exponentially larger mass of non-citizens and slaves. The spartiates were privileged to the point that doing physical labor as a spartiate was viewed as contemptuous. Hence their ability to live as essentially professional warriors - the slaves did all the work.

But maintaining your class position as a spartiate required considerable expenditure - you had to participate, essentially pay significant dues, in certain institutions and maintain arms and armor for warfare.

Over time, Sparta experienced catastrophic demographic collapse. The expense of maintaining the spartiate lifestyle, intermarriage of wealthier spartiate families, and random chance of natural disasters and male inheritance meant the spartiate class shrank over time. Once you fell out the bottom of being a spartiate, Spartan society was structured as such to make it practically impossible to climb back up into it. And this demographic collapse was accelerated by a huge earthquake circa 5th century BC that killed off a shit ton of slaves, which threw tons of poorer spartiates out of the upper class because the wealthier spartiates higged the scarce labor supply. Land became more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

This is a serious problem if your landed citizens are supposed to make up the core of your army, which you need primarily to maintain your extremely cruel slave society.

Amidst this collapse, the Spartan political system was completely paralyzed to do the obvious - redistribute the freaking land to make new spartiates. This was because two its three governing institutions were controlled by the wealthiest spartiates - the two kings, and a literal council of elder citizens, who were mostly friends of one of the two kings. It was directly in the class interests of the wealthiest spartiates to never address the land problem, even if it was to the detriment of Sparta as a whole.

This system was literally impossible to reform from within its own confines. Spartan preeminence was broken forever when they were defeated disastrously at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, decimating the already-tiny spartiate numbers. King Agis IV tried to do land reform, and after being narrowly defeated in the vote his entire immediate family and allies were all killed and had their lands seized by rivals. The next king who tried to reform said to hell with this and basically had all his rivals killed or exiled and made himself a traditional Greek tyrant. But at this point it was centuries too late, Sparta had been eclipsed by Macedon in particular, who ruthlessly crushed this attempt at a Spartan revitalization.

As we enter our own American Crisis of the Third Century, keep in mind historical lessons like this on how ruling classes will in fact consciously commit suicide to maintain their immediate short-term interests at the expense of everything else. See also: ancien regime France and tsarist Russia.

excuse me, Soapy Smith Megathread

A Soapy Smith Megathread?

:castillo-cowboy: :brace-cowboy: :deng-cowboy:

One of my new neighbors is also cat people and is feeding my cat. He went missing for 24 hours, had me all worried, and now he's back the fat bastard won't touch his food. :kitty-cri-potato:

My favorite site tagline will always be

i got pigpoop balls from the fucking moderator.

yo what is up

my dad told me he's tired of seeing me be a failure, and that I should just take what someone I look up to did and copy it to a T. SO I guess Im joining the Air forces just to get kicked out like Hunter Thompson

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Well my dog got her first injection for heart worms and she seems to be in some major pain. She doesn’t really make noise when she’s hurt but she’s softly whimpering and pacing around trying to get comfortable. I’m hoping some trazodone will help her rest :deeper-sadness:

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:agony-consuming:

/c/urbanism save me from this automobile dystopian nightmare

Getting off 30 minutes early today :pika-cousin-suffering:

Edit okay this was not the emoji I thought I picked

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I don't get houseplant people. They're always like wow, it's so hard caring for all these plants. Battling all these issues and diseases. Bruh I bought a plant I liked, turned out it wasn't the easiest to care for, but it's doing great on barely being watered because I'm forgetful. It's flowering. It's being its best self. Lol. This is actually a bragging post. I'm the greatest flower mommy. Sucks to suck, losers! My plants are T H R I V I N G in here and yes I am very proud of them.

I laid down when I got home and now I have to get up and do things 😰

Western North Carolina comrades threw red paint on the local Roman catholic church's statue in solidarity with the Canadian native tribes.

As a Christian, I say... Good.