I bet this was submitted earlier, and you know the story very well (we are living it). Still it was an interesting listen, and the last sentence almost made me cry.
I agree tho it's typical Parentian passion that sometimes pushes the story too far towards the "freedom fighter" side, and I guess also his reflex to counter the mainstream history - which is much further from truth in the opposite direction; IIRC he mentioned more than once that Caesar was no angel.
Probably because he was writing for Americans and thought they need Baby steps towards socialist thought since it's probably history nerds that would read his book at the time
Cicero and Cato might be the two worst guy to ever exist and America based their entire society off of those two’s beliefs.
Not wanting to listen Parenti battling a microphone for 1h? :gulag:
Western history trains us to not think about past in terms of social struggle and justice (well Caesar is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind there). Parenti talks about progressive social reforms that Caesar was trying to implement - against the will and interests of oligarchy, and you know what happens next. As opposed to the standard historical image of brutal dictator removed by a few noblemen, or whatever was written in your history book.
Parenti makes many parallels with modern society, with his typical humor here and there, and that's basically it. I knew it all in advance but I still don't regret listening to it. Sometimes I just do it during my zone 2 (running) or when I prepare meals, it's really rather light and requires basically zero knowledge of history/economy or anything really.
Julius Caesar was popular, had policies that helped the average person, and cracked down on corruption so the landowners and wealthy conspired to have him assassinated and smeared him as a tyrant.
This is the Cliff's Notes. It's the short form of the book he wrote of the same name.
Yh tbh this is unfortunately a museum-worthy example of how the left can also frequently fall into contrarianism. Postmodern concerns of presentism and so on aside, the idea that Julius-fucking-Caesar of all historical people should be taken as a progressive figure is pretty absurd (then again who were anything like progressive from our Marxist pov in that era except perhaps slaves and slave rebels like in the Servile Wars - and even then one of the first things slave revolt leaders did after declaring their own freedom was to take their own slaves).
He's obviously very important in Roman and therefore European/Mediterranean history, but even by the standards of the time he was a monster. He sat atop a social structure built, intrinsically, on aggressive war, rapine, conquest, mass murder, genocide, slavery and human trafficking. Whether or not he's exaggerating, he boasts in his writing about committing genocide against the Gauls. Honestly I think it's difficult not to real him in his own words and come out thinking that he was a sociopath.
A properly Marxist look at him would have noted a similarity with fascism in that Caesar is the last in a line of attempts within the Republic to use the recognised-as-legitimate authoritarian elements of the legal and political system to put an end to the internal conflict and class tensions. This in no way makes it progressive. No more so than a Nazi triangulating against trad-conservatives or a far-right populist against imperialist libs.
Further, we know that the reforms that Caesar is associated with were not truly progressive in any deep sense. You just need to look at the Republic under his dictatorship. And again, built on slavery, and only of interest to a minority of the priviledged citizenship of Rome (citizens were a minority within the Republic, and this was a peak period for slave numbers). It was realpolitik plain and simple. It is not class struggle between classes, but an attempt by one part of a vicious oligarchy to position itself better against the other in a society deeply affected by class tensions. Yes, Caesar was eliminated by his political opponents. But his faction then continued the struggle against them on his basis, and they founded the Empire. Again, Empire becomes the regressive solution to Republics ridden with class conflict.
There's a reason he played such an important role in alot of Italian fascist speculation and literature, where he could combine fetishes for the imperial and the populist.
Yeah I agree Caesar represented his class in many typical ways, he was scheming, chasing women, got lots of blood on his hands...anyway to me Parent's central point is not Caesar but exactly that counterpunkt (or 'contrarianism' as you noted) to the image - one of so many - painted by the modern "history", even if it was just an aspect.
I feel he was building his lecture partly as a political speech, and especially towards his final point "...we are they". Naturally we should take it all with a grain of salt, compare to other sources and yadda, you know that well.
