A Historical Model of Ancient Economy

The book “The Ancient Economy” by M. I. Finley is based on the 43^rd series of Sather Classical Lectures presented by Finley at Berkeley University in 1972. Later in the year 1973 that the book was published by the California University Press. It was only after twenty-five years that the book got reprinted in 1998 to introduce it to the new generation of scholars and students. Ian Morris, a prominent historian and archaeologist has written the forward of the new edition.

Historians who study ancient economies are often grouped into two categories of primitivists and modernists schools. Karl Bucher, in 1893 championed the primitivist view of the classical Greco-Roman economy. According to him, the ancient economies were a non-market economy categorized by very simple small scale, closed household economies engaged with padlocked exchanges with other households.

However, Bucher’s thesis was challenged by Eduard Meyer who argued that Butcher had it all wrong. According to him, the Classical Greco-Roman economy was like those of the modern economies as emergence of integrated nationalized economy is the very modern phenomenon. This came to be known as the Butcher-Mayer controversy. In the book, “The Ancient Economy” Finley just tried to prove that this controversy is ahistorical as far as a classical economy is concerned.

The intellectual importance of the M. I. Finley’s thesis lies in bringing a paradigm shift in the debate and changed the whole set of questions on ancient economies by making use of sociological and philological categories. Finley’s central investigation did not focus on primitive versus the modern nature of classical economies but rather he reduced the whole controversy to the single issue of where to place the Greek and Rome along a continuum from self-sufficient household economy to contemporary industrial economy? As an answer to this, Finley argues that the Greco-Roman economy could not be located in that continuum.

According to him, the ancient man in general and the classical Greco-Roman man in particular was “Homo politicus” who pursued political rather than economic growth. As such, Finley’s thesis on Ancient Economy is more aligned to Weberian Perspective of “Status” rather than the Marxist ideas of “Class”. It was this “Status” which lend the entitlements of privileges or therefore lack of based on hereditary occupations passed from one generation to another without much scope of mobility.

Its guiding principle is “Status consciousness”, primarily socio-political, which according to orthodox Marxist thinker, George Lukas masked their “class consciousness”. Its characteristic feature is that the behavior and mentality of man is non-economic and dominatingly social and political behavior and mentality is determined people’s position in society. The classical society was tangibly structured on various social groups such as orders; masters/slaves; landlords/peasants; citizens/country-dwellers.

Whereas, the formation of class and by that extension “class-consciousness” is based on the concept of proprietorship and non- proprietorship of “means of production” in sharp contrast to Status- conscious man. The class-conscious man is “homo economicus”, an active hunter of economic growth.

After critically examining the philological categories to re-construct the economic history of classical Greek and Rome, Finley couldn’t find any presence of abstract economic notions at perceptual or linguistic level either among Greeks or Latin. This does not mean that they did not do any economic activity.

Finley argues that classical Greco-Roman man did every money- making activity; from import to export and from farming to minting coins; but what he lacked was on the ideas and notions of the economy, as in Finley’s own words, “they lacked the conceptual elements which together constitute what we call ‘The Economy’” (p.21), and what they did not do, was to combine these particular money-making activities into what Talcott Parsons has termed “a differentiated sub-system of society”.

Finley’s argument has found further support in Karl Polyani assessment of ancient economies where he argues that the ancient economy was subservient to the social relationships driven by supply and demand. Polyani calls this model of economy as “substantivism” standing sharply contradictory to the more conventional model of Economics which he calls “formalism” in which economic sphere exists independently and is subject only to economic analysis and price regulation and above the social relations.

According to Finley, it is the prime reason that we don’t find any work related to economics by great philosophers including Aristotle who is known to have collated on every possible issue of ancient times.

Finley further argues that ancient Greeks and Romans lacked the statistical and economic analysis. Finley attributes this failure to their structural and institutional behavior because economic infrastructures were abstract laws of economics whose function was absent. The planned commercial activities were not in action even though there was ample scope for Classical Greco-Roman state to intervene.

However, the classical Greek and Roman State was only concerned with categories like booty, tax, tolls and did not use these categories as economic levers. Although the classical Greco-Romans were very exuberant in giving extended details of wealth but they lacked completely in the statistical analysis. The preoccupation of ancient Greco-Roman man with wealth was unambiguously moral rather than of market concern.

In addition, they were polarized in their outlook on whether possessing wealth was good or bad. In other words, Greco-Romans were overridingly overwhelmed by the moral value system. In Finley’s own words, “they examined, they debated and they disagreed not about the economy but about the private ethical aspects of wealth” Furthermore, Finley’s model emphasizes that classical society of Greek and Rome was a society based on consumption rather than production.

Finley draws validation from the Weberian thesis, according to which ancient cities were centers of consumption rather than that of production. Finley argues that when ancients mortgaged lands, it was not for business startups but for consumption, at certain social occasions like marriage, demanded by the “status” of the person.

Finley’s exclusive focus on Greco-Romans without including the Near Eastern economies has not been either of their non-European location or their linguistic distinctness. It was because such economies were not in free hands like Greco-Romans but were rather controlled by a few powerful people like monarchs or clergy who controlled every means of production, which in Finley’s own words, “…owned greater part of the arable[lands], virtually monopolized anything that can be called Industrial Production” (p.28). Although, Finley argues that fixing the Greco-Roman world in time and space is an historical abstraction but still the time span he has chosen for the study, which is from 1000 B.C to 500 A.D, is of course arbitrary.

Although, the term “economics” is a modern term and was invented only in the later part of the 19^th century, the justification for using it in the context of ancient period, lies in Finley’s argument that “in its final centuries the ancient world was a single political unit, [with] a common cultural-psychological framework” (p.66).

However, Finley warns us on approaching the ancient period with the imposition of modern categories as it would amount to ahistorical approach. The particular periods of history should be examined through proper historical context. This book is representative of this approach and gave birth to the “Finley Model” of ancient Economy.

That’s why Finley does not approach ancient economies with modern economic categories but rather examines their economic behavior and mentality via the sociological perspective. As Finley’s aptly puts it “we have to seek different concepts and different methods, appropriate to ancient economy, not [or not necessarily] to ours” (p.27).

It would not be erroneous conclusion to draw that Finley’s thesis require a greater understanding with ancient economic history to fully understand the scope of his work. Nonetheless, the readers of this book will find Finley’s a stepping stone for further exploration of mostly unknown yet significant historical passé of ancient economy.

by: Mohammad Asif,  Ph.D. Scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia