To expand on the idea of Communism in Rome (lol)
So Romans had no conceptualization of inflation. "Printing more money means money is less valuable" is a pretty unintuitive idea if your idea of "printing" is "dig up rocks and melt them down". Like, don't forget at this time there was no fiat currency they were trading raw materials, the minting was more an authentication that there was actually some gold in there (though they did understand debasement pretty brutally and there uh was less and less gold in each gold coin as time went on, but I digress)
Even though they didn't know why inflation happened they sure did feel it in that their purchasing power was always falling which is an issue when your entire structure is predicated on a inordinately large professional salaried army, which didn't go on strike when that salary fell short so much as they would uhh force a change in leadership. Since they didn't know why their money wasn't buying as much as it used to their solution was.... to debase the coins and mint more which, yeah you can see where things are going.
Enter stage left Diocletian. He's kinda based ngl. tbc he sucked immensely and was an awful violent person as is necessary to be an emperor (the ones who weren't evil or awful are funny footnotes that maybe I'll rant about one day), but still, critical support. Interesting dude with interesting ideas
He looks at this cycle of inflation and debasement and sees it for the risk that it is, the army was getting dangerously close to not just being unable to pay wages but not being able to buy gear or food. Of course of course average person was similarly suffering but hey they don't have swords at his throat like the army does so, less immediate a crises
He sets out to make some gigachad reforms with varying success and cringe rates
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He revamps the currency in some really big brained weird ways. Basically there was now two currencies, the old worthless gold/silver system for every day use + a higher quality/higher denomination system really only usable on macro scale and by nobles. Basically codifying class inequality (cringe)
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Taxes were given up on and replaced by a system similar to what (even more ancient) Egypt did where like,, if you were a mule driver your tax was to carry military cargo for 20 miles a year, if you were a shoe maker your tax was to make X number or shoes for the imperium a year, ect
Some of these burdens suck more than others and there was a real concern that this + natural demographic shifts would result in labor shortages which, when your only way or supplying shoes to a legion is from the cobblers in that provence means oh whoops troops have muddy feet and are revolting again.
- So reform three was the guild system! If you wanted to do a job different than what your father did then you needed permission from that labors guild which has an incentive to be protective of it's labor pool, and if you wanted to move to a different area you needed permission from the state that your leaving would not cause any shortage. Even if you did get permission to move then that new town's guild has absolutely no reason to let a stranger join unless they're dealing with their own labor shortages
And yes this is the same guild system that existed in Europe until modernity, and hhh that's cool right? Those guilds had such a huge effect on labor and history and they all started fucking before Rome was even Christianized lmao
- Finally the last reform is that hey this is all swell and good for the army and imperium, but we do have to provide something to the people who make soldiers. As such Diocletian big brain Chad as he is made just a fucking list of what everything should cost and said that this is what it does cost. Anyone found charging more was to be executed. Both the list and the punishment was roundly ignored lmao everyone just placated him because man no that's not how this works.
I said that these reforms has varying success rates but as I type them out they kind of all suck haha. It worked though! Well, in the sense that the contradictions inherent to the system could be ignored for a little longer. Though what intrigues me is that I really do think that these reforms laid the groundwork for the empires death ages later
The funniest thing though is that Diocletian also tried to reform the way power was passed to successors to prevent the constant cycle of civil wars. Unfortunately the Rue Goldberg machine ass system he set up literally immediately collapsed in such a way where now civil wars are now 4 player deathmatch instead of 1v1 pvp
Anyways. Where was I going with all this... oh yeah! when people talk about Rome being communist I think this is what they're referring to? A deep misunderstanding of Communism as "when one dictator makes a planned economy" coupled with a gross overestimation of how planned Diocletian was able to make the economy
