I never realized the Julius Caesar was a fucking hero of the proletariat

I never realized the Julius Caesar was a fucking hero of the proletariat
youtube.com/watch?v=_IO_Ldn2H4o
He should have slaughtered every last patrician and put that piece of shit siceros head on a spike

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Highly skeptical

He wasn't.
The was a Bornapartist that usurped a populist libertarian movement and used it to create a new kind of Tyranny.

If you want to talk about heroes of the Proletariat in Rome, look up the Brother's Grachii

his "tyranny" was labeled as such because it threatened the classs-interests of the propertied
He wiped out (possibly) a quarter of debts, gave land to proles, and mandated that a third of laborers on slave plantations had to be waged laborers
He wasn't an egalitarian, but holy shit was he better than the psychopathic oligarchy in power

Too bad he was a psychopathic oligarch himself.

Oh so he was a dictator who pacified the masses with slight gibs.

That sounds really revolutionary

You understand that the point of the video isn't to lionise him but to highlight how class struggle has an effect on historical events in ways not discussed in the mainstream.

they didn't threaten the interests of the wealthy at all tough.
There's a difference between hurting the interests of the wealthy (forgiving debts hurts wealthy creditors, redistributing land to proles hurts wealthy landowners and slave-owners, canceling rents for proles in tenement housing hurts the renters) for the good of the proles,
and giving away some services through massive deficit spending, funded by loans from the wealthy, who get interest, and paid for by future taxes on proles

Ummm…
You know that one of the points of the Grachi borther's agitation was to enforce the maximum property cieling that had been established in the early republic and land-redistribution reform.
They wanted to preserve the rebulican system by making it impossible to be wealthier than others.

This

The crisis of the late Republican period that eventually leads to the Empire was driven by material forces produced by class conflicts, both among the patricians themselves and between them and the lower orders.

Yeah.

That begins with the Brother's Grachi.
Caesar was ultimately a very unimportant in the grand scheme of the plebian-patrician conflict that resulted in the Empire.
I suppose Caesar is a "sexier" historical figure to talk about, but ultimately he was just riding on a wave that started decades before he was even born. Just like Napoleon, for example.

I guess it depends on what scale you're judging his relevance. I agree that he was just part of larger social forces that had been working within Rome for decades (or centuries, really). After all, he wasn't the first political strong man to seize the state, especially in that period of unrest. Where his importance lies I believe are his political innovations that Octavian would eventually build on and solidify into the Imperial system. But come to think of it, "innovations" might not be the correct word since he generally didn't make anything new, but the consolidation of so many political powers permanently into a single individual and the precedent it sets is a qualitative shift in European politics that would echo across the continent for the next two thousand years.

Maybe "pivotal" is a better word for the role of Julius Caesar rather than "innovative" or "important."

Yeah, exactly.
The only "innovations" he and Octavian made were that of strengthening the centralized state, by taking away power from the Senate but MUCH more importantly, the direct-democratic popular assemblies that used to have vote-rights over the senate prior to that.

Every single populist element they otherwise stood for was lifted directly from Gauis Marius or the Gracchi brothers.
Therefore, Caesar and Augustus must not not be seen as populist revolutionaries, but rather representing a proto-fascist crack-down on popular power and libertarian communalism.

*veto-rights

Fucking pig disgusting caesars march 15th best day of my life 103,345,726,582 dead patricians kill em all

Parenti is a retard.

Caesar was a patrician who moved into power by a section of the knightly class (comparable to modern capitalists) that lacked direct participation in the senate and circus honorum, and by the mass of roman lumpen proletarians. He was the original bonapartist.

The Gracchi and Catiline were the only decent romans.


marxist.com/class-struggles-roman-republic-fourteen.htm

That would be Spartacus.

bamp

Well that's another look at it.
I'd imagine some of Caesars policies also hurt the financiers, namely forgiveness of some debts and cessation of rents

he was just a socdem

Oh sure, but even bourgeois governments will do things that will hurt porky's immediate interests in favour of long term trajectories and stability because the state is looking out for the system, rather than individual aims. Also because classes aren't a hive mind, so while some financiers would lose out from limited debt forgiveness, others may support it because they have no immediate relation to it and can see the long term benefits.