On Roman Political System

 

I recently watched this informative, but misleading video on Roman political system.

One thing it claimed for example is that Romans internationally wanted to limit the franchise to privileged elite. It is not inaccurate per se but backwards. It is not that franchise was divided from the start, but rather that people who joined the growing Rome at later times, eventually grew to demand political rights. 

That is initial citizens of Rome Inc had voting rights from the start and continued to have them at later times just as before. However, as Republic grew, more and more people ended up relocating to Rome. These newcomers eventually wanted to have representation in political decision making. The original stakeholders resisted it, eventually they compromised on two tier system, where newcomers would have a citizenship but not the same kind as the original ones. 

Original citizens eventually evolved into Senators or Patricians. New citizens were sometimes called plebians informally. They too eventually became as elitist as patricians and resisted expansion of voting rights to those who came after the original expansion of voting rights.

However, there was one other thing that author claimed. That Romans did not pursue universal equality and that we are better because we do. First of all, Romans probably had little time to think about such abstract things. Their system was more of an hoc solution that kept getting more and more ad hoc upgrades as they went. Eventually it became a bloated mess, historians' study nowadays.

However, I would claim one other thing here. Because Roman society was stratified, people had better understand of their self-interest. Because plebian knew he was plebian, he could better understand what his intrinsic self-interest is. In contrast a modern person who thinks that everyone is equal tend to overlook the fact that landlords and tenants, or workers and their employers basically live in different worlds and what is best for them is vastly different and sometimes completely opposite to each other. There is no policy that is good for them all. 

It's similar to how when workers consciously understood their situation and started form Trade Unions to collectively demand more rights. Unions eventually managed to improve their situation. They understood that being a worker puts them in a particular socio-economic situation that needs a particular solution. Such trade unions probably have a lot of parallels with plebian assemblies of Rome. Tories hate unions just as much as Roman Senators hated Public Tribune. 

However, we need more of such things. We need tenant union, who should go on collective rent-unpayment strike if landlords refuse to accept their conditions.

When people do share the same living conditions are represented by a single person, then such person can clearly and decisively advocate their issues with other bodies of power. If a person represents a geographic constituency, then he has to deal with vast array of conflicting needs and demands. That might lead to a situation where only the biggest, richest or loudest demographic is represented, and the rest are ignored.