Capitalism without Classes: The Case of Classical Rome

Rome during the last two centuries of the Republic and the first two of the Principate was an unequivocally capitalist society in the sense that it was based on the private ownership of property and the transaction of social relations through the market. But despite this, classes in the sense of distinctive groups or categories defirled by their relation to the means of production never constituted its structural basis. After a summary of some of the institutional impediments in the way of class-formation, it is argued that these should themselves be seen as symptoms of the pre-existing dominance of coercive and ideological over economic sanctions and that the rise of a market economy and the massive influx of wealth after the Punic Wars did not alter, but were on the contrary absorbed into, the existing pattern of social and political relations and the conflicts within it. In conclusion, it is suggested that if, contrary to factj Rome had been genuinely socially and politically democratic in the fourth and third centuries BC then it would have evolved into a class-based system.