Epilogue: Decline and Fall¶
Core Argument¶
The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire was not the result of barbarian invasion from without, but of terminal internal decay rooted in the impasse of the slave economy. Forced labour was fundamentally unproductive and could only generate profit through a constant supply of new slaves. When imperial expansion ceased under Hadrian, this supply dwindled, a crisis compounded by the Antonine plague. Landowners responded by turning to tenant farmers, the coloni, who were gradually bound to the soil by debt and, from 332 AD, by law—a direct prefiguration of mediaeval serfdom. The state itself became monstrously oppressive: a bloated bureaucracy and predatory tax collectors bled the provinces dry. Emperors debased the currency to pay for armies and administration, unleashing hyperinflation—the price of grain in Egypt rose by over 666,000 per cent by the late third century. Power was absolute, corrupt, and often insane; emperors were routinely murdered by the Praetorian Guard, which once auctioned the Empire itself. This generalised angst found expression in Christianity, which promised salvation after death in a world felt to be ending.
The Huns, driven from China, pushed Gothic tribes into the Empire. Emperor Honorius allowed the Tervingi and Greuthungi to settle on the Balkan frontier—a costly mistake that exposed the Empire’s inner rottenness. Rome was sacked by Visigoths under Alaric on 24 August 410 AD. Successive waves of invaders followed, but the barbarians were not an external enemy; they were the final symptom of internal collapse, long romanised and employed as mercenaries. The decline of cities predated the invasions, as a drift to the countryside laid the basis for feudalism. The fall brought cultural stagnation: for over a thousand years, only the water wheel and windmill were invented. Christians, particularly under Emperor Theodosius I, systematically destroyed pagan culture—a crime greater than the barbarians’ depredations. Postmodernist attempts to present the barbarians favourably are dismissed as childish falsification. The Dark Ages saw real regression: a thousand years after the Empire fell, the only serviceable roads in Europe were Roman.
Capitalist society today mirrors Rome’s decline, with obscene inequality and a monstrous state. Yet Marxists reject pessimism. The development of productive forces under successive modes of production has laid the material foundation for socialism. The modern working class, unlike the Roman proletariat, creates all wealth and can reconstruct society.