When did humans believe they can make systemic change
Anglican Brat
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I was thinking about that one of the biggest critiques of early Christianity I have heard is that early Christians did not think of overthrowing slavery as a system. I then thought about it, and I wondered if ancient or premodern humans ever thought that they could actually radically change institutions in a dramatic and radical way, i.e. overthrow slavery as an institution.
When did humans believe they can make actual systemic change? The Enlightenment?
When did humans believe they can make actual systemic change? The Enlightenment?
Comments
I think it's probably about power more than thought - early Christians were largely powerless on the fringes of a mighty and hostile empire. Large scale societal changes were not something they expected to be in a position to achieve. By the time they had the power they were the slave owners and there was little incentive to seek change.
On the other hand, we have had major advances in travel (for those who can afford it), communications, the availability of knowledge for most people, and medicine.
First-Century Christians probably did not think of overthrowing slavery because (a) they were told not to ("Slaves, obey your masters!") and (b) they thought the last judgement was imminent. (The latter is still used as an excuse.)
Also in a system of hierarchy that went from the top all the way down, in a way that might seem alien to modern views—so too with the serf era in Europe and so on. Arguably, too, the “New World” colonial racially-based slavery we often think of was very different in various ways from ancient world slavery (including the notion of non-white people as less human in some way, which I think would have been utterly alien to people in St. Paul’s day).
I think part of this is whether or not humans are thinking systematically about institutions. The classical Greeks certainly did, coming up with a lot of classifications of political systems (monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny, etc.) that we still find useful today. Indeed, a lot of internal wars within Greek poleis were fought between oligarchic and democratic factions, each trying implement or prevent institutional change in the form of their government.
On the question of slavery it should be noted that there was some systematic institutional change in the ancient Mediterranean world. Once a society had invented both the idea of durable debt and commercially tradable slavery, some bright creditor would get the idea to collect on bad debts by enslaving delinquent debtors. As you can imagine turning free citizens into slaves might work for a creditor's bottom line but it's incredibly destructive from the point of view of society as a whole. Most states that endure find some way to eliminate or control the practice. The Athenians did this with the reforms of Solon in sixth century BCE, which forbade the enslavement of Athenian citizens for debt (or any other reason). Rome did the same in the fourth century BCE. The ancient Israelites took a different route, allowing debt slavery of fellow Israelites but limiting it to a term of six years. While this isn't the kind of total abolition that moderns prefer (each of these societies gladly enslaved non-citizens), these each represent changes to the existing institution of slavery.