Marxist takes on Rome? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

Parenti's book isn't about Rome. Even forgiving his multiple errors (there appear to me to be more errors of simple fact in the book than correct statements, simply because Parenti obviously hasn't read the sources) Parenti's not very systematic and certainly not methodologically rigorous.

Marxist interpretations of the Roman state are pretty blasé these days. They were all the rage for a little while--Marx's own description of Roman society as it fits into social progress is famously one of his biggest shortcomings, since it was based on narratives that were outdated already in his own time. Marxist methodologies were pretty common among classical scholars in the 50s and early archaeologists (even some "Processual" archaeologists in the 60s and 70s), especially as an antidote to earlier methodologies with their own issues, but post-structuralism has all but killed it off as a primary means of analyzing data, though it remains a useful ancillary and shows up in some kinds of post-processual archaeology. The field has moved on, recognizing both the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and incorporating what's useful and looking for alternatives for what isn't--Marxist determinism, as all deterministic structural theories, is considered pretty laughable now (see the arguments against Meier's conclusions, which are pretty well accepted now). The last important economic history of the ancient world to be written using primarily Marxist methodology was Finley's The Ancient Economy which, while one of the seminal works of ancient history, is really pretty dreadfully outdated now. In a sense social history is by definition Marxist, but only in a methodological sense, in that social history posits that subaltern voices can be retrieved from social conditions and that in turn the subalterns influence social conditions as much as other factors. Which is to say that ancient history is by definition Marxist in methodology, as it is by definition a great many other things methodologically. Scholars tend to avoid slavishly adhering to individual methodologies. While Marxist methodologies are fairly commonplace not just in ancient history but among historians who study questions in which they would be useful generally you'll find very little scholarship constructing grand narratives of Roman history so as to fit into Marxist theories of social development. The same way that you wouldn't find many books doing the same to prove a Whig model anymore. Perhaps the closest thing would be Gruen's book, but Gruen wasn't a Marxist, and I don't think his methodology is even particularly material (it's prosopographical, following the dominant scholarly trend of the time).