Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies – ideological, economic, military and political – The Sources of Social Power traces their interrelations throughout human history In this first volume, Michael Mann examines interrelations between these elements from neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilizations, the classical Mediterranean age and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England It offers explanations of the emergence of the state and social stratification; of city-states, militaristic empires and the persistent interaction between them; of the world salvation religions; and of the particular dynamism of medieval and early modern Europe It ends by generalizing about the nature of overall social development, the varying forms of social cohesion and the role of classes and class struggle in history First published in 1986, this new edition of Volume 1 includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of the work

The sources of social power

This essay is speculative and tentative, a preliminary attempt at exploring a broad territory of Roman economic history over a long period. For the sake of clarity, I have canvassed several probabilities in the form of propositions, but the evidence is so sparse that it is difficult to prove that each proposition is right. It is disappointing to confess at the outset that one's case is unproven and that the generalizations advanced are disproportionately large in relation to the supporting evidence. Even so, the experiments made here with both evidence and methods may stimulate others into refuting or reshaping the propositions. And besides, some of the methods can be usefully applied to other problems in Roman history.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0075435800020955

Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400)

“… the extremely dubious speculative juggling, with the concepts and terms of the materialist method, which has under the pens of some of our Marxists transplanted the methods of formalism into the domain of the materialist dialectic; which has led to reducing the task to rendering definitions and classifications more precise and to splitting empty abstractions into four equally empty parts; in short, has adulterated Marxism by means of the indecently elegant mannerisms of Kantian epigones. It is a silly thing indeed endlessly to sharpen or resharpen an instrument, to chip away Marxist steel when the task is to apply the instrument in working over the raw material!” (Leon Trotsky)

/pdf/modes-of-production-in-a-materialist-conception-of-history-hxyd2xw7x0.pdf

Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of History

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

Those who study and teach the history of the Ancient World suffer from a great disadvantage, which we find difficult to admit even to ourselves: in a perfectly literal sense we do not know what we are talking about. Of course we can dispose of a vast range of accumulated knowledge about what we are talking about. We can compile lists of officeholders in the Roman Empire, without our evidence revealing how government worked or even whether it made any impact at all on the ordinary person; we can discuss the statuses of cities and look at the archaeological remains of some of them (or rather some parts of some of them) without having any notion of their social and economic functions, or of whether it made any real difference whether an inhabitant of the Roman provinces lived in a small city or a large village.

M. Rostovtzeff

Papers

The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire

The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World

Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire

Iranians and Greeks in South Russia

The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire.