3. Societies and economies
THE SOCIAL AND THE ECONOMIC
‘the new peace and the monarchical state, the shift of society’s
centre from the coasts to the hinterland—all these changes
throttled ancient capitalism instead of causing it toflourish (as
one might a priori expect).’(Max Weber,The Agrarian Sociology
of Ancient Civilizations,1909, tr. R. I. Frank, London and New
York, 1976, 358)Territorial centralization within the Hellenistic kingdoms was, according
to Max Weber, the great undoing of the green shoots of‘ancient capital-
ism’. If we follow Weber’s thought to its logical conclusion, then the
formative role of Macedon was a key factor in this process of contraction,
since the organizational practices of the kingdom were grafted onto and
consolidated in all the kingdoms inherited by the Successors. The idea
that territorial consolidation within a sovereign state should automatic-
ally precipitate a change in attitudes to capital, commercial enterprise,
and economic performance seems an odd way of distinguishing between
ancient kinds of‘capitalism’(if we accept this description with Weber)
and more recent versions of capitalism. It needs more scrutiny.
Weber’s evaluation of ancient economies is a useful starting point for
thinking about the relationship between the social and the economic in
classical antiquity. It is an interesting way of encapsulating the problem
of economic changes, because it helps to connect monarchies with
economic behaviour; and because Weber’s approach to comparative
historical economies, as illustrated here, was different in key respects
from the arguments that have trapped debates about the economies of
classical antiquity over the last half-century. Weber’s long historical
perspective was unusual among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
excursions into economic theory, in contrast to the great pioneers of the