Spartacus: A Study in Revolutionary History. Francis Ambrose Ridley 1944
In the preceding pages we have already drawn attention to the main differences between the revolutions of antiquity, of which that of Spartacus was the greatest, and the revolutions of modern times. In this last connection, we have not failed to detect the vastly greater difficulties, represented by its static agrarian basis, that stood in the way of ancient revolutionary movements, as contraposed to modern revolutions based on the dynamic foundations afforded by the Machine Age.
We have also seen that the failure of the servile insurrections removed from the stagnant culture of antiquity its last hope of a social and cultural renaissance. Roman society continued to plunge downward until it reached its final graveyard in the vast silence of the Dark Ages, when ‘the glory that was Greece’ and ‘the grandeur that was Rome’, alike sank for a thousand years beneath the horizon of history. The ancient pre-scientific society died of anaemia; of lack of means; of social exhaustion arising from its static technique.
Modern society is today clearly treading the same road to the abyss. The cycle of gigantic hecatombs, of recurring and ever more ‘total’ and totally destructive world wars, which, as far back as 1875, Michael Bakunin predicted as the bloody tomb of Western civilisation if it failed to make its social revolution, is now in full swing. Again, the Dark Ages confront mankind at the end of the road: only, this time, a Dark Age which, unlike that of antiquity, is due not to exhaustion, but to misused excess; which is self-caused and suicidal, not by natural scarcity as in antiquity, but by social maladjustment; from the (literally) suicidal retention of a pre-scientific superstructure of society in a scientific age.
Once again, as in the generation of Spartacus, social revolution presents itself as the only saviour of a decaying and otherwise doomed social order. Only this time the age is itself revolutionary; for its foundation is not static agriculture, as in all earlier civilisations, but science, itself, the supreme revolutionary force in all human history.
On account of this, above all, we have reason to believe that, despite temporary setbacks, our age is pre-eminently an age of revolution, and that the social revolutions of our day, unlike those of antiquity, will end in final victory, and that that the emancipation of humanity from the age-long thraldom of the class state and class rule will be consummated finally in our own epoch.
And also with this final victory, the name and fame of the great revolutionary leaders of mankind will come into their own at long last: mankind will come to revere his benefactors and liberators in lieu of his exploiters and parasites.
In the literature of emancipated humanity, there will be held up to well-merited execration and contempt the ‘heroes’ and ‘great men’ of capital, whose historic eminence is usually in direct proportion to the success with which they have robbed and murdered their fellow-men. But the names of the great revolutionary liberators and martyrs of humanity, from Spartacus to Rosa Luxemburg, who fell foremost in the age-long struggle to redeem their fellows from the yoke of capital, will shine forever down the ages.
And when such an emancipated humanity enrols its great heroes in its spiritual Pantheon, we may be sure that the evergreen name of Spartacus and his heroic comrades will stand in the foremost rank.