Stratos Georgoulas - The Origins of Radical Criminology, Volume II: From Classical Greece to Early Christianity

Cover illustration: Fatima Jamadar

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What a monumental task Stratos takes on to explain so well the evolving history of ideas on how society is or was or could be organized over the centuries BC. Readers might want to have to hand either H. G. Wellss A Short History of the World (1922) and its chronology from 800 BC intended for a popular readership or the longer Outline of History (volumes 1 and 2) published in 1920 and revised in 1940 to situate the issues raised in the great sweep of history so richly told.

To be sure, from the world before man, as Wells put it, and the new technological revolution of artificial intelligence (AI) we have seen distinct modes of production emerge and then be replaced from the mercantilism (of the 15th to the 18th century) which signaled the growth of imperialism and the British Empire onwards. Yet the ideas and aspirations of how political systems affect the individual and the classes are organized, for example as democracy, freedom, rights, law, and states, and yet utopias and dystopias, resonate through the centuries where nothing is totally new but rather common over time. History tells us that the quest for freedom, equality in a classless society, and freedom from oppression and exploitation is not new but eternal.

The chapter on The role of Utopia shows that the idea of building a fair equal society is as old as historya society where all members are equal, where people live in harmony and freedom, and where there is neither money, nor privileges and everything is held in common. Ideas that have been espoused by radical, revolutionary, anarcho-syndical, and radical Christian movements.

The people of the City of the Sun live totally equal, without classes, without social discrimination and, above all, without what causes inequality; that is, they live without ownership. Equality and freedom are interwoven with their lives as well as with the air they breathe with their existence. There are customs and laws that are not, however, engraved on planks and marble screeds, but in the depth of consciousness, laws that make up their own state, which assemble the whole in order and system and harmoniously regulate their life [and]

because no outside enemy covets their bliss, nobody will ever think of changing their social order. Greed, lust of power, intrigue, and crime are unknown among those happy children of equality and nature. Because there is neither money, nor authority, nor discrimination there is no need for crime, guilt, and injustice. No one is forced to observe the law. Because the law over there is not the legitimate right of the stronger, it is not coercive and tyrannical, but customary habit, a primary condition of their bliss and thus an innate need.

Who in their right mind would not want to live in such a society? But of course to reach such a society means those with power would have to give it up and history tells us this rarely happens voluntarily.

We cannot be responsible for the past, but we are responsible for how it is presented and which interests different interpretations serve and how the history we inherit is manipulated in the present.

We all have to take responsibility not just for the present but for how the past, starting with the immediate past, pre-history is presented and manipulated.