This biannual course is taught on years 2015-2016, 2017-2018, ....
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The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.
The evaluation will take place at the June session and will be in a written form.
The students will have a syllabus at their disposal, which includes the documents analysed and the bibliographical references relating to the course.
From tributary to civic economy : the origins of modern economy ?
2500 years ago, citizens of Athens entrusted an abstract entity, called the "polis", with the management of financial resources in order to fulfil the needs of the entire community. This is the final result of a long evolution that this course proposes to analyse.
The Homeric epics enable us to define the starting situation, characterised by tributary relationships : the rulers of the Homeric society - called basileis - levied contributions on the common people (demos). Although largely fictitious, this situation is helpful to understand the real problems that arose at Athens at the beginning of the 6th century B.C. The Athenian tradition credited the legislator Solon with an important reform : the abolition of the debts of the small farmers of Attica. The Solonian reforms are actually of a totally different nature : Solon abolished the tributary relationships implying that a part of the dependant's crop was due to his master, contribution that have been misinterpreted, since the Ancient time, as a debt repayment. The suppression of those tributary relationships created a new situation, where the now enlarged political community needed resources on her own : a property tax is created and each member had then to contribute according to his revenues.
However, when enumerating the Athenian incomes during the Peloponnesian War in his famous play entitled The Wasps (656-663), Aristophanes does not mention direct taxation any more. When and why did it disappear ? There are ideological as well as economic reasons. First, direct taxation was judged incompatible with the status of citizen after the Cleisthenic reforms; second, Athens beneficed now from another important sources of incomes : the Laureion mines and the Delian League. During the Classical period, taxation was thus exclusively indirect. That situation presupposes a major development of the public sphere : the Athenians now consider that commercial exchanges are relevant from the public sphere and, therefore, may be taxed. The creation of a delimited and controlled space specifically dedicated to exchanges is also required : this is the agora. The fundamental basis of our modern economy were thus in place?
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