False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential, writes Chris Trotter

By Chris Trotter*

When Barbara Edmonds made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity with the past – especially the distant past. To hear Labour’s shadow Minister of Finance offer the career of the Emperor Justinian as a cautionary tale about the dangers of excessive taxation was refreshing – and profoundly disappointing.

Rounding off his interview with Edmonds on the current affairs programme Q+A, Jack Tame asked: “What does tax policy have to do with the fall of the Roman Empire?” Edmonds responded:

“When I was going through Law School, I was also doing some ancient history papers. And, basically, Emperor Justinian. It was the fall of the Roman Empire because, basically, they had to over-tax people to pay for the war and for the [indistinct]. So, the lesson I learned from that was that if you over-tax people, well, in Justinian’s case, it broke down an empire.”

Sadly, none of this is true.

The Emperor Justinian ruled over the Eastern Roman Empire – better known to history as the Byzantine Empire – from 527-565 AD. Far from presiding over the fall of the Roman Empire, Justinian and his generals recovered many of the Western Empire’s lost provinces – an achievement which dramatically boosted Byzantine tax revenues. Justinian used this surplus income to construct the extraordinary Christian basilica of Hagia Sophia. This, the Emperor’s most tangible legacy, still stands in the heart of Istanbul (converted, now, to a mosque). Justinian’s other great legacy, known as the Justinian Code, still serves as the foundation of Europe’s legal system. The Byzantine Empire did fall – but not for almost another thousand years. Its mighty walled capital, Constantinople, was besieged and conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

No one academically equipped to lecture students in ancient history – especially classical history – could possibly have got the story of the Emperor Justinian so wrong. Clearly, Edmonds has misremembered the content of her ancient history course.

“Hardly a hanging offence!”, the ordinary voters would doubtless respond. “Most people don’t know anything about Justinian, or his empire, and care even less!” True enough, but they do care about being over-taxed. So, if Labour’s finance spokesperson cites the deeds of some long-dead dude as a warning from the past against taxing citizens too hard, then those same ordinary voters are likely to store her (mis)information in the back of their minds. A handy counter-argument to throw back at all those tax-and-spend radicals.

And, the political impact of Edmonds’ mis-remembered history doesn’t stop there. In the course of the next few months, New Zealanders will hear a great deal about being “over-taxed”. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will argue passionately that the Labour Government’s decision to allow inflation-generated “fiscal drag” to pour unwarranted billions into the state’s coffers stands as a text-book example of over-taxing wage- and salary-earners. To describe National’s policy of returning the state’s ill-gotten fiscal gains to the ordinary Kiwis from whom they extracted, as a policy of “tax cuts” is most unfair.

Now, imagine that Edmonds’ caucus colleagues are as clueless about the history of Ancient Rome as the average voter. (It doesn’t require all that much imagination!) In their minds, too, a little voice may be insisting that what Labour did was wrong.

Grant Robertson, acting with the best of intentions, had connived in their working- and middle-class supporters being over-taxed year after year after year. And, just as the Emperor Justinian’s over-taxation of Rome’s citizens caused the Empire to crumble, Labour’s reliance on the unfair extractions of “fiscal drag” contributed to the fall of its own electoral regime. If Edmonds’ misremembered history was to take hold of her colleagues’ imaginations in this way, then the Labour Opposition’s whole campaign against National’s tax-cuts could be seriously undercut.

False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential. Perhaps the most pernicious example of historical disinformation is the Dolchstoßlegende – the entirely false accusation, spread by the reactionary Right, that Germany’s World War I soldiers, far from being defeated by the Allied Powers on the field of battle, were actually “stabbed in the back” by Socialists, Bolsheviks and Jews agitating on the Home Front. This “Big Lie” contributed hugely to the undermining of the Weimar Republic.

If people could be so dangerously misled about the cause of events that happened only a few months before; then misleading them about events that happened 1,500 years ago would be a doddle.

Then there’s the question of why Edmonds misremembered her ancient history so comprehensively. Could it be that she wants the historical record to show that excessive taxation is politically unsustainable? Is that because she is personally and professionally convinced (as a tax lawyer) that promising to raise taxes is politically unsustainable? Were that the case, then her appointment as Finance Spokesperson, ahead of the considerably more experienced – and fiscally radical – David Parker, could easily be interpreted as a decisive power-play against the Wealth Tax Faction of the Labour Party by Opposition Leader, Chris Hipkins.

To head-off such dangerous speculation, Edmonds should ‘fess-up to her historical mistakes and treat her colleagues to a short corrective lecture on the actual achievements of the Emperor Justinian. She could tell them about his comprehensive reform of the Byzantine tax system. How he both simplified tax collection, and made it vastly more efficient – thereby increasing the flow of gold and silver to Constantinople.

She could point out, also, the parallels between Justinian’s experience and Labour’s. How the so-called “Justinian Plague”, by decimating the Byzantine population, played havoc with the imperial finances – just as the Global Covid-19 Pandemic deranged New Zealand’s economy. Or, how the “Blues” and the “Greens”, rival chariot-racing factions in Constantinople’s hippodrome, joined forces in the “Nika Riots” of 532 BC – very nearly costing Justinian his throne.

There was a time when politicians’ self-immersion in History was one of the profession’s most striking characteristics. Hardly surprising, given the enormous advantage a solid working knowledge of history confers upon those with a hankering to make it themselves. Human nature changes much more slowly than human technology. There are very few, if any, political scenarios that are entirely new. As Mark Twain is said to have quipped: “History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

The trick, Ms Edmonds, is to remember the words correctly.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.