That afternoon, everyone in Paiperte gathered in the maidan. Before thousands of villagers, farmers, shepherds, men, women, children, Muslims, Jews, Roman and Assyrian and Armenian Christians, Afrikans, Turks, Persians, Arabs, Laz people, and even a few Zoroastrians, Herakleia described the requirements for joining the Trapezuntine Republic. Questions were asked and answered. Most people listened in an excited silence, wondering if Paiperte was really going to do this, since the vast majority here were peasant farmers thrilled with the republic’s land redistribution policies.

“In the republic,” Herakleia said, “every farming family is guaranteed sufficient land for their own upkeep. You’ll retain all your produce, rather than losing more than half of it to landlords and tax farmers, and you’ll also be free to sell it.”

The crowd gasped with excitement.

Herakleia raised her hands to get their attention. “But there’s still something you should know. When everyone makes a lot of food and sells it, prices tend to collapse, and farmers become destitute.”

“What does it matter?” said an Assyrian woman. She had introduced herself earlier as Sarah. “We don’t need to sell our produce! We can make everything we need right on our own farms!”

“I’ve heard the same thing many times,” Herakleia said. “I understand where you’re coming from. But this is something I’m going to repeat a lot here. That’s the old way of doing things. That’s the way that led to this city getting occupied by slaveowners and landlords for hundreds of years. We have to do things differently if we’re going to stop that from happening again.”

“What is that something, I wonder?” Sarah said.

“Division of labor,” Herakleia said. “One team of workers inside a properly-supplied building—a factory—can make all the farming tools you need, much more quickly and efficiently than if everyone makes their own tools. The quality will also be better. And if you aren’t spending so much time making or mending tools, that frees you up to do other things.”

“But we need money to buy such tools,” A Roman farmer said.

“That’s right.”

“You just told us that if we all sell our food in exchange for money, prices will collapse, money will become worthless. That means all such tools will be too expensive for us to buy.”

“The farmer’s dilemma,” Herakleia said. “The overall tendency of profit to fall. You work almost all year, leaving home before sunrise and coming home after sundown, putting your children to work almost the moment they can walk, praying for perfect weather, and even if you have a great season, what do you get? Either the Romans or the Seljuks take everything from you, or you try to sell your surplus at a marketplace. But the problem is that everyone there is selling the same thing, and everyone is competing with each other by dropping prices lower and lower. A glut of food for sale will lower prices to the point of worthlessness and possibly lead to destitution, famine, and soil exhaustion.”

There were groans of disappointment.

“Rome has no solution to this problem,” Herakleia said. “Why else has it been falling apart for so long? Time was when even a faraway place like Ultima Thoúlē was a province in the empire, but who here has even heard of it? Great Seljuk also has no answer. They conquer because of their Turkmen raiders, but how different are the policies of the Turkish administrators in the cities? There’s lower taxes, yes, and religious toleration, both thanks to the jizya, but that’s it. Otherwise it’s the same. And no other nation has answers. After all, what do slaveowners and landlords care about the problems of peasants? If your lands become worthless or distressed, then they’re cheaper to buy! If you become destitute, then you’re easier to exploit! If you fight back, what chance does a ragged half-starved peasant with nothing but a sharpened wooden spear have against an armored knight?”

The crowd was silent.

“Only the republic has an answer for you,” Herakleia said.

“We should be wary, my children,” said a black-cowled priest who had wandered out of his little church, which adjoined the maidan. His name was Father Arkadios. “We must indeed be wary of any who claim to be authorities of truth, when they speak without benefit of holy scripture!”

People nearby growled for him to shut up.

“What is the answer?” an Afrikan asked Herakleia.

“If farmers cannot sell their produce,” she explained, “the republic’s agents will purchase it for a fair price using republic currency.”

“Blasphemy!” cried Arkadios. “Nothing can change, for the people are too corrupt at heart, marked as all of us are, my brothers and sisters, by the original sin of our father and mother Adam and Eve! Society is not so simple as this woman supposes, crudely dividing it into classes, when we are all but sinners in the eyes of God! I would sooner return to the cruelty of the Seljuks than submit myself to such madness! Even rule by an emperor is better, by far, than rule by workers!”

People covered their faces, rolled their eyes, and told him to be quiet.

No one asked Herakleia to clarify what she had meant by currency, since paper money only existed in Sera at this time in history, aside from the very rare tally sticks of the Radhanites. In contrast, the vast majority of people here would laugh in your face if you told them about paper money. When you wanted to trade, currency needed to take the form of shiny metal hacked out of mountains. Much labor was locked inside these metal coins, which likewise meant that they could be difficult to procure. Trebizond was always exchanging commodities for money, but that money went straight back into production—better housing, roads, equipment, machines, schools, weapons. This kind of economic planning was how Trebizond avoided the crisis of overproduction Herakleia had described moments earlier. In contrast, the world’s exploitative ruling classes sat on their money, ever fearful of losing it, which strangled economic development. Money that could be working to build bridges and making it cheaper and easier to move commodities (for example) was instead imprisoned in underground vaults, gathering dust, growing in value, enriching the handful of people who owned it while driving everyone else to starvation. Food became too cheap to grow, but too expensive to buy. The contradiction could be difficult to understand.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Indeed, even shiny metal coins could change in value. For centuries, since at least the days of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperors had been trying to find a way to control inflation. Faced with the inability to pay for their endless unwinnable wars, their only solution was to debase the coinage—making money with cheaper metal yet claiming that it had the same value—which just made the problem worse. Trebizond had been tempted to do the same. On the surface, it made everything easier. If we just invent money out of thin air, we can pay for everything! Yet in this early stage of economic development, debasement only intensified inflation, and often proved to be a harbinger of disaster. You could tell people the coins had the same value, but that didn’t mean they would believe you. Emperors and their logothetes in the fisc failed to understand the obvious: inflation was a problem of production.

Improve the productive forces—society’s overall ability to make commodities—to stabilize the value of currency.

Exploitative ruling classes misunderstood this fact deliberately. It was not some innocent misunderstanding. Why? This is where Herakleia’s study of Mazdakism came in handy; after all, she was an educated Master (8/10). To improve the productive forces (a more scientific and Mazdakist term for “economic development”), to ensure that peasants and workers and even merchants could produce more and better commodities—to construct, staff, and supply factories, for instance—this would make any exploitative ruling class obsolete. The exploited classes would begin to wonder—aggressively—why they were taking orders from people who did nothing but stand in their way or steal their labor. Economic development was impossible so long as the ruling class stood to lose. And in the ruling class’s view, it was better to lose a distant war due to supply problems, for instance, than to have an uprising of factory workers on their doorstep. As Simonis had explained earlier, this was why Rome had lost Armenia to the Seljuks. After the Romans had re-conquered these lands from the Arabs, they had moved Armenia’s more dangerous knights westward, to separate them from their power base, while the Armenian soldiery had been incorporated into the Roman army and wasted in wars in the Bulgar Khanate, leaving Armenia defenseless. Thus had Ani, the great city of a thousand churches, been destroyed, its populace massacred or enslaved. War was an expedient that appeared to solve many medieval economic problems, at least on the surface. If the ruling class won a given war, they gained more land, slaves, peasants, women, and children to exploit, and also kept “extra” people (i.e., bastards or second or third sons who would never inherit) occupied. The problem was that the ruling class was investing in destruction rather than creation. Instead of improving farming output with better tools, for example, money was going to destroying farmland outside Rome’s borders, which meant that food became more expensive while currency became worthless. And because the Romans had gotten so terrible at fighting wars, these conflicts often turned into catastrophes, as their enemies swept over Roman lands and seized them permanently—a medieval form of blowback. Yet the ruling class had no choice. To avoid war instead and invest in peaceful economic development would make them irrelevant while strengthening the hand of the classes they exploited.

“Trebizond will not do this to Paiperte,” Herakleia said. “We’re just a day or two’s journey away. Your strength is our strength. We will defend you as we defend ourselves.”

“Yet Trebizond was spared the depredations of the Turks,” said a Persian man wearing baggy flowing pants named Abu Mansur. “The mountains protect you, and the sea connects you to the rest of the world. Your position is different from ours. We have no defenses here except that castle!” He gestured to the huge fortress on the mountain looming over the city.

Giorgadze shrugged his shoulders. “Well, a castle’s better than nothing.”

“Do you really think that if Paiperte falls to the Romans or the Turks, that they’ll leave Trebizond alone?” Herakleia said. “The Romans have already attacked Trebizond twice since we took control! Why else would we be here? We can’t protect ourselves except by going on the offensive. That means working with you.”

The Persian man nodded.

“But defense also means improvement,” Herakleia continued. “It’s not enough to simply change who’s in charge and hope he’ll outsmart the Seljuks. Society itself needs to change. The relations of production—who’s doing the work, who’s calling the shots—that needs to change if the productive forces are going to grow. This in itself means agricultural science, and consolidation and collectivization of farmland.”

Questions immediately arose. Father Arkadios also babbled about how everything good was impossible on this earthly vale of tears until we sloughed off our mortal coils like the sinful snakes we are. Once again, the crowd silenced him.

Herakleia continued. “Collectivization means that in the coming years, the peasants here will manage all the farmland as one farm, meeting quotas set by the republic. In exchange, the republic will supply your material needs, and grant educational opportunities for your children, finding all of them jobs that improve the productive forces. This is one of many ways we get around the problem of inflation.”

“But inflation is everywhere,” cried Father Arkadios. “And it always has been since the Good Lord said ‘let there be light,’ and there was light. It cannot be stopped anymore than the sands of time can be stopped!”

“Fool, if you keep wagging your tongue, I will cut it off,” Sarah said, brandishing an iron knife.

Father Arkadios gulped.

Herakleia had to stop herself from laughing. Then she continued. “Organizing production via collectivization means that we produce so much of one commodity that it becomes worthless. At that point, we move on to producing another valuable commodity, until it becomes worthless, too. We’ll trade with foreign powers and use their money to build up our factories so that no one can stop us—since wars, you know, aren’t necessarily won with tactics or strategy so much as economics, willpower, and righteousness.”

Father Arkadios nodded. “Amen!” But then he looked confused, as though he had not meant to speak that way. Perhaps he had trained himself earlier to say “amen” whenever anyone mentioned righteousness.

“And so on and so forth,” Herakleia said. “We’ll never stop until everyone everywhere has everything they need. At that point, wars will end, and socially constructed differences between people will melt away, since there will no longer be any reason to fight. Money itself will become meaningless.”

“Greed and lust for power shall always poison the hearts of men!” Father Arkadios shouted.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not a man,” Sarah said, punching him.

“Ow!” he cried. “Sarah hit me! Sarah hit a priest!”

Other peasant women had surrounded him.

“And we’ll keep hitting you if you don’t shut up,” Sarah said.

“Don’t you tell me to shut up! I’m an ordained shepherd of the Lord!”

“Shut up, Arkadios, you can’t even read.” Sarah walloped him again. “All you do is murmur through your sermons and cough and sneeze to mask the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You fool no one but yourself.”

“Is that how you argue?” he cried. “Is that how you convince the other side to join you? With a fist?”

“Yes.” Sarah punched him again.

“Flies are attracted with honey!” he yelled.

“Why would we want to attract flies?” She hit him a fourth time.

“You are deliberately missing the point!”

“But I’m not missing you.” She hit him a fifth time.

By now Father Arkadios had taken the hint, rubbing his head and glaring at his peasant women minders, who were helped by the many peasants in the audience who were laughing at him. He murmured that he would leave Paiperte and strike out for a place which respected faith and tradition, and the peasant women then asked what he was waiting for. To this question he had no response. Beyond Paiperte were raiders who would sell him into slavery, while the other towns and cities were already bursting with priests.

But at this point, some members of the audience started asking Herakleia more difficult questions. She steeled herself to answer.