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Roughly one and a half years after first reading about it here and elsewhere I decided to finally binge-watch the 3-part Netflix miniseries about the infamous Woodstock ‘99 festival, released as episodes of the Trainwreck documentary series. I guess I’m lazy like that, or there are hard limits to my curiosity. Anyway, as I’ve commented on it here before, I did read and hear commentaries about this documentary and the one released earlier by HBO on the same subject, and based on these I assumed that I’ll be seeing some another tiresome woke Netflix slop about toxic masculinity and nu-metal being horrible and cringe. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised but also found that the rather little amount of woke commentary in the series seemed to be included in a rather ham-fisted and clumsy way.
To first address what was probably driving the dismissals/accusations about the series being woke propaganda slop: the topics of sexual harassment and assault are regularly brought up in it, which is understandable as this was eliciting much of the negative media focus on the festival. Based on the series there were three interconnected phenomena that were routinely taking place. One: women in the crowd flashing their tits, usually while being drunk or drugged, and prompting guys standing nearby to grab and grope them. Also, women who stage-dived were often groped all over. Three: as nudity was completely normalized from the beginning, which I imagine had much to do with the extreme heat, there were many cases of naked or semi-naked, similarly drunk or drugged women stumbling around and then getting surrounded by sleazy guys, usually also drunk or drugged, who also went on to grope them.
Plus there were rapes taking place, usually in tents and vehicles as mentioned by two interviewees, with a featured news segment mentioning 4 such cases being reported to the police. All this is mentioned in passing, except for one probable case of statutory rape which happened in a commandeered vehicle inside the rave hangar. I say 'probable' because the witness who described it said the otherwise blacked-out girl looked underage and it seemed like some guy just finished boning her, but he wasn’t sure. It also bears mentioning the context, namely that naked chicks were getting boned left and right in the dark next to the walls inside the hangar.
To finally move on to the culture war angle: there are two female interviewees relatively extensively commenting on the subject; one is a black former MTV reporter who curiously claims that the MeToo phenomenon was sparked by incidents and sexist behaviors such as these and a former attendee who was 14 at the time of the festival who said she’s just thankful that these behaviors are no longer considered acceptable.
I watched this and thought MeToo was obviously driven by multiple things, but I’m sure average drunk dudes groping drunk naked girls on festivals is definitely not one of them. Also, how do you then explain the 18-year time gap between the two? As someone of some experience at rock and metal festivals I also wondered: surely these behaviors cannot be said to be normal and acceptable during music festivals. What I think is fair to say is that they were routinely occurring on these particular festival, and that social and cultural factors that are peculiar to the late ‘90s were at play.
For example, widespread nudity was not the norm at the original festival, at least nowhere near to that extent, as far as I know, as evidenced by the many pieces of archive footage also included in this miniseries. Only by the late ‘90s did social licentiousness reach such an average level that such behaviors were normalized. Girls flashing their tits during music shows (and/or getting drugged on Ecstasy) is another expression of this, and I don’t think this was considered normal until the ascendance of nu-metal and rave, with both genres dominating Woodstock ’99. But still, it’s not like groping and touching was seen as a routine pastime during every similar festival in those times, I guess.
To mention some other things:
Curiously no member of Limp Bizkit was interviewed even though many Millennials apparently scapegoated them for the entire, well, trainwreck. Their former manager, on the other hand, was featured and he predictably denied any allegations, and it didn’t appear to me that the show’s narrative was trying to contradict him. However, it appears to be clear that him and the RHCP are responsible for cluelessly inflaming an already agitated and destructive crowd even further when an orgy of vandalism was already poised to break out, their only excuse being the organizers clearly not communicating effectively their request to help tame things down. On that note, no member of RHCP was interviewed either.
The incompetence on display on the part of the organizers is just hilarious, especially in included news segments of the bosses giving press conferences. A complete and delusional denial of the reality on the ground, one rosy and baseless statement after the other, refusing to take responsibility and shifting blame to a small number of evildoer attendees even on the morning after the disaster already happened. The mayor of the host town also came across as a complete dunce during those events, putting on an optimistic façade and actually having the temerity to even openly invite the organizers to return and put on another festival sometime later, doing all this at a point where everything already went to literally shit and things were to fall apart completely in a few hours.
While not openly naming late-stage capitalism as a culprit, the documentary creator clearly consider it to be the main culprit, and for a good reason, I think. Despite all the bullshit and pretense of doing everything to honor the great legacy of the original Woodstock, the overriding objective was to make maximum profit, driven by the bad example of Woodstock ’94 not turning any profit at all, and this went hand in hand with cutting to the bare minimum the budget for any services, facilities, staff and security, while at the same time banning the attendees from even bringing their own drinking water on site.
I've been aware of this phrase for years, mostly from Reddit. Is there a canonical definition, however? I say this with genuine curiosity / bewilderment. Capitalism, to my mind, is an economic
conditionreality bounded by certain conditions. I didn't know (and I am dubious) about there being a temporal aspect to it.Woodstock '99 is one of my first memories from transitioning from childhood to adolescent. One of my siblings wanted to go to it but there was no way my parents would allow it. When all of the MTC reporting came out, the focus then (that is, 1999/2000) was on how bad it was for all of the fans. Mostly, the focus was on heat, water, food, and shelter inadequacies. There were definitely reports of the sexual assaults, however, they did not take center stage. My thinking is that even MTV back in those innocent (lulz) days of 1999 didn't want to dwell on such heavy issues. I could be wrong.
There was zero "woke" angle and zero "this was particularly bad for the female attendees in general." I think there's something revealing about that. As "progressive" as MTV has always been, they, up until the Great Awokening, still believed in gender roles within the context of popular music. Rock Star dudes, of course, banged groupies. Pop Idols (Spears, Aguliera, Etc.) would make dancey-dance songs and then mix in some power ballads about being dumped. Boy Bands would do dancey-dancey almost without exception and the tween girls would swoon but Boy Bands definitely would not bang them. The details don't really matter. The point is that there were assumed "roles" (even within this progressive media outlet) and different actions were permissible - or not - based on which role a person occupied.
I don't think that's the case anymore. Part of the great awokening was a homogenization in all directions. Rock Stars can't be drunk messes who bang groupies anymore. That's toxic masculinity. At the same time, Teen Pop Idols can be weirdo hypersexual entities (thinking of Sabrina Carpenter here). And everyone can (should?) have some sort of "my mental health struggles" part of the biography ready to go at anytime. It's all so authoritarian.
I read a note a few weeks ago that pointed out that describing something as "late stage" only really makes sense retrospectively, or for a phenomenon which has a predictable end state (e.g. the last few weeks of pregnancy are "late stage pregnancy"). Describing our current economic condition as "late stage capitalism" carries more than a whiff of wishful thinking. Indeed, I predict that capitalism will survive all of the people currently using the phrase.
A few years ago I used to see stickers for some Irish socialist party dotted around Dublin, prominently featuring a quote attributed to noted Irish socialist James Connolly, which said something along the lines of "the time for reforming the capitalist system has passed. It must be destroyed." When I searched for the exact wording a few months ago I was unable to find it, so he may not even have said it at all. In any case, I'm sure you've guessed the punchline: Connolly died 110 years ago, and a far greater proportion of the human race lives under capitalist economies than communist/socialist ones than did in his lifetime. Turns out the old girl had plenty of life in her yet.
According to Wikiquote this seems to be the quote you are looking for:
The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it the Catholic and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, the Catholic and the Freethinker, the Catholic and the Buddhist, the Catholic and the Mahometan will co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour toward an end beneficial to all. For, as we have said elsewhere, socialism is neither Protestant nor Catholic, Christian nor Freethinker, Buddhist, Mahometan, nor Jew; it is only Human. We of the socialist working class realise that as we suffer together we must work together that we may enjoy together. We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.
These are actually the closing words of a pamphlet he wrote in 1910 as a response to the anti-socialist lectures of some priest. Well...technically speaking we cannot say if he was correct or incorrect. Four years later the entire world had an opportunity to learn what the firebrand of capitalist warfare is in its true form, and he argued that only a globally united working class can possibly prevent that disaster. I guess that may be true in retrospect.
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Perhaps this is unfairly charitable of me, but I prefer to read the phrase as "capitalism of late", that is to say, it means "recent capitalism" rather than "capitalism near the end of its life".
Probably most people who use it are indulging in wishful thinking, and have hopes of some sort of imminent economic reorganisation, not to say revolution, but the word 'late' by itself can be read in a less ridiculous way.
As others in the thread have noted, the specific phrase "late stage" is reminiscent of "late stage cancer". I think people who use it in the absolute rather than the relative sense are thinking of it this way, and therefore, are not hopefuls looking forward to a revolution, but doomers who anticipate that runaway capitalism will literally kill the planet - or at least Civilization As We Know It - in the foreseeable future.
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You can still be dedicated communist while believing that communism will win in far, distant future. It is hard, but not impossible.
The canonical example is classic of Soviet science fiction, Andromeda by Ivan Yefremov.
Context: Soviet science fiction during Stalin's time was bound by "close limit" rule.
No daydreaming, no wild space fantasies churned by capitalist hacks as opiate for the working class, just describe scientific and technological breakthroughs that are coming in the near future.
Usual plot was: In 1946, heroic Soviet polar explorer gets lost and freezes solid in the arctic ice. Later, in communist future, he is discovered, thawed and revived into full health, and his old friends (in their young and vigorous 120's) get him into flying car and show him the wonderful communist world of 2026.
Andromeda is not like this.
It is utopian communist future, that happens to be far future. Geologic scale future, when all that is left from our civilization is black radioactive layer in the strata (and some mysterious artifacts).
It is clear why such work was problematic, even during the post-Stalin thaw when big K himself promised victory of communism in 1980.
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I’d prefer not to start discussing something here that is only tangentially related to this miniseries, nor am I an economist or a redditor for that matter, but if you wish to discuss late-stage capitalism in general on this site, I’ll be happy to take part. To keep this comment concise I’d make the following argument.
In early-stage capitalism: the concentration of capital is yet of a low level, some natural resources are still untapped and not depleted, some markets are still unclaimed and unexplored, the low-hanging fruit is generally yet not picked, market forces did not yet eat away at social norms and cultural traditions (fertility rates and family formation rates are still high, and labor is plentiful), the environment is not yet poisoned and contaminated all over. In late-stage capitalism, none of that is true anymore.
"Late stage capitalism" is phrase born of Marxist revolutionary optimism/wishful thinking.
"Keep fighting, comrades! The clock is ticking, the bourgeois pig system is crumbling! The masses are waking up, the revolution is just around the corner! Trust the forces of history!"
No one wants to imagine that we are still in early stage of capitalism, and communism will finally win sometime in the 40th millenium.
I think there's really two ways to think about Marxism: one is the obvious motivation of his works. But secondly, I think Marx did a lot to establish a sort of almost historical framework for the economic and political progression of human progress that others have adopted in various forms.
Plainly, Marx was wrong about the precise progression of political and economic realities. He was maybe wrong about treating class as a distinct and supremely strong force, or at least, it's complicated. But I think he was right in the general sense that (excessive, internal) financialization is a very strong, and probably harmful, force. And, again in a general sense, the idea that maybe this system of 'capitalism' is inherently in a state of almost entropic decline, where production runs into natural limits and the insatiated demand growth often distorts into rent-seeking and monopolization, is a pretty interesting one.
I definitely agree that he was wrong about things magically reversing and becoming better as the natural and inevitable result of the system's evolution. However, you can still use the term "late stage capitalism" if you buy the narrative about the trajectory of things, even if you (maybe strongly!) disagree about what happens in the "next stage". And in fact, it seems to me that at least in America, communism (under the lens of: let's seize things for the lower class and take it for ourselves, and redistribute it centrally) is 100% dead in the water. A kind of semi-democratic socialism however (let's seize some of the things, especially from the rich, and then distribute it centrally - and it's okay because we outnumber them) is very much alive. I do consider those different things, and the latter is what even young idiots (many of whom might defend communism reflexively) really want, even if they aren't able to articulate it very well. They don't actually want communism, not when you ask them straight. And really, they aren't even all that revolutionary in a classic sense, even if they say they want to burn down the system: by revealed preference they simply don't.
Revolution needs revolutionary situation - historically it was incompetent, internally split and massively discredited ruling class, unpopular (and losing) war, economic collapse thrusting the masses into desperate poverty.
Fortunately, we are in 2026, not in 1917 and no such things can happen today.
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“Late Stage Capitalism” is a reference to Marx’s statement about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalist economies. All the twenty-dollar bills get picked up and everyone starts scumming the margins for tiny increases in efficiency.
What is weird is that we are in an era of spectacular profits: the rate has risen significantly, not fallen, due to the Schumpeterian heroism of the tech industry. Okishio has won over Marx.
There's also a kind of schizoid relationship people have with the rate of profit. When people object to capitalism, their anger is usually at excess profits, not companies ruthlessly competing away each other's margins; whatever grumbles about airline leg room there are, it's not what's driving any political anti-capitalism. But if we take Marx seriously, exploding profits is, if not outright impossible, then at least a sign of capitalism's strength, with its end state moving proportionately further into the future.
I think this is the wrong way round. People say and think it’s excess profits but actually it’s excess competition.
It’s always dangerous to psychoanalyse one’s opponents but I think the train of thought is roughly:
When people actually feel like they’re getting a great bargain and new cool stuff, they don’t usually mind the creators getting rich. If anything a lot of people support them as an 'our team' kind of thing - look at the way people felt about Palmer Luckey when he invented modern VR, or Anthropic.
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The growth of tipping culture in the US, as much as I dislike it outside of specific traditions, does feel like a negative sign for capitalism: "you can just ask people if they want to pay more, and sometimes they do!" Whole careers have been built around Patreon and pay-if/what-you-want models.
On the other hand, this feels less Marx ("from each according to their ability") and more Banksian post-scarcity: "from each according to 'eh, why not?'".
It’s negative because of the misuse of social pressure to extract the tips. It’s not just “do it if you feel like it.” In many cases, the person finds himself or herself in public or with friends while the waiter hands over or spins the iPad with the tip already filled in, then the person is forced to either go along (and add another 15-20% to the total bill) or publicly choose to not tip. To me, the issue is less tipping itself and more the coercive approach taken where im pressured by the knowledge that other people see what im doing (often including the waiter himself) thus making it less of a free will gesture and more of a pay or be a jerk gesture.
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If only!
When only some people tip, they get to play a little prisoner’s dilemma. Those who pay the surcharge reduce the cost of labor to the employer, and thus the cost to any free riders. In turn, the non-tippers benefit themselves (and harm the employee) more than they inconvenience the employer.
From each according to “how much do I want to be (seen as) an asshole, today?”
I think there are principled reasons to cut down on tipping besides the first order effects (more money for the non-tipper). Just as there are principled reasons to avoid burning fossil fuels, the first order effects are great (my flat gets warm, my car goes places), but the cumulative effects of everyone doing so are bad (climate change). Or giving Kevin a better grade for his paper.
For tipping, the obvious effect is that it shifts the supply-demand-equilibrium for waiters to lower wages, up to the point where a waiter makes as much as before. So in effect, all you have changed in giving the customer veto rights over 60% of their compensation. Personally, I do not favor a view of the service industry as freelancers whose job is to make people happy so that they get paid.
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That's interesting, because I see a slightly different prisoner's dilemma. If I tip in advance, I'm paying a modest premium to get better service than everyone else; to reduce the chance of anyone adulterating my food/drink, etc. But if everyone tips in advance, employers reduce hourly wages and we're all back to square one. And I don't get better service. It would be great if customers could coordinate and agree never to tip, but as with most prisoner's dilemmas that is difficult.
So basically, I see the tippers as the defectors while the non-tippers are the cooperators.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone tip in advance.
But if that were the case, yeah, it’s a race to the bottom the other way.
DoorDashing is like that, tipping an advance. You do it as an incentive to give great service, not as a confirmation of great service given. Predictably I'll leave a generous tip but they won't come to the door, wanting me to go out to a parking lot (I usually order only when at a motel) and forget things.
For delivery apps like that, it's effectively a bidding system. Drivers see the estimated payout for a trip that includes the advance tip amount, so they are a lot more likely to take a trip with a decent tip. $0 tip trips sit in the queue getting rejected until a driver takes it because it's convenient or they are desperate. Worst case, if it sits for long enough, the app will increase the driver payment by a bit until someone takes it. So it's really not ensuring good service, just faster service.
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As guy mentioned, it's getting pretty common. I find it pretty offensive when (1) I am being asked for a tip before the service has been performed; and (2) all the person is doing is handing me something over a counter.
Nevertheless, I sometimes tip in advance in hopes of getting better service. For example if the person is preparing a mixed drink and therefore has discretion over how much effort (and alcohol) to put into my order.
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The "opportunity" to tip in advance is all over coffee shops, and in more and more quick take-out places (ice cream parlor, etc). You order your drink, they punch it into their tablet kiosk, then flip it around to you and it asks how much you want to tip before you swipe your credit card. It's pretty awkward to tap "other amount" and enter "0". I've seen on the internet (i.e. no idea if true) baristas saying they'll spit in drinks where they don't get tipped.
Oh. Oh, duh. Yeah, I didn’t even think of that as advance. To me, it’s the end of the interaction.
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Heh, I recently got to answer a tip prompt on a credit card reader from a sole proprietor.
There is certainly an element of this, especially IRL. But there are also examples like Andreas Kling writing much of SerenityOS and the Ladybird browser while paying rent with donations for BSD-licensed software.
This was probably something built into the software and not something deliberately chosen by the business.
Eh, no, not at all. Virtually all of these POS systems let the business choose exactly what appears on them. Now, there DO exist defaults that some owners will use, but customization is the norm.
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"Werner Sombart, who used the phrase Spätkapitalismus (literally "late capitalism") in his 1902 work Der moderne Kapitalismus. Sombart was developing a stage-theory of capitalism, arguing that the system passed through distinct historical phases: early, high, and late. His framework was descriptive and evolutionary, not necessarily apocalyptic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism
The gist of it is that it's a shibboleth and a cue to boo the outgroup on command.
If there's anything someone dislikes about modern consumerism or globalization, it's a convenient brush to paint with. Gentrification? Late stage capitalism. Rent too damn high? Late stage capitalism. Netflix enshittified its offerings? Late stage capitalism.
Adding this for further context:
The development of capitalism is divided into three stages.[6] The first volume of Der moderne Kapitalismus published in 1902, deals with proto-capitalism, the origins and transition to capitalism from feudalism,[7] and the period he called early capitalism – Frühkapitalismus – which ended before the Industrial Revolution.[8] In his second volume, which he published in 1916, he described the period that began c. 1760, as high capitalism – Hochkapitalismus.[9] The last book, published in 1927, treats conditions in the 20th century. He called this stage late capitalism – Spätkapitalismus, which began with World War I.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sombart#Middle_career_and_sociology
In somewhat comical fashion, Wikipedia authors examined Sombart himself and drew similar biographical conclusions:
As a young man, Sombart was a socialist who associated with Marxist intellectuals and the German Social Democratic Party. Friedrich Engels praised Sombart's review of the first edition of Marx's Das Kapital Vol. 3 in 1894, and sent him a letter.[9] As a mature academic who became well known for his own sociological writings, Sombart had a sympathetically critical attitude to the ideas of Karl Marx — seeking to criticize, modify and elaborate Marx's insights, while disavowing Marxist doctrinairism and dogmatism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism#Initial_use_of_the_term
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In this regard it serves exactly the same social function as "neoliberalism" once did.
I think it's obvious that the phrase "neoliberalism" was invented in order to differentiate the liberal economic policies as they existed before and after the emergence and implementation of Keynesianism.
I know what the word originally meant. I'm referring to how it is often used by left-leaning pundits e.g. this article in the Guardian which blames neoliberalism for pretty much anything the author doesn't like about the modern world, from environmental devastation to loneliness to anorexia.
Fair enough. My point is that the "neo-" part has a more concrete and agreed-upon definition than the "late-" part.
No argument here.
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Not really. Basically there are two neoliberalisms:
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Looks like it only made it into the third volume? So the term is "only" a little over 100 years old now, and the "stage" it purports to describe is only a little over 110 years old.
To be fair, Sombart describes the previous two "stages" as being about 150 years long each, so maybe he wouldn't have thought we're quite due for the end of his last one yet?
If you ask for details, the short-term plan usually boils down to some form of palace economy, with the interviewers imagining themselves among the decision-makers inside the (in this case metaphorical) palace rather than among the decision-targets outside. The long-term plan in theory is for their wonderful planning to allow everyone to flourish and thereby become some sort of New Soviet Man, who will simply make correct and selfless decisions himself and thus allow the decision-makers to return back to their labors. In practice for some reason the long-term never seems to come.
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No idea about a canonical definition but it makes sense to me that forms of social organisation have a life cycle similar to e.g. tech like Google Search.
So for capitalism:
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I think its just a rhetorical trick to suggest that the transition from Capitalism to something else is nigh, and all the weird, distasteful, negative aspects of society right now are therefore proof that we're near the end.
And maybe, by continually suggesting this, actually encourage behaviors that bring the transition about?
"Late" as a temporal stage can only be defined in relation to the actual end of a thing, right? If the end is indefinite, it is incoherent to identify something as 'late' prior to it actually ending/resetting.
Not like anyone is going to call them on their missed prediction if we're still doing Capitalism in 30-300 years.
“Late” can be used like “mature,” I think. Stable in its development. Perhaps ossified or stagnant, even.
I agree that most people using the term are more interested in prophesying the end of capitalist systems. They’ve been doing so since before Marx himself. He framed it as “tendency of rate of profit to fall”; under that metric, “late stage” would mean “relatively low rate of profit.”
'Late' can also mean 'recent' or 'current'; viz. the War of Southern Treason being called 'the late unpleasantness'.
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The people who use the phrase use it in the way you would say "late-stage cancer". You can infer what they think of capitalism from that. It's usually college-age people or redditors who used that kind of phrasing initially, though it's become common enough that you see it pop up elsewhere from people who don't necessarily hate capitalism (often in the way capitalism is blamed for the excesses of consumerism). In general, it expresses that capitalism is unsustainable and that the thing that's called an example of late-stage capitalism is an example of how a dying capitalist system will break down and fail, or of how capitalism ends up killing its host.
True. Historians also differentiate Early and Late Antiquity or Early and Late Feudalism. I guess one can also speak of Mature/Peak Antiquity/Feudalism if we want to divide eras even further. The existence of any economic system is conditional and conditions are necessarily subject to change, which means no system can continue indefinitely, and nor can cancer.
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Or if they want to make a more historical point: they use it in the way you'd say "Late Republic", the period of the Roman Rebublic that was characterized by civil wars, mass slavery / slave rebellions and internal instability.
Same result, really.
Or the Late Empire, alternatively.
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