#历史开讲 #
1. Non-mainstream personification of slaves
It is well known that slavery was a supporting factor in society and economy in ancient times and up to the last century. After the founding of the city, although there were slaves in Rome for a long time, they did not have an important position in terms of numbers, which was called "domestic slavery".
As a result of the Roman Expansionist War, the number of slaves in Rome has exploded since the Second Punic War, and slavery has slowly been legally established.
This system of treating the person as the object of ownership derives from the law of nations, that is, the law common to all countries; There is no slavery in natural law, where everyone is free, and in Justinian's view, slavery is contrary to nature, original sin. Slaves are like stinky tofu in Changsha, smelling stinky and delicious. In Rome, people were divided into slaves and free men, and slaves were distinguished from free men. What is freedom, Cicero defined freedom as:
Freedom is the power to live according to one's own will. Free people are those who follow the right things, those who are happy with their obligations, those who carefully arrange the path of life, those who obey and respect the law out of fear, and who consciously and voluntarily do every word and deed, even every thought,
A person whose undertakings and actions all begin with himself and end in himself, and who has no greater influence on him than his own will and judgment. 4. Eustatinian's classification of human beings is both public and private. It reflects both the class division of master and slave, and the possibility of biological man as an object of private or public ownership.
During the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the situation of slaves was very painful, and in the context of the farm economy, slaves were the main means of reducing costs and maximizing profits, and slaves were squeezed and their expenses reduced as much as possible, making the living conditions of slaves extremely miserable.
Slaves are defined as instruments with souls in Aristotle's Political Science, and Varro (116–27 BC) defines slaves as "talking factors of production" in On Agriculture, alongside the "semi-talking factors of production" cattle and the "mute factor of production" carts. "We all say that the economy determines the law to some extent.
After the crisis of the 3rd century, the relationship between agriculture and the city changed, the economy declined, and commercial activities declined, mainly manifested in the demise of the slave economy and the fixation of free labor on the land in the form of sharecropping. With the decline of the slave estate economy and the rise of sharecropping, the legal status of slaves was transformed. Gradually, because slavery was contrary to nature, legislators encouraged the emancipation of slaves, stipulating that slaves could become freed people through emancipation.
There are also economic considerations for such an option. It was found that the closer a slave was to a free man, the more useful he became. There were five ways to emancipate slaves: church emancipation, rod emancipation, emancipation among friends, emancipation of letters, and emancipation of testaments.
In order to expand the number of Roman citizens, the liberated freemen were given exactly the same status as their former masters. Justinian expressed a desire to improve the status of slaves, which was linked to Christian influences. Through his activities, liberation became not only the right to freedom, but also the gift of civil rights, the former by the master and the latter by the emperor.
In the long course of Roman law in 1300 years, the attributes of "people" and "things" in slaves were slowly moved from "things" to people due to economic and social conditions. With the establishment and widespread acceptance of the system of state-owned property, slaves acquired the ability to engage in commercial trade and made this part of the property as endemic property independent from the property of the owner, thus acquiring a relatively independent legal personality in the market economy. This change enabled the objectified slave to acquire a fictitious personality that was realized at least when the slave was engaged in business activities with unique property.
2. Realize the separation of property and rights
The first is the separation of property. The key to the establishment of special property is property separation, that is, the separation of a part of the property from the owner's own property, but the subsequent maintenance of this separation of property has become the key to the existence of special property. "The significance of this separation is very significant.
Serao pointed out: "The actual control of special property in the hands of the family or slaves, excluding the ownership of the father, this separation of property from the father's personal property is of great significance, and is an important organizational basis for the activities of the business owner, and on the basis of the existence of this part of the property, the magistrate can establish the master's noble duties as limited liability."
Just as today there is a problem of property mixing in limited liability companies. In order to prevent the problem of property mixing and truly realize the separation of the master's property and the slave's unique property, jurists stipulated a separate accounting system, that is, the master's property should be kept separately from the special property established. Today, we still use this genius invention, such as Article 64 of the Company Law of the People's Republic of China, which stipulates:
"If the shareholders of a one-person limited liability company cannot prove that the company's assets are independent of the shareholders' own assets, they shall bear joint and several liability for the company's debts." and the Italian Civil Code of 1942, which provides for the system of accounting books for ex post facto certification in the evidence section.
The second is the separation of rights. On the basis of separating the owner's property from the exclusive property held by the slave, the proprietary property system also succeeded in separating the management and ownership of the exclusive property. First, let's explore the ownership part. All distinctions are divided into de facto and de jure all.
In the legal sense, the slave merely holds the property, and the master remains the owner of the property in the legal sense. How to distinguish between possession and ownership? The answer is to identify and define the boundary of the other party's right to operate the special property by means of the subjective intention of the parties to conclude the contract.
The rights of the slave as the holder include the right to dispose of the special property, which is a kind of management right that is close to the complete management right, including transfer, mortgage and other acts carried out for the benefit of the special property. The reason for giving it a close hat is that this right of disposition is limited: the creation of security would be regarded as a disguised abandonment of the proprietary property, except, of course, for the purpose of the operation of the proprietary property. At the same time, slaves could not be gifted from unique property, and if they were abandoned.
Third, promote the enthusiasm of investors
The limited liability system is a great creation of the market economy, and even generators and steam engines cannot be compared with it, because it is the greatest discovery. "Investors investing in an industry or trade generally bear joint and several liability, which makes investors cautious about investing for fear that the property under their name will be implicated due to business failure. You know, the trade risks of ancient Rome were even greater.
In the Mediterranean and its coastal trade, bad weather often leaves investors with huge debts. The genius invention of the exclusive property system as the limited noblemanship system in ancient Rome allowed investors to engage in various trading activities within the scope of the exclusive property by selecting slave spokespersons, thereby protecting investors' personal property from being burdened by commercial debts.
Limiting the possible liability before engaging in business activities is extremely important to promote the business trading activities of Roman investors.
As a counterpart to the contract, slaves have the capital to engage in commerce because of the establishment of the owner's unique property. Because through business activities, it can absorb profits for the owner, thereby increasing the owner's appreciation of himself or increasing his own unique products, so he is particularly active in the absorption of profits in business activities.