All i was trying to say was that the Eastern Empire's social relations of production remain based on slavery, The middle class - merchants, artisans are taxed to death. In the west fuedalist relations of production allow for the revolutionising of the Means of Production. Witness the spread of Watermills then Windmills in Western Europe. Domesday records 4800 watermills in England alone, 1 for every 50 people.
Industrial changes in the West are vast by comparison to elsewhere, some historians now think in terms of a medieval industrial revolution.
True many processes came from china - steel - but in the west the Fuedal division of europe, provides the ground for independent initiative. By both lords etc and labourers. Consider the agricultural revolution, revolutions in metal working, cast iron, glass making, clock making, leather working, tanning dyeing, cloth making and spinning, paper, printing and a huge amount more. Many ideas and much knowledge comes from china but, its in the fuedal west that they become a common and widespread part of the economy.
Witness western devolpment of banking and finance, Merchant banks, credit mechanisms, Foreign exchange contracts.....
Developments in shipbuilding and construction.........
Witness the development of western Knights and how emperor Manuel I Komnenos, for example, re-equipped his elite cavalry in the style of western knights. Witness also how Armour disapears from Byzantine cavalry, and how much of what they have comes from the west.
Why does Byzantium fall, because the local populations welcome the Arabs as liberators from the horribly oppressive huge Byzantine
state, that taxes them to death and is religiously intollerent. Witness the uprising in syria, prior to the Arab liberation - NOT CONQUEST.
Witness how the armenians welcome the seljuks. The arabs and seljuks, as with the germans, 100s of years earlier , have no state beuocracy to fund.
You cant understand the destruction of the Roman Empire with out understanding the Arabs were liberators, they were welcomed, yes by christians as liberators, theres more going on in history than battles.
Granted in the 6th 7th 8th centuries the East Roman empire maybe the richest and most advanced empire in the world, granted it produced a high culture, granted people from the west were awe struck by it's wealth, granted for a time it's armies were superb. But you have to understand it's decline and fall, it's more sophisticated and complex than being unlucky in a few battles.