For the people

Homer, playwrights, eloquent political writers, historians and philosophers left comments, speeches and books about how Greeks governed themselves. In addition, thousands of inscriptions mention or describe persons, decisions, and institutions of political importance. Most of the surviving evidence, including that from ostracism, the ten-year banishment of politicians voters perceived dangerous, comes from Athens.

Tradition has it that in late sixth century BCE, a man named Kleisthenes, grandson of the tyrant Kleisthenes of Sicyon, a polis in Peloponnesos, founded Athenian democracy. He defeated the Athenian tyrant and disbanded the parties supporting monarchy, oligarchy, and plutocracy.

Furthermore, Kleisthenes reorganized Attica and Athens to give a governing role to the majority. That way freedom, justice and equality would become the pillars of democracy, rule by the people. He made certain that all citizens gathering together in the ecclesia or assembly had the supreme authority.

However, the archons, the nine highest state magistrates, were elected from the ranks of the wealthiest Athenians and the Eupatridae, (well-born Athenians), had more chances being elected to priesthoods serving a variety of gods.

Kleisthenes established direct democracy in Athens because the few powerful men of his time had brought Athens to the brink of civil war. Rich farmers had enslaved so many indebted peasants that the polis was headed for violent class conflict.

Athens had a democratic constitution and government for about a century and a half, down to its defeat by Macedonia. Athenians had their ups and downs with this most difficult but enormously satisfying form of government. In the 330s BCE, they even invented a goddess of democracy.

In his Suppliant Women (Hiketides), Euripides has Theseus, one of the earliest kings of Athens, praise democracy. He tells the Herald from monarchical Thebes that “Athens is free; the people reign, refusing to give power to the rich. Poor Athenians, no less that rich Athenians, share political power” (405-408).

And in the Funeral Oration, Thucydides records Pericles honoring the war dead with his eloquent and stirring defense and praise of democratic Athens, the School of Hellas:

“Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands of all people, not the few. Athenian citizens, rich and poor, are equal before the law. When we choose public servants, it’s the personal ability that matters, not membership to a particular class…. Just because we love the beautiful, we don’t go overboard. And neither our love of the things of the mind makes as soft. Wealth is for the benefit of the polis, not for boasting. Poor people need not be ashamed to admit they are poor. The real shame is not taking practical steps to escape from poverty. Each Athenian is interested not merely in his own affairs, but the affairs of the polis… We don’t say a man who cares less about public affairs is merely minding his own business. We say he has no business here at all,” he wrote (The Peloponnesian War 2.37, 40).

Athenians picked their civil servants by lot or vote: all serving for a year and, with few exceptions, not reelected to the same office. They taxed the rich and, in fact, they obliged them to fund certain state functions like festivals of military construction. Elected civilians (strategoi) headed the military.

Athenians also exercised oversight over high officials: how did they spend public money and exercise powers under their authority? Those officials who made a profit from selling favors or came under the influence of merchants, politicians or foreign agents were accused and tried in court for sycophancy.

This democratic virtue gave Athens a leading role in Greek politics and civilization. Yet forces inside and outside of Greece weakened democracy.

Alexander the Great and his vast empire had something to do with the decline of democracy in Greece: invigorating the old regimes of oligarchy, plutocracy and monarchy. Then the Romans formalized the arbitrary rule of the powerful. Democracy had its glorious time. It became a dream.

That dream was resurrected millennia later in modern Europe and America. Like in the Athens of Kleisthenes, democracy in the modern world came to life because of the excesses of the rulers: oligarchs, plutocrats, and tyrants all.

The United States fought the king of England and his authoritarian representatives and armies in America. Yet the country did not embrace real democracy.

Excerpted from: 'Can Democracy Save America?'. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org