Athenian Democracy’s Dark Side

I myself have fallen into the trap of over Romanticizing Athenian Democracy.  

Most of the time people talking about Athens acknowledge the issue of them having Slavery and how Slaves weren’t even the only people denied the vote, Women, and “foreigners” couldn’t vote either.

I want to clarify something about the “foreigners” who were denied citizenship in Ancient Athens.  I’m a Far Leftist who wants to expand the vote even to so-called “Illegal Immigrants” who can’t even speak proper English.  But this issue in Ancient Athens went beyond that, there were people who had been living in Attica for Generations who the Athenians still saw as foreigners ineligible for citizenship.  I’ve also read contradictory things on whether or not “Bastards” could vote.

There is a desire to paint those issues as mere glitches that could have been patched out.  However Athens political system was built on more than just the technical facts of how Laws were made and enforced.  People praise how Athens was a “participatory” Democracy, how there was no such thing as an “ironic detachment from Politics”, how the word “Idiot” was first coined to insult those Citizens who seemed politically disengaged.  It’s not just that everyone who could Vote did, but that they didn’t simply vote on voting day and stop thinking about politics during their regular lives.

It’s easy to romanticize a society built on all the Citizens being actively politically engaged 24/7 when you aren’t thinking about why that was possible.  No one who qualified as a Citizen had a Job, not a Job as we would most strictly think of it.  The Manual Labor was all done by Slaves, from tilling the farms to mining in the mines to the household servants of the wealthier citizens.  In families that couldn’t afford household slaves the domestic labor was done by their Wives who also couldn't vote.  If anyone was doing paid Labor for a wage it was those non enfranchised “foreigners”.  In fact Athenian culture considered it shameful to be a worker.

People talk about how by 500 BC there were no longer any Property or Wealth requirements to Vote in Athens. The problem is even the absolute poorest landless person who could Vote was still part of a Privileged class benefiting from the systemic oppression/exploitation of the majority of the people living in Attica.

A certain kind of person, often Conservative leaning but not always, will talk about how the average citizen of the United States isn't as politically engaged as the average citizen of Ancient Athens as if that’s a failure on their part, as if they’re willing political ignorance is why our Democracy is failing.  But someone who has to work 40 hours a week to make sure they and their family don't starve to death doesn’t have the time to make themselves just as politically educated and informed as the people fortunate enough to be a Political YouTuber.

Remember that episode of The Mandalorian season 3 where they visit the planet that’s a direct Democracy but where all the work is done by the Droids?  On the one hand I like that this episode acknowledges that such a society is dependent on its Slaves, but it also does the House Elves thing by assuring us the Droids like their state of servitude.

I have an internal personal conflict in how I react to Sentient Robots or AI being used in ways like this.  I personally don’t think Artificial Intelligence becoming truly Sentient is theoretically possible, I’m fully prepared to accept being proven wrong if I see one show the same unambiguous signs of Sentience that so many fictional Robots have.  But right now I don’t think it will happen and I do think technology is the key to creating a Post-Capitalist Utopia.  So it’s frustrating that every fictionalization of a future society where machines greatly lighten humanity's workload presumes they will become Sentient.

But let’s return to the present.  A functioning Democracy where the people actually doing the work that keeps society functioning are also the ones making the decisions, is going to be a lot more complicated to figure out then a society where everyone has the ability to be a full time Politician.  

Every prior post on this Blog where I’ve even mildly looked to Athenian Democracy as a model to be emulated has been in the context favoring Direct Democracy over Representative Democracy.  In theory many fellow Communists also prefer Direct Democracy.  Usually the reason given for why Athenian Direct Democracy couldn’t work for a modern Nation-State is that Athens was a city-state and so true Direct Democracy can only work on a local scale.  However modern mass communication technologies have made it so geographical distance is no longer a valid obstacle to Direct Democracy.

So if there’s any reason to defend Representative Democracy it’s the issues I just talked about.  In a society where the Workers are the Citizens it’s going to be necessary for there to be some Citizens whose Job is Politics.

However I still think the current balance of power between the Representatives and the full Citizenry is tilted too far in favor of the Representatives, especially in The United States on the Federal Level. When the majority of the popular, by a significant margin, wants a Single Payer Healthcare System but the Government is still refusing to make that happen, it’s failing to be a Democracy at all, representative or not.  And now I’m worried I’m rambling too far off the initial topic of Athens.  

None of this changes that Athens is preferable to Sparta, and thar the more well known Critics of Athens from Xenophanes to Plato to Aristotle to Polybius to Plutarch to the Founding Fathers and Jacobin had basically the opposite problem with Athens.  They acted like Athens was a society where the lowest people and slaves held the power, or at least like their system was a slippery slope inevitably leading to that.  

Athens is also preferable to the Roman Republic as it was from 500-100 BC.  The Popularies tried to Reform Rome into a society that would still be far from a Communist Utopia but could at least not be as bad as Athens since it was at least possible for people with non-citizen Ancestors to become Citizens.  But that movement died with Fulvia, under Augustus and Claudians the Principate became no less Aristocratic than the Republic had been.