Athenian Direct Democracy

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characteristic of the Athenian democracy at its peak period, in relation to any other system in the ancient world until today, was a collective conscious effort for the continuous broadening of political democracy and, to a point, of economic democracy. The importance today of the Athenian experience is not only that it shows the possibility, under certain preconditions, for the organizing and functioning of present-day society on the basis of the principles of direct democracy, which are the only ones that may secure real democracy. Its importance reflects also in the fact that it illustrates the incompatibility of political democracy and economic oligarchy.

We can wonder what the causes of the failure of Athenian Democracy were:

The foundations of this democracy were not solid, however, and that is the cause of the decline, which led to its final disappearance once set in motion. The economic factors that supported Pericles’ political democracy disappeared quickly. First, the relative economic equality, brought about by the Persian Wars, was completely temporary. The expansion of trade that had followed the Persian War led to concentration of economic power and greater inequality in the distribution of income and wealth.

However, the final failure of Athenian democracy was not due to the innate weaknesses of direct democracy but, firstly, due to the fact that it always remained partial, embracing only part of its population, and, second, that it was never completed by a corresponding economic democracy. This fact implies that any attempt at deepening political democracy today, through the establishment of direct democratic institutions, is condemned to failure if it is not accompanied by a parallel process of deepening economic democracy. It should not be forgotten that if economic inequality undermined and finally led to the collapse of Athenian democracy, such economic inequality is not only compatible with the political inequality of present day a liberal oligarchy, but it also forms the basis that reproduces it.

What lessons did Athenian Democracy teach us?

The lessons we could draw from the Athenian democracy are as follows: first that a political democracy that is not based on economic democracy is a contradiction, and, secondly, that today, democracy (in the sense of direct participation of citizens in the political and economic decisions that affect their everyday life) implies the biggest possible political and economic decentralization.

Based on these lessons, the fundamental question is what vision of democracy could be defined today, so that the seed which the Athenian democracy is could be fertilized. The answer to this question becomes particularly relevant today, at the close of a century which has seen not only the collapse of the socialist project in its two forms - the existing socialism of the East and the social democracy of the West).

It is important to resolve this issue especially with the present day ecological crisis, which is susceptible to two solutions: one solution implies radical decentralization. The economic effectiveness of the renewable forms of energy (solar, wind), which provide unlimited and clean energy, depends crucially on the organization of social and economic life in smaller units. However, this solution has already been marginalized by the capitalist system, precisely because it is not compatible with today’s concentration of economic and political power. On the opposite, alternative solutions are being advanced which are supposed to concentrate many advantages of renewable energy, but without necessitating any radical changes in the dominant model of development. For instance, thermonuclear rectors are promoted as clean and safe.

Bibliography:

K. Marx, Pre-capitalist Economic Formations (Lawrence and Wishart, 1964), individual labour as the condition of the

2.Encyclopeadia Brittanica, 1986 ed., s.v. “Greco-Roman Civilization”, by Paul Petit.

3. K. Paparregopoulos , History of the Greek Nation, ed. N. Bees, vol. Al (1955), p. 218.

4. Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution

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