“Democracy” the word and democracy the form of political life both began in ancient Greece. The word comes from a combination of the Greek noun demos, meaning “peo-ple” or “common people,” and the verb kratein, “to rule.” For the Greeks, demokratia meant specifically “rule or government by the common people”—that is, those who were uneducated, unsophisticated, and poor. Because these people made up the major-ity of the citizenry, democracy was identified, as it often is today, with majormajor-ity rule. But it is important to note that this majority consisted mainly of a single class, the demos.
Many Greeks thus understood democracy to be a form of class rule—government by and for the benefit of the lower or working class. As such, it stood in contrast to aristoc-racy, rule by the aristoi—the “best”—those supposedly most qualified to govern.
The center of activity in ancient Greece, which was not united under a single government, was the self-governing polis, or city-state. Athens, the largest polis, pro-vides the best example of a democratic city-state. Throughout most of the second half of the fifth century BCE, the period renowned as the Golden Age of Athens, Athenians called their polis a democracy. Not everyone willingly accepted this state of affairs, but those who did seemed to embrace democracy enthusiastically. This attitude is evident in the words attributed to Pericles, the most famous leader of the Athenian democracy, in his Funeral Oration:
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others.
We do not copy our neighbors but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred for the public service, not as a matter of privilege but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country [polis] whatever be the obscurity of his condition.1
Pericles’s words hint at the tension between aristocrats and democrats in ancient Athens. The aristocrats generally believed that only the well-established citizens,
those with substantial property and ties to the noble families, were wise enough to govern. Pericles and the democrats, however, believed that most citizens were ca-pable of governing if only they could afford to take the time away from their farms and work. To this end, the Athenian democracy paid citizens an average day’s wages to enable them, poor as well as rich, to go to the assembly and decide policy by the direct vote of the citizens. Citizens also were paid to serve on juries, sometimes for as much as a year at a time. As further testimony to their faith in the demos, the Athenians filled a number of their political offices not by election but by randomly selecting citizens through a lottery.
Pericles’ Funeral Oration also suggests another distinction of great significance to the Athenians, that between the public-spirited citizen (polites) and the self-inter-ested individual who preferred a private life (idiotes). In Athens, Pericles said,
an Athenian citizen does not neglect the state [polis] because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.2
Even more significant to Athenian democracy was another aspect of citizenship, as Athenians understood it. To be a citizen, one had to be an adult, free, male Athenian.
Women, resident foreigners, and slaves (who together made up a majority of the population) were all excluded. In fact, only about one out of ten inhabitants of Athens was a citizen. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, then, it appears that Athenian democracy was hardly democratic at all.
This judgment becomes even more striking when we consider that Athenian de-mocracy provided little if any protection for minority rights. Although citizens were equal in the eyes of the law, this did not mean that any citizen was free to express his opinions regardless of how unpopular those opinions might be. The Athenian as-sembly sometimes banished citizens temporarily from Athens, without trial and even without legal charges being brought against them, simply because the majority of the assembly thought these citizens posed a danger to the polis. This was the practice of ostracism, so called because of the shell or piece of pottery (ostrakon) on which Athenian citizens wrote the names of those they wished to banish.
Sometimes the punishment for voicing unpopular views was even harsher. We know this especially from the case of Socrates (469–399 BCE), the philosopher who saw himself as a gadfly whose mission it was to sting the sluggish citizens of Athens out of complacency by raising questions about their most basic beliefs. “I never cease to rouse each and every one of you,” he said, “to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.”3 In 399 BCE, when the democratic faction was in control, some citizens stung back, falsely accusing Socrates of religious impiety and corrupting the morals of the youth of Athens. Socrates was tried, convicted, and condemned to death by poison. Thus Athens, the first democ-racy, created the first martyr to the cause of free thought and free speech.
In the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, however, those who favored democracy found themselves facing a different criticism. This was the complaint that democracy is a dangerously unstable form of government. Foremost among those who made this complaint was Socrates’s student and friend, Plato (427–347 BCE).
Plato believed that democracy is dangerous because it puts political power into the hands of ignorant and envious people. Because they are ignorant, he argued, the people will not know how to use political power for the common good. Be-cause they are envious they will be concerned only with their own good, which they will seek to advance by plundering those who are better off. Because they are both ignorant and envious they will be easily swayed by demagogues—literally, leaders of the demos—who will flatter them, appeal to their envy, and turn citizen against citizen. From democracy, in short, comes civil war and anarchy, the destruction of the city-state. When democracy has left the polis in this wretched condition, accord-ing to Plato’s analysis, the people will cry out for law and order. They will then rally around anyone strong enough to bring an end to anarchy. But such a person will be a despot, Plato said, a tyrant who cares nothing about the polis or the people because he cares only for power. So from democracy, rule by the people, it is but a series of short steps to tyranny.4
This argument against democracy found favor with a number of political think-ers, including Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Aristotle maintained that de-mocracy is one of six basic kinds of political regimes or constitutions. Governing power, he said in his Politics, may be in the hands of one person, a few people, or many; and this power may be exercised either for the good of the whole community—in which case it is good or true—or solely for the good of the rulers—in which case it is bad or perverted. By combining these features, Aristotle arrived at the six-cell scheme illustrated in Figure 2.1.
Two features of Aristotle’s classification of regimes are especially noteworthy.
The first, of course, is that he followed Plato in considering democracy to be bad or undesirable. For Aristotle, democracy is a corrupt form of rule because the demos tends to be shortsighted and selfish. The common people will recklessly pursue their own interests by taking property, wealth, and power from the few with little or no regard for the peace and stability of the polis as a whole. But this serves their interests only in the short run, and in the end they will bring chaos, and ultimately tyranny, to the whole polis.
In Book V of the Politics Aristotle analyzes the close connection between democracy and tyranny by showing how the former can and often does turn into the latter. First, a demagogue persuades the common people that their democracy
FIGURE 2.1 Aristotle’s classification of regimes.
In whose interest?
One
The few
The many Rule by
Public Self
Monarchy Tyranny
Aristocracy Oligarchy
Polity Democracy
“True” “Perverted”
is in grave danger from some real or imagined enemy, whether foreign or domestic.
Next, he endears himself to the people by presenting himself as their friend and their savior from this foe. He then starts a war against this real or imagined enemy, based on bogus reasons which the gullible people accept (fear having made them even more gullible), and leaving them “always in need of a leader.” This war serves to distract the people, preventing them from paying attention to what the demagogue-turned-tyrant is doing domestically, including undermining the constitution, mak-ing his cronies and hangers-on wealthy at public expense, and expandmak-ing his powers into areas that were previously constitutionally off-limits. The tyrant maintains and increases his power by distrusting anyone outside his inner circle; he tells lies that the people believe; he plants spies in their midst to ferret out critics and dissidents;
he withholds information and practices censorship; he divides the people among themselves by “sowing dissensions” and “creating quarrels” over real or imaginary issues of little or no importance, thereby turning the people against each other so
Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY
that they wrongly see their fellow citizens as enemies and don’t pay attention to what the tyrant is doing. The tyrant also implicates as many people as possible in his crimes, so that they too are guilty; he subverts the administration of justice by “alter-ing the constitution” and putt“alter-ing innocent people on trial and lett“alter-ing guilty men go unpunished if they are willing to serve him; he uses the courts and other agencies of government to help his friends and harm his enemies; he distracts the people with spectacles and entertainments; he makes some people beholden and loyal to him by enriching them at public expense. And, above all, the tyrant maintains the appearance of being a good man and a just ruler: he pretends to be a “guardian of the public treasury” even as he plunders it by spending recklessly; he will seem to be a “steward of the public rather than a tyrant”; and—not least—he will “appear to be particularly devout in his worship of the gods.” By these means, Aristotle notes, the tyrant lulls the people into a deep civic sleep. If and when they wake up it’s likely to be too late to retrieve their rights and restore their liberties.
Another noteworthy feature of Aristotle’s classification of constitutions or regime-types is the inclusion of polity, the good form of rule by the many. For Aristotle, polity differs from democracy because it mixes elements of rule by the few with elements of rule by the many. The virtue of this mixed constitution or government is that each group can keep an eye on the other—the well-to-do few on the many, the many on the well-to-do few—so that neither class can pursue its inter-est at the expense of the common interinter-est. Aristotle also sugginter-ested that polity may differ from democracy in its distribution of wealth and property; in a democracy, that is, the many will be poor. This is simply the way things usually are, according to Aristotle, and there is little one can do about it. However, in those rare but for-tunate circumstances where most of the people are neither rich nor poor but “have a moderate and sufficient property,” one can expect the many to rule in a prudent manner.5 This is because the many, when they are “middle class,” will avoid the excesses of the envious poor and the arrogant rich. Seeing the good of the polis as their own good, the middling many will work to maintain moderation, peace, and stability in the city-state.
In the final analysis, Aristotle believed polity to be good—he even suggested that it is the best of the six regimes—while democracy is bad. But he also argued that democracy is better than tyranny and oligarchy because many heads are better judges than one or a few. Even if none of the common people is an especially good judge of what is right or wrong, good or bad, their collective judgment is still better than that of any individual or small group, including a group of experts. This is true, Aristotle said, in the same way that “a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single income.”6 Besides, democracy gives more men the chance to participate in the active life of the citizen—to rule and be ruled in turn, as he put it.
Yet even as Aristotle was celebrating the citizen and the polis, this way of life was falling victim to a much larger political unit—empire. First under the leadership of Philip of Macedon (382–336 BCE), and then under his son (and Aristotle’s student), Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), the Hellenic Empire spread across Greece, throughout the Middle East, and all the way to India and Egypt. As the empire con-centrated all power in the hands of the emperor, the self-governing city-state died, and rule by the many, whether in the form of democracy or polity, perished with it.