“The political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.” With these words, Marx described the Paris Commune of 1871. It “was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short term […] a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.” The political tradition of the Commune was inherited by the Russian soviets and inspired Lenin, who explained (...) the role of those governing bodies as a “reversion to primitive democracy.” Arthur Rosenberg, professor of Ancient History at Berlin University, tried in his book Democracy and Class Struggle in the Ancient World to offer historical ground for the ideas developed by Lenin in State and Revolution and compared ancient Athenian democracy to the contemporary German and Russian councils. During the 1920s, as a communist leader and MP, Rosenberg, recalling his ideas on Athenian democracy, criticized the political degeneration of the Russian workers’ State. He stressed how Soviet Russia, in limiting the power of the councils, had suppressed the governing body of socialist direct democracy. In his work Workers’ Councils, Dutch revolutionary Anton Pannekoek renewed Rosenberg’s criticism at the end of World War II, returning to the image of ancient democratic Athens as a forerunner of the socialist councils. (shrink)

This article aims to shed new light on the character of political history as written by Xenophon, by exploring the first two Books of the Hellenika, which, it is argued, implicity correct Thucydides’ judgment that the regime of the Five Thousand in Athens was the best Athenian regime during his lifetime. Thucydides and Xenophon thus appear to disagree about the best regime, a theme central to classical political philosophy. But when we consider Thucydides’ praise of this regime in light (...) of Xenophon’s Socratic defence of traditional political authorities, we see that the two treatments complement each other. Xenophon’s endorsement of a regime rooted in traditional authorities protects the Socratic way of life, while Thucydides’ praise of a non-conventional regime endorses those conditions that make such a life possible. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the role of ostracism in democratic Athens. I argue that the frequent expulsion of aristocrats by rival aristocrats in the predemocratic polis is the key to understanding the function of ostracism in the democratic polis. I show that aristocratic "politics of exile" was a fundamental political problem in the archaic polis and that democratic political power, symbolized by the institution of ostracism, was the polis' solution to the problem. In the archaic polis, the expulsion (...) of aristocrats often led to an endless cycle of exiles and returns and consequent political instability. In 508/7, the Athenian demos usurped the power over decisions of exile by banishing Isagoras and recalling Cleisthenes from exile. By taking control of decisions of exile, the Athenian demos took over political power insofar as power over decisions of exile had become synonymous with political power. The creation of the institution of ostracism, whereby the people decided collectively whether to banish a single citizen for ten years, provided not only a mechanism for the symbolic expression of democratic power, but also a means for the practical and ideological distinction between oligarchic and democratic rule. While aristocrats had banished their opponents without limit in numbers and duration of exile, the Athenian democracy decided each year whether to banish a single individual for a limited time period. In most years, the Athenian demos chose not to exercise the power of exile. Nevertheless, the annual question in the assembly served to remind aristocrats that the demos held the fundamental political power, and hence deterred aristocrats from attempting to overthrow the democracy. The limited nature of ostracism further deterred exiled aristocrats from attempting to return by force. Finally, the infrequent and moderate use of exile as a means of resolving political conflict helps to explain the extraordinary stability of the Athenian democracy. (shrink)

Greg Anderson, The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C. , xvii + 310 pp., 16 plates, $60/?37.50, ISBN 0 472 11320 8 . This article reviews the recent book of Greg Anderson and contributes to ongoing debates about the significance of Kleisthenes and the development of Athenian democracy.

This achievement of democracy was frankly admitted by its opponents. Among the works attributed to Xenophon is a short essay on Athenian democracy. ...

These collected papers construct a distinctive view of classical Athens and of Athenian democracy, a view which takes seriously the evidence of settlement archaeology and of art history. This evidence both casts new light on traditional questions and enables new questions to be asked, questions concerning the experience of being an Athenian citizen, how the institutions of democracy affected the Athenian economy, and how the rituals of religion related to the rituals of democratic politics. Unlike (...) books on Athenian democracy which focus on the Assembly and Council, this book gives full weight to women as well as men, slave as well as free, and the rural worker as well as the leisured man about town. Robin Osborne's work has been in the forefront of the resurgence of interest in Athenian law and Athenian religion; these essays are each placed in their scholarly context, and point the direction for future research. (shrink)

This article analyzes the actual interaction of private and public immunities in ancient Athens, and argues that ancient democracy echoed to a greater extent than traditionally assumed the general dynamics and normative foundations of deliberative democracy. Without denying the important differences that distinguish ancient democratic Athens from modern democracy, I analyze the Athenian situation in light of Habermas's theory of deliberation, and argue that civic and individual liberties in Athens were democracy-enabling because they undergirded the (...) exercise of collective political power. In Athens, the considerable respect accorded to the rule of law (as distinct from majority rule), legitimated private autonomy and created the circumstances that made collective self-government possible. Thus, this article contradicts the dichotomous approach to liberty held by some of the most prominent critics of Athens such as Isaiah Berlin and Benjamin Constant. (shrink)

_Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Athenian Democracy_ delivers a fresh and wide-ranging analysis of the uses and reinterpretations of ancient Greek democracy from the late Middle Ages to the XXI century, offering a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to this important topic.

Writing a history of ancient Greece, in periods of political turbulence and transition, involved the construction of an edifying platform for civil conduct. Britain, 1770-1850, was one such period. In examining Athenian democracy the British historians of the late eighteenth century, like William Mitford and John Gillies, found a convenient channel to articulate their private political preferences and antipathies, thereby accentuating the ideological antagonism of the post-revolutionary age. Athenian liberalism was deliberately drawn from oblivion only to be (...) set as a constitutional example to avoid, whereas the merits of the mixed British constitution were distinctly exposed. The British Utilitarians, by contrast, produced a case on behalf of representative government that included the basic characteristics of democracy and which witnessed its minimum prototype in ancient Athens. George Grote assumed the task of upsetting the conventional idea of Athens, thus perpetuating the typical association of Greek historiography with contemporary political discussion. (shrink)

Scholars have generally held that Xenophon the Athenian favoured oligarchic constitutions and was therefore opposed to the Athenian democracy. Yet Xenophon's writings often seem to display remarkable sympathy for the democracy, and the issue is complicated by the difficulty of assigning any ancient author to a definite place on the political spectrum. Using the categories that M. Walzer employs to analyse modern social critics, this study finds that although Xenophon can take an external/rejectionist approach to the (...) criticism of the Athenian democracy, he more commonly takes an internal/immanent stance. Moreover, his works sometimes seem to express a sympathy for the democracy that extends beyond a patriotic desire for the betterment of his native city regardless of constitution to a solidarity with the foundational ideology of the democratic regime. This suggests, among other things, that the ideological hegemony of the people over the traditional aristocracy in fourth-century Athens was wider than is usually thought; it is reflected not only in the speeches of the active politicians, the orators, who needed the approval of the masses to win honour in the city, but also in the writings of a politically uninvolved philosopher, who had no clear, practical motivation for supporting democratic ideology. (shrink)

This essay considers the tradition of criticism against Athenian democracy, in both ancient and modern times. Often this critical tradition has been seen to adduce greater interest than the very democratic experience from which it arose; in this it has been aided, in part, by the asserted absence of an ancient theory of democracy. Yet there are significant traces of a democratic theory in the ancient sources, which ought to serve both as a theoretical and ideological riposte (...) to the critics. Some of the modern objections to classical Athenian democracy take up the argument of the ancient critics and display an anti-democratic orientation. Others, however, are motivated by a certain sensibility, grown out of liberalism and the legal state, as well as the emancipation of women and the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, these objections are sometimes lacking in historical perspective. If we reassess Athenian democracy, it may yet be seen to constitute a useful point of reference, at a time when the current model of democracy finds its legitimacy questioned.2. (shrink)