>>> owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com 06/19/02 11:59PM >>>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 15:48:43 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: FW:
>>> owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com 06/19/02 11:59PM >>>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 15:48:43 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: FW: The anti-imperialism of fools
The sophists were the first defenders of
democracy -- meaning rule by the _demos_, the people (in modern
terminology, the working class)
This is surely not right. And it seems to me to be a crassly ahistorical way of expressing class conflict. First of all, it implies that democracy is equivalent to socialism, rule by the working class, or the dictatorship of the proletariat - that is what the above says. That's plain wrong. Secondly it ignores the role of the merchant class in Greek society, who were the main promoters of democracy against aristocracy. Thirdly, if one were really determined to find a 'working class' somehow analogous to the modern capitalist working class, then surely better candidates would be the peasants and the slaves. The fact is that from the time of the Greeks up until the 18thC bourgeois revolutions and beyond, democracy as a discourse has been shaped by the merchants and capitalists who have presumed to speak in the name of the people as a whole. It is not much different today. Finally, I believe that Greek democracy sought to exclude slaves and women from their 'people's power', in!
o! ther words the majority of the people. A plebian ideology to be sure, but rule by the working class? No that has never been the nature of the democratic project.
Tahir ("serious political thinker")The sophists were the first defenders of democracy -- meaning rule by the _demos_, the people (in modern terminology, the working class)
This is surely not right. And it seems to me to be a crassly ahistorical way of expressing class conflict. First of all, it implies that democracy is equivalent to socialism, rule by the working class, or the dictatorship of the proletariat - that is what the above says. That's plain wrong. Secondly it ignores the role of the merchant class in Greek society, who were the main promoters of democracy against aristocracy. Thirdly, if one were really determined to find a 'working class' somehow analogous to the modern capitalist working class, then surely better candidates would be the peasants and the slaves. The fact is that from the time of the Greeks up until the 18thC bourgeois revolutions and beyond, democracy as a discourse has been shaped by the merchants and capitalists who have presumed to speak in the name of the people as a whole. It is not much different today. Finally, I believe that Greek democracy sought to exclude slaves and women from their 'people's power', in!
o! ther words the majority of the people. A plebian ideology to be sure, but rule by the working class? No that has never been the nature of the democratic project.
Tahir ("serious political thinker")