kjkhoo at softhome.net wrote:
>
> Re what Grant Lee wrote --
>
> I don't know much about ancient Athens, but the little I know
> suggests the comparison with ancient Athens is either unfortunate or
> apt or both. There may have been a democracy for citizens, but it was
> founded on slavery.
It's more complicated than that. Even slaves, incidentally, in the ancient world did not oppose the _institution_ of slavery. The Spartacus rebellion was not against slavery as such but just a mass outbreak -- their hopes were to fight their way out of the 'empire' and establish an aread of their own in Germany, where they doubtless would themselves have owned slaves. Also, the nature of "defenses" of slavery in the ancient world (i.e. Greece & Rome) is a bit jumbled. Many even attched to or from the ruling classes based their defense _not_ on the rightness of slavery but of its practicality.
But in any case you should take a _much_ closer look at Athenian democracy. No one is proposing the whole Athenian social structure for the present (or future), but nevertheless it was quite remarkable. You might read Ellen Meiksins Wood, _Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy_. Its notes will refer to many other important works of the last half-century. The vast majority of Athenian citizens were non-slaveowning peasants and artisans, the "mob" attacked by Plato & Aristotle. And the major use of slaves _probably_ was as household servants in the homes of the wealthy, who had been denied (by the democratic revolution) the control over peasant labor enjoyed by all other ruling classes of tributary societies. Remember-- no grocery stores, no pre-ground flour, no laundromats, no refrigerators, no textile mills or clothing manufacturers, etc. Riches were useful for consumption only through a very large staff of household servants.
Athens was very nearly the ony place in the pre-modern world where it was not taken for granted, in the words of Mencius, that "Those who work with their minds rule, while those who work with their bodies are ruled. Those who are ruled produce food; those who rule are fed. That this is right is universally recognized everywhere under Heaven." Not quite "everywhere" Wood comments in the last chapter of her book.
Carrol