Quote 1 from Yavor Tarinski's new book "Horizons of Direct Democracy":
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It is well known that citizenship in Ancient Athens (508-322 BCE) - where the concept is said to have initially emerged - meant something radically different from what we have today. Although the Athenian society of that time was plagued by slavery and patriarchy, with slaves and women being excluded from political life, it nonetheless underwent a revolution that saw the establishment of democracy, or self-management by the citizenry. For the Ancient Athenians such as Aristotle, there was a clear distinction between a democratic system and elections for representatives - the former was based on popular assemblies and sortition, while the latter was viewed as the building block of oligarchy. Although critical of democracy, Aristotle underlines its grassroots character:
"A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well off, being in a majority, are in sovereign control of the government, an oligarchy lies in the hands of the rich and better born, those being few."
This understanding of democratic politics as popular self-management continues throughout the ages. Eighteenth-century thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau were well aware of the difference between democracy and representation: for Rousseau, when a government lays in the hands of the whole people, or of a majority of them, then we have a democratic society, while aristocracy or oligarchy is when the government is restructured to a small number of citizens (i.e. representatives). Similar was the stance on the issue of other prominent figures of the period. Thomas Paine, too, made a distinction between representation and democracy, understanding that in its original form the latter stood for a "society governing itself without the aid of secondary means."
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#Democracy #DirectDemocracy #SelfGovernance #Tarinski
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