A Greek essayist c. 420 BC argued that Athens’s radical democracy, giving the vote to every adult male citizen, resulted in the poor having total power to impose their will on the rich. Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party, must dream of such a world.
The essayist agrees that, since the poor row the ships which control the Athenian empire, they have a right to enjoy political power which allows them to serve their own interests in the weekly Assemblies. But he thinks that, while the educated rich are most concerned about what is just and good, the common poor are ignorant, disorderly good-for-nothings. Their power simply ensures that they can satisfy their own lawless needs. Further, whatever the people vote to do can be revoked: they can always find excuses for changing their minds. But if any decision they are persuaded to take is disastrous, there is no mercy for those who did the persuading.
If the best people held sway, they would never allow ‘lunatics to become members of the Assembly’s steering committee, let alone speak in Assembly, or even attend it’. But the people do not want good government, they just want to rule. Indeed, they are paid to serve as jurors in the courts and make whatever judgments they like. Slaves and foreigners are treated almost as if they were free citizens.
Further, it is the rich who undertake public duties: they fund the army and pay for the triremes and crews that run the empire. They pay for the annual festivals and dramatic competitions, ‘for the common people think that they deserve to get money for singing and running and dancing and sailing in the ships, so that they get more and the rich become poorer’.
In fact, wealthy Athenians mostly welcomed such duties. Democritus argued that a community became strong through the ‘concord’ that developed when the rich were generous to the poor, whether in public duties or general charitable works, e.g. ransoming prisoners of war, providing dowries and so on. The rich were honoured for doing so. There will be no such nonsense in Polanski’s world. As his sixth-form debating society speech implies, he will be the one giving out your money to his chums.
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