Democracy I
Thomas Mitchell's Athens: A History of the World’s First Democracy is a great work of classical history. It ranks with the Italian Ferrero's and the German Mommsen's histories of the Roman republic in quality, breadth, and political insight. Mitchell is a professor at Trinity College in Ireland. After decades of our scorched earth cultural revolution, you have to dig pretty deep in the ruins of “old Europe” for such an extraordinary find.
In his epilogue, Mitchell explains why Athens remains acutely relevant at the end of our era of progress. He outlines the growing failures of modern democracy, failures needing to be rectified for any democratic reform and revival. Mitchell writes, “Representative democracy in its modern guise seems to be gliding inexorably towards oligarchy” — it's not gliding towards, it's already there.
Oligarchy is one of the still useful political terms bequeath to us by Ancient Greece. Simply, it is the rule of the few over the many. Mitchell essentially adds oligarchy is politics where “political influence means personal gain.” For the Greeks, in opposition was democracy – the rule of the many. Democratic political influence means each and every citizen participates in shaping the greater public good. Mitchell writes,
“In the Funeral Oration, Pericles emphasized the motivating power of self-rule and the manner in which it inspired loyalty and moved people to act with greater courage and decisiveness in pursuing actions that they themselves had deliberated and decided. High participation and benefits that came with it were to prove and enduring source of the stability and capability of the democracy.”
Mitchell then rightfully indicts the present,
“But the Athenian achievement also has lessons for modern developed democracies, which have increasingly eroded the role of the people and are now pale shadows of the Athenian concept of government by the people.”
There are numerous reasons for this disenfranchisement of the people from modern democracy, the greatest cause the destruction of all politics except electoral politics. Elections are the essential final decision-making step of a healthy democratic system, not the only one. Today, the rest of politics no longer exists. “The trend of modern political thought and practice is to confine the role of the people to the electoral function. Schumpeter (Austrian economist) called it the 'rule of the politicians', not of the people.” Mitchell continues, “But even the electoral role has been diluted and tarnished by the failure of modern democracies to create fair electoral processes.”
The American election system has been compromised in all sorts of way. Most detrimental by defining democracy exclusively through campaigns as campaigns became defined by the methods and practices of industrial business. There is nothing democratic about marketing and advertising, polls and thirty-seconds ads, mass phonebanks and mailers, or over the last half-century, the professionalization of campaigns as they became just another business, a very lucrative business for a few.
As campaigns became a business, their defining medium became money. Mitchell writes,
“US Supreme Court, which held that it is not an acceptable governmental objective 'to level electoral opportunities or equalize the financial resources of the candidates.' The Court considered that a limitation on campaign spending would constitute and infringement of freedom of speech. This is a far cry from the Athenian determination to root out corruption and forestall the possibility of any power group being able to control or manipulate the decision-making of government. It opens the door to the rule of money, the antithesis of all that democracy represents.”
Bloomberg reports this last election saw $17 billion spent. The excellent organization Open Secrets shows less than 1% of Americans contributed all this money, 0.48% contributed 75% of it, and 10 individuals alone placed over $1.2 billion into federal elections over the last decade. The elections' process is bought and sold a billion times over before any votes are counted. If this isn't oligarchy, I don't what is.
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This has led to a completely and entirely unaccountable system. The foundation of Athenian democracy, every American founder understood this, was holding power accountable. Mitchell writes,
“Another notable feature of the democracy that contributed to unity and stability was its diligence in protecting against two of the most insidious threats to good government: corruption and factionalism. The rigour of its system of accountability for all entrusted with public office left little scope for malfeasance or corrupt behaviour.”
He adds,
“When the Athenian demos delegated power to office-holders, that power came with a rigorous regime of accountability for its use. In modern democracies, where the power to rule is delegated in its entirety, there is no such regime. The electorate can replace those who no longer command its favour at the next election, but the prospect of losing one's seat is feeble safeguard against bad government or abuse of power.”
In American politics reelection rates are well over 90%. In the starkest contrast, offices of all Athens' magistrates were held for only a year, with no ability to be chosen for another year. And at the end of their year term, there was a rigorous accounting of each magistrate’s actions with the ability to sanction the actions of all persons who had held any office. Accountability of any and all office-holders was the foremost democratic function. In America today, power is completely unaccountable.
Another great deficiency in today's politics, the heart and soul of any democracy, is the ability to have healthy discussions and constructive deliberations. The overwhelming majority of Americans have zero role in setting any political agenda or defining solutions. Mitchell writes of the present condition,
“The concept of democracy, however, still retains its allure, but it is difficult to see how it can sustain its claim to be the system that ensures the government of a state is carried out in line with the wishes of the majority of the people unless the people have a more meaningful role in debating and shaping the significant decisions that will deeply affect their lives... It can mean more than skeletal electoral democracy.”
Adding,
“The pride in citizenship, the public spirited communitarian ethos, the sense of having a real say in directing the public good – characteristics that gave Athens its social cohesion and unprecedented levels of political government – are all becoming causalities of modern disempowerment.”
Americans have no sense of ownership of politics. Their ability to direct the public good exists not at all. The political agenda is set by the political class and the corporate media. Social cohesion frays as factional predatory oligarchy creates division keeping the majority powerless.
Democracy is also a distributed information and communication system. In the past century, information and communication technologies have undergone the greatest revolution in human history. Democracy has lost out across the board. Any equivalents of the Ancient Athenian agora, assembly, council, juries, and the demes, where the citizenry interacted, learned, discussed, and debated, exist not at all, or are so dysfunctional they may as well not exist.
Mitchell correctly points to the deteriorated role of the established press. At America's founding, a free, massively distributed press both helped shape the political agenda and held officials accountable, today regarding the latter, the press holds no one accountable, while of the former, the media overwhelmingly advocate gross private interests. He writes,
“A vigorous free press is potentially an important arm of healthy democracy...providing a continuous flow of accurate information... duty to hold the government account, to subject the performance of government to rigorous scrutiny and to investigate any evidence of irregularity or corruption.”
Then correctly diagnoses the current dilemma,
“But in many respects the mass media are failing the public...shifting from informing to entertaining...concentration of significant news organization in fewer hands leading to powerful media conglomerates that have dangerous levels of political leverage.”
Our corporate media is overwhelmingly a propaganda tool of oligarchic control. A process developed over the last century with the growth in power of the industrial corporation and the development of broadcast mass media.