Macedonia and the European Union

[Risto the Great]

I agree Bill.
But for the sake of clarifying a point. Greece did not invent democracy ... Greece merely invented a belief that they invented democracy.

[Bill77]

I agree Bill.
But for the sake of clarifying a point. Greece did not invent democracy ... Greece merely invented a belief that they invented democracy.

Totaly agree Risto. along with many other Belief in there imaginary minds and there invented Nation. But thats another thread and already covered

[Spartan]

The ancient Athenians invented democracy. If there is evidence to the contrary, Id like to see it.

[astibo]

The ancient Athenians invented democracy. If there is evidence to the contrary, Id like to see it.

Oligarchy would be the bether word

[George S.]

If Macedonia gets into EU & Nato it's sure as hell going to be pushed around & dictated to.This is going to be done by the so called democracies.It's going to lose it's sovereignity.

[George S.]

astibo oligarchy is the rule by the few its not democracy.DEmos means people cracy means rule by.For the people by the people.

[astibo]

astibo oligarchy is the rule by the few its not democracy.DEmos means people cracy means rule by.For the people by the people.

I know, i was trying to say that there was oligarchy in athens not democracy

[Bill77]

The ancient Athenians invented democracy. If there is evidence to the contrary, Id like to see it.

There is plenty of evidence the modern day Hellenes know nothing about it. You would think if someone started something they would be masters of it. Please don't take offence, My intention was not to atack you personaly or your post.

Also. could you Briefly explain what you think Democracy is?

[Risto the Great]

The ancient Athenians invented democracy. If there is evidence to the contrary, Id like to see it.

It appears to be the case that they developed a form of democracy never seen before.
They were not Greeks, nor are Greeks ancient Athenians.

[Spartan]

Oligarchy would be the bether word

Actually, it was Sparta (and some others) that had oligarchies.
Athens , at some point during the 6th century bc, adopted a democracy.

I know, i was trying to say that there was oligarchy in athens not democracy

Actually it was a Democracy, albeit an aristocratic one, if that makes any sense. The peloponesian wars were in large a conflict of political ideologies. Athens and her allies were the enemies of the oligarchial/monarchial states.

[Spartan]

Also. could you Briefly explain what you think Democracy is?

Its simple actually, the definition is in the word.
A state ruled by the people.

[Spartan]

It appears to be the case that they developed a form of democracy never seen before.

Of course it hadnt been seen before, it wass the first one!
But I agree, it wasnt like the democracies of today. How could it be? it was from 2000 years ago.

I dont know if you remember Risto, but we had a good conversation about this about a year ago when I first joined the forum. Ill see if I can dig up our old posts.

[The LION will ROAR]

The ancient Athenians invented democracy. If there is evidence to the contrary, Id like to see it.

Hi spartan, Athens was not the first to invent democracy from what i understand..
One of the earliest instances of a civilization with a democracy was that founded in the republics of ancient India, which were established roughly somethime before the 6th century BC. These republics were known as Maha Janapadas, and among these states was Vaishali (in what is now Bihar) would be the world's first ever republic. It is interesting to note that The Republic of India is currently the largest democracy in the world, and so argueably also the oldest.

What is democracy?

http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/ss/ch11.htm

The conclusion drawn in the first part was that, assuming that the ultimate cause of the present multidimensional crisis is the institutional framework which reproduces the present concentration of power at all levels, the way out of this crisis should be in terms of a new institutional framework securing an equal distribution of power, i.e. democracy. But, what is democracy? Everybody talks about democracy today but, in fact, few words, apart perhaps from socialism, have been so widely abused during the twentieth century as the word “democracy”. It is therefore important, before we discuss the proposal for a new liberatory project in terms of an inclusive democracy, to examine the meaning of democracy itself.
The usual way in which the meaning of democracy has been distorted, mostly by liberal academics and politicians but also by libertarian theoreticians, is by confusing the presently dominant oligarchic system of representative “democracy” with democracy itself. Thus, a modern textbook on the topic states that “the word democracy comes from the Greek and literally means rule by the people”.[1] So, the author, having asserted that democracy is a kind of “rule” (an error repeated even by some libertarians today), goes on to argue that if ruling is taken to mean the activity of reaching authoritative decisions that result in laws and regulations binding upon society, then it is obvious that (apart from occasional referendums) only a small minority of individuals can be rulers in modern, populous societies. So, for the definition to be operational, ruling must be taken in the much weaker sense of choosing the rulers and influencing their decisions.[2]
However, as I will try to show below, the modern concept of democracy has hardly any relation to the classical Greek conception. Furthermore, the current practice of adding several qualifying adjectives to the term democracy has further confused the meaning of it and created the impression that several forms of democracy exist. Thus, liberals refer to “modern”, “liberal”, “representative”, or “parliamentary” democracy, social democrats talk about “social”, “economic” or “industrial” democracy, and, finally, Leninists used to speak about “soviet” democracy, and, later, “people’s democracies” to describe the countries of “actually existing socialism”.
Still, as this chapter will attempt to show, there is only one form of democracy at the political level, that is, the direct exercise of sovereignty by the people themselves, a form of societal institution which rejects any form of “ruling” and institutionalises the equal sharing of political power among all citizens. Two important implications follow from this thesis:
First, that all other forms of so-called democracy (“representative”, “parliamentary” etc.) are merely various forms of “oligarchy”, that is, rule by the few and that the only adjectives that are permissible to precede democracy are those which are used to extend the classical meaning of it to take into account democracy at the economic, or broader social domains. This is why in this book, to denote the extension of the classical conception of democracy to the social, economic and ecological realms, the adjective “inclusive” precedes the word democracy.
Second, that the arguments advanced by the “civil societarian” “Left” in favour of “deepening” democracy are nonsensical since they implicitly assume that the present representative “democracy” is a democracy and the difference with classical democracy is just quantitative, whereas, in fact, liberal “democracy” is not a democracy at all but what Castoriadis aptly called a “liberal oligarchy.”[3] In other words, civil societarians confuse the present “statist” democracy in which polity is separate from society with the classical conception of democracy in which polity was identified with the citizens.
But let us examine in more detail the historical conceptions of democracy starting with the classical Athenian conception.
The Athenian conception of democracy
It is well known that the Athenian democracy was a partial one in the sense that power relations and structures did not disappear in the Polis, not only at the economic level where inequities were obvious, but even at the political level where the hierarchical structure of society was clear with the exclusion of women, immigrants and slaves from the proceedings of the ecclesia. Still, as Hannah Arendt[4] points out, the Athenian democracy was the first historical example of the identification of the sovereign with those exercising sovereignty:
[T]he whole concept of rule and being ruled, of government and power in the sense in which we understand them, as well as the regulated order attending them, was felt to be prepolitical and to belong to the private rather than the public sphere. (...) equality therefore far from being connected with justice, as in modern times, was the very essence of freedom: to be free meant to be free from the inequality present in rulership and to move to a sphere where neither rule nor being ruled existed.
So, it is obvious that libertarian definitions of politics as “the rule of one, many, a few, or all over all” and of democracy as “the rule of all over all”[5] are incompatible with the classical conceptions of both politics and democracy. It is, however, characteristic of the distortion involved that when libertarians attack democracy as a kind of “rule” they usually confuse direct democracy with its statist distortion. This is not surprising, in view of the fact that it is obviously impossible to talk about a “rule” in a form of social organisation where nobody is forced to be bound by laws and institutions, in the formation of which s/he does not, directly, take part.[6] Thus, as April Carter points out “the only authority that can exist in a direct democracy is the collective «authority» vested in the body politic. (...) it is doubtful if authority can be created by a group of equals who reach decisions by a process of mutual persuasion”. Not surprisingly, the same author concludes that “commitment to direct democracy or anarchy in the socio-political sphere is incompatible with political authority”.[7]
Therefore, the Greeks, having realised that “there always is and there always will be an explicit power, (that is, unless a society were to succeed in transforming its subjects into automata that had completely internalised the instituted order),”[8] concluded that “no citizen should be subjected to power and if this was not possible that power should be shared equally among citizens.”[9] So, although the Athenian democracy was a partial democracy, this was not due to the political institutions themselves but to the very narrow definition of full citizenship adopted by them ―a definition which excluded large sections of the population (women, slaves, immigrants) who, in fact, constituted the vast majority of the people living in Athens. Unlike today’s “democracies”, which (after long struggles), institutionalised universal suffrage but at the same time secured the concentration of political power at the hands of a small political elite, as we saw in ch1, Athenian democracy was based on the principle that sovereignty is exercised directly by the citizens themselves. This is why classical Athens may hardly be characterised as a state in the normal sense of the word, as a state presupposes a sovereign and a centralised authority. As Castoriadis put it, “the Polis is not a «State» since in it explicit power ―the positing of nomos (legislation), dike (jurisdiction) and telos (government)― belongs to the whole body of citizens”.[10]
Still, Athenian democracy had a partial character not only because of the limitations of political democracy but also because of the fact that it was restricted to the political realm only. In fact, as I argued in TID, it was exactly the very limited nature of Athenian economic democracy[11] which, in combination with the limitations of political democracy, eventually led to its collapse. In other words, the final failure of Athenian democracy was not due, as it is usually asserted by its critics, to the innate contradictions of democracy itself but, on the contrary, to the fact that it never matured to become an inclusive democracy. Furthermore, this failure cannot be adequately explained by simply referring to the immature “objective” conditions, the low development of productive forces and so on ―important as may be― because the same objective conditions prevailed at that time in many other places all over the Mediterranean, let alone the rest of Greece, but democracy flourished only in Athens. Vice versa, the much lower development of productive forces did not prevent higher forms of economic democracy than in Athens to develop among aboriginal American communities where economic resources were available to everyone in the community for use and “things were available to individuals and families of a community because they were needed, not because they were owned or created by the labour of a possessor”.[12]

[Spartan]

Hi spartan, Athens was not the first to invent democracy from what i understand..
One of the earliest instances of a civilization with a democracy was that founded in the republics of ancient India, which were established roughly somethime before the 6th century BC. These republics were known as Maha Janapadas, and among these states was Vaishali (in what is now Bihar) would be the world's first ever republic. It is interesting to note that The Republic of India is currently the largest democracy in the world, and so argueably also the oldest.

Well if this is true, than I guess the Athenians did not 'invent' democracy.I wonder how these Indian democracies functioned? Very interesting stuff. The Athenians are attributed to have established their democracy in 510 bc, though it was 'in the making' prior to this.

And of course the athenian democracy was not a 'pure' one by the definition of the word, and looking back by todays standards, could be interpreted as an 'oligarchy'. Regardless of this, the athenian democracy was a much wider form of gov in comparison to the verry 'narrow' aristocracies, and tyrranies that existed before .

[Spartan]

You would think if someone started something they would be masters of it.

Well, the democracies of ancient greece only existed for about 200 years. Alexander and Philip put an end to that. 200 yrs is hardly enough time to 'master' something like this.

Hi spartan, Athens was not the first to invent democracy from what i understand..
One of the earliest instances of a civilization with a democracy was that founded in the republics of ancient India, which were established roughly somethime before the 6th century BC. These republics were known as Maha Janapadas, and among these states was Vaishali (in what is now Bihar) would be the world's first ever republic. It is interesting to note that The Republic of India is currently the largest democracy in the world, and so argueably also the oldest.

Was just doing some browsing on this interesting topic, and I assume LwR, that the above paragraph is from this link -

http://hubpages.com/hub/Interesting-Facts-2

What you have posted above is the 2nd paragraph from that link.
The first paragraph says this -

The concept of democracy first appeared in Ancient Greek political and philosophical thought. The great philosopher Plato first contrasted democracy, which is the system of "rule by the governed", with the alternative systems of monarchy, oligarchy and timarch which are rule by one individual, rule by a small advanced class and finally rule by one race or nationality over another.

Judging from the above text, I think it would be safe to assume that perhaps the first democracy was implemented in India, however the idea of a democracy goes even further back to ancient Athens. I think its also safe to assume that both these democratic ideologies developed seperately from one another.
Of course, this conclusion can only be drawn from the above text. What do you think of the strength of this source?
I think more research will yield a better picture of 'who invented democracy'.

Also, I am fascinated that this Indian democracy has flown 'under the radar' as they say. Has anyone else heard of these ancient Indian republics prior to this thread?