Every American president, whether Democrat or Republican,
conservative or liberal, speaks lovingly of 'democracy', whenever the
nation engages in some escapade abroad. When the U.S. invaded Iraq,
it did so, ostensibly, to 'bring democracy to the Middle East.' When it
launches a raid in Grenada, or rains death on a poor neighborhood in
Panama, when it invaded Haiti in the last century, ad infinitum, it always
did so in the name of 'restoring democracy.'
What is this democracy of which they so blithely speak?
We all have heard the term since our infancy, but who really knows
what it means? I wanted to learn more about it, so I began to read one
of the finest historians I know of, the great C.L.R. James, author of the
ground-breaking *The Black Jacobins*, an influential study of the Haitian
Revolution. Some years ago, James published a pamphlet titled, *Every
Cook Can Govern: A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece* (Jackson,
MS: New Mississippi, Inc., Mar. 1986). I found myself (as I often am
when I read his stuff) blown away by what I learned. As his subtitle
suggests, James looks at Greek history for the roots of the democratic
idea, and finds it, in some stages, truly democratic, in ways we can
hardly imagine. He writes:
Perhaps the most striking thing about Greek democracy was that the
administration (and there were immense administrative problems) was
organized upon the basis of what is known as sortition, or, more easily,
selection by lot. The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a
method which amounted to putting names into a hat and appointing the
ones whose names came out. Now the average C10 bureaucrat or Labor
Member of Parliament in Britain would fall in a fit if it was suggested to
him that any worker selected at random could do the work he is doing.
But that was precisely the guiding principle of Greek democracy. And
this form of government is the government under which flourished the
greatest civilization the world has ever known.
Rating: User: rclark23 2007-09-17T04:06:27.187Z
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