Neue Debatte - Special Edition - Long Essay on Left Strategy #002 - 04/2017 | Page 15

2 On democracy
2 On democracy
Let us talk of democracy. Now and again some national Greek pride
shines through when you argue with ancient Athens though the old
Greek Polis took place two and a half millennia before our time and
has absolutely nothing to do with you, me, and the EU. So please al-
low me as a historian to talk about democracy for a moment.
2.1 Self-administration vs. democracy
We normally deem a state to be a democracy or democratic if all
members of society are free and equal. These free people decide
their matters according to a majority decision. This theory and Utopia
were basically defined by the United States Declaration of Independ-
ence of 1776. Yet, all through history no democratic state of this kind
has ever existed. Name only one state that is made up of exclusively
free and equal men and women whose collective, democratic majori-
ty will is the guideline in political and social development! Liberty,
legality, fraternity of the French Revolution remained wishful bour-
geois thinking. We have to go far back into the history of archaic trib-
al times to find anything bearing resemblance. Archaic communities
formed around natural law and equality, not to be mixed up with
identity. The tribe members naturally differed in gender and age, in-
dividual talents and faculties. Even in the doom of their era they lived
according to majority vote of free, at least male peasant-warriors.
Take archaic Germanic or Slavic tribes for example. They decided by
majority vote at Thing meetings or other gatherings of adult warriors.
The same holds true for the autochthon and the early Dorian in-
vaders into the Aegean sphere.
Such a type of prehistorical social coexistence and tribal administra-
tion was not yet a manifestation of democracy. Democracy is a type
of stately government. Archaic tribal communities were not yet
states – although bourgeois-idealistic thinking used to glorify the
state to be of divine origin and eternal. Over the course of history
states evolved when the old clan and tribal community became split
internally by man-made social and economic gaps: Relevant distinc-
tions between larger private landowners, indebted minor peasants,
landless but still free workers, and the slave population. Companion-
ship between equals was more and more replaced by the rule of a
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