No, Athens Was Not a “Democracy”
I remember sitting in all of my history classes, which always had American flags placed all around the classrooms. I distinctly remember sitting in my eighth-grade history class, and the famous Gadsden flag was hung right above where I would sit. Its menacing face would never fail to give me a jumpscare no matter what I was doing. My teachers would go on coffee-fueled rants about how the United States is the pinnacle of freedom and democracy only truly resides in the West. I was always suspicious of the whole “America is the best” rhetoric relentlessly shoved down my peers and I’s throats, but once I took my own time outside of the classroom to conduct my own research on the origins of democracy, I realized that since its inception, the concept had been an illusion. The concept of freedom can be contorted to indoctrinate the masses, ultimately sustaining the dominant power structure. Democracy has only been empty words meant to legitimize the brutality and horrors of the West and its allies.
When I was young, whenever I thought of Greece, I thought of democracy and, of course, Greek yogurt. As we know, Athens is cited as being the birthplace of democracy; I remember hearing that without Ancient Greece, we (people inhabiting the Americas) would not have freedom, and we really owe our existence to Athens for creating democracy. Except when you realize that in Ancient Athenian society, women, enslaved people, foreigners, and non-citizens did not have fundamental human rights. My teachers would always either leap around this detail or excuse it and follow it up by saying that “those enslaved still had some rights, so it was not that bad!” But I would wonder how Ancient Athens could have been a democracy if it had discarded the majority of its population. The exclusion of women, enslaved people, foreigners, and non-citizens from this idea of democracy implies that they are not worthy of freedom and are fundamentally lesser than ruling free-born Athenian men. This is reminiscent of how we are taught that the United States has always been a democracy, but we ignore the plight of enslaved people, women, and Indigenous people.
Are marginalized groups not worthy of freedom?
Reserving democracy solely for male ruling elites actually serves a purpose, that being to retain the superiority of the ruling class (and for the United States, that would be the white ruling class since the social construct of race did not exist in Ancient Athens). Reserving “democracy” only for a select group of people raises the question: was it even democracy?
Democracy is supposed to refer to when power is vested in the people, not the power of a few by this very definition. Athens could not be considered a democracy. According to the UN, valuing freedom, respect for human rights, and holding elections are all essential to democracy. However, when evaluating Athens, they did not have “respect” for human rights or “freedom.” Elections were only decided by adult male citizens who had military training as ephebes could vote. Women, children, and those enslaved could not vote since they were not considered citizens. This surely does not sound like the democracy the UN outlined. We were lied to; societies labeled as democracies cannot truly entail freedom when they create social stratifications and hierarchies and rely on exploitation.
Ancient Athens and the United States were/are both patriarchal societies; patriarchal societies set up dichotomies of all women tending to domestic labor and upper-class men being able to participate in government, own property, etc. Gender as a social construct did have somewhat of a presence in Ancient Athens, of course, being a product of a patriarchal society and placing women beneath men. However, Ancient Athens was a pre-capitalist society, so gender did not have the same exact functions as it did in the United States, but it is nonetheless comparable.
Women in both societies were tasked with doing housework and being reduced down to reproductive organs. Athenian women were bound to their homes and could only leave their homes when their husbands commanded them to. Athenian Women, well, really girls, were forced to marry their husbands arranged by their families between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Sometimes, Athenian girls would meet their soon-to-be husbands (who would typically be much older than them) on the day of their wedding. Girls did not gain formal education and instead received education from their mothers, but the “education” they were receiving was on how to perform household duties. After getting married Athenian women’s purposes were to bear children and to tend to the house.
Women could not own property, nor could they participate in the government in any way whatsoever since they were designated as “non-citizens.” Most women would even live in separate areas of their house and eat separately from the men in the house. Wealthy families would have servants take care of their children, do chores, and weave cloth for the family clothes. The labor of those designated as “beneath” was a tool for ruling elites to retain their power.
Patriarchy and class division functioned as a means to establish oppressive hierarchical systems that relied upon their labor to keep the power in the hands of a few. Hierarchies were justified through dehumanization in both the United States and Ancient Athens; women and those enslaved in Ancient Athens were not deemed citizens. In the United States, we know that those formerly enslaved were granted citizenship with the 14th Amendment and that women gained the right to vote with the 19th Amendment (Black women, Native women, and Asian women were not given the right to vote until The Voting Rights Act). By labeling both societies as a democracy, we are peddling the normalization of marginalization. Our conception of democracy is controlled to serve the ruling elites and continue the chain of oppression necessary to dehumanize their subjects.
Hierarchies are reliant upon the toil of other groups designated as “beneath” the “dominant” group (without the labor of the groups “beneath” the ruling elite would not exist). In Athens, the enslavement of non-citizens who were foreigners often captured during war or were sold off by enslavement traders played a role in forming the wealth of Athens. Much like how in the United States, the enslavement of Africans catapulted the wealth of the nation.
While both societies practiced enslavement, it is essential to recognize that they are not the same, as many social factors that existed in America did not exist in Athens, nor did the magnitude and extent compare. My intention is to compare how the desire for power and wealth creates the usage of enslavement.
Athens was one of the first societies to practice enslavement; ultimately, the profitability of enslavement in the United States and in Athens determined its usage. Historian Edward E. Baptist notes that enslavement turned the United States from a “colonial economy to the second biggest industrial power in the world.” According to Vox, enslavement for the cotton industry spanned from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the Civil War, which existed as a business fixed on maximizing profits. Growing cotton was lucrative as it served the purpose of fueling global industrialization, the labor was done by enslaved women and men who were the children of people forcibly displaced from their homes and legally treated as property. Forcibly removing African people from their homes served the purpose of creating laborers who would build a robust economy for the United States. The United States and Athens used chattel enslavement, which is a form of absolute servitude where enslaved people are owned as property and can experience physical violence, sexual exploitation, torture, and death at the hands of their masters. Profit motive and building wealth drive how we are taught to perceive governments and their function.
Colonialism, imperialism, enslavement, and the social construction of race are responsible for building the wealth of white ruling elites in the United States; hence why, we are taught to perceive the government as being designed for us (the people). If we were taught the truth and that the government was intended to support a bunch of oligarchs, the people’s awareness would threaten their power. Notice how people becoming aware of the Israeli occupation of Palestine threatens oligarchs and corporations who are directly benefiting from this ongoing genocide. This is why we see lawmakers passing laws deeming any criticism of Israel as “Anti-Semitic,” and student-led protests at universities are being met with resistance from the government.
We live under an oligarchy; our government is not one designed for the people, and by the people but for the rich and by the rich.
