‘Athens, which had known the most untrammeled democracy of the Ancient World, produced no important theorists or defenders of it’ (1978: 73).
Shifts in the social structure of Athens and policies designed to reduce class tensions led to a reconfiguration rather than disappearance of class conflicts within the Athenian polis and between it and other poloi. The conflict between the rich and poor over taxation rested on the demos’s political power in the Assembly. This in turn led the rich to oppose democracy and aim to supplant it with an oligarchy – rule by a small number of rich individuals. Economic pressures and status tensions were exacerbated by wars, especially the Peloponnesian War with Sparta. It has been argued that the Greek class system was conducive to war and that the demos was more inclined to military adventures and war since these provided much of the state’s surplus from which it derived its direct economic support (Gouldner, 1967). Through war the upper classes found themselves economically drained and politically damaged, yet they needed war as a way of diverting the demos from taxing them further. Warfare was a fact of everyday life for the ancient Greeks. During the century and a half from the Persian Wars (490 and 480–79 bce) to the Battle of Chaeronea (338 bce) Athens was at war, on average, more than two years out of three, and never enjoyed a period of peace for over ten consecutive years (Garlan, 1976: 15).
In addition to the warrior code and martial values, various commentators have tried to identify other values important to Greek culture (Adkins and Adkins, 1998; Gouldner, 1967; MacIntyre, 1998). These include the disposition to punish one’s enemies and reward one’s friends; high levels of competition, which also affected interpersonal relations; a need for friends but also a crisis in intimacy (Gouldner, 1967); and envy as a normalised emotion. Greeks were also attracted to the body, to its health, its youth, its beauty, and physical prowess was associated with all-round virtue. They also foregrounded and placed great emphasis on the notion of immortality.
Slaves, Foreigners and Women in Athens
During Pericles’ time about 50,000 male citizens lived in Athens. When slaves, foreigners (metics) women and children were included the population varied between 200,000 and 300,000 people. Neither the poorest peasant nor the richest philosopher could conceive a world without slaves since both benefited enormously from the institution. The largest individual holdings of slaves in Athens were workers in the mines; it is estimated that about 30,000 slaves worked in the Athenian silver mines in Laurium. Others were in domestic service held by Greeks. Most of the leisure class owned slaves. Plato mentioned 5 in his will whereas Aristotle had 14 when he died. At all times and in all places Greeks relied on some form of dependent labour to meet public and private needs. The ideal of being a citizen in Athens was one who could hold public office, discuss politics, vote and sit on juries. In the context of Greek values and practice, slavery was generally seen as a natural and unquestioned phenomenon in ancient Greece. The slave was seen as a non-person, an unfree body of human stock, and the chief market day for cattle was the same as for slaves. Very few challenged the moral basis of slavery. The exact number of slaves in Athens is a matter of dispute. Finley (1991: 72) argues for a figure between approximately 60,000 and 80,000 slaves. Anderson argues for a slightly higher figure of 80,000–100,000 so that the ratio of slaves to free men in Periclean Athens was approximately 3:2 and that although the slave mode of production was the central productive force in Hellenic society, other producers included free peasants, dependent tenants and urban artisans (Anderson, 1978: 21–2).
If adult males were responsible for politics, which, as Aristotle noted, required a man of leisure (schole), this presupposed a large amount of menial work being undertaken by slaves but also by women and foreigners. Women were not an undifferentiated mass and their position varied according to their economic and social status. Although women of all classes went to festivals and funerals, those who were citizens were expected to marry and have children but not engage in the public sphere of politics yet remain in the private sphere of the oikos leading spatially secluded lives. In her book Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, Pomeroy notes:
Socrates blunt dismissal of his wife Xanthippe from his deathbed and his desire to die among his male companions is a dramatic, if exaggerated, indication of the emotional gulf between husband and wife. The distance between husbands and wives extended to other spheres… While men spent most of their day in public areas such as the marketplace and the gymnasium, respectable women remained at home. In contrast to the admired public buildings, mostly frequented by men, the residential quarters of Classical Athens were dark, squalid, and unsanitary. Women stayed home not only because their work did not allow them much chance to get out but because of the influence of public opinion. Many families were likely to own at least one female slave, but even a woman with slaves was tied down by the demands of her household, husband, and infants. (1995: 79)
[Republished with permission of Blackwell, from The Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, G. Ritzer, 2000. Permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc]
The democratic experiment reached its peak under Pericles, and Plato wrote at a time when Athens was at a crossroads following a huge military loss in the Peloponnesian War. The war lasted over 25 years, led to the death of nearly half the population and cast a huge shadow over Athens and its cultural achievements. Plato saw all this as a consequence of democracy, amateur rule and misrule. In addition, he witnessed constant and inconclusive fighting between the numerous Greek city-states and as a result often called for Greek unity.
Against Democracy
Plato’s thinking constitutes a worldview, a political vision aimed at transforming the world. However, this does not necessarily mean that his ideas and concepts are bereft of value. Wood and Wood (1978) argue that Plato’s thought constitutes the ideological standpoint of a declining landed aristocracy. Prior to and following the death of Pericles, aristocratic values no longer held sway in Athenian politics, exacerbating the sense of injustice caused by the loss of large swathes of land during the Peloponnesian War. In such a context, the aristocracy became increasingly conscious of their identity and sought to distance themselves from the growing numbers of traders, manufacturers, artisans, shopkeepers and wage labourers. According to Wood and Wood they constituted:
‘gentlemen’ (kalot kagalhoi) and the ‘better sort’ (chrestoi) in contrast to ‘bad men’ (poneroi), prosperous business men (agorawi), and the nouveau riche of the commercial and manufacturing world or neoploutoi, a term beginning to be used frequently during the period. (1978: 2)
In the context of a humiliating defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Socrates and Plato as part of the kalot kagalhoi, or beautiful people, sought to reform and revitalise aristocratic values to provide a new foundation for civic and political life, a counter-revolutionary ideology, that although not fitting wholly aristocratic values, nevertheless shared in their condemnation of the rule of the lower classes.
That Plato and the members of his Academy were neither disinterested nor uninvolved in the practical politics of their time is illustrated by their intervention in Syracuse. The Academy was not only a teaching and research institution but, according to Gouldner (1967), the first intellectual colloquium of rational policy development. It was, Gouldner argues, ‘the RAND corporation of Antiquity’ (1967: 157), though such a reductionist view of Plato’s political position has been challenged by others (Saunders, 1986; Euben, 1980). It has been argued that, for example, Plato was not simply a proponent of aristocratic values but championed forms of communism, austere living, and a rejection of material objects that were incompatible with an aristocratic value system.
Arguments and Ideas
The Republic (1945) is perhaps the book that captures best the breadth and depth of Plato’s philosophical, political and proto-sociological outlook. In his multiple dialogues,
