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Comment by speakeron | Hacker News Reader

"In theory every assembly represented the collective will of all the male citizens of Athens"

That doesn't sound like democracy to me. An oligarchy, perhaps?

The true birth of democracy (at national level) was in New Zealand in 1893 when women were given the vote and, for the first time in history, virtually all adults were enfranchised.

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Indeed.

This is also the case with Iceland, where the althing is also commonly cited as the "oldest continuously functioning democratic parliament in the world".

This sounds great, and does wonders for national pride. Especially since most Icelanders have an extremely rose-tinted view of their own past (thanks to propaganda during the independence campaign in the last century), and most are not aware that the only people who had voting rights were landowners, and everyone else was basically a slave. That's not really a democracy by any definition.

"he only people who had voting rights were landowners".

Well, do Children in the US have voting rights? Illegal immigrants? Prisoners? There are different flavors of "democrazy".

One advantage of limited voters (e.g. "landowners") is, that the system is less likely to run into an out of control socialist redistribution system. If two wolfs and one sheep having a vote on what they have for dinner. Is this democracy too?

I don't know where the line is drawn. One could certainly argue by those metrics that most countries that consider themselves democracies do not fit that definition.

That said, I do think that when less than 1% of the country has voting rights, it's hard to call that a democracy by any measure. Is a dictatorship a democracy if the one person in power holds a "vote" for himself? What if there are two people that split the power?

> One advantage of limited voters (e.g. "landowners") is, that the system is less likely to run into an out of control socialist redistribution system.

I'm not sure how to respond to that. I suggest you read up on the history of Icelandic politics, I particularly recommend reading up on "vistarband" and related concepts, if you really think that this system is somehow more fair than allowing universal suffrage. The result was that this small group of landowners passed laws making anyone who did not have land (and therefore voting power) into indentured servants.

Actually it's the opposite. Today's western parliamentary regimes are oligarchies and in absolutely no way democracies. Electing a bunch of assholes who then get to do whatever they wish is not and has never been democracy, it's elected oligarchy. Democracy is when all the people vote the laws. Which was the case in ancient athens and iceland. Today the only country which comes anywhere close to this is Switzerland. Western parliamentary regimes call themselves 'democracies' to look good just like soviet countries did.

> Actually it's the opposite

What is? I'm not really sure which part of my post you are replying to here. Can you quote a specific bit?

> Democracy is when all the people vote the laws. Which was the case in ancient athens and iceland

No, at least in the case of Iceland, the entire point of my post was that only a very, very tiny group of people got to vote on the laws. Kind of like representative democracy without the democracy part (because the representatives are not elected). Also known as a plutocracy.

I'm not completely sure about iceland. I think I read it was one vote per family. But as far as ancient athens goes, every male regardless of wealth or status got to vote the laws and decrees. And were in fact very much encouraged to do so. The word 'idiot' actually comes from 'idiotes' which is what people who didn't debate/vote were called in ancient athens. It originally meant people who only care about their private affairs as opposed to public affairs. This made it impossible for the rich to rule, because the rich are always far fewer than the poor. So while one might be right to point out that it wasn't fair that women were left out (but women were second class citizens also in cities which weren't democracies at all like for instance Sparta), it still is very different and far more egalitarian system than what we have today.

> But as far as ancient athens goes, every male regardless of wealth or status got to vote the laws and decrees.

Except for slaves and former slaves. Also a large portion of the population were resident foreigners, who didn't get the vote.

Wikipedia puts the number of voters at 10% to 20% of the total population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

Foreign residents by definition are not citizens. They don't get to vote in elections of parliementary regimes either. But assuming foreign residents could vote, then anyone can come en masse and just change the outcome of the vote. As for slaves, they weren't citizens either, but either mostly war captives which were taken into slavery rather then executed or citizens which were stripped of their citizenship for various crimes. War captives or people who commited crimes don't get to vote in elections either in parliamentary regimes.

But both slaves and foreign residents ("metics") transmitted their status by birth: you could be born in Athens, as could your father, and your father's father, and still have no route to citizenship, unless the city chose to grant it as a gift (a rare event). So even if you discount the foreign-born, you still have an elite ruling over a disenfranchised population.

No, it's the other way around. It was athenian citizenship which was transmitted by birth. First you had to have at least one athenian parent. And then later athenians voted to change the law so two athenian parents would be required. And this is in part because 'metekos' were more often than not rich merchants and not underdogs at all. And the athenians were weary about them having influence just like they ostracized any citizen who had too much influence. But anyway, more or less restrictive citizenship conditions is irrelevant to the fact that electing masters is not and never will be democracy.

> electing masters is not and never will be democracy

Neither is having political power in the exclusive hands of a hereditary elite. That's oligarchy or aristocracy.

Well, I was only talking about Iceland in my comment. My knowledge of Greek history is insufficient to comment; you might want to take that discussion up with the commenter that was talking about Greece.

As for Iceland, I really recommend you read up on the history if you are going to start correcting people about it, because you seem to be completely misinformed. And no, it was most certainly not "one vote per family"; I have explained how these things worked at least twice in this discussion. I know this because I am from Iceland, and I have read up on our history from primary sources instead of the ridiculous whitewash that gets taught in elementary school and on tourist buses.

But you mentioned Iceland because you were agreeing with the parent poster who was talking about ancient Athens. So I was replying to both of you. I probably need to research Iceland, but I did the work for Athens :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogens_Herman_Hansen

He was talking about your critique on Island's political system, obviously. As for defending the righteousness of the voting system, I'd just say that back then (when the democracy were employed) the people empowered to vote were only the citizens. In those times it made sense to consider citizens those whom the society could count on to defend its existence. Those would be, objectively speaking, the individuals invested enough to stay and defend the city/country with their own life if necessary, otherwise there wouldn't any assurance that the civic-responsible (and interested) voter wouldn't make himself scarce at first sign of trouble. So no, not everyone deserved to vote (back then). Let's talk about women's condition - could women have any influence in politics? Perhaps! But when the time did come, women were powerless in regard to enforcing decisions and more - like it can be deduced from the reference that user ableal provided¹, the women were spared and treated like objects rather than subjects of decisions' consequences. Nowadays (almost) everyone has a right to vote because everyone who votes has more or less the same footing (men and women alike). Now the system is supported (on the individual level) through financial contribution, and everyone supporting (i.e. empowering) the system should have at least some power, expressed through vote. So yes, everyone deserves to vote (now).

¹ (in the current page) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9818243

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