[P2P-F] Fwd: Ancient Athens didn't have politicians. Is there a lesson for us?

[Orsan Senalp]

Since the demise of the Athenian model -which was physically made
possible thanks to the slave labour so that every citizen had the time
to govern or learn how to govern things when their turn came up- the
question is still how to get rid of kaisers, cesars, sultans, kings,
chars, empires, presidents, ministers etc that capture the social
power and turn against the people. A political economy equation
underlies this question of course which involves several sub
questions: i. how to convince the bullying social class elements who
socialise and continuously and creatively reproduce themselves through
complex historical structures, ii. how to de-construct these
structures and transform them into new version of Athenian models that
work transnationally as well as in their own contexts, iii. and what
is the productive model that will allow people to take role in such
modern direct governance models so they could function.


On 11 January 2013 20:14, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis <xekoukou at gmail.com> wrote:
> Letting people literally become the state is the best way to protect
> Democracy. But how efficient is this?
>
> The good thing is that today we have the internet and thus it is much easier
> to have a decentralized state by the people, thus solutions like these could
> for some things scale without costing a lot.
>
> I wonder if there has been any mathematical research for the amount of
> decentralization that is required so that a hegemonic class doesnt emerge.
>
> I'd prefer it to be mathematical because I know a lot of opinions on this
> matter which are always interrelated with one's political
> agenda.(reformist,anarchist,revolutionary marxist,capitalist)
> .
>
> 2013/1/11 George Dafermos - TBM <G.N.Dafermos at tudelft.nl>
>>
>> i suppose that was probably meant as a joke, right?
>> x,
>> g.
>>
>>
>> >No, at least for America where we have a Constitution "of, by and for
>> >the People".  Athens didn't have a government of the People.
>> >
>> >mark
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>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
>      Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
>
>
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