The Origins of Democracy in Tribes, City-States and Nation-States

1721 Pages·2017·21.01 MB·English

by  Ronald M. Glassman (auth.)

Ronald M. Glassman
The Origins of
Democracy in
Tribes, City-States
and Nation-States
The Origins of Democracy in Tribes,
City- States and Nation-States
Ronald M. Glassman
The Origins
of Democracy
in Tribes, City-States
and Nation-States
Volume I
Ronald M. Glassman
NYU School of Liberal Studies
New York, NY, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-51693-6 ISBN 978-3-319-51695-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51695-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932397
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Preface
We all know that ancient Greek democracy was unique and the most fully
developed form of democracy the world had ever known. But where did
Greek democracy come from?
Aristotle states in his Logic: something cannot come from nothing.
Therefore, if something exists, it must have come from something.
Aristotle describes in detail how Greek city-state democracy came from
Greek tribal democracy. In his Constitution of Athens, Aristotle (and his stu-
dents) gives us a precise, detailed description of the Athenian tribal assembly
of male warriors and the council of elders—restricted exclusively to the aris-
tocrats who led the warriors as mounted cavalry soldiers. The aristocratic
clans were “charismatized,” linking their descent to the gods and heroes of
Greek tradition.
Though the aristocrats dominated the council of elders and made policy,
the warriors of the assembly had the right to vote on all decisions.
The democratic warriors’ assembly, the council of elders, and the aristo-
cratic domination by “royal” clans were typical for many tribes, not just the
Greek tribes.
What was unique to the Greek situation was that during the transition to
city-state society, the mounted aristocrats lost their military superiority to the
foot soldiers of the newly perfected heavily armored hoplite phalanx forma-
tion. The city-state assembly and the law courts then became fully democratic
institutions.
Economic class distinctions, however, did emerge in the new money-craft-
trade economy of the Greek city-states. This led to oligarchic, as well as
democratic, polities. But in many of the Greek city-states, not just Athens,
every citizen—rich, poor, or middle class—had an equal vote at the assembly
and in the law courts.
Thus, Greek city-state democracy did not come from nothing. It evolved
from Greek tribal democracy. Further, other tribes evolved into city-states.
And, even though Greek city-state democracy was the most fully developed,
other city-states held similar institutions.
Aristotle describes the evolving city-state democracy in Carthage—a
Phoenician city-state. He describes the warriors’ assembly, the council of
elders, and the declining traditional kingship. By Aristotle’s time, the kings
had been replaced by generals—who were powerful, but received no godlike
deference. Aristotle also described how the council of elders had become a
v
vi Preface
council of rich oligarchs, who made policy, but whose decisions could be
vetoed by the warriors’ assembly—which had become a citizens’ assembly.
Other Phoenician city-states, such as Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, had gone
through similar transitions. So too had certain Syrian city-states, such as
Ebla, and, centuries earlier, the Sumerian city-states had also exhibited a
democratic assembly and council of wise elders—before being absorbed into
the expansionary military kingdoms of Mesopotamia.
All across the Aegean and Mediterranean region and centuries later in
Renaissance Italy and Hanseatic Germany, trade-capitalist city-states
emerged with various forms of democracy or oligarchy. And all of these
exhibited holdovers from their tribal days.
Having established this, it must be made clear that tribes contain a para-
dox: they exhibit democratic institutions linked to their clan-representative
tribal councils, but they also exhibit despotic institutions linked to the war
chief and the shaman.
Kings and royal clans emerged from warrior tribes, leading them toward
military despotism, and theocratic priestly domination emerged from the sha-
man role. Therefore, tribes were just as likely to evolve toward despotic king-
ship and theocracy as toward democratic-egalitarian governance.
In conclusion, then, since something cannot come from nothing, the some-
thing that these four volumes describe is tribal democracy and its occasional
transition to city-state democracy in the ancient Mediterranean region and
post-feudal Europe. The development of the divine kingship and theocracy is
described as well, though these forms of government are not the main focus
of this treatise.
History is not just a chronicle of kings and tyrants. It is also the story of
various forms of democracy. It is common knowledge that democracy
emerged in ancient Greece. Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens gives us a
detailed description of the workings of Greek democracy. And Herodotus
contrasted Greek democracy with the despotic kingships of Persia and Egypt.
Our human potential is paradoxical. It can engender democracy; but it can
also foster various forms of violent tyranny.
This four-part work focuses on the forms of democratic governance that
existed in tribes, city-states, and nation-states.
Part I uses the anthropological literature to describe the “campfire democ-
racy” of the African Bushmen, the Pygmies, and other band societies. Its
main focus is on the tribal democracy of the Cheyenne, Iroquois, Huron, and
other tribes.
In tribal democracy, a council of elders was elected from the clans, and
these elders submitted their decisions to a warriors’ assembly. Paradoxically,
tribes also institutionalized the war chief and shaman roles, from which des-
potic kingship and theocracy emerged in the larger tribal confederations.
The role of women in the tribal democracies is also given special attention.
Though they were excluded from the warriors’ assembly, they were powerful
within the matrilineal clans.
Part II focuses on the transition from tribal democracy to city-state
democracy in the ancient Middle East—from the Sumerian city-states to the
Phoenician. These city-states, though not fully democratic like Athens and
Preface vii
Croton, did exhibit a democratic warriors’ assembly along with an oligarchic
council of city elders. Both these institutions were carried over from tribal
times, along with the war kingship and the office of the high priestess of the
fertility cult.
But of course it was in ancient Greece that the full flowering of democracy
occurred. Therefore, Part III presents a detailed description of the tribal
democracy of Archaic Greece—emphasizing the causal effect of the hoplite
phalanx military formation in egalitarianizing Greek tribal society. Then the
transition from tribal to city-state democracy is analyzed—with the new com-
mercial classes engendering the oligarchic and democratic conflicts described
by Plato and Aristotle.
The rise of science and rational secular law in Greece is also described.
For they became part of a new worldview that generated legal-rational author-
ity—as Max Weber has made central.
Further, women philosophers such as Aspasia and Hypatia are highlighted.
For there was the glimmering of a women’s movement in the Golden Age, as
Aristophanes tells us in The Assemblywomen and as Plato asserts in The
Republic.
Part IV focuses on the tribal democracy of the Norse tribes of post-Roman
Europe and then on the rise of the commercial city-states of Renaissance
Italy, Hanseatic Germany, and the Netherlands. Once again, elements of tribal
democracy are carried over into the city-states, especially in the Netherlands,
Switzerland, Iceland, and England.
The concurrent trend of unified military kingship, which overrode the
authority of the city-states, is also analyzed. For it led to a conflict between
the monarchies and the city-states which eventuated in two differing out-
comes: either constitutional monarchy with parliamentary dominance or
absolute monarchy with kingly dominance.
So, the nation-states of Europe emerged with the same paradox as all
human societies: either the democratic potential of humans prevailed or the
despotic potential.
New York, NY, USA Ronald M. Glassman
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework of this treatise combines five foundational ele-
ments derived from Max Weber, Aristotle, the evolutionary anthropologists,
and the comparative-historical methodology. It also includes feminist theory,
as a new perspective in socio-history.
We must also add that the origins of democracy, as a purely human politi-
cal phenomenon, assume a conception of human beings as both animal and
human. “Homo duplex” is driven by animal drives while having the con-
scious awareness to analyze them. We are “Homo sapiens sapiens,” the ani-
mal that is consciously aware of ourselves, others, nature, and the universe.
Democracy assumes the ability of humans to “intersubjectively” commu-
nicate with one another. In this sense, democracy brings out our most human
characteristic: language, symbolic communication, and the building of a
growing “stock of knowledge.”
Let us look more closely.
Weberian Methodology
A. Max Weber, in Economy and Society, presents us with his theory of
“legitimate domination.” He focuses on “traditional authority,” including
the kingly-patrimonial and kingly-bureaucratic state; “legal-rational
authority,” that is, the parliamentary democratic state with legal-
constitutional constraints; and “charismatic authority,” which provides a
temporary legitimation during periods of crisis or rapid social change.
The categories of legitimate domination are applied throughout the four
volumes and explicitly described.
B. Weber also in Economy and Society, and in the Methodology of the Social
Sciences, develops his theoretical notion of “ideal types” and “civiliza-
tional peculiarities.”
The “ideal types” of political organization in tribes, city-states, and nation-
states are developed out of the empirical data, and then the “civilizational
peculiarities” are also analyzed.
ix
x Theoretical Framework
C. In The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, Weber describes the
Greek tribes: their clans, their phratries, and their military organization.
This is a tour de force by Weber, even though modern historians and
archaeologists have gone far beyond his foundational conceptions.
For instance, his comparison of the Spartan “ephors” and the Roman “tri-
bunes” was groundbreaking.
D. In The City, Weber describes the rise of the Northern European city-states
and their breakaway from feudal kingly authority. “City air makes one
free.”
His description of the Hansa trading cities and the Dutch trading cities
gives us an up close look at the conditions which generated oligarchy, democ-
racy, and legal authority in the Northern European city-states.
Of course, Weber’s focus on the role of Calvinism in both the economic
development and political development of the Dutch and British trading cities
shows us the complexity of the causality of human social change.
In The City, we get the ideal typology for city-state law and democracy,
while in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, we get the civili-
zational peculiarity which helped generate a new kind of economic
production.
E. Finally, in Ancient Judaism, Weber describes the tribal Jews, who began
as a set of typical herding tribes, but in an unusual peculiarity—after
experiencing the Egypt of the 18th and 19th Dynasties and being led by
Moses—became “theocratic.”
This was not at all a typical tribal development and alerts us to the fact
that, even though there are regular stages of development, some societies will
diverge from them.
Aristotelian Theory
A. In the Constitution of Athens, Aristotle describes the transition from
Greek tribal political organization—dominated by the military aristo-
crats, but with a democratic warriors’ assembly—to Greek city-state
political organization.
B. In his Politics, Aristotle gives us a logical classification of the forms of
government—a classification which can be used cross-culturally and
transhistorically.
Aristotle then links the forms of government to the class structure, analyz-
ing oligarchy of the rich, democracy of the poor, and democracy with a
middle- class majority—which he famously calls “polity,” because it is inclu-
sive of elements of oligarchy, democracy, and even monarchy.
Theoretical Framework xi
Aristotelian theory, thus, gives us categories of comparison, a class analy-
sis, and a comparative-historical framework for the analysis of political
systems.
Significantly, Aristotle also describes the varieties of kingships: from rudi-
mentary tribal kingships to the “great” kingships of Persia and Egypt.
Aristotle goes further beyond Greece in his description of the Phoenician
city-states—especially Carthage—illustrating that his theoretical framework
transcends ancient Greece.
Lastly, Aristotle makes legal authority central by insisting that even a
middle- class democracy must be constrained by constitutional law: “When
the law rules, God and reason rule; when a man rules, we add the character of
the beast.”
Evolutionary Anthropology
Elman R. Service, Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle, Ronald Cohen and
John Middleton, and other modern anthropologists have developed a typol-
ogy of tribes in evolutionary perspective. They divide tribes into stages of
development: hunter-gatherers, hunter-horticulturalists, horticultural village
societies, herding tribes, and expansionary chieftainships.
Notice that mostly the categories are based on economic organization of
the tribe, but the chieftainships are based on military organization.
Further, categories such as age, gender, and clan type are also analyzed by
these anthropologists as are spiritual institutions such as the shaman organi-
zation and religious beliefs and rituals.
These categories of analysis—though multicausal—can be utilized for
comparative-historical analysis.
Thus, Thorkild Jacobsen has compared the council of elders and warriors’
assembly of ancient Sumer (the Epic of Gilgamesh) with that of the
Scandinavian “thing” and “Althing” assemblies of the Norse tribes. And
W.S. Ferguson has compared the Zulus and the Spartans in terms of their
military organization.
Similarly, E. Adamson Hoebel and Bruce Trigger compare the tribal clan
elders and warriors’ assemblies of the Cheyenne, the Huron, and the Iroquois.
They use the category “hunting-horticultural” but also focus on the matrilin-
eal clans in these societies and the power of clan matrons.
Allowing for “civilizational peculiarities,” the ideal-typical characteristics
of the evolutionary anthropologists’ categories are useful.
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory has given us a new perspective in our quest to understand
human history and social organization. History has been “his story,” as the
feminists remind us.
From feminist theory we can get a fresh perspective on the clan organiza-
tion of tribes. Clan matrons in societies with matrilineal clans had political