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• merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Where would ancient Greek democracy

  They had slaves, so it wasn’t particularly democratic.

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• patatahooligan@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t know if there’s a meaningful way to treat that as a spectrum and to place political systems on it. I mostly pointed out the different definitions one might use so that people wouldn’t read my examples of rights violations and think “what’s that got to do with democracy?”.

  Also, there’s no ancient Greek democracy. Greece was a bunch of city-states, each with its own political system. I know that in Athenian democracy there were slaves, and as you would image they didn’t get a vote. Neither did the women. If it existed today it would probably not even be called a democracy by western standards.

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  • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mostly pointed out the different definitions one might use so that people wouldn’t read my examples of rights violations and think “what’s that got to do with democracy?”.

    Yet you wrote

    That’s not even true in a very minimal definition of democracy

    Are you contradicting yourself later by conceding (flawed as it may be) it fit “a very minimal definition of democracy”?

    Other common restrictions in ancient Greek democracies were being a male citizen (who was born to 2 citizens), a minimum age, completed military service. Still, rule wasn’t restricted to oligarchs or monarchs. I think we’d still call that a democracy in contrast to everything else.

    Your writing seems inconsistent.

    If it existed today it would probably not even be called a democracy by western standards.

    Do good, objective definitions vary by time & culture? Seems problematic.

    Seems you’re claiming something doesn’t fit a minimal definition of democracy while using a non-minimal definition of democracy. Sure, it’s a flawed democracy, but we can repudiate it on those considerations it fails and clarify them without overgeneralizing.

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    • patatahooligan@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Are you contradicting yourself later by conceding (flawed as it may be) it fit “a very minimal definition of democracy”?

      What part are you referring to? This?

      So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense, that the people have some sort of power through their vote, that’s technically still going on.

      Cause that not the same context. One is responding to the “100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players” claim and the other is talking about the USA political system as it exists right now. These are not just referring to different periods; but the former is not even asking whether democracy exists in the USA. It’s asking whether the US has a long tradition of fighting for democracy against its major enemies. That’s why I didn’t just mention just the lack of voting rights for minorities, but also stuff like violently interfering in other countries’ politics. The sentences seem inconsistent to you because you took out every bit of context.

      Do good, objective definitions vary by time & culture? Seems problematic.

      Yes they do vary. One could argue objective definitions don’t exist in the first place. It’s not problematic, it’s a good thing. If definitions didn’t vary by time, black people would still be slaves and women would not have the right to vote. It is our changing definition of who “the people” of a country are that changed the rights afforded to those people. And the fact that even the most fundamental words of the most minimal definition are not objective and unchanging is why you cannot come up with a single universally accepted definition. I mean, if you think you have one, why don’t you share it?

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