Solon To Iceland To Greece: Adventures In Democracy
By Robert Snefjella
14 February, 2015
Countercurrents.org
History teems with times of trouble, including societies going all to hell; which may not console current participants, but does offer potential education: Plenty of lessons on how to fail, and some on how to succeed.
For example, Athens in 600 BC was going all to hell. And a highly esteemed person was asked to try to fix it: Solon. And he did, sort of. He relieved a disastrous immediate situation, but also seeded changes that bore results over generations, and, some would say, over millennia.
It’s not hard to find support for the idea that his efforts have special historic significance.
Will Durant writes in The Life of Greece that “Solon’s peaceful revolution is one of the encouraging miracles of history.”
Lord Acton, in his essay Freedom in Antiquity, offers that “Solon was the most profound political genius of antiquity,” and that Solon saved his country through a “bloodless and pacific revolution.”
John Ralston Saul in his book Voltaire’s Bastards brings the subject close to home by asserting that the influence of Solon is still much with us.
A bit of background: In the decades before the time of Solon, and during the first half of his life, Athens had undergone a process of concentration of wealth and property, and, increasing widespread poverty, debt and misery. Many people had been forced to promise themselves or family members as security on loans, and inability to make payment led to many being enslaved, including children. Society was breaking down, and the potential was growing for either violent revolution by the suffering many, or brutal repression by those with power, or both.
Prominent Athenians, feeling increasingly insecure, (1) commissioned a nobleman memorably named Draco to keep things under control. By establishing the first written code of laws for Athens, ad hoc justice was curtailed. But Draco's was a brutal approach. His laws favored harsh (draconian) punishments, featuring great generosity with the death penalty, even for trifling offences.
Draco’s intent was to solidify the prevailing social order, and keep the rabble submissive, but his laws did nothing to resolve basic problems: Misery, poverty, hopelessness and social divisions remained.
Seeking a peaceful alternative to their degenerating circumstance, the Athenians hit upon the idea of inviting Solon to try to fix the debt mess.
Why were many Athenians willing to turn for help to Solon? Aristocrats and rich conservatives were feeling increasingly insecure, and encouraged by the comforting knowledge that Solon was, after all, roughly speaking, ‘one of them’. He came from a ‘good’ family and had served ably as both a political and military leader. (Nevertheless, it would not have escaped the Athenian elite that Solon’s measures might reduce their wealth, so also implied is some element of upper-class broad social concern.)
On the other hand, commoners knew Solon as someone sympathetic to their plight and interests. Many favored land redistribution, and supposed that Solon would include that in any package of reforms.
So what manner of man was the chosen one? Through bits of history and the fog of lore, one glimpses a bright, thoughtful, independent-minded man with a reputation for integrity and generosity. He had shown himself a master of guile as military tactician; had been successful in business; had been a canny mediator for difficult disputes. His acknowledged skill in composing and orating poetry, in a culture where such talent was highly regarded, added to his stature.
And, he spoke well. Effectiveness in Greek public affairs depended heavily on the ability to speak well spontaneously and debate with competence. It was an oral, not a bookish, culture.
A key reason for Solon’s broad acceptance was, again, his independent-mindedness: no clique or faction could claim him.
In proposing that one person fix their dire problems, an Athenian consensus is implied that one person was the preferred means of doing so. That is, the Athenians did not turn to a group of people, say, a legislative process, or prominent dignitaries, to attempt radical reform.
The Athenians understood that for such a divisive issue, any legislative process or body of people would, as Plutarch put it, squabble. Factions, collisions of will, would lead to impasses or unsatisfactory compromises. Secret arrangements - real or imagined - would contaminate the process and undermine support for the result.
Athenians understood the critical role of excellent individual leadership, with its capacity for combining integrity and a coherent vision.
So what in essence did Solon do? The basic challenge was to relieve the near death grip that debt had on Athens.
In effect, Solon waved the social-health-restoring wand of the Jubilee: Poof, and crippling debts and mortgages were relieved or eliminated, and enslavement for debt was canceled and made illegal. Even people who had been taken as debt slaves to foreign places were freed. One other great chronic injustice was ended: the forced extraction by nobles of payment – in effect protection money – from small property owners.
Solon’s measures immediately transformed Athens from a scene of despair and hopelessness, personal enslavement and financial ruin, to the widespread euphoria of freedom and the optimism of a fresh debt-free start. (3)
One challenge for Solon was how to reduce the financial advantages of the powerful without inciting their violent reaction. By relieving the debt problem without confiscating landholdings, Solon was able to mute extreme hostility from those with most to lose.
While many benefited from Solon’s reforms, there were initially many complaints. Some wealthy people were indeed bitter about seeing their net worth and incomes reduced, while those who were land poor were disappointed that property was not redistributed.
Other economic reforms were later made by Solon to augment the removal of killing debt. (4)
Over the next several decades Athens went from being a rather run of the mill down on its luck place to being a leading city among Greeks, a thriving cosmopolitan trading center, with growing wealth and a diverse and growing population. Its success had extremely important consequences. (5)
It didn’t take long for the initial griping over Solon’s financial reforms to fade into a consensus that Solon had indeed done well, and as Plutarch relates, Athenians then came to Solon with a further proposal: Okay smart guy: how about drawing up for us a new sensible Constitution and sensible new laws. And by the way, also, we want you to be our ‘tyrant’ (a term that is roughly equivalent to ‘benign dictator on a bit of a public leash’).
Solon’s response, puzzling to many, but which he predicted correctly would win him enduring acclaim, was to turn down the part of the invitation that proposed that he rule: I’ll try to fix things, but I won’t be your tyrant.
A comment by Plutarch in his chapter on Solon sheds contextual light: “the Athenians relapsed into their perennial squabbles about the form that their government should take.”(2)
Although Plutarch’s remark sounds unflattering, “squabbling” verges on ‘appropriately animated ongoing discussions’ over a critically important issue. “Squabbling” implies that many Athenians took active and opinionated part in the debate over what manner of constitutional framework they ought to have.
And Athenians did, finally, sensibly come to the point of saying to themselves: okay, we’ve been trying year after year to sort this thing out, and haven’t been able to come to a conclusion, and furthermore this place is going down the drain, so let’s try a different approach.
Solon began by repealing most of Draco’s laws, and gave amnesty to Athens’ political prisoners or exiles, except those who had tried to seize power. But the basic constitutional challenge was reminiscent of the financial challenge: how to smoothly rearrange traditional political institutions, power relationships and presumptions in such a way as to satisfy most, and especially, ruffle as few powerful feathers as possible? Traditionally, great privilege and power accrued to a few, and the bottom was essentially politically powerless. His new constitution sought to give all citizens the satisfaction and security of meaningful involvement and real political weight.
His approach was psychologically clever, and the results again impressive. He left Athenian elites with a considerable semblance of their traditional offices and trappings of power, but inserted an avenue into political prestige and high office that was based on wealth. This introduced more upward mobility, and encouraged ambitions in industry and business, while weakening the power of bloodlines.
But it was his subtle empowering of common citizens that would prove most consequential. The lowest class of citizens was restricted by Solon from high office, but was given the right to take part in mass juries that had final arbitration power: that is, Solon inserted a decisive element of democracy into a formerly oligarchic and aristocratic polity. As Plutarch notes, this change was initially accorded small significance, but over time, like an implacable wedge, it turned out to be the means by which great changes, including full democracy, followed.
The Assembly of all citizens was also given the power to question, impeach and punish the top rung of officials.
Solon went on to make a wide range of laws, some pertaining to matters of public behavior, such as say how to behave at funerals. Due to the obscurity of some of his laws, and the disputes that they generated, the citizen jury played a gradually increasing role, in effect as the supreme court of Athens. Appeals of magistrates’ decision were also placed before these citizen mass juries.
Note that the size of the jury, numbering potentially in the several thousands, made pretty nigh impossible buying or intimidating the jurors, and obviated the modern mechanism of filtering through many people to ferret out ‘the right’ little jury. Also avoided was the modern plague of lawyers’ parasitic stratagems, or giving judicial supremacy to politically biased or corruptible judges.
Another important innovation was to allow any citizen to seek justice through the law on behalf of any other citizen who had been the victim of a wrongdoing.
At the end of his lawmaking effort, Solon in effect said: okay, there it is; give it a good try, see how it works out, I’m going traveling.
Although Athens soon reverted for some decades to one person rule, the reforms that Solon had initiated and instituted were largely maintained, and his democratic experiment built upon and extended by two notable leaders, Pisistratus and Cleisthenes. Within a century the process of democratization reached a point where Athenian democracy directly carried out executive, judicial and legislative functions.
And hundreds of years later the Athenian Constitution with all its changes was still referred to as Solon’s.
Without the reforms of Solon the future of Athens as well as Greece and indeed Europe and indeed human history would have unfolded differently, be that good bad or indifferent.
The achievements of classical Greek culture would still have been remarkable, but what did happen was cultural fecundity and excellence in so many fields that we’ve never seen anything like it. (6).
A century after Solon, massive armies from the mighty Persian Empire twice attempted to conquer little Greece; on both occasions it was the free citizens of Athens who were key to victory against the Persians.
The most important Athenian ally in the struggle against Persia was Sparta.
Less than two centuries after Solon, Athens and Sparta went to war with each other for three decades and just about destroyed each other. Sparta won the war, set up an oligarchy in Athens, but Athens soon restored democracy.
‘Direct’ Democracy:
Athens’ unique adventures with democracy took place in an era when concentrated political power of various descriptions was the norm in the surrounding world. However, no matter what political power structure any particular Greek settlement had developed, Greeks generally saw themselves as a comparatively free people surrounded by hordes of subject, servile – not Greek - peoples.
The word democracy refers to that political system in which the people exercise actual political sovereignty. Thus ‘direct democracy’ is a redundancy, but since the term representative democracy has taken over, the redundancy seems necessary. Direct democracy is a synonym for real democracy, while representative democracy concentrates power, and thus is in effect predominantly oligarchical. Typically there are many democratic pretensions, and occasional democratic insertions, as in say honest elections.
One of the enduring myths about Athens’ democracy is that its dysfunctions were responsible for the troubles and decline of Athens. Plato via Socrates was a powerful agent of that view. But the amazing unprecedented and unequaled achievements of Athenians, after Solon’s insertion of an admixture of democracy, refute such accusations and ought to be part of any judgment. Furthermore, societal difficulty and breakdown has been known to occur in states that are anything but democratic..
It is fascinating how many countries have draped themselves in the legitimizing language of democracy but have avoided like the plague actual democracy. Even those readily admitting that Athenian democracy had merits and achievements may next offer the standard rejoinder that direct democracy in the Athenian manner cannot possibly be applied sensibly in the modern world. The argument boils down to something like: we’re too big and complex, and besides, people are such dummies.
Yet we have examples that suggest otherwise. (7)
Athens’ gradual adoption of full democracy was based on an implicit respect for common citizens: that the community of average citizens were worthy of a decisive, sovereign role in a community’s politics; that common folk were typically the repository of common sense (8), and capable of prudent policy; that the narrow self-interest that is a dominant tendency in oligarchy and aristocracy ought to be balanced by effectively-empowered broader community concerns; that the protection of the interests of the average person was best assured through politically empowering the community.
The Athenian freedom and tendency to speak frankly, the habit of discussion, debate, argument – the life of reason - was critically important to the Athenian democracy project.
Direct democracy empowered Athenian citizens beyond the practical asset of decisive political power: it also conferred the dignity of sovereignty, and created a sense of solidarity, of cohesion, among citizens: this is our community. And direct democracy also provided an antidote to the tendency for executive political power to covet and gain more and more and more power.
Although Athens was unique in its particular Constitutional journey, Greece and the large Greek diaspora of colonies around the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea was a laboratory for a great variety of political experiments. Aristotle for example found 158 constitutions to study and compare in his ground breaking foray into political science. (9)
Iceland's tribulation and (temporary?) triumph:
From the sunny climes of classical Greece we turn to Iceland’s recent adventure with debilitating debt and the delights of democracy: Erupting with the suddenness of one of Iceland's volcanoes, came financial disaster. Icelanders, lulled by easy credit and rhapsodizing over a flood of acquisitions and burgeoning good times, with fulfilled dreams of driving a Mercedes here and inhabiting a gleaming mansion there, woke up one morning to a debt-based nightmare.
What happened next is kindred to the theme of Solon and Athens.
Its total population not much larger than Athens in its later classical period, Iceland was suddenly plunged into bank failures, a financial crisis and social turmoil in 2008/9. The reflexive, ordained, 'orthodox' message to Iceland from the global financial powers that be was: a contract is a contract: pay up or else, you profligate foolish people.
And initially, some variation of the pay up or else theme was the only thing on the table. However, Icelanders, many of them not everybody's fool, and on the whole a pretty cohesive bunch, began to ask very loud and pointed questions about the basis of the financial disaster, and staged largely peaceful, pot banging protests in the face of the authorities, smelling fraudulent rats here, and refusing to sheepishly submit to the descent into penury, there.
It has been a marvelous, inspiring but bumpy journey so far.
Iceland's President Grimsson offers first hand observations and philosophical context in a CBC radio interview on Dec. 11, 2011: (10)
“It was an extraordinary experience to witness how the collapse of the banks, the financial crisis, seemed to be in the process of breaking up the very strong social cohesion which has characterized Iceland for centuries.
“From one day to another as we came into January of 2009 what I feared every morning when I woke up was not that we wouldn’t be able to deal with the economic consequences, but that whether what was happening to our political and social and democratic system would completely split apart and we wouldn’t be able to put it together again.
“…I’ve said to many political and financial leaders in other countries, what all of this demonstrated is that … [the actions of banks and financial markets can] … break down our democratic and political system.
“…the theory … was very popular from the 1980s onward, … that somehow the market was supreme, that if you allowed the market to go ahead full force the rest of society and our political system would somehow take care of itself. But we witnessed in Iceland … that the failure in the market threatened the breakdown of our entire political and democratic system.
“But fortunately for us in Iceland we were wise enough somehow early on to realize that this challenge, this crisis, was not just an economic crisis: It was also a fundamental political and social and democratic challenge. [other countries seem not to have learned that lesson].
“…But when all the complicated analysis was swept away I was left with a fundamental choice between what we interpreted as the paramount financial interest of the financial markets in Europe with respect to Iceland, and on the other, the democratic will of my people. And I came to the conclusion that Icelandic society…is more about democracy than it is about financial markets.”
The entire interview is well worth listening to. Grimsson explains that orthodox ‘solutions’ – save the banks and milk the people – were rejected, at least temporarily, in favor of saving the people and letting the banks fail. Referendums were held in which a very strong majority favored not taking responsibility for the debts of private banks. Instead, criminal investigations were launched. Constitutional changes were made. The most financially vulnerable people were helped.
Rating agencies had given Icelandic banks glowing reports until just before the collapse, so that was another important lesson learned. Britain complained bitterly about British citizens’ losses and demanded Iceland's taxpayers take responsibility, and in the face of Iceland’s refusal, Britain invoked anti-terrorism law.
Many people, including experts inside and outside of Iceland, predicted that Iceland’s approach would fail, even destroy the country, but by 2011, a scant three years after disaster hit, unemployment had fallen to an enviable 4%, there was a 3% growth rate, and the social trend was positive.
In the case of Iceland, reminiscent of Solon and Athens, it was a combination of plucky social solidarity, alleviation of onerous debt, democratic procedures, constitutional changes, rule of law (even for banksters and politicians and officials), referendums (direct democracy) in which the sovereign will of the people repudiated obedience to financial scam artists and oligarchs, and canny and bold and principled leadership that saved the day, at least temporarily. And it should be noted that the Icelandic revolution was among other things an inspired reason-based and peaceful one, where at a critical moment demonstrators actually protected the police from violence. The story continues to unfold. Iceland has not escaped dysfunction near and far.
Meanwhile, in the now of 2015, the people of the countries of the planet have seen incomprehensible trillions of dollars sent into the private banking system, while many countries continue to have great economic problems and social distress. Like Greece.
And so we turn back to Greece, once again, with social and economic dysfunctions and debt problems and oligarchs. Are there shades of Solonic inspiration in the 'we're not going to take it any more' reformist rebellion playing out right now, February 2015? A national election victory of an upstart coalition, 'Syriza'; a wide ranging program of social reconstruction, alleviation of debt, and democratic reforms. Starving people, massive debt, high unemployment and hopes dashed in Greece – where have we heard that before? - have precipitated substantial, at least temporary, political support for re-thinking business as usual, and maybe even going beyond tilting at windmills to achieving real reform.
Europe without passports was a nice idea for travelers and saboteurs, Greece without a national currency was good for diminished sovereignty and an influx of mountains of ensnaring electronic wizardry debt, and then the scam of more debt to 'solve' the impossible debt burden, and then again and again, but how's it actually working out? All that technocratic zeal for EU, all that amazing modern technology, such greatly increased potential efficiency and productivity potential, how come so much poverty and unemployment?
The Syriza program has a bizarre quality not just because some of its key spokespeople say frank sensible things, but because it (11) contains some sensible taboo items which might well be implemented: for example, “a tax on financial transactions”, strangely absent from so many jurisdictions. Tax essentials, okay, but tax financial transactions? Wild. And for example “preference for renewable energy”. Now there's an problematic idea for the cash flow and ideology of the powers that be. And disallowing the wearing of masks by police at demonstrations? And what's this about not wearing a tie around the bigwigs? That's getting down to some serious subliminal trained-political-seal ass kicking.
So Solon. Any more bright ideas? Would you remind us that Norway and Switzerland are not in the EU and have retained more sovereignty than most and have unemployment rates between 3-4 %? Or notice that in February 2015 little Croatia embarks on your kind of adventure by giving 60,000 indebted citizens a debt-free fresh start (12)? Or insert some big question marks...into the wild blue yonder.... student debt Jubilee, or credit creation as a public utility, or reaching for the moon and mandating media honesty? You would have understood that the tall tale and censorship approach to describing the world, normalizing dishonesty, the hallmark of criminality, is, past a certain very circumscribed point, deranged, a really really bad idea.
Robert Snefjella is a retired organic farmer living in Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at [email protected]
Notes:
1. The introduction of a new style of warfare into Greek culture in the 7th century BC played some role in undermining the confidence of the traditionally powerful. This was the militarily effective innovation of massed line fighting featuring spear thrusting Hoplites locked shield to shield. The average fit fellow could take part, was suddenly both indispensable and effective as warrior, and this reduced the ability of smaller numbers of well trained and equipped ‘noble knights’, the enforcers of the aristocracy, to intimidate the masses. Furthermore, this all together locked-shield warfare encouraged solidarity among the infantry commoners, in contrast to the chronic factionalism of the elite, as they vied for power. Indeed, one could go further and say that the idea of ‘democracy’ – political sovereignty for the many - was to some extent cultivated by effective infantry warfare - military confidence by the many.
2. From the Ian Scott-Kilvert translation, Penguin books.
3. Contrast Solon’s Jubilee-esque approach to the common contemporary ‘strategy’ of dealing with onerous debt problems by allotting trillions of dollars to large banks and exacerbating impossible debt difficulties for many indebted countries and countless indebted individuals.
4. Athens was blessed with a good climate and good access to the sea, but it had poor thin soils, so growing a surplus of food was a challenge. As an alternative to attempting food self-sufficiency, Solon enhanced Athens’ capacity to trade for food. He encouraged skilled tradespeople to come to Athens, and promoted industry and the diversification of the Athenian economy. He mandated that fathers must teach their sons a trade. And he introduced a simple graduated income tax.
5. Athens’ growing wealth became a critical military factor, enabling it in the face of a threatened massive Persian invasion to quickly build a formidable navy, enabling it in turn to play an indispensable role in the successful repulsing of the Persian empire’s attempt to subjugate Greece. This victory – a David beats Goliath story if ever there was one – gave an enormous boost to Athens’ self –confidence. It also incidentally has been described by more than one commentator as a key event in history, since so much of what we identify as classical Greek accomplishment may well not have happened, given Greece’s defeat by Persia.
But Athens’ increasing power also devolved into empire, the weakening of community spirit, involvement in distant wars, sometimes catastrophically, and much of the magic wasted away….
6. A short list of the historically most influential playwrights or philosophers or sculptors or historians or politicians or mathematicians would have a hard time not including many classical Greeks. And what percentage of modern ‘medical practitioners’ measure up to Hippocrates?
7. An example of direct democracy's capacity for elite-defying astuteness was displayed in Canada in 1992 in an attempt by the Canadian government at the time to legitimize an extensive rewriting of the Canadian Constitution – known as the Charlottetown Accord. It was put before the Canadian people in a referendum. That is, Canadians were given the power to decide by majority vote if this new Constitution was to be accepted or not. Endorsing the proposed changes were nearly all political parties, and most of the media. The Canadian people were inundated with warnings about the dire –‘the sky will fall’ - consequences for the country if the proposed changes were not accepted.
Nearly alone among prominent Canadians in opposing the proposed Constitutional package was former Prime Minister Trudeau. There was intense interest and much discussion across Canada about the issue, and in the end a majority of the people of Canada (sensibly in my opinion) voted no.
Noteworthy was first the ability of Canadians to resist the extremely strong elite and media support for the changes, and to come to their own conclusions, and secondly, the appropriately keen interest that many Canadians took in the question of their country’s primary legal document.
Thus were the elites instructed that direct democracy could be hard for them to control.
Direct democracy can be inserted into the processes of many institutions that are removed from the political sphere. The executive power of appointment to public institutions, for example, tends to ensure that ideological or nepotistic or political considerations will prevail over quality and disinterested leadership. The rot on top of many regulatory agencies derives from this practise. In most cases the public or employees of an institution could do a better job of selecting institutional leadership.
8. Common sense is advantaged by broad practical experience. The typical Athenian at the time of Solon took part in many different tasks relating to the upkeep of a household and the community: Life for most was a composite of rural and village life. A man might gain competence in house building, carpentry, stonework, gardening, hunting, going to war, political leadership, building and sailing a vessel, and raising a family, and more. Much of the basic economy – say clothing and tools and food - was largely provided by one’s household.
The Greek polis – inadequately called City States – though each was different than the rest, shared an underlying common culture: This included the remarkable classical Greek language, with its capacity for clarity and precision; a language which has of course had a prolific heritage: many words derived from the language of classical Greece adorn many languages today.
And the Greeks shared Homer, who for many centuries was the dominant bard, guide, teacher, and mentor to them. Homer’s remarkable mental landscape was an enduring spur to Greek pursuit of excellence, and inspiration among other things to the indispensable quality of courage.
Greeks were polytheists, with a pantheon of superhuman yet imperfect gods; although these gods were interpreted as meddling in human affairs, sometimes helpfully, and on the whole ‘tilting towards justice’, they left people with the dignity of choice, the capacity to influence their own destiny. Religion was largely a hands-on affair, not done to or for the people by a church, but woven into daily life. Again, this tended to create an empowered population, full participants, not passive recipients, in religion.
There was no heaven to head for, so the Greek hero did not have the consolation of dying bravely as a ticket to immortality with angels and harps. The consolation was in being remembered well, celebrated, revered for what one did.
Greek objectivity – say defining the earth as a ball in space and nearly getting the size right – can be contrasted with Europeans nearly 2000 years later worrying about going over the edge of the earth, and in our own time, expectations of being ‘raptured’, or believing that nuclear power plants are sensible and safe.
10.CBC interview Dec. 11, 2011.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zlzC_XMQzI
11. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-29/syrizas-original-40-point-manifesto
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