In his column “Ancient and Modern” published in the Spectator Australia, Peter Jones warns his readers against the “Maoist re-education” of the young, generated by the “cancellation” tactics wielded by those “urging gender changes on children who rather feel like it”. In the process, Jones gives his readers a sketch of the Athenian system, including its reliance on sortition, presenting it as a model of good government, where policy was decided based on debate, persuasion and “peaceful agreement”, rather than the outrageous tactics he decries.
Despite mentioning selection by lot, Jones ignores the role of the allotted Council in Athenian politics. When talking about “the all-powerful Assembly” Jones does not consider the question of whether this Assembly in reality provided an arena where isegoria was more than a formality. It also remains unclear whether Jones advocates for the radical change that would be required in order to turn the Western political system into something that is more akin to the Athenian system and providing “more political control over tyrants and oligarchs”. His focus on activists causing an “uproar and silently glueing [themselves] to tarmac” may indicate that leaving those aside we are already living in a system which embodies the ideals of democracy. An off-handed comment about the “rights” of free speech being “rescindable” may also provide a hint regarding Jones’s mindset.
What would ancient Greeks have made of the current protests relating to the oil industry and identity reassignment? Very little indeed.
The Greek invention of democracy (‘people power’) emerged in the late 6th century bc after strong popular demand for more political control over tyrants and oligarchs. The result was a system in which all male citizens over 18 debated and determined all political questions in the regular Assemblies. Most official posts were held, usually for one year, by citizens who presented themselves for selection by lot (voting was considered meritocratic, not democratic), with serious consequences for failure.
Anyone who wished to wield power could do so only through his capacity to persuade a majority of the all-powerful Assembly. This is where free speech came in. Every citizen had a right to an ‘equal say’ (isegoria) in the Assembly to express his views or propose a motion. Likewise, every citizen had a right to parrhesia (literally, ‘saying everything’), i.e. an unconstrained frankness of public utterance. But these were ‘rights’ only because a (rescindable) law made them so.So any Greek who wanted to Just Stop Olive Oil had to Just Persuade The Assembly. To ‘persuade’ people by frustrating their normal life was to use force, inviting force in return, when the point of democracy was to replace force with peaceful agreement.
As for those urging gender changes on children who rather feel like it, a Greek’s reaction – incredulity and outrage apart – would probably have been to wonder how banners, uproar and silently glueing yourself to tarmac would persuade anyone, or indicate at all how the community would benefit. Such tactics do not win debates, let alone respect.
But debate is the last thing these people want. They have different tactics: cancellation and the fear that generates, especially among the young, of speaking out. Maoist re-education seems to be working rather well.
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Equality by lot 
*** In contemporary polyarchies there are different kinds of powerful groups which may have difficulties to push their agenda through debate. By simplifying they belong 1 to the moneyed elite 2 to the culture elite 3 to activist groups (the last class being partially connected to the second).
*** These groups may use their social power to have the debate biased through for instance their power on mass media.
*** They may likewise use their social power by practically disregarding the common citizens feelings and ideas.
*** But some activists use a third way. They want to enforce their agenda by open pressure, as in totalitarian systems, but by decentralized ways. Peter Jones criticizes that by opposing it to the Greek democratic model and its “art of persuasion”. Right, here the opposition is clear and open. But I agree with Yoram Gat : Jones seems to imply that without this third way we would be in a dêmokratia. He is using the old trick of the line with polyarchy on one end and totalitarianism on the opposite end, which does not allow place for dêmokratia (let’s remember that the modest Ségolène Royal proposal of “citizen juries” was labelled as Maoist). Political systems are not on a line, and polyarchy is not dêmokratia.
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*** Jones writes that isêgoria and parrhesia “ were ‘rights’ only because a (rescindable) law made them so.” He seems to oppose that to the polyarchic systems where rights are said “enshrined” in “constitutions” with judicial review, whereas in ancient democracy the Assembly was all-powerful and could rescind any right through some emotional movement of the day.
*** At least for the 4th Athenian democracy it is a basically wrong picture. Let’s suppose an Assembly decree curtailing isêgoria : it would have been quickly subject to a graphê and an allotted Court would have reviewed it , and most probably crushed it.
*** Jones, as many contemporary commentators, knows about the use of lot in ancient dêmokratia but underestimates it, by disregarding the central role of allotted juries in Demosthenes’s Athens – the one dêmokratia we know well. Except in direct peace and war decisions, the allotted juries had the last word.
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> some activists use a third way. They want to enforce their agenda by open pressure, as in totalitarian systems, but by decentralized ways
I am not sure what you mean by that. Comparing the tactics of direct action activists to those of totalitarian governments seems completely wrong to me. The activists are not seeking to force citizens into following prescribed actions. They have no power to do so. They are seeking to pressure the powerful by shaming them in front of the population at large, or in front of some influential strata of the population, which the activists believe share their ideas.
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*** I was not clear enough. Actually the ways used by some activist groups in our polyarchies described as “direct action” or as “outrageous tactics” are to be analyzed closely before opposing them to the “art of persuasion”. Many of them may be ways of attracting attention, and be the first step of persuasion, as before to persuade you must first be heard. Others are intended clearly to intimidate any opposing discourse. If the happy burning of bad books is not practiced, it is because it reminds too directly some totalitarian memories, but the idea is here.
*** Thus Jones’ discourse may be ambiguous. He may target the activists who tries to crush dissenting opinions, but he may likewise ask the activists to restrict themselves to the old polyarchic ways as electoral campaigns, needing money and mass organization – thus favoring some specific kinds of the social powers in polyarchy.
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About the link between dêmokratia and art of persuasion.
*** In a dêmokratia, any activist group must try to persuade the majority of citizens. Thus Peter Jones is right to link the art of persuasion to the dêmokratia model. (Is he really thinking of it as a working model for 21st century, I don’t know). And the ancient democratic Athens produced masterworks of oratory.
*** But the art of persuasion must be used in other socio-political environments, and furthermore may be valued as art even if its role is lesser. The masterworks of Attic oratory went to us through societies which did not like at all their democratic environment and most of the political values they contained but saw them as models of oratory (specially for the Roman elite) or cultural treasures. Likewise contemporary Europe, whereas mostly atheistic, preserves Christian themes through literary and artistic masterworks.
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André,
> He may target the activists who tries to crush dissenting opinions
I didn’t see any indication that he is talking about such actions. None of his examples are of this kind. But moving beyond Jones personally, whose mindset seems pretty clear, what examples of this kind are you thinking of?
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*** I have not a list of “direct action” by activists in France. And I was mostly interested by direct actions targeting institutions, which are not usually really violent, because institutions yield to any menace. I think the good example is a very known one, the cancellation of a 2019 conference by Sylviane Agacinski, known as feminist philosopher (and as wife of former Socialist Prime Minister Jospin), but likewise lately for her oppositions in the field of new ways of reproduction (conference «L’être humain à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique» – the human being at the time of his technical reproductibility). See liberation.fr checknews 2019-10-27.
*** The conference was cancelled after opposition of activist groups with a menacing tone. Could be it transformed into a contradictory meeting, both sides refused. The philosopher gave a practical reason: I don’t want to be in front of people who will insult me. On the other side, a more ideological and interesting stance : we don’t want to consider our rights as debatable.
*** The influence of such conferences is actually very reduced. The aim of blocking them is not to counter a dangerous thinker, it is to impose the principle that debate is not allowed, leading to general intimidation and, they hope, self-censorship in Academia and media.
*** Note that for these topics France is not divided into two warring sides. There is not clear simple polarization. Many (especially but not only feminists), who accept the idea of children for lesbian couples through artificial insemination and double female parenthood without father, at the same time reject gestational surrogacy, as commodification of human body or exploitation of women – thus practically (waiting for artificial womb) refusing for the gay male couples the right for parenthood given to lesbian couples. It seems the stance of Mélenchon (who, at the time, supported the right of expression of Agacinski). Many, who accept the idea of transgenderism as expression, however strange, of individual freedom, at the same time have strong qualms about gender transition for teen agers, especially if it involves puberty blockers. A complex ideological landscape. France is not in a situation of ideological civil war and the use of direct action is not the result of such a situation, it is grounded upon an avowed principle, “the rights we support are not debatable”, principle which, in a dêmokratia, would be destroying of isêgoria.
*** In Athens there was only a limitation to isêgoria. It was impossible in the Assembly to say “don’t mind these oracles; oracles are worthless, as gods do not exist”, because open atheism was a criminal offense. But this limitation had no political role (except, one time, to allowing Socrates to be the scapegoat after the civil war). Even supposing a problem with an oracle, a smart statesman could find a good interpretation, as Themistocles famously did. The former limitations in the French Republics targeted ideologies of racial hate which were subversive of the constitution itself and openly supported only by small sectarian groups – and thus did not interfere with living political debates. But the contemporary proposed limitations to free debate “when there are undebatable rights” have a wide potential effect: rights of such and such living humans (or unborn humans, or future humans), rights of animals, rights of Mother Nature (even rights of rivers or forests) … Free debate could be suppressed about many important subjects.
*** Among the pillars of dêmokratia are isêgoria and use of lot. Therefore it would be interesting to ascertain the stances of the various contemporary activist groups about both topics. I am not a political sociologist and I am not able to do this work. It looks that Extinction Rebellion is fond of allotted “citizen assemblies”; do they accept the principle of free debate about their axial subject ?
*** At least I know a French circle which openly and strongly rejects both free debate and mini-populus (actually populus itself): the hard-leftist circle of Eribon, De Lagasnerie and friends. Rejecting the democratic idea itself as grounded on mythological entities as the populus, rejecting the idea of mini-populus (explicitly by Eribon in his known book “Return to Reims”), they claim to be interested only by emancipation struggles, not by institutions – which means that practically they stand for polyarchy (Eribon supported the Yellow Vests as rebellion against the “neo-liberal” capitalist order, but opposed all their leanings toward direct democracy). They stand for a polyarchy with strong role of direct action, of infiltration and of one-sided debate. Against free debate, against the democratic idea, against the mini-populus : we have a perfect opposite to dêmokratia.
*** Note that this circle is often pictured as “totalitarian”, “Stalinist” etc for their open attacks against free debate. We could suspect these characters would have been totalitarian in other times. But for now they accept polyarchy, they defend it against “mythological” ideas of dêmokratia, and they appear to avoid any link with old totalitarianisms.
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André;
I think you are severely over estimating the power of the activists and severely underestimating the power of established elites.
To the extent that established elites want to discuss an issue, no amount of activist threats would block them. Quite to the contrary: any attempt at threats (even from an extreme fringe that does not represent the bulk of the activists) would be used against the activists to delegitimize them if not to actually criminalize them.
The opposite effect is far more important and more prevalent: to the extent elites want to marginalize a certain point of view, they have a myriad of ways to use their institutional power to do so. Those ways are completely legal and are so ubiquitous that they often become imperceptible. A an extreme example would be the way opposition to the Ukraine war has been treated in the West – up to and including criminalizing such opinions.
As a complete aside:
> thus practically (waiting for artificial womb) refusing for the gay male couples the right for parenthood given to lesbian couples
The option of adoption seems available, no?
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Here is another recent, extremely overt, example of the way activists are silenced by the establishment. (Again, most example are much less high profile and more insidious.)
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*** Yoram Gat feels that I am “severely over estimating the power of the activists and severely underestimating the power of established elites.”
*** It is not my real idea. Among the social powers which drive the political life in contemporary Atlantic polyarchies, I don’t minimize the oligarchizing elites. And I think that usually there are few abilities for an activist group to have their way against a coalition of the main oligarchizing elites.
*** Maybe I gave Yoram a wrong feeling by writing about Academia institutions which “yield” to activists. Actually they yield to activists who have sociological and ideological links to them. They are not cowards, but they don’t want to fight people they don’t see as really enemies.
*** My interest is about the relationship between the activist groups views and the 21st century prospects about the political system, and specially about polyarchy and dêmokratia.
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