C. L. R. James: ‘Every Cook Can Govern’ (1956)

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Marxist theorist and activist C. L. R. James, in his 1956 essay ‘Every Cook Can Govern‘, did not offer any specific plan for incorporating sortition into modern government. Instead, James forcefully offers sortition as a radical tool for democratizing government, reflecting in practice the idea that served as the title of his essay.

James began as follows:

The Greek form of government was the city-state. Every Greek city was an independent state. At its best, in the city state of Athens, the public assembly of all the citizens made all important decisions on such questions as peace or war. They listened to the envoys of foreign powers and decided what their attitude should be to what these foreign powers had sent to say. They dealt with all serious questions of taxation, they appointed the generals who should lead them in time of war. They organized the administration of the state, appointed officials and kept check on them. The public assembly of all the citizens was the government.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Greek Democracy was that the administration (and there were immense administrative problems) was organized upon the basis of what is known as sortition, or, more easily, selection by lot. The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a method which amounted to putting names into a hat and appointing the ones whose names came out.

Now the average CIO bureaucrat or Labor Member of Parliament in Britain would fall in a fit if it was suggested to him that any worker selected at random could do the work that he is doing, but that was precisely the guiding principle of Greek Democracy. And this form of government is the government under which flourished the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

Filed under: Athens, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Australian prime minister proposes “people’s assembly” on climate

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Yoram Gat

The Brisbane Times reports that a “people’s assembly” to investigate climate change is being proposed by the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, as part of her re-election platform:

A JULIA Gillard government would create a ”citizens’ assembly” of ”real Australians” to investigate the science of climate change and consequences of emissions trading, under a plan to build a national consensus for a carbon price.

[…]

Few details will be given [in an upcoming speech] about how the citizens’ assembly would operate, other than that an independent authority would select people from the electoral roll using census data. Membership would be optional.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, History, Initiatives, Sortition | Leave a comment »

The lottery of Greek democracy

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Yoram Gat

The BBC History Magazine, “Britain’s bestselling history magazine”, has a recent short article called “The lottery of Greek democracy” by Michael C. Scott.

Interestingly, despite its title, the article manages to mention the use of chance solely for nominating juries, avoiding any mention of sortition.

My favourite item in the Epigraphical museum is in fact not an inscription per se, but actually a machine made originally of wood and stone: the kleroterion. A what? A kleroterion was used to ensure absolute randomness in the allocation of particularly important civic positions, in particular the allocation of men to juries that sat in the many Athenian court rooms.

[ Description of the workings of a Kleroterion. ]

This machine was, in essence, just like the lottery machines used in so many national lotteries in countries around the world today. It provided the Athenians with a definitive way of ensuring that the important organs of their system of democracy were not tainted by corruption. This machine, combined with the fact that most juries were 500 people strong, made bribing juries in advance a practical impossibility and helped reassure the citizens of Athens that when a decision was made, it was made on the strength of the arguments alone. The kleroterion is thus a remarkable testament to a remarkable civilization.

Filed under: Athens, History | 7 Comments »

More sortition advocacy by Marxists

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Paul Cockshott writes:

In a modern oligarchy like France, Britain or the USA, what Aristotle called the magistracy is elected. In these elections those with education and money have a huge advantage. The election process is expensive – there are the costs of advertising and campaigning. Historically, in Europe at least, workers’ parties have been able to partly get round this by collecting dues from hundreds of thousands or millions of members. But when standing candidates they usually face the hostility of the privately owned mass media, which is hard to offset.

They are also under pressure to present candidates who are far from being “of indigent circumstances and mechanical employments”. Their first generation of leaders may be of that sort: Ramsay MacDonald or Lula. But later they attempt to present candidates who are educated and polished: Obamas and Blairs. In consequence the elected representatives of popular parties tend to be from higher classes than their supporters. They tend, in consequence, to be markedly cautious in implementing the full rigour of a socialist programme when in office.

Democratic selection by lot suffers none of these disadvantages. It guarantees that the assembly will be dominated by the working classes. It guarantees that the assembly will be balanced in terms of sex, age, ethnic origin, etc. As such it would constitute the most favourable possible grounds for achieving a majority for socialism.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Sortition | 1 Comment »

How democratic was Athens?

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Back and forth on this subject on a Marxist blog.

Filed under: Athens, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Sortition in The Economist

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Jorge Cancio emails:

fyi: Ancient Athens online – are we getting mainstream?

Filed under: Athens, Experiments, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Athenian Democracy in the British Museum

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Yoram Gat

I recently visited the British Museum and found that among the hundreds of displays devoted to the ancient Greek world and specifically to ancient Athens, there is one display box titled “Democracy”.

The box contains, among other items, a storage jar dated 490-480 depicting Theseus (“credited with the invention of democracy”), a drinking cup dated 490-480 depicting Athena watching over the Greeks at Troy as they vote to decide whether Ajax or Odysseus should receive the arms of the dead Achilles, and several jurymen pinakia, such as the one below, which belonged to one Archilochos of Phaleron and is dated 370-362.

The box carries the following description:

Classical Athens was the world’s first democracy. The tyrants who had ruled the city for some 50 years were expelled at the end of the 6th century BC and, from 460 onwards, all male Athenian citizens governed law and politics by debating and voting in a popular assembly. State offices and legal juries were filled by drawing lots. Not everyone, however, was included in this democracy, and women, resident foreigners and slaves were excluded. Nevertheless, Athenian democracy was a starting point for the development of modern democracies.

It is interesting that despite the mention of the practice of sortition in Athens, the text endorses the conventional modern view of equating democracy with elections and equating democratic progress with  the widening of electoral rights.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Sortition | 6 Comments »

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