Reviving Athenian Democracy
Applying Modern Computers to Ancient Ideas
Things to Keep in Mind
The warmest friends to, and the best supporters of, the Constitution, do not contend that it is free from imperfections; but these were not to be avoided, and they are convinced if evils are likely to flow from them, that the remedy must come thereafter; because, in the present moment it is not to be obtained. And as there is a Constitutional door open for it, I think the people (for it is with them to judge) can, as they will have the aid of experience on their side, decide with as much propriety on the alterations and amendments which shall be found necessary, as ourselves; for I do not conceive that we are more inspired—have more wisdom—or possess more virtue than those who will come after us. The power under the Constitution will always be with the People. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their Interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their Servants can, and undoubtedly will be, recalled.[1]
—George Washington, on the proposed Constitution
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…corruption in elections has heretofore destroyed all Elective Governments.”
—John Adams, 1796 Letter to Thomas Jefferson
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By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
—James Madison, Federalist 10
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They [parties/factions] are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
—George Washington, Farewell Address
Like many people my age I have memories that stretch back to the late 19th century—over 120 years. This is because of the oral history that was taught to me by my great grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, my grandparents, my parents, their siblings, as well as family friends whose life memories stretched across the same time span. Until I was nine years old I had never seen a TV, and we didn’t own one until I was a senior in high school. All I knew about the past came from classes at school, and from sitting in a room with adults from the generations I just mentioned as they recalled the events they had lived through, or repeated the stories they had heard from their elders. Often this story-telling would take place on a winter’s eve warmed by a wood, or kerosene, or natural gas fire. I don’t recall a fireplace, or coal as fuel, but I did hear stories, probably false, but intended to kid the kids, about using dry cow “chips” as fuel to keep warm, and there was always the debate about which liquor was best for keeping the inner self warm.
These stories stretched across decades, from the beginning of WWI in 1914 when young men born in the 1890’s went into service, to its end in 1918, to the beginning of WWII in 1939, to its end in 1945, from the farming sector problems of the years after WWI, to 1928, when Herbert Hoover, in his speech from Stanford University as he accepted the Republican Party’s invitation to be their candidate for President, also promised, literally, to end poverty, from the 1929 stock market crash, the start of the Great Depression, to the Dust Bowl, to the beginning of its end of the Depression in 1957, these stories took the same form, told and retold the same events, the same hopes, the same heartbreaks, the same tragedies, the same pain, the same disappointments, and the same sense of abandonment by their, and now our, government.
Then, as I grew older and got access to the small library at school and the larger one at the next county seat 35 miles away, I learned more and more about our history. Then our parents gave us kids a brand new set of encyclopedias, which the two of us who were old enough to read devoured in one quiet, hot summer during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, and the start of the bitter, scary, irrational fight by whites against school integration. And then we got television and could witness marches and beatings and murders and assassinations and starvation and economic downturns, and all the other phenomena in which ordinary people get pushed around by those who hold all of the power of the people. I began to see that our systems of government and economics mistreated most Americans. They mistreated seven groups of people, I call them the “hated” groups because if we loved them we wouldn’t treat them the way we do.
The seven hated groups are: the not-white, not-male, not-Christian, not-heterosexual, not-well-to-do, not-native-born, and the disabled. These groups make up the majority of our population. But the people who hold power, the seven favored groups, the white, male, Christian, heterosexual, well-to-do, native-born and the abled, are treated with great deference by our systems of government and economics. They are in the minority, yet they are in control. Even a child could see that something was seriously wrong with American “democracy.” And, while we speak of children, I must point out that our present system of government is creating an eighth hated group: schoolchildren. Any system of government that enables the murder by gunfire of its children, while they are in school, at their desks, studying for that wonderful day when they will graduate and finally have the liberty to live their own lives in pursuit of their own happiness, is a government that has forever forfeited its right to rule, and according to the command of the Declaration of Independence, must be abolished and replaced.
Then the truth was revealed by James Madison when I read Federalist 10. Therein he said our system of government is not a democracy, but it is a republic. He said that a democracy like that of ancient Athens would require the people to meet together and decide everything themselves in person. He said that such a government would not work in America because both our population and our geographic expanse were too large. He said that only a republic with the “scheme of representation” would work with a nation as large as ours. He said:
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The truth revealed by Madison’s paragraph was found in these words: “the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” He was precisely describing our national system of government. We use elections to delegate our entire government to a small group, usually all men, who come together to do the nation’s business—and, truth be told, to do their own personal, private business as well. We delegate to them the entire government and give them the power to do what they please with little or no interference from us, the people. I was shocked when I realized that we the people have power only one day every two years. At that time we delegate all of our transformative power to a small number of citizens who can do what they please. We, the people, hold power for one day, and one day only.
I was stumped. Because of our large population, a democracy would not work for America. The Athenians were lucky. They were small enough so that all of them could gather together and conduct their nation’s business. The citizens of ancient Athens did not have representatives of the kind that we have, they did not delegate all their power to a small group of men for years at a time.
By the time I realized these facts, I was nearly out of college and soon embarked on a career as a teacher, primarily of math and German, and as the golf coach at a large Texas high school. While I worked as a teacher, computers were gaining power and offered wonderful career opportunities. In June of 1965, I left teaching to become a designer and developer of computer hardware and software systems for large enterprises. I worked as a systems engineer until my retirement in 1995, after thirty years on the job. My generation of systems engineers computerized America and the world. You are welcome, no thanks are necessary, it was exhilarating.
I dusted off my dream of establishing a real democracy in America. I tried to see if computers could make such a government possible. Through decades of experience with computer applications I had learned that computers did not work everywhere for everything, but it was worth a try, if only as a hobby, to see how computers could be applied to the democracy of ancient Athens and possibly be extended to make American democracy a real possibility. But, I couldn’t get around the small population of Athens and the enormous population of America. It seemed that Madison’s “scheme of representation” was the only possible approach.
Then one morning, while shaving, something happened that had happened many times over my career in computer applications—I got an idea, an idea that might solve the problem. The idea was simple: in fact, it was a simple question:
“Was James Madison right in Federalist 10 when he said that a democracy would not work for us because our population was too large for everybody to meet in person as was done in ancient Athens?”
I realized that I had accepted his statement at face value. What if he was wrong, and I was also wrong not to check his statement? Here is the key paragraph from Federalist 10 (emphasis added):
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
What if the population of Athens itself was too large for everybody to meet in person, just like the population of modern America? A quick search of the Internet showed that the population of democratic Athens varied just as any large city’s population would, but scholars agreed that most of the time it consisted of about 30,000 citizens. This was clearly too large a number to meet at one time to conduct all of the nation’s business. So, the question became: “How did the Athenians deal with a population that was too large for the entire population to meet together to conduct the city’s business?” The answer was at first surprising, but then obvious. Further research revealed that the Athenians did not require that all citizens be present in the Assembly in order to do the city’s business. I learned that the Athenians required a quorum of 6,000 to be present to do business. The Athenians were willing to accept that a sample of 6,000 would be accurate enough so that the decisions reached by the quorum would have the same weight as if the whole population had made them. To my way of thinking, the use of computers to randomly select groups of citizens to carry out various tasks of government seemed a natural way for us to simulate, with high fidelity, the actual operation of Athenian democracy.
After all, the modern world has proved beyond doubt the accurate reflection of a properly selected, relatively small sample of a much larger population. In the modern world of politics we rely on scientific opinion polling to give us an accurate picture of the state of an election contest at a given moment in time. There are certain rules to follow to ensure the quality of the sample, as well as the usefulness of the questions to be asked of the members of the sample, but there is nothing difficult about obeying those rules and getting high-quality results.
I have not been able to find the method used by the Athenians to choose their quorum, but I think it likely that if 6,000 showed up at the pnyx, the hillside where the Assembly met, then business went on as usual, but if fewer than 6,000 showed up, everybody went home. I am not very concerned about how the Athenians satisfied themselves that a quorum was present because we need only adapt the idea of a quorum, we do not need to adopt it in every detail, we are free to use our own method for selecting our quorum, and random selection by computer is easy, reliable, and can be used to serve many situations, at all levels of government. To my way of thinking, my early morning flash of insight swept away many of the barriers between living with our horrid system of unresponsive, stultifying, corrupt, often brutally punishing, government, our Madisonian Republic, and living with the useful, people-friendly, responsive, government of Athenian democracy. All of a sudden, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” seemed to be a real possibility, seemed to be in reach, seemed to be… revivable.
[1] George Washington, writing about the Constitution in a letter to his nephew and heir, Bushrod Washington, November 9, 1787. The words, “present moment” are emphasized in the original. An internet copy of the letter can be found at: http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1787/washington.html