Why Socrates hated Democracy

[Lagay Raho]

 

[JOEY TRIBIANI]

The reason why i hate democracy is
" a thief & a Scientists have same amount of vote "

 

[jamal18]

Socrates first choice was the 'enlightened ruler'.

 

[waleed3601]

Socrates first choice was the 'enlightened ruler'.

pakistan has had these. ayub and musharraf. these men truly had vision to make Pakistan a great country. unfortunately our awaam is na shukri piece of crap, can't see true potential even when its staring them in the eye. what a waste.

 

[Path-Finder]

pakistan has had these. ayub and musharraf. these men truly had vision to make Pakistan a great country. unfortunately our awaam is na shukri piece of crap, can't see true potential even when its staring them in the eye. what a waste.

one reason is lack of education and other is a cultural thing where people are stuck in bradri system, another is worshipping personality as well. Look at Panama case the whole world know the kind of crooks noora tubbar is yet in Pakistan people are shamelessly benign. Education will solve the case for most people but not everyone.

 

[Jungibaaz]

What Socrates called democracy and what we call democracy are quite different. I'm not just talking about Pakistan's unenlightened democracy, but the modern perception of what democracy is, the anglicised democracy based on Magna Carta as opposed to Athenian democracy.

A lot of people when considering Athenian democracy focus (wrongly in my opinion) on those that it excluded, the smaller number of people that it allowed participation, its exclusion of women and migrants. But for its time it allowed the poor to participate, which is remarkable.

Equally, there are ways in which I would argue that their democracy was even more true to the principle than ours, sortition has many merits over election, for instance, it eliminates career politicians, electioneering and lies, limits the influence of people who rig the process etc. In a perfect system of sortition applied today, the ordinary working man is just as likely to be in power and make the system work for him as a rich man does. And they both can't stick around long enough to form a ruling class, it's out with all of them after their terms and they are then forbidden from partaking again. They had direct democracy compared to our representative ones.

These are differences to bear in mind when considering the opinions of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle on what they called 'democracy'.

Their opinions leave some interesting lessons on how to manage modern democracies, where they can go wrong and how to stop them from doing so.

By the Ancient Greek standard, our democracies are more like oligarchies, where the rich rule. If indeed we have democracy as the Greek's saw it, then what Socrates and Aristotle feared would happen is that the poor through mob rule would capture the wealth of the rich. The two solutions in the modern context to that issue would be to limit participation and by default, limit democracy, or by lowering inequality.

There was a very interesting paper by some political scientists at Princeton a few years back, that paper basically concluded that the US, though it may pride itself on being a democracy, functions for all intents and purposes as an oligarchy. The paper refers to these as systems of majoritarian pluralism (democracy) and biased pluralism (subversion of democracy or oligarchy). The latter is a political system that works for monied interests, and if the ordinary people get what they want once in a while, it happens to be coincidental, and only results from the monied interests already being on board with the idea.

These are important distinctions to understand when watching that video in the OP. Socrates is taking issue with the mob rule of Ancient Greek democracy, which are very different to systems we idealise today. And even those systems we idealise, in reality are detached from the textbook definitions of the words we use for them. Our so called 'democracies' are NOT suffering from mob rule as the video WRONGLY implies, or unenlightened plebs influencing policy for the worse, instead our democracies are suffering from biases that rig the system in favour of the wealthy and that usurp the power of the vote and deny representation to the poor.

 

[livingdead]

What Socrates called democracy and what we call democracy are quite different. I'm not just talking about Pakistan's unenlightened democracy, but the modern perception of what democracy is, the anglicised democracy based on Magna Carta as opposed to Athenian democracy.

A lot of people when considering Athenian democracy focus (wrongly in my opinion) on those that it excluded, the smaller number of people that it allowed participation, its exclusion of women and migrants. But for its time it allowed the poor to participate, which is remarkable.

Equally, there are ways in which I would argue that their democracy was even more true to the principle than ours, sortition has many merits over election, for instance, it eliminates career politicians, electioneering and lies, limits the influence of people who rig the process etc. In a perfect system of sortition applied today, the ordinary working man is just as likely to be in power and make the system work for him as a rich man does. And they both can't stick around long enough to form a ruling class, it's out with all of them after their terms and they are then forbidden from partaking again. They had direct democracy compared to our representative ones.

These are differences to bear in mind when considering the opinions of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle on what they called 'democracy'.

Their opinions leave some interesting lessons on how to manage modern democracies, where they can go wrong and how to stop them from doing so.

By the Ancient Greek standard, our democracies are more like oligarchies, where the rich rule. If indeed we have democracy as the Greek's saw it, then what Socrates and Aristotle feared would happen is that the poor through mob rule would capture the wealth of the rich. The two solutions in the modern context to that issue would be to limit participation and by default, limit democracy, or by lowering inequality.

There was a very interesting paper by some political scientists at Princeton a few years back, that paper basically concluded that the US, though it may pride itself on being a democracy, functions for all intents and purposes as an oligarchy. The paper refers to these as systems of majoritarian pluralism (democracy) and biased pluralism (subversion of democracy or oligarchy). The latter is a political system that works for monied interests, and if the ordinary people get what they want once in a while, it happens to be coincidental, and only results from the monied interests already being on board with the idea.

These are important distinctions to understand when watching that video in the OP. Socrates is taking issue with the mob rule of Ancient Greek democracy, which are very different to systems we idealise today. And even those systems we idealise, in reality are detached from the textbook definitions of the words we use for them. Our so called 'democracies' are NOT suffering from mob rule as the video WRONGLY implies, or unenlightened plebs influencing policy for the worse, instead our democracies are suffering from biases that rig the system in favour of the wealthy and that usurp the power of the vote and deny representation to the poor.

socrates was moaning about uninformed voters in that video, which means he will be more pis*ed with our version of democracy which has women, slaves, poor being able to vote.
You might have missed the timing of the video, its about a demagogue(trump) using stupidity of poor/ignorant people to fight against rich, socrates will apparently be more at ease with wealthy ruling us all because they are the ones who can afford good education.(during his time and even now).

 

[Jungibaaz]

socrates was moaning about uninformed voters in that video, which means he will be more pis*ed with our version of democracy which has women, slaves, poor being able to vote.
You might have missed the timing of the video, its about a demagogue(trump) using stupidity of poor/ignorant people to fight against rich, socrates will apparently be more at ease with wealthy ruling us all because they are the ones who can afford good education.(during his time and even now).

I get that, but I disagree with the video itself. He talks about voting, and Socrates taking issue with mob rule. Failing to make any distinction between sortition and election, no mention of the difference between Socrates' idea of democracy and ours. And then it wrongly implies that unenlightened mob rule might be an issue for us even today.

This is NOT the case at all. What we call democracy and what they call democracy are different. Our democracies aren't actually democracies and therefore cannot suffer the mob rule that Socrates feared. Instead they suffer the tyranny of the richest. See the report I posted a link to in my previous post.

As for the Trump phenomena, yes it's a case of unenlightened voters and mob rule ending badly. But before you arrive at that stage, a number of far larger failures need to take place. People couldn't find proper representation in the establishment so they go looking for alternatives, with the system rigged against them, they suffer and their seeking for an alternative can get desperate, desperate enough to vote for a guys like Trump.

He and the voters that voted for him are symptoms of a broken system, not the cause of one. They do not deserve our condescension, nor would simplifying issues in the way the video tries to do help us overcome the underlying problems. I had a similar discussion with @Syed.Ali.Haider just the other day.

 

[VCheng]

I get that, but I disagree with the video itself. He talks about voting, and Socrates taking issue with mob rule. Failing to make any distinction between sortition and election, no mention of the difference between Socrates' idea of democracy and ours. And then it wrongly implies that unenlightened mob rule might be an issue for us even today.

This is NOT the case at all. What we call democracy and what they call democracy are different. Our democracies aren't actually democracies and therefore cannot suffer the mob rule that Socrates feared. Instead they suffer the tyranny of the richest. See the report I posted a link to in my previous post.

As for the Trump phenomena, yes it's a case of unenlightened voters and mob rule ending badly. But before you arrive at that stage, a number of far larger failures need to take place. People couldn't find proper representation in the establishment so they go looking for alternatives, with the system rigged against them, they suffer and their seeking for an alternative can get desperate, desperate enough to vote for a guys like Trump.

He and the voters that voted for him are symptoms of a broken system, not the cause of one. They do not deserve our condescension, nor would simplifying issues in the way the video tries to do help us overcome the underlying problems. I had a similar discussion with @Syed.Ali.Haider just the other day.

Sometimes, it is useful to change perspective. Regardless of what it is called, just what is any system of government supposed to do for the citizens of a country? Then the logical next question would be which governments come closer than others to delivering on those duties and responsibilities?

 

[gambit]

A lot of people when considering Athenian democracy focus (wrongly in my opinion) on those that it excluded, the smaller number of people that it allowed participation, its exclusion of women and migrants.

This begs an intellectual problem.

Say we have a population of 1000. Say that after certain criteria, only 100 are qualified to vote. Would this be legitimately call a democracy ? For those who met the criteria, of course, in their opinions. But what if we shrink the population down to 500 ? Or even further to 200 ?

A set of criteria naturally produces its opposite: discrimination.

You want a driver's license ? If you are younger than 'X' yrs, you are discriminated from getting a driver's license. We discriminate all the time.

Back then, everyone 'knows' that women are inferior to men in every ways. The Gods says so. And if the Gods says so, then why is it wrong to discriminate women from voting and still call ourselves a democracy ?

Today, we discriminate people from participatory democracy by way of citizenship. But for some, even if a person does nothing more than to pay taxes, one way or another, that alone is enough to warrant participation in democracy, citizenship or not.

 

[livingdead]

I get that, but I disagree with the video itself. He talks about voting, and Socrates taking issue with mob rule. Failing to make any distinction between sortition and election, no mention of the difference between Socrates' idea of democracy and ours. And then it wrongly implies that unenlightened mob rule might be an issue for us even today.

This is NOT the case at all. What we call democracy and what they call democracy are different. Our democracies aren't actually democracies and therefore cannot suffer the mob rule that Socrates feared. Instead they suffer the tyranny of the richest. See the report I posted a link to in my previous post.

As for the Trump phenomena, yes it's a case of unenlightened voters and mob rule ending badly. But before you arrive at that stage, a number of far larger failures need to take place. People couldn't find proper representation in the establishment so they go looking for alternatives, with the system rigged against them, they suffer and their seeking for an alternative can get desperate, desperate enough to vote for a guys like Trump.

He and the voters that voted for him are symptoms of a broken system, not the cause of one. They do not deserve our condescension, nor would simplifying issues in the way the video tries to do help us overcome the underlying problems. I had a similar discussion with @Syed.Ali.Haider just the other day.

I fundamentally disagree with secretes because the idea of democracy is not to have the best way to govern ourselves but to have a stable system in place that takes all/most people into confidence. Universal adult franchise is fundamental to having people feel ownership of the govt/country. but then I am fundamentalist/religious when it comes to these democratic ideals that I think is right, so I will not have an open mind on this subject.

 

[Jungibaaz]

Sometimes, it is useful to change perspective. Regardless of what it is called, just what is any system of government supposed to do for the citizens of a country? Then the logical next question would be which governments come closer than others to delivering on those duties and responsibilities?

The answer to that last question would depend on numerous factors. The duties and responsibilities would have to be defined by the people. Otherwise if success in those duties leads to the common good, it may just be coincidental.

This begs an intellectual problem.

Say we have a population of 1000. Say that after certain criteria, only 100 are qualified to vote. Would this be legitimately call a democracy ? For those who met the criteria, of course, in their opinions. But what if we shrink the population down to 500 ? Or even further to 200 ?

A set of criteria naturally produces its opposite: discrimination.

You want a driver's license ? If you are younger than 'X' yrs, you are discriminated from getting a driver's license. We discriminate all the time.

Back then, everyone 'knows' that women are inferior to men in every ways. The Gods says so. And if the Gods says so, then why is it wrong to discriminate women from voting and still call ourselves a democracy ?

Today, we discriminate people from participatory democracy by way of citizenship. But for some, even if a person does nothing more than to pay taxes, one way or another, that alone is enough to warrant participation in democracy, citizenship or not.

You're right, it absolutely does. And it extends in other ways too, should prisoners be allowed to vote, why and if so how do you define who qualifies to vote by age for instance? I can't tell where exactly these boundaries should be defined, but I can propose a simple metric for judging them if indeed all you care about is the ideals of democracy. If not, then this consideration is largely irrelevant.

In any 'democracy', power lies in participation, and representation if it's not direct. Anyone excluded from participation is powerless and therein lies an inequity that the whole point of democracy tries to solve, so that the many rule over themselves. If we were to take democracy to its natural conclusion, newborns ought rightly to be allowed to participate, not just those over 18. But we find it acceptable to deprive children of that power because their well-being and interests are protected by parents and their rights ensured by the state. They're not equal citizens, they're incapable of participating, however while they're not participating they aren't left behind, their interests are secured indirectly.

So maybe a simple way of judging who (else) should be allowed to vote should be to consider whether they'd lack any representation at all if they aren't allowed. For children it wouldn't matter as much, all that matters is that their special status is guaranteed for as long as they're not allowed to vote and participate in other aspects of citizenship, whether that limit is set at 16, 18, or 21 doesn't matter as much.

Of course, the opposite way of judging who should participate is discrimination as you mentioned. For this I can only think of one reason you'd exclude anybody from participating besides earning the right to, that would be if their participation impacts negatively on the collective. This could be how we define who gets to participate, and why prisoners or foreigners might not be allowed. It probably takes a healthy mix of both methods of judging to get to where we are now.
However, discrimination leads to its own distinct problems, namely that participation rights might never be extended to anyone if extending them harmed the interests of those with power. Land owners wouldn't want peasants voting it would hurt their pockets, men might not want women voting if it means they can't be as dominant, one race might not want to allow another race the right if it currently maintains domination by political control etc.

 

[VCheng]

The answer to that last question would depend on numerous factors. The duties and responsibilities would have to be defined by the people. Otherwise if success in those duties leads to the common good, it may just be coincidental.

So let us talk about what people would want their government to deliver first. And only then can we determine which forms of government deliver most of the steps that meet those demands and expectations of the people, no matter what they are called. A rose by any other name .... .....

 

[gambit]

@Jungibaaz

The main problem is the perception that democracy is supposed to be perfect, as in perfect in solving everyone's and every group's unique problems.

I have said it before and will repeat: Democracy is both the goal and process.

Say we have a population of 1000 and country is Elbonia. Say that the Gods 'showed' us that women are inferior and therefore should not taint the governance of the country with women related nonsense. That means half of Elbonia is disqualified from politics in general. But for the other half, the Elbonian men, no other disqualifier are in place. All Elbonian men are equal in the eyes of the law. Is Elbonia a democracy ? Yes.

If democracy is both the goal and the process, it means democracy is inherently imperfect since you cannot make what is perfect a process. It is perfect. It needs no improvements. But precisely because we continuously examine our democratic processes, it stands to reason out that democracy is not perfect. It can never be. Despite the institutional discrimination of Elbonian women, Elbonia qualifies as a democracy because the people operate their democracy under the best known available information about humans and politics at the time.

Would there be Elbonian suffragette ? Probably. Would the idea that women is the equal of men come from nascent Elbonian thoughts or imported from outside ? That does not matter. There will be resistance from 'the establishment', for certain. But proposition and resistance are the inevitable components of the process. A system, be it human or mechanical or natural, favors stability and favors it even to the point of being static. The old saying applies: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." To Elbonian men, the system is perfect. But to Elbonian women, their discrimination from politics made the system imperfect, therefore, in need of fixing.

Why was Elbonian women discriminated from politics in the first place ? Because The Gods said women are inferior. This means this group was discriminated through no fault of its own. The members of this group have violated no social conventions or even ethics, let along laws, to warrant discrimination. If we remove 'The Gods' from consideration, this forces Elbonia to reexamine itself.

When you belongs to a club, there are costs and benefits. The first cost is loyalty. The first benefit is prestige. Both are intangibles. The tangible costs and benefits are dues, attendance, protection, privileges to exclusive things, and so on. If you do not pay your dues (taxes) and is consistently absent at roll calls (expat), why should you receive the club's protection and enjoys its privileges to exclusive stuff ? After all, the tangibles came from other tangibles such as labor in order to be real which contribute to the intangible 'prestige'.

This line of reasoning is natural in every organization that seeks to stand apart from other organizations. In other words, it seeks to discriminate and does it based upon the best known available information about humanity. The issue is not representation but first whether or not have you harmed the organization and/or a member in any way.

Here is a conflict that must be resolved. You paid your club dues but you stole from another member. In this case, both actions are tangibles. Or, you paid your club dues, but you disparaged the club in the presence of another club. In this case, one action is tangible and the other intangible. Which is more heinous ? More offensive in the eyes of the membership ?

The process of finding disqualifiers is no less important than the process of trying to be inclusive. Democracy is not invulnerable. If the process is not defended, it will be destroyed from within. The members of the club must be aware that there are negative consequences to their actions if those actions are harmful to the social conventions and ethics that predated the laws. We punish via laws, but we judge from social conventions and ethics. If you start eyeballing my wallet, I will judge you even though you have not done anything tangible.

If we are to assess ancient Elbonia according to today's standards of democracy, regarding being an evolving process, then ancient Elbonia would not be a democracy because of what 'The Gods' said about women. In a sense, it would be unfair simply because of the time and knowledge gaps. We can be kind and give them the benefits of the doubt of being a democracy because at least they did not placed any disqualifier on the men. What this means is that we can only judge our contemporaries on who is 'democratic' and who is not. We are on the same era of human growth in terms of social evolution and knowledge accumulation. Caveat: We are not talking comparing the US and some unknown jungle tribe of humans.

Our contemporaries consists of countries that have varying degrees of inclusiveness in the democratic process. Because of the greater inclusiveness factor, it is easy to call one country 'not democratic' and difficult to defend one's own democratic process in the face of that charge.

Everyone generally agrees that being a convicted felon is at least worthy of being discriminated from the democratic process of voting, even though not everyone actually made legal that that disqualifier. That violation of social convention was severe enough for everyone to even consider the idea of discrimination. So for now, we can ignore convicted felons as a legitimate criticism that a country is 'not democratic' for disqualifying such a group from its democratic process.

But what about holding other or even diametric ideas ? Today, the Western countries allows people with diverse political ideas to participate in our democratic processes. Many countries do not. We call those countries various 'un-democratic' labels like 'authoritarian' or 'dictatorship'.

Our defense of our current notion of democracy must not shy away from the disqualifiers we put in place because we did not create those disqualifiers from external factors like 'The Gods'. We have those disqualifers because of the demonstrated tangible harm to our members.

 

[vi-va]

This is a must read.