Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy

by Ellen Meiksins Wood

The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented prominence it gave to free labor. Wood argues that the emergence of the peasant as citizen, juridically and politically independent, accounts for much that is remarkable in Athenian political institutions and culture.

From a survey of historical writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus of which distorted later debates, Wood goes on to take issue with recent arguments, such as those of G.E.M. de Ste Croix, about the importance of slavery in agricultural production. The social, political and cultural influence of the peasant-citizen is explored in a way which questions some of the most cherished conventions of Marxist and non-Marxist historiography. This book will be of great interest to ancient historians, classicists, anthropologists and political theorists, as well as to a wider reading public.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology, Greece, Ancient History, Philosophy

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Ellen Meiksins Wood FRSC (April 12, 1942 – January 14, 2016) was an American-Canadian Marxist historian and scholar. From 1967 to 1996, she taught political science at Glendon College, York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

With Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood articulated the foundations of Political Marxism, a strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It provoked a turn away from structuralisms and teleology towards historical specificity as contested process and lived praxis.

Meiksins Wood's many books and articles, were sometimes written in collaboration with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Of these, The Retreat from Class received the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.

Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the socialist magazine.

Reviews

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellen Meiksins Wood's "Peasant-Citizen and Slave" is a criticism of a particular conception of classical Athenian life which is fascinating throughout, though in my mind only partially successful.

The target is a particular conception of the Athenian social order, which begins by noting Athens' uniquely democratic political order (notably, and crucially, among a citizen class that was an absolute minority of the population, but a much larger minority than elsewhere) simultaneously with the preponderance of chattel slavery within it, compared to less absolute divisions between free and slave persons (various forms of peasants obliged to various kinds of lords, and so on) in the rest of the Hellenic world. This conception then looks at the positive obligations of citizenship (primarily serving in war and on juries and assemblies) and to the remarks in much of Athens' enduring literature (Plato, Aristotle, and so on) which aver that only the man released from the demands of labor is fit for freedom, and concludes that the leisure necessary to carry out citizens' duties was only possible by virtue of the exploitation of the slave class.

In politically conservative historiography especially this is often connected with the characterization of the (relatively) "poor" Athenian citizens as an "idle mob," though this picture has also infected Marxist historiography as well, and EMW intends to go about a house-cleaning. In order to evaluate this, however, we must distinguish between two parts of the "idle" mob" argument:

1) That the extraction of a surplus from the slave population constituted the objective condition for democratic political participation in Athens, and that
2) this resulted in a society dominated by "contempt for labor" among the citizenry, who by and large did not work, and when they did, did not take pride in doing so.

The arguments in here seem much more successful for the second part of the argument than the first. EMW's argument against (1) is largely that the Attic countryside was dominated by peasant freeholders, rather than slave latifundia, and her argument for this claim about rural labor seems (to my admittedly nonspecialist mind) to be persuasive. The number of slaves never exceeded by much the number of citizens (and was lower than citizens + metics, a category that shows up little in this work) and slaves were primarily employed in domestic service, which was unproductive, and mining.

But wait! You can't just breeze over mining like that, especially for a city which (as Woods offhandedly admits) was constantly importing grain and had to launch various ad hoc imperial adventures to ensure its continued flow, like America with oil. Here's a simple model, which I'm not sure captures the primary dynamics of Athenian society, but which EMW certainly doesn't refute: slaves owned by aristocrats dig out silver from the mines at Laurentia, which is sold to the rest of Hellas in exchange for grain. The democratic state taxes the aristocrats through various confiscations, liturgies, &c. This then is used to pay for the rowers and hoplites with which the poor citizenry preserves the state, and to allow the jury wages and the like that enable people who are mostly craftsmen or farmers to participate in political life. The poor citizenry is not "idle" - they are engaged in a mixture of public service and manual labors - but their ability to not engage in manual labor full-time, and their ability to remain organized enough to defeat encroachments from the aristocracy on their political and social freedom, ultimately does depend on the extraction of surplus from slaves. And EMW does admit that the growth of slavery may have been partially because of the Athenian democracy among citizens, so perhaps we are quibbling over details. (More fully evaluating this would probably require more knowledge of Athenian demographic and economic history, so maybe that's another thing to put on my reading schedule.) Although it's perhaps unfair to bring such outside elements of her ouvre, it's hard NOT to notice the parallels with her stance in the Dobbs-Sweezy/Brenner-WST debate - the "political Marxists" are seemingly very committed to viewing states as internally insulated divisions of labor, rather than political subdivisions of a larger economic unit.

The more convincing elements of the argument concern the cultural status of labor. The contempt for craft labor evinced by Plato and Aristotle is an aristocratic reaction, she argues, and the different classes of Athenian society had different approaches to the relationship between freedom and labor suiting their different goals - for the aristocracy only freedom FROM labor made one free, but for the smallholders and artisans, freedom IN labor (that is, working for oneself, not a master or wage-employer) constituted freedom. Plato and Aristotle do not refer to their lesser citizens as an "idle mob," but as furriers, cartwrights, and so on - emphasizing their status as busy producers, and their nearness to slaves rather than distinction from them. As for the demos, we must see through a glass darkly, but there are hints - most prominently through the fact that potters signed their work, unlike in other ancient societies, but also through democrats quoted (if presumably not too charitably) by Plato such as Protagoras, and in the very fact that Plato is continually arguing from the expertise of the craft specialist to the aristocratic political points he has to make. And it says something good about the book that the part I knew more about (the Plato stuff especially - like my own mostly-naive reading she is struck by the centrality of the division of labor to his thought) seemed strongest. (Of course, some parts, such as the philological examination of property and social terminology in Homer and Hesiod, were so completely beyond me that I REALLY couldn't evaluate it; but they were at least interesting and suggestive, and since the last book on a nominally completely different subject emphasized the same things, maybe it's something to learn more about as well, though it seems like one of the more time-intensive things to become proficient in.)

All in all, an only partially successful book on its own terms, but full enough of interesting asides, and successful enough in the things it is successful at, to be worth it.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating challenge to the received view that democratic Athens was a state only made possible by the extensive use of slave labour among historians on both left and right. The slowest chapter is the first one which unpicks the historiography of this view of Athenian society from the 18th century onwards. Meiksins-Wood demonstrates comprehensively how past writers have overlaid their own feelings about democracy and rule "by the mob" onto the history of Athens. She then moves on to explain the evidence for Athens as a society of free labourers whose ability to participate in the democratic life of the polis is not created by the extensive use of slave labour, but rather by the reforms of Solon which restrict the ability of wealthy citizens to extract surplus labour from the poor. Athenian democracy was not therefore built - as often characterised - on a disdain for labour which creates the leisure time for democratic engagement at the price slavery. Meiksins-Wood finishes with a discussion on the impact of this fundamental change in social relations between the wealthy and the poor on the wider culture, including it's influence on the introduction of writing (the need to write down laws to control oligarchic power) and philosophy.

A genuinely interesting book that challenges received wisdom on ancient Athenian society.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much stan EMW, but: while not altogether sceptical about its argument (in short: that ancient Athens' democracy rested much more on free labour than historians usually admit, and that slavery was much more limited than received opinion allows), I found this to be not much more than a simple transfer of her approach from the capitalist transition to the ancient world, lacking the depth of examples, the vivid detail and elegance of argument she takes to the 15th-19th century - when she quotes Moses Finley, who has all the above on the subject, the temperature rises several notches.

[Ramzey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book I recommend this book along with Miachel Parentis book the assassination of Julias Ceaser.

[Gage Hoefer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wood rightfully points out and corrects some reactionary influences on both Marxist and non-Marxist conceptions of ancient Greece; the focus on the specificity of the Athenian polis and how that stems from peasant-landlord relations of the time is fascinating

[Eurethius Péllitièr · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book setting out misunderstood class differences, the emergence and consequences of Athenian democracy and the attitudes of whom we consider 'greats' of Greece

[Samppa Sirnö · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kiinnostava vastine teesille, jonka mukaan antiikin poliksen kansalaiset elivät orjatyön ansiosta. Woodin mukaan heillä toki oli orjia, mutta suurimman osan työstä tekivät vapaat kansalaiset, jotka vastasivat keskiajan talonpoikia.

[Ithome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant Marxist analysis of Athenian Democracy that challenges many erroneously held ideas. My favourite part was Chapter 3, which covered a short history of Ancient Greece's various modes of productions: from the "redistributive kingdoms" (palace economies) of Mycenae and the Minoans, to an aristocratic decentralisation during the Archaic Age and the quasi-feudal poleis in Crete, Thessaly & Sparta. However, there's one main issue: it's just not long enough. When I finished it I found myself thinking "is that all?"

[Frobisher Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This took me quite awhile to read, but I am very glad I did. Not sure I can do it justice with a short review, it is dense, well argued, nuanced, and highly detailed. The world of Ancient Athens is painted in close detail, as an examination of the material conditions brings into relief the real values and power centers of the city.

There is a full-throated defense of democratic ideals, and of their genuine importance to Athens success. Woods gives a strong argument that the Democracy of Athens was not dependent primarily on slaves for its basic agricultural production and labor, and instead was mostly dependent on the farmer and the peasant farm-worker, and indeed this is why they ended up with such an elevated status, for that time, as Peasant-Citizens and given a democratic voice.

[Jonathan]

An enlightening way to begin October.