Blogs > Liberty and Power > Anarchist Athens

Jun 22, 2004

Anarchist Athens


by Liberty and Power


[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

LRC is"reprinting" two of my articles on the libertarian aspects of ancient Athens: The Athenian Constitution: Government by Jury and Referendum and Civil Society in Ancient Greece: The Case of Athens. (For the original versions see here and here.)

The articles were written in 1996 and 1998, respectively, and my thinking has undergone various sorts of evolution since, so I'm not prepared to stand by everything I said in them; but I certainly still endorse their central thesis: Contrary to the claims of so many historians, ancient Athens was neither a majoritarian, mob-rule democracy nor an organic, communitarian collective; instead, it was in many respects a quasi-anarchistic free-market constitutional republic -- and thus, like medieval Iceland, a valuable model for our libertarian future.

In addition to the sources cited in the articles, today I would recommend M. H. Hansen's wonderful book Polis and City-State: An Ancient Concept and Its Modern Equivalent, a devastating critique of modern-day mythology about the polis.

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Kenneth R Gregg - 6/23/2004

Rod,
You might be interested in the developing body of Pirate revisionist work that has been led by the maritime historian and Marxist, Marcus Rediker (see http://www.marcusrediker.com for info on his books) and continued by a number of other writers on the Hydrarchy, Pirate utopias/colonies, such as Libertalia (St. Mary’s Island off of Madagascar), Barbados and Morocco, and the transatlantic revolutionary tradition. Most of the papers and books on the subject are new and there is quite a bit of controversy in the literature so far.
I’ve been doing research on the subject recently, and the ramifications of this field for libertarian history and theory is tremendous. It places into a clearer context a fairly wide range of movements, from the Levellers (where did they go? Many went into Puritan activism, or left for the American colonies along with the Regicides, but others are unaccountable), communities built upon smuggling (“Rogue’s Island”—Rhode Island), Masonic smuggling of banned books and pamphlets, and even the filibusters (Walker and the other Americans who were deemed as terrorists by Europeans, but were expansionists who added territories to the U.S. during the Antebellum period). Going to have a longish post on my CLASSical Liberal blog over this topic.
Pirates, Smugglers, and Filibusters, O My!
Just a thought
Ken Gregg
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/

Gus diZerega - 6/22/2004

I have printed your articles to read, and would like to know the major changes you would make in them today, were you to rewrite them.

Thank you.