THE ORIGIN OF DEMOCRACY

J. L. GILLIN
University of Wisconsin

I. WHAT IS MEANT BY DEMOCRACY?

Democracy is a term that is rather loosely used by many people and covers a variety of meanings. Used in a political sense, it denotes democracy in the government in the sense that every member of the state has the right to control directly the details of the government. This form of democracy is represented in the old New England town meeting. Even then, of course, it was not absolutely democratic, because woman had no voice in the government.

Again the term is sometimes used to denote democracy in the state. By this term is meant universal manhood or adult suffrage. Here the control of the government may be democratic or representative. We have this form of government in only a few of the states in the United States at the present time. Before the Civil War the black man had no part in the government of the state, and until very recently woman had no part in political affairs.

Again democracy indicates the equality of opportunity as between individuals and different classes, not only political, but educational, social, and economic, opportunity. Nowhere as yet has this form of democracy been completely realized. This phase of the matter is sometimes called social democracy in a broad way. One aspect of it is known as industrial democracy, as phrased by the Webbs. Other aspects of social democracy are the democratizing of the church, of the schools, and of social intercourse.

From these suggestions it may readily be perceived that what most people mean when they speak of democracy is political democracy, and usually they mean political democracy only as applied to the government or the state. A real democracy will possess the characteristic of participation by the people in all of these relationships. A real democracy is therefore yet to be realized, although great steps have been taken toward the realization of democracy in all phases of our social life in the last half-century.

II. THE ORIGINS OF DEMOCRACY IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETY

It is very interesting to observe that democracy has its roots in the far-distant past. It is not the birth of the last hundred years of the world's history. A long series of world-wars, incident to the building of states, obscured the democracy of primitive societies. Only recently, since the study of primitive peoples has been more diligently pursued, have we come to a recognition of the democratic form of early human societies.

If we remember that primitive societies are small groups of people bound together by blood ties rather than by political ideals, or residence in a common territory, we shall have little difficulty in reconstructing the life of that early period and seeing at the fountainhead democracy at work and evolving among the early types of societies. All of them were tribal groups. Either in fact or in fiction the members of these groups were related to each other. The largest social groups in these times were composed of a few hundred, or at most a few thousand, individuals.

Let us now turn to a few representatives of primitive people organized on the basis of blood relationship and get a glimpse of democracy in its beginnings. Let us cite first the description of Tacitus of the primitive German tribes. Describing their method of doing the tribe's business, Tacitus says:

On affairs of smaller moment, the chiefs consult; on those of greater importance, the whole community; yet with this circumstance, that what is referred to the decision of the people is first maturely discussed by the chiefs. . . . Then the king, or chief, and such others as are conspicuous for age, birth, military renown, or eloquence, are heard, and gain attention rather from their ability to persuade than their authority to command. If a proposal displease, the assembly reject it by an inarticulate murmur; if it prove agreeable, they clash their javelins; for the most honorable expression of assent among them is the sound of arms.1

Here we see the affairs of the tribe conducted by the assembly of the people. He adds:

In the election of kings they have regard to birth; in that of generals, to valor. Their kings have not an absolute or unlimited power; and their generals command less through the force of authority than of example.2

Tacitus, Germany and Agricola (Oxford trans.), pp. 16-17.

2 Ibid., p. 11.

This ancient democracy is even more clearly outlined by Morgan. Describing the Iroquois gens, he says:

The principle of democracy, which was born of the gentes, manifested itself in the retention by the gentiles of the right to elect their sachem and chiefs, in the safeguards thrown around the office to prevent usurpation, and in the check upon the election held by the remaining gentes.1

Describing the council of the gens, Morgan says:

The council was the great feature of ancient society, Asiatic, European, and American, from the institution of the gens in savagery to civilization. It was the instrument of government as well as the supreme authority over the gens, the tribe, and the confederacy. . . . The simplest and lowest form of the council was that of the gens. It was a democratic assembly because every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it. It elected and deposed its sachem and chiefs, it elected Keepers of the Faith, it condoned or avenged the murder of a gentilis, and it adopted persons into the gens. It was the germ of the higher council of the tribe, and of that still higher of the confederacy, each of which was composed exclusively of chiefs as representatives of the gentes.2

The same system of democratic control is to be seen in the tribes of ancient Greece. Morgan says:

The instrument of government was a council of chiefs, with the co-operation of an agora or assembly of the people, and of a basileus or military commander. The people were free, and their institutions democratical.3

Even after the great change of political organization under Cleisthenes, democracy was characteristic of the Athenian political system, and Morgan writes:

When the Athenians established the new political system, founded upon territory and upon property, the government was a pure democracy. It was no new theory, or special invention of the Athenian mind, but an old and familiar system, with an antiquity as great as that of the gentes themselves. Democratic ideas had existed in the knowledge and practice of their forefathers from time immemorial, and now found expression in a more elaborate, and, in many respects, in an improved government. The false element, that of aristocracy, which had penetrated the system and created much of the strife in the transitional period, connected itself with the office of basileus, and remained after this office was abolished; but the new system accomplished its overthrow. More successfully than the remaining Grecian tribes, the Athenians were able to carry forward their ideas of government to their logical results. 1 Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 73. 2 Ibid., pp. 84-85.

3 Ibid., p. 216.

It is one reason why they became, for their numbers, the most distinguished, the most intellectual and the most accomplished race of men the entire human family has yet produced. In purely intellectual achievements they are still the astonishment of mankind. It was because the ideas which had been germinating through the previous ethnical period, and which had become interwoven with every fibre of their brains, had found a happy fruition in a democratically constituted state. Under its life-giving impulses their highest mental development occurred.

How the political democracy of the tribal state was maintained in the new political arrangements based upon territory rather than upon blood kinship is indicated by Morgan's description of how Cleisthenes brought the change about. He says:

Out of the naucrary, a conception of a township as the unit of a political system was finally elaborated; but it required a man of the highest genius, as well as great personal influence, to seize the idea in its fullness, and give it an organic embodiment. That man finally appeared in Cleisthenes (509 B.C.), who must be regarded as the first of Athenian legislators—the founder of the second great plan of human government, that under which modern civilized nations are organized.

Cleisthenes went to the bottom of the question and placed the Athenian political system upon the foundation on which it remained to the close of the independent existence of the commonwealth. He divided Attica into a hundred demes, or townships, each circumscribed by metes and bounds, and distinguished by a name. Every citizen was required to register himself, and` to cause an enrollment of his property in the deme in which he resided. This enrollment was the evidence as well as the foundation of his civil privileges. The deme displaced the naucrary. Its inhabitants were an organized body politic with powers of local self-government, like the modern American township. This is the vital and the remarkable feature of the system. It reveals at once its democratic character. The government was placed in the hands of the people in the first of the series of territorial organizations.'

Everyone familiar with Old Testament history will recall that the ancient Hebrew social control was based upon an assembly of people and a council of elders. One scarcely needs to be reminded that Saul was not only anointed by the priest Samuel, but was elected also by the people. "Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations." After Saul I Sam. 8:4-5.

'Morgan, op. cit., p. 270.

had proved his valor in the attack upon the Ammonites who were besieging Jabesh-gilead, the people chose him as king.

And the people said unto Samuel, Who is he that said, Shall Saul reign over us? bring the men, that we may put them to death. Then said Samuel to the people, Come, and let us go to Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there. And all the people went to Gilgal; and there they made Saul king before Jehovah in Gilgal.'

David himself did not take office as the successor of Saul until the approbation of the tribesmen had been secured. When David was first crowned at Hebron, the men of Judah had to sanction it. "And the men of Judah came, and there [at Hebron] they anointed David king.' Later all the tribes sent delegates to ask David to become their king.

Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was thou that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and Jehovah said to thee, Thou shalt be shepherd of my people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over Israel. So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron: and king David made a covenant with them in Hebron before Jehovah: and they anointed David king over Israel.3

While Solomon obtained the throne by a coup d'état, his successor Rehoboam was refused the allegiance of the northern tribes.

And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him king. . . . . And when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David. So Israel departed unto their tents.4

They called to the kingship of their nation Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. "And it came to pass, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was returned, that they sent and called him unto the congregation and made him king over all Israel."5

In every primitive society that modern study reveals to us we see the same democratic institutions. It is only as groups become larger and wars come to abound that democracy becomes limited

II Sam. 11:12, 14, 15.

2 II Sam. 2:4.

3 II Sam. 5:1-3.

4 I Kings 12:1, 16.

5 I Kings 12:20.