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meangradin
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:37 pm Post subject: Slavery led to Democracy? |
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I have been reading "The Penguin Atlas of World History" over the last few days, and I came across this sentence discussing Ancient Greek political structures:
"Democracy was made possible by the introduction of slavery, which provided the necessary leisure for political activity by free citizens" (p.49)
Any thoughts on this? |
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red_devil
Joined: 30 Jun 2008
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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Slavery also gave birth to the Industrial Revolution.  |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:48 pm Post subject: Re: Slavery led to Democracy? |
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| meangradin wrote: |
I have been reading "The Penguin Atlas of World History" over the last few days, and I came across this sentence discussing Ancient Greek political structures:
"Democracy was made possible by the introduction of slavery, which provided the necessary leisure for political activity by free citizens" (p.49)
Any thoughts on this? |
There are a bunch of chinese kids working 10 hours a day making nothing which allow you to even contemplate this idea. So long as you have millionaires (or their equivalent), you will have slaves. Slavery just changes a bit in how it's done.
We can have a specilaized society without slavery, but no so long as people want more than the next guy. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 7:09 pm Post subject: Re: Slavery led to Democracy? |
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| meangradin wrote: |
I have been reading "The Penguin Atlas of World History" over the last few days, and I came across this sentence discussing Ancient Greek political structures:
"Democracy was made possible by the introduction of slavery, which provided the necessary leisure for political activity by free citizens" (p.49)
Any thoughts on this? |
Yes, but the quote should be amended to "Direct Democracy (for male landholders) was made . . . "
There are very few examples of direct democracy left today, even on the town council level. |
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