Held argues that the nation-state would ‘wither away’ but by this he does not
mean that the nation-state would disappear. What he suggests is that states would
no longer be regarded as the ‘sole centres of legitimate power’ within their own
borders but would be ‘relocated’ to, and articulated within, an overarching global
democratic law (1995: 233). Democracy would, it seems, be simultaneously statist,
supra-statist and sub-statist, but, although this is an attractive argument, there
remains a problem. States, after all, are institutions that claim a monopoly of
legitimate force in ‘their’ particular territory. They are jealous of this asserted
monopoly (which lies at the heart of the notion of state sovereignty) and, therefore,
cannot coexist equally with other bodies that do not and cannot even claim to
exercise a monopoly of legitimate force.
Held seeks to transform the world environment in the interests of self-government
and emancipation, but he remains prisoner of the liberal view that the state is
permanent. As far as Held is concerned, the state merely remains as one of many
organisations. Yet the state is incompatible with democracy, and as it gives up its
claim to a monopoly of legitimate force, it ceases to be a state.The ancient Greek polity and the problem with liberalism
The ancient Greek polity was, as noted earlier, exclusive and Athenian democracy
rested, among other things, upon imperialism. It is revealing that Rousseau, as an
admirer of the ancient system, is uncertain as to how to respond to its reliance on
slavery. On the one hand, he argues fiercely against slavery and takes great exception
to Aristotle’s comment that there are slaves ‘by nature’. On the other hand, he
concedes that without slavery, democracy in ancient Greece would not have been
possible (1968: 52, 142; Hoffman, 1988: 146).
The fact is that ancient Greek democrats took democracy to be a form of the
state, although their concept of democracy was mystified by its apparent linkages
with the old clan system of tribal times. When Kleisthenes overthrew the oligarchs
and forged a new constitution at the end of fifth century BC, the external features
of the old system were faithfully reproduced in the arrangements of the new.
‘Restoring’ the popular assembly, the festivals and the electoral system made it
appear as though the people were simply recovering the ancient rights of their old
tribal system.
The continuity was deceptive. The new units of the constitution, though tribal
in form, were geographical in reality, so that in practice the new democratic
constitution actually worked to accelerate the disintegration of the clan system. The
development of commerce and industry helped to dissolve away the residues of the
old kinship bonds, and introduce a system based on slavery. Morgan, a nineteenth-
century American anthropologist, complained that a ‘pure democracy’ was marred
by atrocious slavery (Hoffman, 1988: 147–8), but once we understand that this
was a statist form of democracy, then the paradox of popular rule and slavery ceases
to be a problem.
Conservatives failed to understand this when they feared that democracy would
undermine ‘natural’ hierarchies. John Cotton, a seventeenth-century divine in New
England, spoke of democracy as the meanest and most illogical form of government,112 Part 1 Classical ideas