this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
437 points (90.4% liked)

Memes

54993 readers
1013 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] stinky@redlemmy.com 7 points 4 months ago (12 children)

Which greek philosophers said that? and what did they say? do you have any sources to confirm?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 28 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (11 children)

Both plato and aristotle, but aristotle thought that any election-based state turned out in practice, to be an oligarchy or aristocracy, not a democracy (which he define as rule by the poor, with random selection by lot).

Aristotle's politics books 4-6 talk a lot about this:

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.4.four.html

In other words, what today we call "representative democracy", the ancient greeks correctly identified as oligarchy.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)