somewhere Plato (I think through Socrates) says that "democracy is the best form of bad government." jb.... In a message dated 05/30/2000 2:05:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: << You really should read Ellen Meiksins Wood, *Peasant-Citizen & Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy* (London & New York: Verso, 1989). You are of course correct about the sources of our knowledge of Athenian democracy -- and without the hatred that democracy inspired in its opponents "western philosophy" as we know it would not exist. Just once, and once only, did Plato allow an opponent to speak -- in the reply of Protagoras to the proto-fascist Socrates, in the dialogue of that name. Plato's usual (deliberate?) distortion or subversion of his opponents is best illustrated in that (in)famous debate between Thrasymachus and Socrates in the *Republic*. It would be hard to recognize from the words Plato gives to Thrasymachus that the latter is a defender of Athenian democracy -- the key point of which is that it was won by peasant struggle *against* an aristocracy, not created by by an Aristocracy (as was u.s. democracy) for the specific purpose of preventing the development of popular struggles. One might say without too much exaggeration that the heart and soul of the U.S. Constitution is to prevent the occurrence of such events as Shay's Rebellion. Read Madison's Federalist No. 10 and its hatred of "faction" (i.e., democracy in the Athenian sense). Carrol >>