Ancient Athenian 
Democracy, Workers’ 
Councils, and Leftist 
Criticism of Stalinist 
Russia
Vittorio Saldutti*
INTRODUCTION:  
MARXISM AND ANCIENT DEMOCRACY
“The political form at last discovered under which to work out the 
economic emancipation of labor.” With these words, Karl Marx, ad-
dressing the General Council of the International precisely 150 years 
ago, described the revolutionary experiment of the Paris Commune.1 
The German philosopher had always been very cautious in defining the 
political form of the new society that would come into being following 
the seizure of power by the working class.2 Even though in the years 
following the establishment of Bonaparte’s government he continued 
to have hopes about the political potential of universal suffrage for 
the proletariat, in general, he had been silent about the future political 
organization of a socialist society and increasingly suspicious of any 
1 Marx, “Civil War in France,” 142. This phrase was added in the third draft of 
the text, with many other observations on the political nature of the Commune 
lacking in the first two drafts. 
2 His main task after his break with the Hegelian tradition had been the analysis 
of how to obtain the “economic emancipation of labor,” but “the features of this 
future order were […] never outlined,” as Nippel says in Ancient and Modern 
Democracy, 288. Hudis, in “Marx’s Concept of Socialism,” describes the general 
solely economic predictions as “intimations of the future” and sketches a brief 
history of their evolution through Marx’s works. 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4312/clotho.4.2.47-67
* Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II,” Corso Umberto I 40, 80138 Napoli, 
vittorio.saldutti@unina.it.
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI48
election as a potentially revolutionary tool.3 The French proletarian 
revolt filled that gap. In Marx’s eyes, there was a novelty in the orga-
nization of the Paris Commune of 1871 and how the communards took 
decisions amid their resistance against the German army. Marx under-
lined that the revolutionary government “was formed of the municipal 
councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the 
town, responsible and revocable at short term […] a working, not a 
parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.” He then 
went on to say that the Paris Commune “supplied the republic with 
the basis of really democratic institutions.”4 The revolution of 1871 thus 
demonstrated that representative democracy was not a real democracy.
The impression left by the French events was so deep that it led 
Marx and Engels to make their only revision to the Communist 
Manifesto. In the preface to the German edition published in 
1872, they wrote, “One thing especially was proved by the Com-
mune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the 
ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’”5 
This belief – which, as we shall see, was fundamental in the later 
struggle between Bolsheviks and social democrats – was, moreover, 
the starting point for further studies on the meaning and nature of 
democracy, ancient and modern, which engaged Marx and Engels 
in their late years.
A much-debated question is whether Marx’s ref lections re-
garding the meaning of democracy inf luenced his opinion about 
ancient democratic Athens. Indeed, he did not share a classicist 
notion that saw ancient Greece and Rome as a golden age and 
model for a future society, and that is also true for Athens. Even 
if he recognized the outstanding achievements of Hellenic culture 
and civilization, a social order economically based on slavery was 
hardly suitable as a model for an exemplary society.6 However, it 
3 Doveton, in “Marx and Engels,” 555–591, analyses the development of Marx’s 
ideas regarding democracy from the warm support of his early works to a more 
skeptical later vision of any kind of electoral and representative governing 
system. 
4 Marx, “Civil War in France,” 139–142 (my emphasis).
5 Marx and Engels, “Preface to the German Edition,” 175. The German original 
runs as follows: “Namentlich hat die Kommune den Beweis geliefert, daß‚ die 
Arbeiterklasse nicht die fertige Staatsmaschine einfach in Besitz nehmen und 
sie für ihre eigenen Zwecke in Bewegung setzen kann.”
6 According to Marx, in “Economic Manuscripts,” 47–48, Greek art shows that 
ancient times were “the childhood of humanity” in “the most beautiful form.” 
Nevertheless, he recognized the “immature social conditions” and the “imma-
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 49
is also evident that his judgment was not limited to this general 
statement. In his last years, Marx deepened his analysis of ancient 
societies. After reading the works of Lewis Henry Morgan, he was 
confirmed in his idea that ancient societies were initially egalitarian 
and that the State was coincident with society.7 In this framework, 
Athenian democracy was a peculiar form of communitarian 
resistance, implemented by the demos, against the development 
of social classes. This interpretation of ancient societies emerges 
clearly from a reading of Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks, written in 
1880–81. Here the philosopher traces the evolution of Greece, and 
Athens in particular, from its primitive gentile institutions to the 
political State. The economic evolution of Athenian society enabled 
the transition from a pristine society, organized according to the 
gentile origin of everyone, to a political society, where “all registered 
citizens [were] free and equal.”8 Cleisthenes’ reforms were a crucial 
moment in that progress, marking the point at which “the relations 
to gens or phratry ceased to govern the duties of an Athenian as 
a citizen. The coalescence of the people into bodies politic in ter-
ritorial areas [was] now complete.”9 Only after the Roman period 
did “the element of property, which [had] controlled society to a 
great extent during the comparatively short period of civilization, 
give mankind despotism, imperialism, monarchy, privileged classes, 
and finally representative democracy.”10
In Marx’s line of reasoning, slavery was in the background. Engels 
brought it to the fore in the Origin of the Family, Private Property and 
the State, a work inspired by the same readings as his friend. Conclu-
ding a chapter on “The Emergence of the Athenian State,” he writes, 
“the class antagonism on which the social and political institutions 
rested was no longer between the nobles and the common people, but 
between slaves and freemen, wards and citizens.”11 Engels exonerates 
the Athenian democratic system from the allegation that it had caused 
ture stage of the society in which it originated.” The concept was brilliantly 
summarized by Engels in “Anti-Dühring,” 168: “Without slavery, no Greek state, 
no Greek art, and science; without slavery, no Roman Empire.”
7 This idea was first developed by Marx in Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s 
Philosophy of Law, 31, where he writes, “in the states of antiquity, the political 
state makes up the content of the state to the exclusion of the other spheres.” 
8 Krader, Ethnological Notebooks, 214. 
9 Ibid., 215.
10 Ibid., 233 (my emphasis).
11 Engels, “Origin of the Family,” 222.
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI50
the fall of the polis,12 distinguishing economic and political struc-
tures; however, the emphasis on the first element made it prevalent 
among the first generation of Marxist scholars, who were unable to 
read Marx’s Notebooks, since these were only published almost a 
century later.13 In any case, neither Marx nor Engels explicitly stated 
that ancient Athenian democracy could be a model for the future 
proletarian real democracy.14
During World War I, the split inside the social democratic parties 
was fought in the field of theory and politics. The red line dividing 
the two political factions was the democracy they were fighting for. 
Right-wing and centrist social democratic theorists such as Eduard 
Bernstein and Karl Kautsky thought that the only possible democracy 
was the parliamentary and representative form that existed at that 
time. The main task, in their view, was to acquire universal suffrage 
and win general elections to lead the society from capitalism into 
socialism. On the other hand, Leftist leaders defended Marx’s ideas 
about breaking up the old state machinery and establishing a new 
democratic order.15 In The State and Revolution, Lenin, defending 
the Dutch revolutionary Anton Pannekoek against the criticism of 
Kautsky, returned to the problem of the early examples of an actual 
democratic regime. Writing on the eve of the October Revolution, 
he prophesized: “Under socialism much of ‘primitive’ democracy 
will inevitably be revived, since, for the first time in the history of 
civilized society the mass of population will rise to taking an indepen-
12 Engels, “Origin of the Family,” 222: “It was not democracy that caused the down-
fall of Athens, as the European schoolmasters who fawn upon royalty would have 
us believe, but slavery, which brought the labour of free citizens into contempt.”
13 The impact exerted by Engels’ “Origin” on early Marxist studies of the ancient 
world is well testified by its reception among scholars such as Franz Mehring and 
Karl Kautsky. Mehring cited Engels as an undisputed authority in his pamphlet 
“Über den historischen Materialismus,” 289–343, and Kautsky used the study 
in his description of class struggle in antiquity in many of his historical works. 
Cf. Kloft, “Karl Kautsky,” 311–331. 
14 I must emphasize the adverb “explicitly,” since many scholars have argued that 
ancient Athens was an implicit model for Marx and Engels’ idea of democracy. 
Among classicists, Marcaccini, in Atene Sovietica, 49, and briefly in “What 
Has Marxism,” 353, has elaborated on this conclusion; while among experts on 
Marxist thought, Hunt, in Political Ideas, 82 (taken up by Femia, Marxism and 
Democracy, 75–76), and McCarthy, in “Praise of Classical Democracy,” the latter 
in the context of Marx’s so-called “humanism,” suggest this possible source of 
inspiration. 
15 Steenson, Karl Kautsky, 207–211, briefly summarizes the controversy.
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 51
dent part, not only in voting and elections, but also in the everyday 
administration of the State. Under socialism all will govern in turn 
and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.”16 “Primitive 
democracy” is a suggestive expression, which was, in all likelihood, 
not about ancient democratic Athens.17 Lenin, in the same book, wrote: 
“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it 
was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners,”18 
demonstrating a vision of ancient democracy that is anything but 
positive. When talking about a “primitive democracy,” Lenin was 
perhaps thinking of the Russian village communities called obshchi-
nas.19 More probably, he was evoking the rudimentary and naive trade 
union democracy criticized by Bernstein and Kautsky, but defended 
by Lenin as a valuable tool for the governance of a socialist society.20
To recapitulate, Marx and Engels stated that direct democracy 
without a division of powers was the only proper form of democracy. 
However, until the Russian Revolution, no one explicitly referred to 
the Athenian democratic regime – since it was based on the slave 
mode of production – as a possible model for the socialist revolution.
ARTHUR ROSENBERG’S ATHENS  
AS A PROLETARIAN REPUBLIC
A few years later, Arthur Rosenberg (1889–1943) was the first to do 
so. A promising alumnus of Eduard Meyer, who later became his 
Doktorvater and principal supporter,21 Rosenberg studied at Berlin 
16 Lenin, “State and Revolution,” 492–493.
17 Marcaccini, in Atene Sovietica, 109–111, seems to be leaning toward that hypo-
thesis.
18 Lenin, “State and Revolution,” 465.
19 Even if he could not have been aware of the then-unpublished correspondence 
between Marx and Vera Zasulich on the potential revolutionary role of pea-
sant village communities, he would certainly have known of Marx and Engels’ 
“Preface to the Russian Edition,” 426, where, in a summary of that debate, they 
wrote, “the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting 
point for a communist development.”
20 This possibility is suggested by the context. The expression “primitive 
democracy” was coined by Beatrice and Sidney Webb in “Primitive Democracy,” 
397–432, in reference to the internal organization of trade unions, and was uti-
lized by Bernstein and Kautsky with a derogatory tone. Lenin, in “What has to 
be done?” 481–482, agreed with them at first. 
21 Rosenberg’s problematic relationship with Meyer, who would also become his 
principal opponent within German academia, has been studied by Wirsching 
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI52
University.22 At first, his research was devoted to Italic and Roman 
political institutions. Due to his expertise in Roman constitutional 
history, he edited several substantial entries in the Pauly-Wissowa.23 
Writing the entry Res publica, Rosenberg began to investigate ancient 
democracy as a self-government of the people, and this would go on 
to be the main topic of his later research. During the war, he decided, 
like many others in his position, to adhere to the German Fatherland 
Party, a conservative political organization founded by Ludendorff. As 
the war was ending, his thoughts on ancient history intersected with the 
events of contemporary history, and his life was redirected as a result. 
The sudden collapse of the Wilhelmine regime fostered the setting 
up and spread of workers’ and soldiers’ councils all over the country, 
particularly in Berlin, where he lived. Rosenberg was so impressed 
by the newly established governing bodies, which he thought were 
similar to the organs of self-governing ancient democracies, that he 
made a political U-turn. He decided to side with revolution, joining 
the rank and file of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), 
the party most sympathetic to the idea of a workers’ state based upon 
the power of councils.
In 1919 Rosenberg went a step further than Marx and Lenin con-
cerning Athens and workers’ democracy when he wrote the article 
“The most ancient proletarian republic in the world.”24 The article was 
published in the Freie Welt, an illustrated weekly magazine attached to 
social democratic newspapers. Its editorial location, layout, phraseo-
logy, and appealing title were all directed at educating working-class 
readers to perceive Athenian democracy as a helpful lesson from the 
past. He argued that “Athens in [the] period of the dictatorship of the 
proletariat had a constitution which conforms in its fundamental lines 
to the elements characterizing the system of councils. […] Thus, the 
Athenian republic was characterized by the direct self-government of 
the proletarian masses.” To demonstrate the existence of a proletarian 
republic, the historian described the Athenian social and economic 
organization in highly original terms compared to the well-established 
Marxist reading. Its main target was the importance and role of slaves 
in “Politik und Zeitgeschichte.”
22 Recent detailed biographies of Arthur Rosenberg are Riberi, Arthur Rosenberg, 
and Keßler, Arthur Rosenberg. Less exhaustive is Senatore, “La vita e le opere di 
Arthur Rosenberg,” 177–232. Canfora’s Comunista senza partito remains useful.
23 Imperator (9.1, 1139–1154); Imperium (9.2, 1201–1211); Ramnes, Ravenna, Regia, 
Regifugium, Res publica, Rex, Rex sacrorum, Romulia, Romulus (1 A, 1137–1139; 
300–305; 465–469; 469–472; 633–674; 702–721; 721–726; 1074; 1074–1104).
24 Rosenberg, “Älteste proletarier-Republik.” 
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 53
in Athenian production, which, in Rosenberg’s opinion, constituted 
only “a small minority of the population, perhaps one-fourth of the 
total population.” Consequently, “the vast majority of productive work 
was already done by free workers.” This was the premise of Rosenberg’s 
peculiar history of Athenian democracy, which he argued had been led 
by a bourgeois government until Ephialtes put it in the hands of the 
working class. This innovative reconstruction of Athenian democratic 
history caused a lively debate on the pages of the cultural insert of the 
authoritative social democratic newspaper Leipziger Volkszeitung.25 
The reply to Rosenberg was first entrusted to Otto Jenssen, then to the 
Italian socialist historian Ettore Ciccotti. The response was consistent 
with the Second International orthodox reading of Marxism, and the 
controversy, therefore, took on the character of a struggle between the 
old and new approaches to Marx’s texts.26
 At the end of 1920, Rosenberg joined the Communist Party (KPD). 
The following year, he learned from the lessons of the previous debate 
and further explored his ideas about the development of Athenian 
democracy in a textbook of ancient history for the workers’ university 
entitled Democracy and Class Struggle in the Ancient World.27 Here 
he made explicit the comparison between ancient democracy and 
contemporary councils:
It is possible to discover close similarities between the Athenian 
constitution of the period of proletarian democracy and the politi-
cal organization developed by the Paris Commune in 1871: in both, 
there were small districts from which poor people sent their delegates; 
both paid civil servants a worker’s salary; both had a central authority, 
wielding at the same time advisory and executive power, formed by 
delegates from small districts. In addition to this, regarding the effects 
that the ideas developed by the Paris Commune had on the present 
Councils’ Republic in Russia, it is easy to find many analogies between 
that political system and the Athenian constitution.28
Rosenberg was reading about Athenian democracy with Marx’s Civil 
War in France and Lenin’s State and Revolution lying open before 
25 Jenssen, “Die ‘Proletarierrepublik’ Athen”; Rosenberg, “Nochmals die Proleta-
rier-Republik”; Ciccotti, “Athen eine ‘Proletarierrepublik’?”
26 The debate has been analyzed in detail by Saldutti, “Origini di Demokratie.” 
27 Rosenberg, Demokratie und Klassenkampf. Saldutti, in “Arthur Rosenberg,” has 
underlined the educational framework and aims of the book. 
28 Rosenberg, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, 37–38 (my translation).
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI54
him.29 He was thus led to the conclusion that “the three constitutions 
[i.e., of ancient Athens, of the Paris Commune, and the Soviet Union] 
rested on the same fundamental principle: the aim that the poorest 
working population could self-govern as far as possible,” to such an 
extent that “in Athenian society class distinctions withered away.”30 
In this manner, the classicist brought his interest in ancient societies 
into convergence with the goal of socialist revolution, even at the 
cost of straying from the conventional social democratic reading of 
ancient societies.31
DEMOCRATIC ATHENS  
AND THE SOVIET REGIME  
IN ROSENBERG’S CRITIQUE
Rosenberg’s career progression within the Communist Party was 
swift. Elected city council member in 1921, he took part in the 
Congress of Jena, where he sided with the Party’s left wing, led by 
Ruth Fischer. In 1924 his faction obtained the majority in the Party, 
and he became a member of the central committee and then MP. 
His commitment took two directions. First, he was involved in 
the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the German defeat in 
World War I. This assignment significantly impacted his decision 
to abandon ancient history in favor of contemporary history. Even 
more important was his role as a German member of the executive 
committee of the Communist International. From this vantage point, 
he could see first-hand the decline of the International under Stalin. 
In subsequent years he maintained his critical stance until he left 
the Communist Party in 1927. Like many other left-wing communist 
leaders, he saw what was happening in Russia as a decisive deviation 
29 Riberi, Arthur Rosenberg, 57–58, has emphasized Rosenberg’s debt to Lenin’s 
State and Revolution.
30 Rosenberg, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, 41 (my translation). Worthy of note 
is that Rosenberg here uses the verb “verschwinden,” the same peculiar verb 
used in the German translation of Lenin’s State and Revolution to describe the 
slow disappearance of the state after the conquest of power by the revolutionary 
movement.
31 The analogy between ancient Athens and contemporary politics was pursued 
in other aspects as well. In Rosenberg’s description of the split within the Athe-
nian proletarian party after Pericles’ death and the consequent struggle between 
Cleon and Nicias (Demokratie und Klassenkampf, 52–53), it is possible to read 
between the lines an analogy of the clash between social democrats and com-
munists.
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 55
from Marxism: degeneration from proletarian democracy to the 
dictatorship of a bureaucratic clique.32
When his appointment as MP was over, Rosenberg decided to write 
books on contemporary history.33 In 1932 Rosenberg published a History 
of Bolshevism.34 Here he tried to sketch the evolution of Bolshevism as a 
peculiar kind of Marxism characterized by two distinctive elements. The 
first was the prominent role of a centralized Party in the revolutionary 
struggle. The second was Lenin’s refusal to limit the Party’s task to the 
emancipation of industrial workers alone. According to Rosenberg, 
“Lenin regarded social democracy as the great leader of the Russian 
nation in its struggle for freedom,”35 and “the difference between Lenin 
and all other social democrats consist[ed] in his including in his plans, 
in addition to the proletariat and the middle class, the immensely 
powerful class lying between them.”36
This description of Bolshevik political theory owed much to the 
renewed interest of Rosenberg in Marx and Aristotle, simultaneously, 
in the early thirties. Several publications on the father of scientific 
socialism, as well as Rosenberg’s final article in classical studies on 
the meaning of democracy and dictatorship in the Politics of Aris-
totle, date to those years.37 This last article reacted to Werner Jaeger’s 
salient study on the evolution of Aristotle’s thought,38 which served 
as a pretext for him to return to his previous interest in ancient 
32 In his resignation letter, “Rosenberg begründet seine Austritt,” he said that “the 
sharp turn made at the 14th Congress of the Bolshevik party in domestic policy 
must have as a logical consequence the dissolution of the Third International.” 
The reference was to both the implementation of the “Socialism in one country” 
theory and the emergence of Stalin as the one and only leader of the party, rati-
fied at the Russian party congress of 1925. 
33 He began with a monograph on the birth of the German Republic: Rosenberg, 
Entstehung der deutschen Republik. 
34 Rosenberg, Geschichte des Bolschewismus, cited in its English translation, His-
tory of Bolshevism.
35 Ibid., 29.
36 Ibid., 41.
37 On Marx, see Rosenberg, “Marx und Engels”; Rosenberg, “Karl Marx.” 
Rosenberg was the editor of Marx, Das Kapital. On Aristotle, see Rosenberg, 
“Aristoteles über Diktatur.” 
38 Jaeger, Aristoteles: Grundlegung. The main difference between Rosenberg and 
Jaeger lay in their stances on Aristotle’s judgment about democracy in books 
3 and 4 of his Politics. While Jaeger thought that the Stagirite resumed Plato’s 
harsh criticism of democratic regimes, Rosenberg believed that he had already 
broken with the political ideas of his master and was thus less critical of those 
regimes.
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI56
political philosophy.39 Rosenberg once again stated explicitly that 
most of his theoretical ideas on contemporary politics derived from 
ancient history and political philosophy. Since his first attempt to 
understand Athenian democracy in the light of Marx’s thought, he 
had difficulty comparing the modern proletariat with ancient social 
classes, which differed from industrial workers.40 Thus, even though 
the political form of ancient and contemporary democracies could 
be compared, their social bases were, at first glance, very different. 
Reading Aristotle’s principal political work and Marx’s most influential 
essays, Rosenberg found a solution to this dilemma. He underlined 
that the philosopher from Stagira had defined the constitutions based 
on their class composition. Democracy was the regime of the poor, 
and oligarchy was the regime of the wealthy, irrespective of how 
numerous they were.41 Aristotle’s analysis refers to a conservative 
and even oligarchic definition of democracy as the regime of the poor 
and the worst. This contrasted with democratic ideology, portraying 
democracy as the government of the majority and thus of the entire 
civic body.42 The Stagirite observed that the reason why democracy 
could appear to be the constitution of the majority was that in every 
city, the poor outnumbered the wealthy. He ended his reasoning with 
the paradox that if by coincidence, the poor people were a minority in 
a polis, and they led it, it must be described as a democracy. Aristotle 
concluded that a constitution’s social and economic bases determined 
its political definition. According to Rosenberg, this was also true of 
modern, industrialized societies.43
39 Canfora, Comunista senza partito, 66.
40 Rosenberg’s terminological inaccuracy was one of Ciccotti’s main criticisms. 
Rosenberg attempted to reply in Demokratie und Klassenkampf, 3, saying that 
“in ancient times, the proletarian was the product of poverty alone.” 
41 Arist., Pol. 3.1279b16–1280a6, 4.1290a30–b3.
42 The democratic ideology was exposed by Hdt. 3.80.6, who defines democracy as 
πλῆθος […] ἄρχον, hinting at the sovereignty of the majority; and by Thuc. 2.37.1, 
who makes explicit the idea of a regime based on majority rule, saying that: 
ὄνομα μὲν διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐς ὀλίγους ἀλλ̓  ἐς πλείονας οἰκεῖν δημοκρατία κέκληται. 
In sharp contrast to this image, Ps.-Xen., Ath. pol. 1.2–9, describes Athenian 
democracy as follows: οἱ μὲν γὰρ πένητες καὶ οἱ δημόται καὶ οἱ χείρους εὖ 
πράττοντες καὶ πολλοὶ οἱ τοιοῦτοι γιγνόμενοι τὴν δημοκρατίαν αὔξουσιν· ἐὰν 
δὲ εὖ πράττωσιν οἱ πλούσιοι καὶ οἱ χρηστοί, ἰσχυρὸν τὸ ἐναντίον σφίσιν αὐτοῖς 
καθιστᾶσιν οἱ δημοτικοί. Plato, Resp. 8.557a, agrees with this image of democratic 
government by saying that it is the regime of the poor, while oligarchy is the 
regime of the wealthy.
43 Rosenberg, “Aristoteles über Diktatur,” 352.
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 57
 Once again studying the history of Bolshevism, Rosenberg con-
cluded that Marx had the same idea as Aristotle: “In Marx’s view, 
true democracy in a modern industrialized state can only mean 
the government of the proletariat in the sense that the working class 
assumes the leadership of the middle class and the peasantry.”44 The 
proletariat and oppressed groups did not completely overlap, and 
since contemporary society is divided into two layers, the working 
class must be the leading group of a broader social coalition. This 
meant that poverty was the link between ancient and contemporary 
oppressed classes and the social basis for any democracy. Lenin, 
inheriting this conception from Marx, favored the formation of the 
typical democratic coalition of all the poor.
At the start of the revolution, Lenin tried to organize this hetero-
geneous social bloc into the political system proper to the Russian 
uprising, that is, the soviets. “[In] the Soviet Lenin recognized the 
existence in a weak and elementary form of an entirely new type of 
working-class government which could only be compared histori-
cally with the Paris Commune of 1871.”45 Soviets were created by the 
popular masses themselves, and for this reason “the Bolshevik Revo-
lution was able to base itself upon the sole democratic and national 
representative body, i.e., the Soviet Congress.”46 Given its social basis 
and constitutional organization, Soviet Russia was initially a true 
democracy in the definitions of both Marx and Aristotle. However, 
wartime communism, the NEP, and the subsequent rise of Stalin rati-
fied the Party’s victory over the councils and resulted in the defeat of 
democracy. Rosenberg clarified: “As will presently be demonstrated 
in detail, the educated (so-called) Soviet government that has been 
in power from 1918 to the present day has nothing in common with 
this type of government.”47 He confirmed this statement in his work 
on Aristotle as well, where he wrote: “[Assuming Aristotle’s point of 
view] Soviet Russia of 1917 and 1918 would have been a democracy, 
while [our] contemporary French republic would be an oligarchy.”48 
Compared with ancient Athens, the democratic experience of Soviet 
Russia was over definitively. Drawing his conclusions on the Soviet 
Union of his days, Rosenberg said:
44 Rosenberg, History of Bolshevism, 12 (my emphasis).
45 Rosenberg, History of Bolshevism, 97.
46 Ibid., 119.
47 Ibid., 99.
48 Rosenberg, “Aristoteles über Diktatur,” 355.
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI58
Socialism is inconceivable unless accompanied by the exercise of 
self-determination on the part of the people. For socialism is the rule 
of freedom under which the State disappears. An over-bureaucratized 
administration based on the employment of force, and which the 
masses must obey, is irreconcilable with the socialist organization 
of society and can only be regarded as a middle-class institution.49
Rosenberg’s judgment of the evolution of Russia from Lenin to Stalin 
was driven by the idea – developed through his research on ancient 
Athens – that democracy is, in the end, the people’s self-government, 
presupposing the sovereignty of the poor. The Athenian model is, in 
some way, the benchmark for every attempt to establish a democratic 
regime, something that happened at the beginning of the Soviet re-
gime but did not last long. Contemporary Russia was thus no longer 
a democracy, as the Athenian comparison showed.
PANNEKOEK ON COUNCIL DEMOCRACY  
AND STALINIST RUSSIA
The use of Athenian democracy as a touchstone for the degeneration 
of the Soviet Union under Stalin was even more explicit in Anton 
Pannekoek’s final works. As we have seen, Anton Pannekoek (1873–
1960) was already a recognized leader of the leftist and revolutionary 
tendencies of European social democracy before the Great War.50 Since 
the foundation of the Dutch Social Democratic Party, he had been a 
fierce opponent of reformist and revisionist attempts. He came into 
contact with German social democracy in 1906 when he was chosen 
to be a teacher at the central Party school in Berlin.
In 1912 he defended, against his former friend Kautsky, the need 
for a violent revolution to overthrow capitalism. His controversy with 
Kautsky became a fundamental point in the ensuing struggle between 
the left and center of the Party, even if he had no well-defined idea 
regarding the new political system to be established after capitalist 
power had been broken. The Russian and German revolutions sug-
gested to him the missing piece of his reasoning. Like Rosenberg, 
Pannekoek was impressed by the spread of soviet councils in Russia 
49 Rosenberg, History of Bolshevism, 262.
50 The most exhaustive biographies of Pannekoek are Malandrino, Scienza e Socia-
lismo, and Gerber, Anton Pannekoek. The works contained in Anton Pannekoek 
are devoted to investigating his background in academic astronomy and the 
impact this had on his political theories. 
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 59
and their work as revolution engines. This impression was confirmed 
by the November Revolution in Germany and led him to become a 
passionate advocate of council democracy as the only way to win the 
revolution and establish a workers’ regime.
Later on, he became increasingly critical of the Soviet regime in 
Russia and the strategy of the Communist International, to the point 
that Lenin’s criticism of left-wing communism was directed mainly at 
him. Pannekoek’s organization, the Rätekommunisten (Communist 
Councils), disapproved of the international tactics and the Party’s 
dominant role in the Russian Revolution in the establishment of the 
socialist State. Pannekoek became a point of reference for all commu-
nist critics of the Bolshevik hegemony in the international workers’ 
movement. It is unknown whether Pannekoek ever met Rosenberg, 
but he certainly knew his works and his ideas since they both spent 
much of their life in Germany in the same political field.51
During World War II, he took stock of his political experience and, 
in 1946, published his definitive work, Workers’ Councils.52 The task 
of the book was to fight back against both bourgeois democracy and 
Soviet communism and to defend the meaning of council socialism. 
Against parliamentary and representative democracy, he stated:
Council organization, in this respect, is quite the opposite of par-
liamentarism. Here the natural groups, the collaborating workers, 
and the personnel of the factories act as unities and designate their 
delegates. Because they have common interests and belong together 
in the praxis of daily life, they can send some of them as real repre-
sentatives and spokesmen. Complete democracy is realized here by 
51 Riberi, in Arthur Rosenberg, 92, postulates the existence of political connections 
between the left wing of the KPD, Rosenberg in particular, and the Dutch ultra-
left, led by Pannekoek. During the twenties and thirties, both shared an interest 
in the work of the Marxist philosopher Karl Korsch (a close friend of Rosen-
berg until his death), who inspired many observations in Rosenberg’s History 
of Bolshevism and Pannekoek’s Workers’ Council, as noted by Riberi in Arthur 
Rosenberg, 381–402, Keßler, in Arthur Rosenberg, 122–125, 232–233, and Gerber, 
in Anton Pannekoek, 192.
52 The first Dutch edition, De arbeidersraden, was published under the false name 
Aartz. The English translation was published, with a new chapter and major 
revisions, in 1950 as Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils. The complex history of this 
book’s publication has been summarized with archive references in Gerber, 
Anton Pannekoek, 195, with notes. I cite from the first Dutch edition with my 
own translation.
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI60
the equal rights of everyone who takes part in the work […] This 
labor democracy is entirely different from the political democracy 
of the former social system.53
Council organization is a real democracy, as Marx stated about the 
Paris Commune and Rosenberg wrote during the German Revo-
lution. Pannekoek also shared with both of them the idea that the 
distinction between legislative and executive power would disappear 
in a council society.
Many chapters of his book analyze what happened in Russia du-
ring and after the revolution. He defined the economic system of the 
Soviet Union as state capitalism and criticized the political decline 
of the Bolshevik Party after 1919, saying that:
The soviets were gradually eliminated as organs of self-rule, and 
reduced to subordinate organs of the government apparatus. […] 
The Russian Revolution initially gave a mighty impulse to the fight 
of the working class. For the first time in history, the working class 
could overthrow a corrupt government, which was shaken by huge 
strikes. On the basis of strike committees, which already existed, 
the Russian Revolution built up the councils, that is, self-governing 
political bodies […]. But Russia was an underdeveloped country, and 
its working class was too weak and small to realize true workers’ 
control over production […]. The councils were soon left powerless, 
subjugated to the already dominant bureaucracy.54
According to Pannekoek, however, beyond capitalism and state 
capitalism, there remained the possibility of establishing a society 
of councils and a genuinely democratic one.
Casting his net further back, Pannekoek found that this future 
society had models beyond the Paris Commune and the first two 
years of Soviet Russia. In a chapter devoted to analyzing the evolution 
of the idea of democracy in history, Pannekoek uses ancient Athens 
as his central positive paradigm: “Like in ancient Greek towns […] 
democracy was the usual organizational form of the community 
[…]. Democracy was the form of collaboration and self-rule of free 
53 Pannekoek, De arbeidersraden, 39–40. In the English translation, the phrase 
continues: “The so-called political democracy under capitalism was a mock 
democracy, an artful system conceived to mask the real domination of the 
people by a ruling minority.” 
54 Ibid., 74–76.
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 61
and equal producers, each master of his own means of production, 
his soil or his shop and his tools. In ancient Athens, which produced 
this kind of democracy in its most perfect form, it was the regular 
citizens, gathering every month and every week, that decided on 
public affairs.”55 He goes on to address the problem of the modern 
distinction between legislative and executive power, saying that: 
“The administrative functions, which were already developed, were 
not performed by professional, governmental employees, but by the 
citizens themselves, who held those functions for short periods only, 
which were circulated by lot.”56 Of course, in this kind of primitive 
democracy, there were various problems, particularly slavery, along 
with the imperialist attitude of Athens, but this was not the point. 
Much more interesting, in Pannekoek’s view, was the role of ancient 
democracy as a trailblazer for every subsequent democratic form of 
government in history, in particular that of the workers’ councils. 
This becomes even more evident some pages later. Defending the 
word ‘democracy’ from both bourgeois and Stalinist appropriation, 
he continues:
Workers must be strongly persuaded that council organization is 
the most perfect and superior form of juridical equality. Adhering, 
then, to the emotional value attached since ancient times to the word 
“democracy,” we may say that council organization represents the 
higher form of democracy, the true democracy of labor. Someone 
may ask whether the word “democracy” really meant this, since the 
word -kratia means supremacy, government, power. In the word 
itself there is the idea of control from above, from the side of the 
government, which is above the people themselves, even if it has 
been elected by the people. In a council organization, this problem 
will not exist […] since the government will be the people itself, 
comparable to some extent with the ancient democracy of Athens.57
Thus, ancient Athens was, in Pannekoek’s eyes, a forerunner of 
council democracy, and council democracy was the only way for 
the workers to escape the double trap of capitalism on one side and 
Stalinism on the other.
55 Pannekoek, De arbeidersraden, 133 (my emphasis).
56 Ibid., 133.
57 Ibid., 140–141 (my emphasis).
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI62
CONCLUSION
Stigmatized as a slave society in the theoretical elaboration of the 
Second International, Athens became a political model in the years that 
followed the Russian and German revolutions. Thanks to Rosenberg, 
the organization of Athenian democracy was seen among the ultra-left 
of the Communist International as the forerunner of contemporary 
council democracy, a true democracy compared with the bourgeois 
false one. This idea was used once again in subsequent years when the 
dream of a socialist republic in Russia faded away. The NEP and the 
adoption of the “socialism in one country” theory were perceived by 
the leftist and council communists as a betrayal. The Athenian model 
was thus used to stress the distance between genuine democracy and 
the bureaucratic regime established in the Soviet Union, which was 
seen as a parody of the previous council system.
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 63
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VITTORIO SALDUTTI66
ABSTRACT
“The political form at last discovered under which to work out the 
economic emancipation of labor.” With these words, Marx descri-
bed the Paris Commune of 1871. It “was formed of the municipal 
councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the 
town, responsible and revocable at short term […] a working, not a 
parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.” The 
political tradition of the Commune was inherited by the Russian so-
viets and inspired Lenin, who explained the role of those governing 
bodies as a “reversion to primitive democracy.” Arthur Rosenberg, 
professor of Ancient History at Berlin University, tried in his book 
Democracy and Class Struggle in the Ancient World to offer historical 
ground for the ideas developed by Lenin in State and Revolution and 
compared ancient Athenian democracy to the contemporary German 
and Russian councils. During the 1920s, as a communist leader and MP, 
Rosenberg, recalling his ideas on Athenian democracy, criticized the 
political degeneration of the Russian workers’ State. He stressed how 
Soviet Russia, in limiting the power of the councils, had suppressed 
the governing body of socialist direct democracy. In his work Workers’ 
Councils, Dutch revolutionary Anton Pannekoek renewed Rosenberg’s 
criticism at the end of World War II, returning to the image of ancient 
democratic Athens as a forerunner of the socialist councils.
kEYWORDS: Arthur Rosenberg, Anton Pannekoek, democracy, 
Athens, workers councils
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ANCIENT ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY 67
Antična atenska demokracija, delavski sveti 
in levičarska kritika stalinistične Rusije
IZVLEČEK
»Naposled odkrita politična oblika, pod katero je mogoče uresničiti 
ekonomsko emancipacijo dela.« S temi besedami je Marx leta 1871 
opisal Pariško komuno. Sestavljali so jo »občinski svetniki, izvoljeni 
s splošnimi volitvami v različnih mestnih okrožjih, odgovorni, ki 
jih je mogoče hitro odpoklicati [...] delovno in ne parlamentarno 
telo, izvršilno in zakonodajno hkrati«. Politično tradicijo komune 
so podedovali ruski sovjeti in navdihnila je Lenina, ki je vlogo teh 
u pravnih organov pojasnil kot »vrnitev k prvotni demokraciji«. Arthur 
Rosenberg, profesor antične zgodovine na berlinski univerzi, je v svoji 
knjigi Demokracija in razredni boj v antičnem svetu poskušal ponuditi 
zgodovinsko podlago za ideje, ki jih je Lenin razvil v knjigi Država 
in revolucija, in primerjal antično atensko demokracijo s sočasnimi 
nemškimi in ruskimi sveti. V dvajsetih letih 20. stoletja je Rosenberg 
kot komunistični voditelj in poslanec s sklicevanjem na svoje ideje o 
atenski demokraciji kritiziral politično degeneracijo ruske delavske 
države. Poudarjal je, da je sovjetska Rusija z omejevanjem moči svetov 
zatrla vodilni organ socialistične neposredne demokracije. Nizozemski 
revolucionar Anton Pannekoek je ob koncu druge svetovne vojne v 
svojem delu Delavski sveti obnovil Rosenbergovo kritiko in se vrnil k 
podobi antičnih demokratičnih Aten kot predhodnice socialističnih 
svetov.
kLjučNE BESEDE: Rosenberg, Anton Pannekoek, demokracija, 
Atene, delavski sveti
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