In the UK the richest 1 per cent — 300,000 — of the working population control 23 per cent of the nation’s total wealth. Austerity and cuts loom. Oxfam says there are 13 million ‘relatively’ poor in the country. But the poor seem rather relaxed about it.
The ancients, however, knew the poor could not be ignored. In the Athenian radical democracy, the poor were in fact the bosses, having total control of Athens’ courts and sovereign assembly. They could have voted themselves pensions for life had they so wished, or stripped the rich of everything they owned. They did not. Instead the rich were taxed in times of war and made to pay for festivals — games, theatre, poetry, music — and the running of the state navy. On one occasion, the assembly had the chance to divide up among themselves the proceeds of a rich silver strike; Themistocles persuaded them to put the money into enlarging the fleet to control the sea and build an empire.
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