Donni Wang | Democracy Without Separation: Why the Ancient Greeks Never Believed in “The Economy”
About this episode
Donni Wang discusses the relationship between democracy and economics in ancient Athens compared to modern economic practices.
Note：This essay is based on a presentation delivered at the conference Degrowth: Bridging Green and Just in Central and Eastern Europe ( Kraków, Poland, June 2026). Many critics argue that modern economics can impede urgently needed social and political change by concealing questions of justice, equality, and social cohesion within the language of scale, optimization, and equilibrium. A fundamental reason for this is that the economy is formally treated as a distinct, value-neutral, expert-led sphere. This essay therefore turns to ancient Athens, the earliest democracy in the West (albeit a deeply flawed one), as a concrete illustration of a society in which economic life was not allowed to remain independent. In Athens, financial decisions were understood as part of broader deliberations about collective flourishing rather than a conduit for competing self-interests. A close reading of evidence on public finance, employment, and wealth accumulation suggests that material activities were aligned with the democratic goals of mutual aid, communal wellbeing, and public honor in a consistent manner, resulting in non-separation between politics and economics. Through juxtaposition…
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