Voices and signals

active citizens and the market-place

Geraint Parry

George Moyser

pp. 81-99

in: Michael Moran, Maurice Wright (eds), The market and the state, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Abstract

In democratic Athens it was the practice to use a vermilion-smeared rope to drive citizens from the market-place (the agora) to the assembly on the pnyx.¹ Thus it would seem that Athenians fell somewhat short of Rousseau's ideal that men would "fly to the assembly" and that, even in this most politicised of communities, they were inclined to stay around in the market, trading for their own advantage. This reluctance to use one's political voice may, perhaps, be reflected in the ambivalent relationship between states and markets which has run through political thought. What is it that people can do or that they prefer to do through politics which they cannot do through the market?

Cited authors

Rousseau Jean-Jacques