>>472318>The entire Mediterranean world was full of slavery and female exclusion at the time, that doesn't make Athens and other democracies stand out any less from the oligarchies, monarchies, and dictatorships that they pivoted from.That maybe is a good enough argument for a non-marxist, but for a marxist differences in political superstructure don't matter that much.
Basically, his argument: differences between Athens and Sparta are quantitative, not qualitative.
Demos was a beneficiary of the Empire and of the institution of slavery, just as the propertied classes were - that's why a political alliance between them was possible.
Think about imperial core proletariat in the maoist third-worldist discourse lol.