金石堂
你真的懂你口口聲聲捍衛的民主是什麼嗎？
大旗一揮，高喊人民做主，人民真的能夠做主嗎？
民主幾乎是全球各國政治的核心價值，是數以億計的人拚搏的成果，如今民主卻讓許許多多人失望，甚至成為犯罪的藉口。曾經，美國學生為爭取民主，提出休倫港宣言，畫下歷史性的一刻，而今，為此撰書的 James Miller 寫下民主何時生根，又是如何茁壯至今。
古希臘時代，人們認為選舉是腐敗的權力繼承，更別說是所謂民主，他們寧可抽籤決定領導人，也不以投票的方式選擇領導人。法國大革命為爭求人權而起，但隨之而來的卻是君主暴力專政。而在美國，選舉權甚至是搶來的，而非天賦。所有二十世紀時期的各種改革和戰爭，無論是在共產主義、文學或民族主義範疇，都聲稱是為了民主而戰，而這些人根本不懂民主。
遠溯至雅典時代，近談至佔領華爾街事件，James Miller 在本書中剖析所謂的民主——這個我們最珍視卻又令人困惑的理想概念——究竟為何物，既有趣又充滿洞見。（文 / 博客來編譯）
A new history of the world’s most embattled idea
Today, democracy is the world’s only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In Can Democracy Work? James Miller, the author of the classic history of 1960s protest Democracy Is in the Streets, offers a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present. As he shows, democracy has always been rife with inner tensions. The ancient Greeks preferred to choose leaders by lottery and regarded elections as inherently corrupt and undemocratic. The French revolutionaries sought to incarnate the popular will, but many of them came to see the people as the enemy. And in the United States, the franchise would be extended to some even as it was taken from others. Amid the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century, communists, liberals, and nationalists all sought to claim the ideals of democracy for themselves—even as they manifestly failed to realize them.
Ranging from the theaters of Athens to the tents of Occupy Wall Street, Can Democracy Work? is an entertaining and insightful guide to our most cherished—and vexed—ideal.
