Donni Wang | Democracy Without Separation: Why the Ancient Greeks Never Believed in “The Economy”

之間書評 In-Between Review Podcast · Jul 9, 2026 · 19m

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…