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Ezekiel comments on "Progress" - Less Wrong
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I've never read Marx, but I don't think Plato's Republic would match most modern definitions of "democracy"; it was made up of predefined castes ruled by an elite minority.
No, Plato sketched out the way that his Republic would gradually deteriorate - one of the inevitable stages was "democracy". He also suggested that once the people began to rule, they would not only enjoy their freedom, they would begin to value freedom for its own sake - and then they would start to do ridiculous things, like free all the slaves, allow women to rule, and even show concern for the rights of animals.
That's really interesting. Thanks for the education.
The Republic wasn't democracy, but points along the political cycle he sketched were democratic (though surely Plato wasn't thinking of anything as specific as parliamentary democracy as we know it today.)
The young Marx would have said that democracy (though not anything as specific as parliamentary democracy as we know it today - more like free association, cooperation, and individual autonomy) expressed the truth of human nature, while the old Marx would say that human nature plus the path of technological development existing over our whole history implies that at a certain point something like parliamentary democracy would be inevitable (but not irreplacable.)