Why did Athens develop industry and commerce when the ancient countries of the East tended to be mainly agricultural?

Ancient Athenian democracy was a system of democracy developed in Athens in ancient Greece. Other Greek cities established various democratic institutions, most of which were modeled after Athens, but none of which were as strong or enduring as Athens. It was a unique and inspiring experiment in direct democracy, in which the people participated directly in voting on legislative and executive bills. The participants in this democracy, although not all the inhabitants of Attica, were not selected on the basis of economic stratification and were very broadly based. Never before had a people been so involved in governing themselves.

Why was it that in the ancient civilizations of the Orient, which were generally centralized and authoritarian, the Greek world of the Mediterranean produced a model of democracy such as that of Athens? People who think about this question often first focus on the special geography of Athens, and try to say that this is the decisive factor in the formation of Athenian democracy. But this is not convincing. Certain city-states of the Greek world with similar geographic conditions to Athens, such as Corinth and Megara, established oligarchic regimes. It is clear that there is no direct and necessary connection between geography and the political system of human societies. It cannot be denied that the formation and development of the Athenian democratic political system included the influence of geography, but this influence was indirect rather than direct, not to mention decisive. It should be said that the formation and development of Athenian democracy was the result of the combination of many complex factors such as its economic, political, historical and cultural traditions.　First of all, the ancient Athenian state was formed with a fairly high level of social productive forces. This was one of the characteristics that distinguished the Athenian state from the ancient civilizations of the East from the very beginning. The heroic epics of Homer show that at the stage of the disintegration of the primitive society iron tools and oxen were already used in Greece. Eastern civilizations were formed much earlier than the Athenian state, while the level of development of productive forces was much lower. In Egypt, the plows and wooden tools were used mainly in the Old Kingdom. It was not until the Middle Kingdom that bronze tools appeared in Egypt. Iron was considered a precious metal in the New Kingdom because of its scarcity - some 1,000 years after the formation of the unified Egyptian state. Marx argued that this low level of civilization and the vastness of the country was one of the reasons for the need for a centralized, authoritarian government. While the more developed social productive forces in Athens during the period of the formation of the state in agriculture, handicrafts, the existence of production activities in the form of self-employment, on this basis, it excludes the need for the intervention of a centralized authoritarian government.　Secondly, against the background of the geographical environment of Athens and the more developed state of social productivity, the period of the formation of the ancient Athenian state was characterized by its own socio-economic activities. Ancient Athens, situated on the Attica peninsula, was characterized by rolling hills, which were not conducive to the development of food production, but horticulture, animal husbandry, fruit-planting and bee-keeping flourished. The silver and clay deposits in Attica favored the development of handicrafts. The Aegean Sea, which surrounded the Attica Peninsula on three sides, was connected to the Mediterranean Sea, and several natural harbors on the west coast of Attica provided the Athenians with convenient conditions for the development of maritime trade. The dependence on foreign foodstuffs and the need to export handicrafts and clothing made it necessary for the inhabitants of Attica to expand their contacts with the outside world and to establish close economic and cultural ties with the rest of the world. The Athenian population continued to expand its foreign contacts and to establish close economic and cultural ties with the rest of the world. Thus, at the beginning of the formation of the Athenian state, the Attic society already had a more developed commodity and monetary relations, to a large extent, breaking through the situation of natural economy. At this time, Athens had become the center of economy, trade and culture in the eastern Mediterranean. In the time of Thoreau, "movable property, i.e., wealth consisting of money, slaves, and merchant ships, was increasing, but it was no longer used merely as a means of acquiring real estate, as it had been in the first period of narrow-mindedness - it had become a gully in itself." In contrast, the countries of the ancient Eastern civilizations were generally based on a self-sufficient rural economy. In India, as Marx pointed out, there were two situations: on the one hand, the people of India, like the people of all the countries of the East, left to the government the main condition on which their agriculture and commerce depended, namely, the large-scale public **** works, and on the other hand, they were scattered throughout the country, clustered in very small localities by means of the combination of agriculture and handicrafts in the form of families. As a result of these two conditions, a special social system, the so-called village system, has emerged in India from very ancient times, which has made each of these small units an independent organization, leading a life of seclusion. These idyllic rural communes, however innocuous they might seem at first sight, remained the firm foundation of the Oriental despotism.　Again, the productivity, geography and economic activity of the Athenian state at the time of its emergence led to a more complete destruction of the clan organization, which was based on blood ties. One of the main reasons for the destruction of the clan organization was the expansion and development of private ownership on the basis of the development of commodity and monetary relations, especially the private ownership of land, which became widespread with the mortgaging, transferring, buying and selling of land. In the time of Thoreau, the private ownership of land and the sale of land were openly recognized by legislation. Private ownership of land was a common fact even before Thoreau. The sale and purchase of land for private ownership undermined the communal ownership of land, which was the basis of clan organization. On the other hand, on the basis of a more developed commercial economic activity, the Attic inhabitants had a high level of external contacts and intermingling with the Gentiles was very common. This made it difficult for the clan organizations, which were based on blood ties, to perform their normal administrative functions and gradually lost the need for their existence. As a result of the more complete destruction of the clan organization, the inhabitants of Attica established a free and independent identity in commodity-money relations, and initially established relations of mutual equality, which provided the background conditions of social relations for the establishment of democratic politics when they were reorganized in the form of a State.　What was the situation in the ancient civilizations of the East, which Marx considered to be based on the Asiatic mode of production? Marx's conception of the Asiatic society was characterized by three basic features. Firstly, there was no private ownership of land, if not, at least, land belonged to the state. Secondly, Asean society was based on the village community system, where each village was self-sufficient through a close combination of agriculture and cottage industry. Thirdly, the centralized power played a dominant role. This power was established in the course of history as a result of the environment in which waterworks and other public works had to be organized in order for agriculture to meet the needs of a growing population.　If we focus only on the above, it is not enough to show the necessity of the emergence of democracy in the Athenian state. The system of government in a country is not simply adapted to the circumstances and economic relations of the society. The power relations between the various strata and factions of a country's ruling class, as well as the political consciousness of the class or faction that had gained leadership, also had a direct influence on the system of government of a country.　On the basis of the more developed overseas trade and handicraft production in Athens, a rather powerful class of industrial and commercial slave-owners arose in the Athenian society. This class existed from the very beginning of the Athenian state, and as its wealth grew, it claimed a position of dominance. If the rich of the old clans and aristocrats had used the "six-one" rent and debt slavery to bankrupt the Athenian small farmers and craftsmen and put them under their rule, the industrial and commercial slavers demanded to ensure the independence of the free small farmers and craftsmen so that they could maintain the source of foreign exports and the domestic consumer market. Thus, the industrial and commercial slave owners and the free small farmers and craftsmen could raise the banner of political alliance on the basis of economic interests. As a result, the political reforms under the leadership of the industrial and commercial slave owners represented by Thoreau enabled the Athenian state to abolish the native debt slavery at an early stage, set the maximum land occupation limit, and preserved a large number of free small peasants, craftsmen and free urban poor in the Athenian state. The small peasant economy and independent craft production constituted the economic basis of classical society in its heyday. These people were a powerful social force in favor and support of democratic reforms. In ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon and other countries, the royal family and the nobility owned large-scale farms and workshops, and possessed a large number of slaves and various types of dependent peasants, which was the class basis for the formation of monarchical dictatorship.　In addition, and more importantly, the Athenian commoners, led by the industrial and commercial slavers, established democracy by means of gradual reforms. In the process of reform, there were no obvious traces of civil wars, riots and bloodshed. At the same time, the landed aristocracy, which had been overthrown from the throne of exclusive rule, still had a place in the new democracy. Considering the fact that a considerable number of the industrial and commercial slaveholders had been transformed from the landed aristocracy, and that there was still a considerable convergence of economic interests between them, there was a possibility of political compromise between them. The learned Thoreau may have summarized the experience of political reforms in other countries, so that he adopted a moderate attitude towards the poor and the landed aristocracy in his political reforms, which made the compromise a reality. As a result, all classes and factions of the slave-owning ruling class were accommodated in a democracy. Democracy is a form of government that takes into account the interests of the various classes of slave-owning freemen who compromise with each other.　In general, when examining the causes of Athenian democracy, we should see the complex synthesis of a series of conditions in the Athenian society of that time, such as economic, political, historical, cultural and natural environment. These conditions were closely connected with each other. According to the viewpoint of historical materialism, we can think that the special mode of production of the Athenian society, which was different from that of the civilized countries of the ancient East, was the fundamental cause of the formation of Athenian democracy, but we must not simplify this proposition.　Athenian democracy was built on the basis of slavery, in essence, it was a tool for the slave-owning class led by the Athenian industrial and commercial slave-owners to exercise dictatorship over the slaves and non-citizens, and in the final analysis, it served the economic interests of the slave-owning class as a whole, and it was the democracy of the slave-owning free people class. This limited class democracy determined the great limitation and narrowness of this democracy.　In the heyday of Athens, the total number of free citizens, including women and children, was about 90,000, while the number of male and female slaves was 365,000. Slaves, who constituted the majority of the inhabitants of Athens, were deprived of their freedom, did not enjoy the right to citizenship, and therefore could not participate in political activities. As in other Greek countries, slave owners could abuse and punish their slaves at will. In workshops, mines and farms, slaves were forced to perform heavy work with simple tools. In fact, it was precisely on the basis of the hard labor of the slaves that the slave-owning freedmen were able to engage in political activity; it was precisely on the premise that the valves: apart from the slaves' political life, oppressed and tyrannized over the slaves that the slave-owning freedmen were able to have a democracy. So Athenian democracy was a privileged democracy of slave-owning free citizens.　This privileged democracy was even further imposed. During the period of Pericles, which was called the heyday of Athens, the scope of Athenian citizenship, instead of being enlarged, was further narrowed, and 5,000 of the inhabitants of Athens were disenfranchised at once by the special decree passed in 151 B.C., which stipulated that only persons of Athenian parentage could be citizens of Athens. Since then, Athens lost the possibility of replenishing free citizens from other city-states.　The basic features of Athenian democracy were popular sovereignty and rule by rotation. The manifestations of the democratic system were commonly found in the citizens' assemblies and popular tribunals. It was also manifested in small administrative and military bodies. The principles of collective leadership and majority rule are usually applied.

The evolution of the political system in ancient China was characterized by the strengthening of the monarchy at the central level and the strengthening of the central bloc at the local level. Although there were occasional anti-corruption efforts during this period, the general trend remained unchanged.