Plutarch wrote of an Athenian leader named Themistocles. According to Wikipedia, “He was one of a new breed of non-aristocratic politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy. As a politician, Themistocles was a populist, having the support of lower-class Athenians, and generally being at odds with the Athenian nobility.”

From Plutarch’s Lives:

“Well then, they visited him with ostracism, curtailing his dignity and pre-eminence, as they were wont to do in the case of all whom they thought to have oppressive power, and to be incommensurate with true democratic equality. For ostracism was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.”

You can see why the leaders of capitalism, Stalinism, and nano-bureaucracy have come together in an attempt to silence the antiquities. Their writing and culture depict not just a slave-owning aristocracy but the lower class rising in prominence above the aristocracy through political movements and the vote. Whatever aristocrat wanted to get in their way would need a great deal of education and political agility to stand up to them and their movement of workers and intellectuals.

The same ostracism of great leaders has overcome the SEP. It its attempt to fight the influence of the working class and their culture, the nano-bureaucracy has ostracized Democratic Power. As Plutarch pointed out, “ostracism was not a penalty.” The SEP nano-bureaucracy has never accused Democratic Power of anything substantial nor even formally ended the membership of Bertrand Poster. The “disfranchisement” arise from pure “malice” towards the working class and its political demands. Themistocles lead the defense of Athenian democracy against invasion by the Persian empire. Democratic Power now defends inner-party factional democracy against the nano-bureaucracy. For this reason, like Themistocles, Democratic Power is the movement of the disenfranchised international working class that must demand fair and transparent elections within all legal parties and throughout the world for the organization of a world election of all people for a world government.

This demand has definite practical implications, in that Democratic Power will welcome the collapse of any capitalist “republic” as the starting point of the establishment of a workers’ state anywhere in the world. Only such a state can provide media coverage and security for an international election for the workers’ state or for a federation of workers’ states. Themistocles never returned to lead Athens, but during his ostracism found an ally in Persian King Artaxerxes, an early defender of the seperation of church and state. In this way, Themistocles returned to power as governor of Magnesia. Whether or not Democratic Power can find an opening to reintroduce democracy to the SEP and the ICFI, its campaigns must influence the working as to the importance of building an international revolutionary party that they can trust to lead a new workers’ state without descending, like the Russian and Chinese parties and states did, into Stalinist bureaucratic barbarism.