The Criterion/Volume 4/Number 1/Aristotle on Democracy and Socialism
i.
IT has been well remarked by Sir Frederick Pollock that just as a Brahman, when he starts to write a book, invokes Ganesh, the elephant-headed Deity of Wisdom, so any Western, essaying to treat of politics, might well begin with an invocation of the name of Aristotle.
On almost all subjects connected with man and his problems Aristotle is the first and the greatest master. He possessed—as no other thinker has possessed in an equal degree—a combination of the philosophic and the scientific mind. He 'saw life steadily, and saw it whole'; his calm and piercing gaze enabled him to penetrate to the heart of a problem, to analyse its component elements, and, with the nearest human approach to infallibility, to select and stress its most important factors.
Of rhetoric, of passion—other than the passion for facts and laws in facts—of any merely literary striving after style, his works, as they have come down to us, are quite destitute. As Cardinal Newman remarked, he writes like Nature talking of her own works. In the serenity with which he strides over whole continents of thought, and maps out once for all their chief landmarks, he reminds us of the great material conqueror, with his almost godlike calm, narrating so simply and so clearly his campaigns in Gaul. But there is no touch of 'veni, vidi, vici' about Aristotle. His gaze is so intensely rivetted on the facts, his mind so absorbed in their analysis and explanation, that, as has been well said, he sounds sometimes like a man talking to himself.
In an age of philosophical sciolism and impossible systems, a reinterpretation in modern terms of the greatest of thinkers is one of the needs of the times.
The Politics of Aristotle, though it is a treasury of political wisdom, is in some ways an unsatisfactory work. It has come down to us in a form which is certainly not the final form that the Master would have given it. The parts do not combine into a logically connected whole, and cannot be rearranged to do so. We cannot be sure that any given paragraph—still less any given sentence—contains the actual words of Aristotle. And yet we feel that, as Jowett says, the whole bears the 'imprint of the master mind', and that the apparently simple and yet profound aphorisms which light up its pages are the expression of that mind alone.
The Politics of Aristotle, says Jowett, 'continue to have a practical relation to our own times'; the objection that Aristotle dealt only or mainly with the city-state is plausible, but superficial. Aristotle dealt with the fundamental qualities and relations of man in society.
To enable us better to understand the way in which he would have looked at modern socialist and communist schemes, let us briefly review some of his leading ideas.
The object of the State, he says, is to enable its citizens not merely to live, but to live well. It should therefore be something more than a mere guarantee for the mutual respect of rights, and should develope the virtue of its citizens (Book III., Chapter 9[1]). This is surely a higher ideal than that of Herbert Spencer and the Philosophical Radicals. But Aristotle knew that mere laws and prohibitions—like those of our Puritans or of America to-day—are comparatively useless to that end. He insists (V., 1) on the importance of education, which should be regulated by the State, to impress on each citizen the peculiar ethos proper to the polity. The immediate success and the ultimate failure with which this aim was pursued by pre-war Germany is a double confirmation of Aristotle’s wisdom. The State must mould, but it must mould wisely, and history warns us that militaristic states have ultimately failed (IV., 14).
In his approval of the rule of the superman—of unique virtue and wisdom—Aristotle agreed with Carlyle; but, unlike Carlyle, he regarded such a thing as a purely ideal conception (III., 13), and his best practicable ideal is some form of constitutional democracy. For democracy seems to be the only form of government suitable to large states (III., 15)}—a fortiori to our huge modern nation-states. The best constitution i1s one in which the middle class is predominant, because the middle class is more reasonable, more ready to act constitutionally, and in its nature more permanent than the classes of the very rich or the very poor (VI., 11). From this point of wview Aristotle would have held that Victorian England under Palmerston was politically sounder than England wunder Lloyd George.
If a large number of persons are excluded from all honours or are very poor, the State will have enemies within itself (III., 11). They should therefore have some share in the Government, though in the best state the unfit will be excluded from full political rights (III., 5). Now our modern franchise is the equivalent of the direct participation in government by the Greeks of the old city- states; and it is quite certain that Aristotle would not have approved of universal adult suffrage even under modern conditions. He would regard the franchise less as a right than as a duty to be exercised for the benefit of the State, and he would insist that some qualification, other than that of age and residence, whether of property, education, or service to the community, would be a desirable safeguard (III., 13). The art of government, said Voltaire, is to make two-thirds of the community support the other third; our modern ideal—economically far more dangerous—seems to be exactly the reverse. Bagehot, Liberal as he was, saw the danger that both political parties would try to outbid each other for the support of the working man. Vox populi, if worked in that manner, he said, will be vox diaboli; which is what it appears to Dean Inge. Aristotle was well aware of the danger. For the poor to use their majority to confiscate the property of the rich is, he says, as unjust as the plunder of the masses by a tyrant or an oligarchy (III., 10).
A mainly agricultural democracy is more stable, he says, than a mainly industrial one, for large bodies of mechanics are politically restless and meddlesome (VII., 4). Is it necessary to quote the attempts of Trade Union leaders to blackmail the community and dictate to Government by means of Direct Action?
Extreme democracy, in which all citizens have an absolute equality, is suited only to some states, and will not last even in those unless founded on a sound system of laws and morals (VII., 4). To our talk of basing government in countries like India on democratic principles, Aristotle would have replied, with a smile of amused contempt, that the idea was, in the nature of things, impossible, because the necessary character and the necessary unity did not exist.
Book VIII. contains a masterly analysis of the causes and occasions of political disturbances and revolutions. Aristotle’s generalisation that the principal condition which gives rise to such ‘sedition’ is a desire for equality on the part of the many, or of superiority on the part of the few—often, of course, cloaked under democratic pretexts—has been abundantly verified by history. He adds, with his usual insight, that the desire of gain is often not so much the wish to acquire wealth for itself as the envy that men feel of the larger share possessed—whether justly or unjustly—by others. Most modern communist propaganda is founded upon, or derives its appeal from, mere envy. When he adds (Chapter III.) that the carelessness of admitting to high office persons who are disloyal to the State may be among the predisposing causes of sedition, we are reminded of a favourite modern device—not unknown to the Government of India—of placating enemies, and of the case of a politician, who had done his best to hamper the State in a Great War, being permitted not long after to become its chief magistrate.
In dealing with revolutions in democracies, Aristotle makes the significant remark that their principal cause is the intemperate action of unscrupulous demagogues, who compel the propertied classes to combine in defence of their own interests (VIII., 5), and he reminds us that many practices which appear to be democratic are really the ruin of democracies. Unless the whole body of citizens by habit and education have absorbed the spirit of the polity, the wisest laws will be of no avail (VIII., 9).
ii.
Such being Aristotle’s views on some of the main problems of government, what would be his attitude, if were alive to-day, towards modern socialist or communistic schemes?
He would, of course, have rejected laissez-faire individualism, and would have insisted that the State has further and higher functions than the mere provision of internal and external security. He might even have approved of some of our legislation that is vaguely termed ‘socialistic’ (as we may infer from VII., 5). On doles and State assistance generally he remarks: ‘The poor receive and need ever more and more, for such assistance is like water poured into a leaky vessel. Still, the true friend of the people should guard against extreme poverty, which lowers the character of the democracy.’ All schemes of predatory legislation Aristotle would (as we have seen) have sternly condemned. To the exercise of voluntary and friendly charity he attached a high value, but he insisted on the fundamental principle that a man’s work is worth (economically) what it will fetch, and that his salary or wages should be fixed not by his own desires but by the market value of his work. In a well-known chapter of the Ethics (V., 5) he discusses the function of money as a means of establishing what he calls proportional justice between different kinds of work, taking a builder and a shoe-maker as his examples, and he concludes: ‘In reality things which are not homogeneous cannot be measured, but they can be measured well enough for practical purposes by means of our need.’ Any system which aimed at equalizing the rewards of different kinds of work, or discouraging individual industry, efficiency, or inventiveness, he would have at once condemned as unnatural, and an impossible foundation for any enduring State.
What would he have said to the Socialist formula of ‘The Nationalization of all the means of Production and Distribution’?
In his Republic Plato had sketched an ideal communist
State. Plato himself admitted that, human nature being
what it is, such a State could never be more than an ideal,
and in the ‘Laws’ he gives us a sketch of his ‘second-best’ State, from which the communistic features are
omitted. In the second book of his Politics Aristotle subjects
the communist ideal to a rigorous examination. He points
out that diversity in its members—analogous to the diversity of parts in an organism—is of the essence of a State,
and that the unification aimed at by communism would tend to dissolve the State. For the true unity of the State
is a moral unity. He points out that under communism
(1) industry would be discouraged, because the natural
relation between work and its reward would be upset. He
saw clearly enough that the communistic principle is
economically unsound, and is opposed to human nature.
(2) The ‘magic of property’ would disappear from life.
The loss would be not merely the loss of a selfish—though
natural and universal—pleasure, for there is nothing
that is more pleasant than to afford gratification or assistance
to one’s friends, and this is possible only if our property
is our very own’. If communism, he adds, were a wise
system, it would have been put into practice by his time.
It has been left for the folly of the modern world to prove
the good sense of antiquity.
The sort of legislation proposed by Plato, he continues, has a plausible and philanthropic air, and makes easy converts of the sentimental, especially if its ideals are combined with attacks on the evils of society, which are represented as due to the absence of communism. ‘All these evils, however, are due not to the absence of communism but to the evil passions of human nature.’ (II., 5.) Every word of this is as exactly true to-day as when it was written; and when he tells us that disputes are commoner between partners in a joint estate than between neighbours on separate estates, we are reminded that one of the reasons of the failure of the Building Guild was the quarrelsomeness of its members. He concludes that communism is ‘impossible’—a conclusion which modern experiments have abundantly verified.
With regard to proposals to limit or equalize individual properties by law, he has some wise words. ‘Those who frame such laws should remember what they tend to forget—that a legislator who limits the amount of property should also limit the number of children . . . clearly then he must aim not only at equalizing properties but at limiting their amount. And yet if he fix a moderate
limit for all, he will be no nearer his goal; for it is not the possessions but the desires of men which need to be equalized, and this is impossible, unless an adequate education 1s provided by the State’ (II., 7). And again, ‘The remedy for these evils is not so much the equalization of property as the training of the nobler type of men not to desire more, and the prevention of the lower from getting more’ (ib.)—a moral achievement which Aristotle could have expected only in his ideal State.
iii.
That Aristotle was very much alive to the fundamental principles urged by the Eugenists can be inferred from his discussion of marriage (IV., 16). To the family, as the foundation of the State, and to biologically suitable marriages he attributed the highest importance. Not only should parents be healthy, but children should be healthy too, and, if necessary, the number of children produced for the State should be limited. Can anyone doubt that Aristotle would have approved of birth-control in the present conditions of this country? That the least valuable and most improvident elements of the population should be encouraged by various forms of State assistance to multiply at the expense of sounder elements is a thing that he would have regarded with abhorrence. He would have pointed out, with his usual logic, that the State should either let natural selection work unhindered, or, if any and every person can claim the right to be supported by the taxpayer, the State in self-defence should do its own work of selection, and abstain from 'fostering the feeble,’ or helping the unfit to reproduce their kind. He does not himself mention the sterilization of the unfit as a possible remedy, but there can be no doubt that he would have approved the proposed legislation to that end.
iv.
It is not only on communist schemes as a proposed remedy for the ills of society that Aristotle can give us guidance. Such schemes are usually supported by Marxian or semi-Marxian theories of wealth-production, as it actually takes place under natural (i.e. 'capitalistic’) conditions. Here, too, Aristotle, properly interpreted, annihilates all Marxian doctrine. Capital, said Marx, is robbery. Wealth 1s produced by labour, and is simply condensed labour—which is about as true as the saying that all crime is condensed beer. The capitalist, says Marx, takes all except the minimum required for the support of the labourer. Marx’s fallacies have been often enough refuted by genuine economists, but their neatest refutation, founded on Arnstotle, is still comparatively unknown. It is to be found in Mr. F. W. Bain’s Principle of Wealth Creation, wherein it 1s demonstrated that the four Aristotelian causes give a complete account of the process. Mr. Bain’s work is now out of print, and it is high time that another edition was published, for it has been strangely neglected by professional economists. The present writer, some years ago, was studying Ruskin’s economics, and turned to a well-known Dictionary of Political Economy to see what the authorities had to say on the subject. Ruskin’s name was omitted! The reputation that Mr. Bain has won in a very different field, as a writer of delicate imaginative prose, has perhaps tended to obscure the value of his contribution to economic theory; but that so brilliant and original a book as The Principle of Wealth Creation—even if the germ of it 1s in Aristotle—should have been allowed to fall into comparative oblivion, 1s no credit to our professors.
Let us then take a brief glance at the leading idea of Mr. Bain’s book.
Every commodity—the commodity being the type of wealth 1n a modern community—has four causes:
(1) The matter out of which it is made.
(2) The design to which it owes its form or shape. (3) The labour which actually shaped the matter into form.
(4) The need or demand of the consumer or purchaser, who looks to the function or end of the thing, and expresses his demand by means of money.
Now these are simply the four Aristotelian causes—material, formal, efficient, and final. G. H. Lewes thought fit to belittle Aristotle’s insight when he declared that these causes were not susceptible of verification; but if we accepted only what could be verified by being weighed and measured in a laboratory, we should get very way in any of the sciences that deal with man.
Let us take a bicycle as an example of a modern com- modity and analyse it as Aristotle would have done. It is made of metal and rubber, provided originally by Nature, and purchased by the manufacturer from the holder of raw material. Its form is the result of the brainwork of several generations of inventors, the fittest of whose ideas have survived. This form is imparted to it by workmen, using highly specialised machinery. This machinery, a compound of work and form, is, like the bicycle itself, in its parts and their combination, the result of the continually improved designs of inventors. It is set up in a factory erected by money borrowed from the capitalist or from shareholders, on land rented from the landlord.
Land, raw material and capital all come under the head of the material cause; management, invention, organisation, etc., under the head of the formal cause. Communist schemes of expropriating the capitalist (or shareholders) and discouraging the inventor and employer, would put out of action two of the causes—the material and the formal—of wealth production, would fatally cripple the power of the final cause (demand) and would even—as the example of Russia and of experiments like the Building Guild prove—gravely impair the operation of the efficient cause (Labour). The application of Aristotle’s causes to the problem of wealth production, not only provides us with a clear-cut proof otP the economic impossibility of communist theories (whether considered as a diagnosis or as a remedy of economic 1lls), but gives us also an instrument of historical criticism. Thus Quesnay and the Physiocrats over-empha- sised a part of the material cause (land), Adam Smith, Ricardo and Marx the efficient cause (labour), while the exchange-value school made too much of the final cause (demand). These and other applications of the four-fold principle are admirably brought out by Mr. Bain.
v.
We are now in a position to form some conception of the advice which Aristotle would give us if he could be summoned from the shades to view our modern world.
Insisting as he always did on the difference between the ideally best constitution and the best constitution possible under particular historical and political conditions, he would probably agree that any other government than that of ‘extreme’ demo (i.e. government by public opinion and the general will operating through adult franchise) was impossible in England now. He would warn us that anything approaching to communism, syndicalism, or the ‘ nationalization of all means of production and distribution ’ would be economically disastrous and politically fatal, for it would eventually involve the ruin of the State. To those who would fain abolish the State or replace it by a collection of self-governing groups, he would reply that they were aiming at what was impossible, and, in a world composed of competing national States, undesirable.
In our industrial problems he would insist on the necessity of the encouragement of the virtues of industry, efficiency, inventiveness and thrift, both among employers and employed.
He would point out that our material progress had been
very lop-sided; that in discouraging our agriculture and sacrificing it to the supposed interests of the masses in our towns, we were deliberately throwing away a source of national strength and of political and he would warn our politicians that the continued and increasing bribery of the proletariat, by benefits at the expense of others, in exchange for votes, was simply the rake’s progress of the demagogue that had brought more than one Greek democracy to ruin in his own day.
Lastly he would say that in two important matters we had been foolishly heedless; that our system of national education had not been sufficiently designed to train up our citizens in the spirit of the State, and that we had made it too easy for the least valuable types to increase and multiply at the expense of the provident and the thrifty. ‘You must educate, but educate wisely,' he would say, ‘and you must exercise some selection as regards both the quantity and the quality of your citizens. Only by so doing will you be able to approximate to the end of the State—the good life.’ {{nop}
- ↑ The references are to the books as numbered in Bekker's edition of 1878, as followed by Welldon, whose translation is probably the easiest for the general reader. Jowett follows the order of Bekker's first edition.