[Peace-discuss] That dangerous radical Aristotle

[C. G. Estabrook]

A considerable majority of Americans are more or less in favor of New Deal-style 
liberalism. That's remarkable, since most Americans never hear anybody 
advocating that position...

Now I don't think New Deal liberalism is the end of the road, by any means. But 
its achievements, which are the result of a lot of popular struggle, are worth 
defending and expanding.

[The title, "The Common Good"] was given to me, and since I'm a nice, obedient 
type, that's what I talked about. I started from the beginning, with Aristotle's 
Politics, which is the foundation of most subsequent political theory.

Aristotle took it for granted that a democracy should be fully participatory 
(with some notable exceptions, like women and slaves) and that it should aim for 
the common good. In order to achieve that, it has to ensure relative equality, 
"moderate and sufficient property" and "lasting prosperity" for everyone.

In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor and rich, you 
can't talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy has to be what we call 
today a welfare state -- actually, an extreme form of one, far beyond anything 
envisioned in this century.

(When I pointed this out at a press conference in Majorca, the headlines in the 
Spanish papers read something like, If Aristotle were alive today, he'd be 
denounced as a dangerous radical. That's probably true.)

The idea that great wealth and democracy can't exist side by side runs right up 
through the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, including major figures like 
de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Jefferson and others. It was more or less assumed.

Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect democracy, a small 
number of very rich people and a large number of very poor people, the poor will 
use their democratic rights to take property away from the rich. Aristotle 
regarded that as unjust, and proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty 
(which is what he recommended) or reducing democracy.

James Madison, who was no fool, noted the same problem, but unlike Aristotle, he 
aimed to reduce democracy rather than poverty. He believed that the primary goal 
of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." 
As his colleague John Jay was fond of putting it, "The people who own the 
country ought to govern it."

Madison feared that a growing part of the population, suffering from the serious 
inequities of the society, would "secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of 
[life's] blessings." If they had democratic power, there'd be a danger they'd do 
something more than sigh. He discussed this quite explicitly at the 
Constitutional Convention, expressing his concern that the poor majority would 
use its power to bring about what we would now call land reform.

So he designed a system that made sure democracy couldn't function. He placed 
power in the hands of the "more capable set of men," those who hold "the wealth 
of the nation." Other citizens were to be marginalized and factionalized in 
various ways, which have taken a variety of forms over the years: fractured 
political constituencies, barriers against unified working-class action and 
cooperation, exploitation of ethnic and racial conflicts, etc.

(To be fair, Madison was precapitalist and his "more capable set of men" were 
supposed to be "enlightened statesmen" and "benevolent philosophers," not 
investors and corporate executives trying to maximize their own wealth 
regardless of the effect that has on other people. When Alexander Hamilton and 
his followers began to turn the US into a capitalist state, Madison was pretty 
appalled. In my opinion, he'd be an anticapitalist if he were alive today -- as 
would Jefferson and Adam Smith.)

It's extremely unlikely that what are now called "inevitable results of the 
market" would ever be tolerated in a truly democratic society. You can take 
Aristotle's path and make sure that almost everyone has "moderate and sufficient 
property" -- in other words, is what he called "middle-class." Or you can take 
Madison's path and limit the functioning of democracy.

Throughout our history, political power has been, by and large, in the hands of 
those who own the country. There have been some limited variations on that 
theme, like the New Deal. FDR had to respond to the fact that the public was not 
going to tolerate the existing situation. He left power in the hands of the 
rich, but bound them to a kind of social contract. That was nothing new, and it 
will happen again.

--Noam Chomsky, from The Common Good (1998)


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