[Peace-discuss] That dangerous radical Aristotle

[C. G. Estabrook]

Aw, your compliments quite turn my head, John...


John W. wrote:
> Wow!  At first i thought you wrote this, Carl, until I got to the bottom and
> saw that it was written by Noam Chomsky.  Here's something that a Joe Sixpack
> like myself can sink his teeth into.  Why can't YOU write in a comprehensible
> way like this, Carl?
> 
> Joe
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 4:51 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at uiuc.edu>> wrote:
> 
> 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)