Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Evolution Debate

Introductory note: challenges and criticisms are welcome. Rude, vulgar or hostile responses will be thrown out with the garbage.

I recently came across previews for Ben Stein’s documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” The premise of the documentary is that there is a systematic effort on the part of the scientific community to suppress any dissent to the prevailing theory of evolution, or “neo-Darwinism” as it is referred to. Its aim, or at least its primary stated aim, is to promote academic and intellectual freedom.

To me, the project initially looked promising – more academic freedom is always a good thing in my view. As a Catholic and a supporter of the theory of evolution – moreover, as one who was able to reconcile these views after years of struggle – I welcomed the prospect of the door being opened to the possibility of scientifically discussing the role of “intelligence” in the development of life.

As I investigated the blog site that promotes the release of the move in April, however, it became clear that, while Ben Stein can sound reasonable in an interview, this project is ultimately rooted in what thus far looks to be “soft” right-wing ideology. Of course this unfortunate discovery in no way invalidates the demand for greater academic freedom, for the ability to express ideas in an academic setting without fear of ridicule, censorship, a ruined career or in some cases, physical violence. For those who see double-standards implied in every position, I would defend Ward Churchill’s right to speak as much as I would Stein’s or anyone else’s.

Now is not the time to track the development of fundamentalism or the “Religious Right”; but it must be said that Biblical fundamentalism alone is not necessarily the motivation behind the “attacks on science”. There are deeper ideological problems which largely go unaddressed by the atheist crusaders, and by defenders of the theory of evolution in general. In a knee-jerk way that parrots the behavior of their foes, they have not sought to patiently explain, but rather to become just as aggressive, and now field their own highly visible and obnoxious contingent on the battlefields of the Culture War.

It may be argued that one good turn deserves another, and in the battle for Truth and Right and Good, no punches can afford to be pulled. Partisans on each side consider that they have a duty to their doctrines. In such a struggle the ends naturally justify the means, and no lie is too bold or audacious to repeat over and again until it gains an air of truth, and finally becomes truth to all who hear it. Those who aren’t conscious liars are at any rate doing all they can to avoid the displeasures of cognitive dissonance; they know that the further they stray outside of a carefully-defined paradigm of facts and methods, the closer they come to having their subjective, ideological pretensions undermined and possibly debunked.

Because they lack the critical thinking skills, or the necessary intellectual optimism, to attempt to synthesize apparently conflicting views (or at least build bridges between them), they say that the gap is unbridgeable without having ever taken a serious look at the possibilities afforded by the terrain.

At the end of the day it appears to me as if the EXPELLED project, even in spite of what I think are its flaws, errors, and downright silly pretensions, still has a valid point to make. If the Catholic Church 500 years ago was the status quo and the Galileos were the rebels, today the situation, in the minds of a significant section of the public, has been reversed. The modern scientific establishment, dubbed “Big Science” by the EXPELLED group, occupies an analogous position to the Church, and today’s creationists, in spirit if not in method, the position of the dissenting Galileo. Again I reiterate that this is how a large chunk the public sees it; I don’t buy into the popular Galileo narrative, most of which is based on some ridiculous play written long after the affair.

What is at the heart of the fear of the average fundamentalist or “evangelical” Christian with respect to evolution? Part of it is that inability to synthesize, out of intellectual limitations or rigid pessimism, which I might add is more shamefully shared by a growing number of atheists and horribly misnamed “free thinkers”.

Much of the objection in my experience to the theory of evolution is that it threatens to render life meaningless. Not just personal lives, not just personal relationships with Christ, but life in general, in the larger, existential sense. Ironically it does not seem to me that evolutionary biologists have ever accounted for the development, in humanity, of a need to search for meaning and embrace it when we believe we have found it. What role “meaning” could play in the survival of the species at a physical, material level is beyond me. Is it that any being capable of self-awareness and abstract thought will necessarily consider meaning? It seems rather that meaning was all around primitive and ancient man, practically taken for granted, and it was only with the advent of modern atheism (itself a product of man’s unexpected separation from nature) that it began to dawn on humanity how important meaning is.

Of course there are those who will state that those who “need” meaning are weak, in need of a crutch, incapable of dealing with harsh reality. They should strive to be satisfied with what science allegedly reveals – that there is no meaning but what we make. Life is, or can be, a party, so why not embrace what it has to offer? Have promiscuous sex. We have condoms and birth control pills for you, abortion if those don’t work. Eat fatty foods, we have by-pass surgery. Submit to a degrading, unfulfilling job or career – we have many drugs, from entertainment to consumer goods to actual pills and shots that can get you through it. The list could go on for some time.

Under these conditions, for those who absolutely reject this empty hedonistic perspective, religion is more appealing than it ever was in medieval times. And in our American society, it is highly individualistic; it takes its cues from American libertarianism and the legacy of English Puritanism. Unlike in Latin America, where the Catholic perspective has created a strong cohesion between social justice and Christianity, I think it is arguable that the Protestant/libertarian perspective in America has been a cause of social atomization and the resulting alienation and despair.

It is no surprise then that a highly personal religion would be vigorously defended against perceived threats to it. And at this juncture the greatest threat is perceived not to come from the degenerate “culture industry” or even the rival religions such as Islam, but from the march of “Big Science” and the regime of secularism it seeks to impose upon society.

The revolt against “Big Science”, I believe, is not necessarily some sort of revolt against the scientific method, empirical investigation, logical analysis, or rational thought. It is a revolt against arrogance and prejudice, against established orthodoxy and dogma. It is a revolt against “secularism”, against the materialism and hedonism which are rightly perceived to be at the root of personal and social malaise. Above all it is an expression of what seems to be a timeless human characteristic to question authority, no matter what that authority claims to base itself upon.

The creators of EXPELLED sense this and have marketed accordingly, portraying themselves as the heralds of a new rebel counter-culture. Along with other Christian youth movements such as "Battle Cry" they believe they have turned the tables on yesterday's radicals who are now today's academic establishment. "Every generation needs a rebel" says the EXPELLED website.

Wrapping up.

Ben Stein made an important point that I agree with; a theory that rests solidly upon fact and logic need not fear questions and challenges. As a supporter of the theory of evolution, I believe it can successfully withstand the criticisms of Creation Scientists and others who insist that the actual mechanics are somehow flawed or contradicted by other appearances of the facts. Evolutionary theory has nothing to fear. The real fear comes from ideological quarters, who believe that those who question evolution do so as part of a bolder and broader strategy to a) discredit science in general and b) impose a theocracy, setting back the “progress” of history and launching us back into a new Dark Age.

These claims are only partially grounded in an accurate understanding of reality. There will always be ideologues who want exactly those things, although it must be said that when even the most extreme positions on this side of the divide label themselves “scientific”, clearly it isn’t some sort of abstract hatred of science that motivates them. Their conception of science is incorrect, but that doesn’t mean they hate it. They instinctively realize that no theory today can have any credibility if it is not scientific, or thought to be scientific.

I will end on this note: successful challenges to materialism and hedonism, as well as successful defenses of the Christian faith, do not need to undermine science. The developments in physics and neuroscience are far more compelling and relevant to our cause than the controversy over Darwinian evolution, which has absolutely no account for the origins of life, the origins of the universe, the substance of the universe, or the existence of consciousness. “Darwinism” properly understood as a theory which explains the diversity we see in nature and how it has changed over time poses no threat to a spiritual worldview.

Likewise, atheists and secularists do not need to trample religion underfoot to build a rational and humane society. They will, however, need to recognize that some of their ideals and values will never be shared by the vast majority of the human race, not because of some mythical lack of intelligence, but because most of us are, I believe, hard-wired to seek out and embrace meaning where we can find it.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The Labor Theory of Value: A Scientific and Moral Proposition

II. The Marxian Laboratory

The nature and function of the Marxian LTV is often mistaken by its critics, and even some of its proponents. Whenever you read that the LTV is supposed to account for the price or value of "an object", you know you've strayed onto the wrong path. There is a reason Marx does not immediately begin Capital with a discussion of labor, even though labor will become central to his analysis of the commodity later on. The reason is that before we can determine what gives a commodity value, we must know what a commodity actually is.

What the LTV analyzes is a very specific, historical thing: a commodity, defined by Marx as a thing produced by laborers working for a capitalist, solely for exchange. It presumes that these things are the result of definitely aimed economic activity. Above all, a commodity has a social existence. If an "object" does not meet this criteria, the LTV has little if anything to say about it. Oddities, exceptions, and the like may all exist – they may meet some of the criteria or none of it. The LTV does not need to account for everything to be applicable to the things it actually claims to be applicable to, such as practically everything you will find on a store shelf with a price tag on it or in a catalogue.

It is the commodity, and nothing else, that is the basic "cell" of the capitalist economy. As we know with modern physics, everything may be made up of atoms, but atoms themselves are made up of smaller components; protons and electrons, quarks, etc. One knows very little about matter if one only knows that it is a particular arrangement of atoms. The same applies to commodities; we know they are bought and sold every day, but what are they, actually? One knows very little about commodities if one only knows that they are bought and sold in a market place.

Since we cannot use a microscope to "see" a concept, we must use, as Marx says, "the lens of abstraction". The Marxian microscope is thus first applied to the commodity, the basic unit, atom, or cell of capitalist society. A word on "capitalist society" – some libertarians claim that "capitalism" is a phrase invented by Marx (though it was actually used earlier by Trugot). For Marx capitalism is simply the epoch of generalized commodity production. For instance, in earlier epochs, production was first aimed towards securing necessities, while surpluses may have been sold at the town market or to a traveling merchant. Thus most things were not commodities. They were immediately consumed or stored away. Capitalism is signified by production almost exclusively for exchange, or production for the sake of further production.

Returning to the Marxian microscope, when applied to the commodity, it is seen that they contain both use-value and exchange-value (or utility and value). The LTV accounts for value only, the proportions at which two commodities are exchangeable. Furthermore, "value" and "price" are not identical terms. How and why prices diverge from values is an interesting discussion that I will return to later. The central point is that, in Marx's words, "[T]he exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value. Then one use value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient quantity."

As some critics point out, this seems to "defy common sense" and every day experience. That is why we must step back from the Marxian microscope and understand that we are really in the Marxian laboratory. In the laboratory we control the conditions of the experiment, not so we can obscure the fundamental operations of a process but so we can better understand them in their pure and untainted form. Unpredictability and chaos are replaced with some degree of predictability and control. The central findings of experiments under these controlled conditions can be extrapolated to the wild environment outside the laboratory when all of the variables are accounted and adjusted for, though I will admit that with economics this is theoretically possible but often practically impossible. Even most mainstream economists who have no love of Marxism take this basic scientific approach to economic phenomena; the phrase ceteris paribus was first introduced to me not in a "hard sciences" classroom but in a microeconomics class (see below for a definition and explanation of this phrase). It may be understood that the role of labor in the creation of value is much like the role of dark matter in the universe – we will never really "see" values become prices, but we know theoretically that it must take place.

In the Marxian lab, for instance, supply and demand are almost always assumed to be at equilibrium – that is, at the point at which they cease to account for the value of a commodity. No labor theoretician either before or after Marx has ever denied that the fluctuation of supply and demand ultimately determine price. The theoretical assumption rather is that – and this should be rather obvious - when supply and demand are in perfect balance, price cannot be explained by fluctuations in supply or demand, i.e. in terms of something that is no longer happening. The likelihood or unlikelihood of this cessation is totally irrelevant. It isn't impossible in the same way a square circle is impossible, that is a logical contradiction. It is theoretically possible. In fact it may happen regularly, if only for a second here and there. This is when price = value. It is this value we draw out of the darkness and chaos and put under the light in the Marxian laboratory.

As consumers we are of course always thinking about utility. But producers are interested in defeating the competition and capturing the largest share of the market they can. In many was this competition has fueled technological innovation, and this is one of the central themes of Marx's Capital. It is technological progress, and the effects this progress has on the productivity of labor, more than any other force, subjective or objective, that determines the value of commodities. Commonly we hear that the LTV determines commodity value in terms of labor-time spent on the production of a commodity. But what determines how much labor-time is spent in production? What takes a week to do with a hoe and a scythe might take a day with modern farming equipment. This was central to Marx's expanded definition of labor. Right after his definition of socially necessary labor-time, a concept I accuse many of not wanting to understand, Marx points to the role of technological development in determining this time. An extended quote from Capital vol. 1, chapter 1 states:

"Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value."

In the Marxian laboratory, then, labor productivity is the primary variable for which we wish to control. When we think of competition, we normally think of two businesses slugging it out for market share. In a historical sense, competition also occurs between modes of production and levels of productivity. There is a reason why the shoe factory can defeat the shoe producing peasant family, or even a whole village of independent shoemakers in the open market; it can put out a much higher volume of equally useful but far less valuable shoes. In our laboratory at least, and probably at some point in the actual past, if we took the capitalist shoe and the peasant shoe and put them side by side, we may see only a few superficial differences, and in fact their subjective utility might be identical. You might get the exact same use out of the peasant shoe as you would the capitalist shoe. But which would you purchase? Chances are the capitalist can afford to sell you a pair of shoes at a much lower price than the peasant can. The peasant more than likely spent a few hours crafting the shoes he holds before you; the capitalist's workers and machines probably belched them out in under a minute. The peasant would probably have to sell his 10 pairs of shoes at 10 dollars a piece to even recoup his losses; the capitalist could sell his 1000 pairs at 1 dollar a piece and put the peasant out of business the next day.

All of this should seem rather self-evident. We know that, at least in some countries, the standard of living is far higher than anything imaginable in the past, and we know it is because of industrial mass production. We are very far removed from the struggle for daily existence, so far removed that the connection between labor and value has all but disappeared from our view. Thus it is important to remember that LTV has its roots not in Marx, for whom industrial capitalism was a reality, but in Locke and others, for whom the contrast between subsistence production and production exclusively for exchange was far more sharper and fresher, living as they did on the cusp of this development. There was no question for them that labor and value were intimately related. Where Marx diverged from the classical bourgeois economists, at least in the most important, fundamental respect, was his recognition of labor in the abstract. We have already seen it explained one way as "homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power". But in order to truly understand the significance of abstract labor, it must be contrasted with concrete labor, the labor with which Locke was concerned when formulating the original LTV, to which at least some libertarians, conservatives, and other defenders and apologists for capitalism still adhere to. The historical journey from the Lockean to the Marxian LTV is the journey from capitalism in its infancy, weak and forced to co-exist with other modes of production, to capitalism in the prime of its youth, standing victorious over the bodies of its slain opponents. It is debatable at least as to whether or not we are now living with capitalism in its old age (an old age I would say is wracked with violent spasms and malignant disease). What I hope will emerge is that the Lockean and Marxian LTV are complimentary, like a younger and older brother, and not mutually exclusive. Even conservatives and libertarians can embrace it, since on its own it does not imply or demand a command economy and massive state bureaucracy (an argument I will make later).

[From wiki: Ceteris paribus is a Latin phrase, literally translated as "with other things [being] the same," and usually rendered in English as "all other things being equal." A prediction, or a statement about causal or logical connections between two states of affairs, is qualified by ceteris paribus in order to acknowledge, and to rule out, the possibility of other factors which could override the relationship between the antecedent and the consequent.[1] A ceteris paribus assumption is often fundamental to the predictive purpose of scientific inquiry. In order to formulate scientific laws, it is usually necessary to rule out factors which interfere with examining a specific causal relationship.]

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Albert Einstein, Science and Socialism

The very first issue of the Left journal "Monthly Review", published in 1949, featured an article written by Albert Einstein - yes, the scientist we all know and love - entitled Why Socialism? In it one not only finds a well composed appraisal and argument for socialism, but what I believe to be some crucial points about the nature and role of science. For me, re-reading this article was quite literally refreshing, as I have currently been embroiled in a number of debates with socialists who are openly hostile to religion, mostly on the grounds that it is "anti-science".

Einstein begins his article by taking up these very issues, by recognizing what is appropriate for scientific investigation, and what is not:

"[S]ocialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends."

I was delighted to read these lines, for what I will readily admit to be a rather sophomoric reason. A while back I had made the same claims about science, and denounced by hacks of a certain political party for being an irrational idealist. It is beyond all doubt, however, that these same people would not have hurled their invective at Einstein. At the very least they would have disagreed with respect.

Science cannot create ends - this to me has always appeared to be an elementary, self-evident truth. Science is a means to an end, which is another way of saying that science is wholly subordinated to our values, to our "social-ethical end". The problem perhaps is that not all socialists share the same ethical vision. Some have elevated science into an end itself.

Einstein warns us of the dangers of a technocratic approach to social problems:

"[W]e should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society."

Do these lines require further comment? Apparently for Einstein there was in fact a whole realm of "human problems" that may be beyond the scope of scientific methods. "On guard against overestimation" - this was surely asking too much. People are always on guard against those they perceive to be their enemies, but rarely is that disposition turned inward. Pride and arrogance are easier emotional states to attain than introspection and self-criticism.

What Einstein has to say about socialism throughout the rest of the article, I will not comment upon here, although I encourage everyone to read the full article. I just wish to say to anti-religion socialists that it was a common agreement on core values with the Church, and not "scientific" evidence or any other sort of evidence that reconciled me with it.

My "faith" therefore is of a different kind. I am willing to look at an institution whose values I share in large part, and take their spiritual claims seriously. The logic I employ, and it may not be free of fallacy, is as follows: if I believe the Church has the right values, then it would seem that I should also adapt its beliefs, from which those values are derived. If I were facing an organization which was unashamedly anti-science, I would have my doubts about joining it. My decision to rejoin the Church was made infinitely easier by the mere fact that it embraces science. What it rejects, and what I began to reject long before my reconciliation, is philosophical materialism.

Economics can be studied scientifically. But socialism as a "social-ethical ideal" is outside of the scope of science. Science cannot create an ethical system - it can tell us what "is", but never, at least on its own, what "ought". At the same time, all human beings have biases, and in the field of economics, positivism (value-free science) is virtually impossible. Marxists have always known this and embraced their "partisan science", while accusing bourgeois economists and social scientists in general as presenting their science as falsely "impartial".

Social scientists must strive to give us as accurate a picture as possible of history and society. But it is up to all of us to clearly demarcate the scientific claims from the moral or ethical claims, which can become tangled and confused with one another. Marx never made a moral claim - directly. But moral claims inevitably follow from his work. In fact, as I argued in my master's thesis, Marxist economics would have been impossible without the moral claims made by previous bourgeois theorists regarding labor and natural law, and the conclusions can be interpreted as continuing the natural law tradition.

But Marx, and many Marxists, refused to acknowledge these claims - there is a strange mixture of reverent awe for "objective truth" alongside a sloppy mish-mash of moral certainty regarding their own views on what the working class is owed, and moral relativism whenever morality threatens to tell them that something they choose to do in their own lives is wrong. Fear of being wrong, or being thought wrong, of having done wrong, seems to animate so many of these paranoid polemics against religion. I think true wisdom begins with getting over this fear.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Ron Paul Revolting

As he gains more media attention and a growing support base, more leftist political commentators have felt compelled to confront "The Ron Paul Revolution". Ron Paul is perhaps unique among the presidential candidates for the 2008 elections in that he is not so much presented as a man, but an ideology - capital L Libertarianism (to be distinguished from libertarianism with a small l, which can be used to describe a wide range of positions). Libertarianism with the capital L is generally associated with the American Libertarian Party.

There is a right way, and a wrong way, to criticize Ron Paul. The wrong way is to neglect the concerns of those who find him so appealing at this juncture in American history. The Paul brand of Libertarianism is as much a part of the American intellectual tradition as Puritanism, and more recently, Progressivism and welfare-liberalism. It's central themes resonate with Americans because they are rooted in the founding documents of the United Sates and harken back even further to the intellectual forebearer of the American Revolution, John Locke. Of course there were other intellectual influences - Thomas Jefferson read Rousseau too, and the ratification debates were peppered with references not only to the ancients but to contemporary political thinkers such as Montesquieu. If I had to identify a dominant trend, however, it would be the classical liberalism of Locke, which has become modern Libertarianism, in spite of its having departed from Locke on some crucial points.

An example of the wrong way to criticize Paul is to be found in a bulletin I recently received re-posting an article from the International Socialist Review, titled Ron Paul, Libertarianism, and the Freedom to Starve to Death. I don't think the defense that this is primarily intended for an audience of socialists and other radical leftists is going to hold water. In the socialist circles I used to travel in, the claim was always made that what is written is for the working class, not simply middle class intellectuals. If this is so, then socialists need to choose their language with more sensitivity. For instance, consider this point:

"Ron Paul argues, "Government by majority rule has replaced strict protection of the individual from government abuse. Right of property ownership has been replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and property. . . ." Few folks likely to be reading this article will agree that we actually live in a society where wealth and property are expropriated from the rich and given to workers and the poor. Even the corporate media admit that there has been a wholesale redistribution of wealth in the opposite direction. But Paul exposes here the class nature of libertarianism -- it is the provincial political outlook of the middle-class business owner obsessed with guarding his lot."

I will eventually address Paul's claim, which I think is central to the debate over his politics. For now I wish to focus on the flawed approach the author of this article has taken. The problems here are manifold, and they are typical of socialist writing these days - they assume their audience will not question their claims. What they assume here about the "folks likely to be reading this article" is rather absurd. If we are meant to understand that those reading it are inclined to reject Paul's premises, then why did this article need to be written in the first place? On the other hand, if people reading this article may be in agreement with, to different degrees, with Paul's premises, how will these assumptions have any other affect than to leave them offended? The workers and the poor do not always have the right idea about how society works. Neither, for that matter, do many middle class intellectuals.

Adding "even the corporate media" does not help matters either. Nor does the classification of small-business owners, many of whom struggle daily to keep their meager enterprises afloat, as "provincial". Anyone reading this piece would be right to label it as condescending, if not presumptuous. At least some socialists, such as Trotsky, have seen the need to forge political alliances with the "provincial" peasants and petty-bourgeoisie, and thereby address their economic and social concerns within the socialist program itself.

The correct way to critique Paul is to, in the first place, apply the scalpel of historical materialism to his own claims. Let us return to what the ISR article attributed to Paul:

"Government by majority rule has replaced strict protection of the individual from government abuse. Right of property ownership has been replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and property. . . ."

It would have been useful to follow this with at least a brief historical account of how and more importantly why government intervention in the market and property rights ever came about. The abysmal conditions of the American working class in the post-Civil War "Gilded Age" would be a good place to start. For instance, wikipedia explains the origins of this term:

"The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The term originates in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." The Gilded Age, like gilding the lily (which is already beautiful and not in need of further adornment), was excessive and wasteful -- it was a period characterized by showy displays of wealth and excessive opulence."

It was during this Gilded Age that political ideas most closely resembling Paul's were the dominant ideology in American society, though I am aware that Libertarians would contest this view. The market was largely free from intrusion, most importantly for our purposes from below - workers had not yet won the rights which many may arguably take for granted today. Massive displays of personal wealth and affluence were made possible because the workers had not yet won their rights, because the government had refused to interfere with the market. When George Fitzhugh, John C. Calhoun, and other Old Southerners warned of a fate worse than slavery for America in the 1850's, they weren't far off, no matter how repugnant their own socio-economic system was.

Ron Paul and his Paulamaniacs might argue that the Gilded Age was as American as apple pie. I recall that Paul, during his appearance on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, simultaneously denounced corporations and justified Bill Gate's massive fortune, in the tens of billions. Historical perspective is needed - it was precisely because corporations could facilitate such massive concentrations of wealth that some of the founders, notably Jefferson, denounced them. To separate these two phenomena is to forget why corporations came into existence in the first place - to accumulate and concentrate capital for the carrying out of large economic enterprises which were beyond the means of any single producer.

An assumption shared by many of the founders - and this view has precedent all the way back in Aristotle - was that the availability of land would result in the economic equality required for meaningful political equality. No, not everyone would be exactly equal, and unfortunately this is what comes to mind when the word equality is mentioned in the economic context. Corporations could be viewed with skepticism but tolerated, since the build up of what Marx called the "surplus population" could always be sent West, where there was land for the taking. Homesteading acts made land free to anyone who could plant his stake in the ground. The history of early America is a history of the libertarian ideal surviving not necessarily on its own merit, but because the problems it must inevitably cause kept being pushed West, to the open spaces, where man and woman could start anew.

As Engels remarks in his own comments on America, this great "saftey valve" has closed. There is no more space - economic and social problems can only go "up", not "out". If the problem can no longer be address spatially, how is it to be addressed other than through policy? The Gilded Age represents a time between times - the victory of the North unleashed industrial capitalism and corporatism on a hitherto unknown scale, and it took society several decades to recognize all of the implications of this rapid and disorienting development.

The story of government intervention into the economy is not the story of brave independent property owners battling it out with the government. Many of those small proprietors for whom well-meaning Paulites would speak, were actually crushed mercilessly by larger property owners. They did not have government aid in doing so - that was simply not the policy during the Gilded Ages. The laws of the market, sometimes supplemented with head-bashers from Pinkerton or a bought-off city official enabled this thinning of the herd. Social Darwinism, not welfare-liberalism, was the guiding principle. The strong grew stronger - the weak perished. That is why populism had its day in the sun during this same era - it, not laissez-faire capitalism, most clearly articulated the interests of the small property owner, especially the tiller of the soil.

The emergence of the American industrial working class also promoted government intervention. Neither its inhuman treatment at the hands of the capitalist class, nor its burning desire to be free of such treatment, can be mythologized out of existence. Only those trying to remain ignorant of American history would deny the fact of it - yet those who acknowledge it are also compelled to acknowledge that contrary to Libertarian assumptions, the market did not provide anything but a maddening race to the bottom. Of course this was also bad for the capitalists too - the same practices which brutalized and dehumanized the workers also hastened the economic crisis which culminated in 1929. It is fashionable among Libertarians to blame this crash on the Federal Reserve, but this is an a-historical approach.

When Paul therefore bemoans "majority rule", it is evident that his anger is directed at the American working class, which had the gall to fight for the right to form labor unions, abolish child labor, and other hard-won reforms. All of this is seen as infringement on property. The trick is that "government" gets blamed, since Paul can't very well blame the working class - aside from the prospect of losing their vote, Libertarians will only acknowledge the existence of classes after a great deal of prodding. But even if classes "don't exist" (and I think they do), it is evident that there were many political movements, comprised of people who identified as workers, as farmers, as women, as taxpayers, as black or Irish, whose activity forced the powers that be, the "government", to take them seriously. The US government could no more have ignored these forces as they could have the threat of an invading foreign army.

I do not believe that Paul's economic ideas will find much favor in today's political climate. In my home state of AZ, red as a rule, a proposition to raise the minimum wage passed overwhelmingly. The working class does not see any injustice in "forcing" society, be it the market or the government, to provide them with a dignified standard of living. They instinctively understand that to say one has a "right" to something is rather meaningless if one cannot claim that right. But with this recognition, there is also a great deal of possessiveness and chauvinism - few are willing to share these rights with "illegal aliens". Paul can play this tune and expect many workers to dance. But it is the immigrants that are living out the horrors of the Gilded Age today, so that the "native" does not have to. American workers will never move an inch forward until they recognize their common humanity and economic interests, regardless of national origin.

Wrapping things up, Paul and his Libertarianism can only be meaningfully critiqued from a historical perspective. One must understand that classical liberalism a la the Founding Fathers was to correspond to a time where great expanses of land were available, where slavery provided an abundance of cheap labor, and where corporations were only a somewhat new phenomena. The industrialization of America completely changed the rules of the game. Classical liberal political doctrine, captured in essence by the Bill of Rights, remains a template to follow today and anyone presuming to tamper with it should rightly be avoided. But classical economic liberalism is an ideology whose time has come and gone. A return to the Gilded Age is the only promise that Libertarianism can keep, and it is an ugly prospect for the vast majority of Americans.

For the record, however, my issue is not with markets, but rather with ownership. Another blog for another time.

(Postscript:
Since I originally published this blog, on of my friends informed me that no Libertarian would accept my association of the Gilded-age with their ideology. Of course I don’t mean to argue that all or even most Libertarians believe that the Gilded Age was good, though I know some who do think that. Rather, as I pointed out, there is this absurd confusion which I saw from Ron Paul on the Daily Show, and have encountered in nearly ever Libertarian I have ever debated (and there have been quite a few), when the “corporations” are denounced, yet the Bill Gates fortune is justified on the basis of market morality . So from my view, it doesn’t matter whether or not the all-evil “big government” helped the robber barons attain their fortunes, or whether or not the market is more responsible (and I think it was). If Bill Gates can have his fortune, and if, as many Libertarians I have encountered firmly believe, most of the rights won by the working class in their political struggles are “coercion”, then my claim about Paul leading us back into a Gilded Age holds up. Of course he and his supporters assume that the market will improve the condition of the average worker, and that unions, regulations, and labor laws are unnecessary and an infringement on the business owner. This is an assumption that I believe has failed the test of time.)

A Flawed Argument for Abortion

A Flawed Argument for Abortion

One of the reasons I like to talk and argue about abortion is that so many people are so easily offended by it. I don’t mean that they are offended by any particular argument, but rather that a human being with a Y chromosome has dared to open his mouth on the subject. The indignation of hysterical phonies who substitute slogans for arguments and insults for logic is in my view a reward, a sign of accomplishment and achievement.

Someone I know recently posted a very lengthy argument for abortion as a morally acceptable choice on his blog, On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion by Mary Anne Warren.[1] In it one finds a sophisticated attempt to define “the moral community”, and explores concepts such as “genetic versus moral personhood” and “criteria for personhood”. Not surprisingly, it concludes that the unborn (or “fetuses”) are not human persons belonging to the “moral community” and consequently have no rights. Further, even if rights were extended to them, they would never outweigh those of the mother, whom no one can deny is a person.

It was rather difficult for me to identify just what moral approach was being used. On the surface it appears to be the argument that our rights are derived from our status as persons belonging to this “moral community”, that our moral obligations only extend to those whom we are able to deem, on the basis of their having met at least some of the criteria outlined, persons. The author unfortunately refers to Thomas Jefferson in the first paragraph:

“What sort of entity, exactly, has the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Jefferson attributed these rights to all men, and it may or may not be fair to suggest that he intended to attribute them only to men.”

If Jefferson is her template, and we are never really given a different one, how could it have been forgotten that he identified our Creator as the endower of those rights? Jefferson may have used the word “men”, and he may well have only meant white men. After all we know he owned slaves. So, of course, did the ancient Greeks whom the author invokes to give her slouching towards infanticide an enlightened gloss.

Nonetheless it remains that Jefferson did not identify himself as the attributer of rights, but rather, a Creator. Jefferson’s personal religious inclinations, which I understand leaned towards the fashionable Deism of the 18th century Enlightenment, are not the issue here either. In this particular belief, which I think he authentically held, he shares a common conviction with Christians – that rights only have meaning if they come from God. Indeed Jefferson is also quoted as writing:

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?" --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVIII, 1782. ME 2:227[2]

Let it not also be forgotten that Jefferson, meditating on the issue of slavery, trembled for his country when he recalled that “God is just”. These points are not at all irrelevant, since if God is invoked as the author of rights, the various criteria that Ms. Warren formulates throughout her argument become superfluous at best. While we might not be able to make an immediate leap to the pro-life position, we can nonetheless claim that the argument needs to proceed along much different lines.

Yet Warren, presumably, does not wish to bring God into it. If God is out, then Jefferson is out as well, and as you will see should you read the article, there is little left in his place. The question remains open enough to her: why should anyone meeting her criteria for personhood have the rights Jefferson claimed were “the gift of God”?

We in fact find in the article another conception of morality which I find meaningless, what I will call “consensus morality”, and alongside it, mere selfishness. The former is snuck through the backdoor of the argument when the author attempts to defend herself against the charge that her criteria for personhood could easily justify infanticide and involuntary euthanasia for a number of groups, as all such criteria inevitably ends up doing. Here is the specific passage I am referring to:

“[M]ost of us value the lives of infants, and would prefer to pay taxes to support orphanages and state institutions for the handicapped rather than to allow unwanted infants to be killed. So long as most people feel this way, and so long as our society can afford to provide care for infants which are unwanted or which have special needs that preclude home care, it is wrong to destroy any infant which has a chance of living a reasonably satisfactory life.”

I will refrain for now from commenting on the economic proviso, which I find morally repugnant. Rather I will draw attention to the language used here: “Most of us value” and “so long as most people feel this way.” This is what it ultimately can be reduced to – the principle of might makes right. If those of us who “feel” one way are in the majority, those who dissent would be “wrong” to destroy an infant (and not just any infant, but that which has a chance of living a reasonably satisfactory life, another morally repugnant standard).

Subjective feelings plus numerical strength = right. Dissent from this mass of feelings on the issue = wrong. How far Warren has traveled from Jefferson! One is compelled to ask what the significance of Warren’s criteria for establishing personhood is at all, if the question of moral truth can be settled through simply asking everyone in society to raise their hand, yea or nae? The objective argument which dominates the middle sections of the article is called into question simply by virtue of its having been objective. Consider Warren’s lead-in to her five criteria of personhood, a hypothetical situation:

“Imagine a space traveler who lands on an unknown planet and encounters a race of beings utterly unlike any he has ever seen or heard of. If he wants to be sure of behaving morally toward these beings, he has to somehow decide whether they are people, and hence have full moral rights, or whether they are the sort of thing which he need not feel guilty about treating as, for example, a source of food.”

In this scenario, we are presented with the space traveler, a moral agent, who needs to make a moral decision – he has to “somehow decide”. Our moral agent in this scenario is motivated solely by whether or not his actions will result in guilt. Where there is guilt we may presume a moral wrong; where there is no guilt, we may presume a moral good, or at the least a sort of morally neutral act on par with shoe-tying or singing in the shower. By this dubious criteria, in conjunction with the numerical majority criteria, if the majority of us felt guilty about the practice of abortion, it would be sufficient to outlaw it.

This is not what Warren intends us to take away from her argument. This is because her argument presumes that we will agree with her five criteria for personhood, and conclude as she does that a being that meets none of the criteria is not a person and therefore bereft of rights. But what she has demonstrated in actuality is that her moral compass is mere selfishness. Some may choose to interpret that description as a derogatory one. But how can it otherwise be described? If the space traveler would feel no guilt at using the aliens he encountered as a source of food, and/or if the majority of humans agreed with the space traveler, then it would hardly matter whether the aliens met Warren’s criteria or not. What happens to them is ultimately dependent upon how our behavior towards them makes us feel, not on what they are. This is what I believe to be the real moral significance of her argument. If it feels good, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t do it. All she has done is elevated feelings to morals. The question of whether or not the space traveler is "behaving morally" towards the being he counters is completely meaningless, because the phrase "behaving morally" is meaningless.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone by this point that I am pro-life. I am pro-life for many reasons, not the least of which is the bankruptcy of arguments such as Warren’s. I do not require a series of elaborate “scientific” justifications for my position either. The dignity and value of human life is not a testable scientific hypothesis. I agree whole-heartedly with Thomas Jefferson: rights can only come from God. Elsewhere I have argued that to assume human value is to assume the existence of a being capable of valuing all humans equally, as one does not possess moral value, but is valued.

If rights are said to rest on our feelings alone, they may as well rest upon nothing. Feelings can be swayed and changed. The historical experience of fascism has shown that the irrational can triumph over the rational, that society can be swept up in all kinds of crazes. No one believes that the Holocaust was morally acceptable on the grounds that the Nazis did not feel guilty about murdering the Jews. Such an argument is instinctively repulsive.

Of course Warren and those who share her position would retort that an adult Jew is obviously a human person, while an unborn fetus is obviously not. But then she and her supporters would have to explain why subjective feelings get to determine whether or not infanticide is “right” (she doesn’t even speak of it in legal, but in moral terms), and why the guilt of the space traveler, as opposed to the nature of the thing he might want to use as food, is the primary concern, or even a concern at all.

It also places her in the awkward position of having to accept that the Jewish babies and fetuses that perished under the Nazis were not really murdered; it would obligate historians who share her premises to revise the 6 million death count by subtracting fetuses, infants, the comatose, and whomever else is deemed a non-person from the list. The same of course would have to be done for all of the other groups that suffered under the Nazis. To leave them on the list is to recognize their status as human beings who had a right to live, who did not deserve to be murdered by sophisticated machinery intended exactly for that purpose.

If the absence of guilt and the presence of consensus make right, then Hitler did nothing wrong. Under Nazi law, he certainly did nothing illegal.


[1] from Biomedical Ethics. 4th ed. T.A. Mappes and D. DeGrazia, eds. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1996, pp. 434-440.

[2] http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0100.htm

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Property, Citizenship and Social Stability in Aristotle’s Politics

Property, Citizenship and Social Stability in Aristotle’s Politics[1]

I. It is somewhat popular, some might say necessary, among both scholars and casual readers who aim to engage in a philosophical defense of private property to employ historical examples and arguments. Such efforts are sometimes supported by references to Aristotle’s defense of private property, particularly that which appears in Book II of the Politics. It is here that Aristotle critiques the “communism” of Plato’s Republic and introduces a number of arguments in defense of private property that continue to influence its apologists to this day. For instance, it was Aristotle who was probably the first to set down in writing the “tragedy of the commons” argument, which he surmised as “that which is common to the greatest number has the least amount of care bestowed upon it”.[2] Other critiques of communism, as well as defenses and positive arguments for private property, follow thereafter.

I believe that an attempt to present Aristotle as sort of champion for private property in general is flawed. Throughout the Politics we find so many constraints and caveats placed upon private property that we are left with an ideal society in which it is heavily restricted and moderated for the common good. Aristotle was not blind at all to the potential dangers, both to the individual and to society as a whole, inherent in what we would now call property rights. A rejection of common property (and as we will see, it is not a categorical rejection) and even a list of the positive benefits of private property do not constitute a wholesale endorsement of the property rights that modern thinkers believe must be associated with private property to render it meaningful. Aristotle’s ideal state, the “true” form of state, is one in which the common good is prioritized above the subjective desires of any person or class.[3] It is also one in which the citizens are freed from the struggle for daily wants. All citizens must own property, but of course not every person can be a citizen.[4] As I intend to show, however, Aristotle’s reasons for the exclusion of slaves, women, and common workers from the political community are largely anachronistic and do not impair our ability to gain a useful insight into modern debates on private property and property rights. Indeed it will be shown that Aristotle grappled with two rather important sociological dilemmas that still demand our attention today: first, whether human behavior is rooted within individuals themselves or their social context (innate desires versus the conditions of life), and secondly the tensions between a rapidly expanding citizenry and the internal stability of the state. A study of Aristotle’s thought on these topics is important because, in my view, he is the first in a long line of political philosophers – including Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Marx - who approaches these issues from the most useful and realistic social and historical perspective.

II. Economics in the Greek context is household management; each household is said to be a self-sufficient economy resting upon a master-slave relationship.[5] In the ancient world a second form of economic activity arises, the art of “wealth getting” or what we today understand as commerce. For Aristotle the former was the necessary and natural (and therefore good) form of economic activity, while the latter was a perversion, the manifestation of human desire driven to dangerous excess. Aristotle condemns the arts of commerce in terms that seem to resurface in works such as The Communist Manifesto, and the subsequent defense of private property that he later employs can in no way be read as an endorsement to the unrestricted accumulation of personal wealth.[6] In fact he goes so far as to suggest that people who become to rich and who use their wealth to influence the political process should be “driven clean out of the country”.[7] Thus the first important limitation on private property is established.

Aristotle’s objections to the unrestricted accumulation of personal wealth stem from his distinction between “living”, and “living well”.[8] An individual life and a state based upon excellence do not demand the possession of wealth and goods “to a useless extent”.[9] It is the man who only seeks to live, but not live well, who sees in the art of wealth-getting a means by which to gratify his endless desires. A hedonistic life based merely on the satisfaction of desire is a perversion of nature and ultimately a danger to the state. Such a person will inevitably put their selfish interests ahead of the common good and seek to remake society in his own image. With regards to the state, Aristotle makes a similar argument – it is not founded merely for the purposes of life, but for a good life, and a state obsessed with acquiring wealth will inevitably fracture under the weight of class conflict.[10]

Having established that the right to property by no means entails the right to limitless self-gain, it remains to be seen what sort of property Aristotle did endorse. There appears to be some tension which is only partially resolved in Aristotle’s view of the relationship between citizenship and property. One the one hand, we often see that he is skeptical of the common people, going so far as to suggest that the best democracy would be the one in which the people had the fewest chances to actually participate.[11] He does however concede that if the people are not “utterly degraded” they may be able to manage their own affairs.[12] How then do the people rise from a state of degradation to a more dignified state in which they may be able to fully participate in public life?

III. Aristotle gives two different answers at two different points. In Books I –III desire is the ultimate cause of human behavior and especially misbehavior. Aristotle’s defense of private property is, with a few exceptions, not a positive defense but rather a purely pragmatic one that acknowledges that common property is incompatible with individual desire. Hence his admonishment of Phaleas of Chalcedon, who equalized property in his state: “it is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized, and this is impossible, unless a sufficient education is provided by the laws”.[13] In Aristotle’s view an equalization of possessions will only prevent petty crimes arising from material want – men will still however desire honor and power. Men, as he says, do not become tyrants for want of food, but in order to attain these non-material objects of desire.[14] The answer is not to redistribute property but to ensure a proper education through proper laws. If the desires of men are molded, then their ambitions will also be held in check. It is at this point that Aristotle declares that common use of private property would be the best state of affairs:

Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule private; for, when everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because everyone will be attending to his own business. And yet by reason of goodness, and in respect of use, ‘Friends’, as the proverb says, ‘will have all things common’. Even now there are traces of such a principle, showing that it is not impracticable, but, in well-ordered states, exists already to a certain extent and may be carried further.[15]

Thus regardless of whatever else may be said about it, Aristotle views private property as a form that generally coincides with our unrefined, uncultivated natures while a form of communal property corresponds to just the opposite. Those who have as their motivation “goodness” will be natural communists, and unlike many modern-day apologists for private property, Aristotle believed that such a motivation need not be innate but in fact could be achieved through education and habit.

A somewhat different solution is provided in books IV-VI. Here the degradation of the masses, as well as the avarice of the wealthy, is not merely their default state, but rather a result of their impoverished or excessively wealthy status. In Aristotle’s somewhat impassioned warnings against social polarization, the emphasis clearly shifts from desires to the conditions of life. It is not reasonable to expect either the extremely poor, or the extremely wealthy, to “follow the rational principle”, i.e. to act in accordance with the common good. Rather Aristotle expects that extremes of wealth and poverty create either “great and violent criminals” or “rouges and petty rascals”.[16] It is here that Aristotle presents moderate living not merely as a good in and of itself, i.e. the sort of living that corresponds to a life of excellence, but rather as a life and death principle for any state. The best political community is one in which the middle class outweighs both the wealthy and the poor.[17] Hence he writes,

Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme- either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them. (emphasis added)[18]

This is only one of the many instances Aristotle will make on the absolute importance of harmony for the survival of the state. Later he argues that great increases in any portion of the state will lead to dangerous imbalances that undermine its stability.[19] But how is this harmony to be achieved? The answer lies in the particular way in which property is distributed. As it should be clear by now, a rough equality of property is in fact necessary to the survival of the state. This means that the ideal state has no conception of unrestricted property rights. Everyone must prosper relative to everyone else in order for the state to maintain itself. Aristotle’s earlier admonishment of Phaleas, in light of his writings on social polarization, now appears to be more of a riddle than a persuasive argument. Must a good education precede the equalization of property, or should the equalization of property precede a good education?

IV. This dilemma only gives rise to another. Regardless of the terms in which Aristotle viewed the ideal monarch, he explicitly declares that no one individual is so superior to his fellows that he ought to rule over them. As he writes, “if some men excelled others in the same degree in which the gods and heroes are supposed to excel mankind in general… it would clearly be better that once for all the one class should rule and the others serve. But since this is unattainable… it is obviously necessary on many grounds that all the citizens alike should take their turn of governing and being governed”.[20] But we know that many people in Aristotle’s polis will be excluded from citizenship. The primary reason for this is that citizenship is bound up with political participation, which is in turn bound up with a life of leisure.[21] The leisure of the citizen is therefore premised on the lack of leisure for the slaves, the women, and the mechanics/artisans and sometimes the farmers.

It is therefore difficult to gauge whom exactly Aristotle is referring to when he speaks of “the poor”. Presumably he means the poor citizenry, or perhaps an ambiguous social layer that stands perpetually with one foot in the camp of citizenry and the other somewhere outside of it. Regardless, Aristotle’s exclusionary criteria seem to weaken a bit when discussing the problem of social unrest and the danger it poses to states. Having established that those excluded from citizenship are those who by “nature” or custom are also excluded from property and therefore leisure, there is still the matter of general poverty and all of its potentially destructive consequences. That is perhaps why we find an ancient version of a “path to citizenship” in book VI which at first seems a bit surprising:

Where there are revenues the demagogues should not be allowed after their manner to distribute the surplus; the poor are always receiving and always wanting more and more, for such help is like water poured into a leaky cask. Yet the true friend of the people should see that they are not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the democracy; measures should therefore be taken which will give them lasting prosperity; and as this is equally the interest of all classes, the proceeds of the public revenues should be accumulated and distributed among its poor, if possible, in such quantities as may enable them to purchase a little farm, or, at any rate, make a beginning in trade or farming.[22]

Although it is not explicitly declared, what other conclusion can be drawn from this passage other than that the measures needed to prevent an excess of poverty are also those by which the citizenry is necessarily expanded? This expansion obviously has its limits; there can only be leisure for some if most have none at all. Slavery and the total subjection of women are taken for granted. The important point is that society will be structured in such a way as to extend citizenship to as many people possible. Where there are new opportunities for trade and farming, the state ought to play an active role in establishing the poor as self-sufficient property owners. It is in this way that “the poor”, or at least those among them theoretically eligible for citizenship, rise above their degraded status.

But surely this is not what Aristotle was getting at, some may be tempted to object.[23] Perhaps not, but at any rate there appears to be a certain amount of dissonance between Aristotle’s ideal state and the state which necessarily emerges from the efforts of legislators to ward of revolutionary impulses. The ideal state looks only to the common good, while the sustainable state always seems forced to place the immediate interests of the poor ahead of those of the wealthy. That is why when all is said and done the solution to the caprice of the wealthy is to run them out of the city while the solution to the plight of the poor is to enable them to rise above their poverty. It is undeniable that Aristotle wanted to limit citizenship, but again there is a delicate balancing act taking place. It is inconceivable that the same poor people whom Aristotle wants to grant the means of a “lasting prosperity” would never want to become citizens themselves. Eventually we reach a point where a good education and good laws return to the foreground as the elements required for social stability, especially in a scenario where the number of citizens drawn from the common people threatens to outpace the “notables” and middle class.[24]

Ultimately a reasonable conclusion emerges from everything that has been considered thus far: an equalization of property is how a viable democracy is attained; a good education is how it is preserved. Such a society is far from ideal – Aristotle characterizes it as “disorderly” as opposed to “sober”.[25] But it appears to strike the correct balance between what is necessary and what is ideal.

V. That being said, there does not appear to be a solution to Aristotle’s dilemma regardless of how greatly the sphere of citizenship is extended and how universal education becomes, since even the most viable system Aristotle can conceive of is still premised on the poverty and powerlessness of the great majority of society’s non-citizens. His prescriptions for the relief of the poor through the granting of property ownership obviously cannot extend to slaves, women, and probably most mechanics, artisans, etc. – in short, the vast majority of the population. Citizenship cannot be extended to them, since leisure, or more generally, free time is a basic requisite of entry into political life, to say nothing of the cultivation of excellence.

But as was mentioned in the introduction, these are limitations of a historical character. Aristotle’s defense of a “natural” slavery may simply be the ideological icing on an essentially materialist cake. Slaves, as instruments of production, are necessary to the sustaining of life. Consider what Aristotle writes in book I in the midst of his exposition on the topic: “…if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus… chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves”.[26]

Thus in a way, Aristotle inadvertently forecast the demise of slavery with the advent of modern industry. Of course machines still require human labor to transform raw materials into finished articles of consumption. But the continual improvement of the productivity of labor ushered in by industrial capitalism meant that ever-diminishing amounts of human labor would be required for the production of those goods. This is a historical process which continues down to the present day. But its political implications cannot be fully realized in a society premised upon what Marx called capitalist private property. It is through a historical path that takes humanity down the road of capitalism and ultimately to a kind of socialism that Aristotle’s dilemma is finally resolved. Three passages from respective works by Marx and Engels provide, in my view, an invaluable contribution to fully grasping the dilemma which appears in the Politics. The first and second from chapter 32 of Capital volume I and chapter 3 of The Germany Ideology:

The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.[27]

[The Communists] are very well aware that egoism, just as much selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the Communists by no means want to do away with the "private individual" for the sake of the "general", selfless man. That is a statement of the imagination.[28]

These passages should be read in conjunction with Aristotle’s synthesis of private and common property in book II, which I quoted previously in section II of this paper. Contrary to what many may be inclined to believe about Marx – and undoubtedly much of the confusion arises from a certain looseness with terminology throughout his works – the ultimate goal of (Marxian) socialism is the synthesis of individual property and common usage, or put another way, self-interest and the common good, the same balance sought after by Aristotle. It is also in this way that a great moderation in property, so essential to the internal stability of states, is accomplished. Everyone occupies the “mean” or middle position; no one is in a position to gain disproportionately to their individual efforts, yet everyone is ensured the opportunity to gain as much as their individual efforts will yield. One of Marx’s lasting contributions to social science is his discovery of how such efforts can be quantified by society – through socially-necessary labor-time.

But this synthesis does not come about, as Aristotle believed, through good laws and good education alone. It requires material conditions which he believed could only exist as a form of magic, i.e. the infrastructure of modern industry which is a reality for us today. It is therefore worthwhile to consider what Engels wrote on the connection between property, freedom, and political participation. What makes his comments all the more interesting is that they emerge from a polemic in which Engels is taking up the very question of the institution of slavery in the ancient world. Against his opponent Eugene Duhring, who had “turned his nose up at Hellenism because it was founded on slavery”, Engels writes,

We may add at this point that all historical antagonisms between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes to this very day find their explanation in this same relatively undeveloped human labour… Only the immense increase of the productive forces attained by modern industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and thereby to limit the labour-time of each individual member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general—both theoretical and practical—affairs of society. It is only now, therefore, that every ruling and exploiting class has become superfluous and indeed a hindrance to social development, and it is only now, too, that it will be inexorably abolished…[29]

Here the most important resource of all required for political participation, more than any tangible thing – free time – becomes for the first time in history within the reach of every member of society. Education and laws do not lose their significance but the universal availability of free time means that these requisites will also be within the reach of the masses.

In closing, I hope it is clear that the aim of this paper was not to diminish Aristotle by finding perceived “holes” in his theory and filling them in with insights only available to modern thinkers. On the contrary, modern thinkers such as Marx and Engels saw in Aristotle a source of inspiration, since he was able to penetrate so deeply into the same social questions that continue to present themselves to us today.



[1] All references to The Politics from “The Politics and The Constitution of Athens, Cambridge University Press, ed. Stephen Everson (1996)

[2] 1261b33-36

[3] 1279a29-34

[4] 1329a17-21

[5] http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/Intro/Eco111h.html

[6] 1257b-1258a. Here Aristotle condemns commerce as activity which leads to unnatural behavior: “…some persons are led to believe that getting wealth is the object of household management, and the whole idea of their lives is that they ought either to increase their money without limit, or at any rate not to lose it. The origin of this disposition in men is that they are intent upon living only, and not upon living well; and, as their desires are unlimited, they also desire that the means of gratifying should be without limit… as their enjoyment is in excess, they seek an art which produces excess of enjoyment; and, if they are not able to supply their pleasures by the art of getting wealth, they try other causes, using in turn every faculty in a manner contrary to nature.”

[7] 1308b16-19

[8] see footnote 6

[9] 1323b1-7

[10] 1280a32-34

[11] 1318b9-14

[12] 1282a14-17

[13] 1266b27-32

[14] 1267a14-17

[15] 1263a25-33

[16] 1295b1-11

[17] 1295b34-35

[18] 1295b39-40;1296a1-5

[19] 1302b34-40;1303a1-22

[20] 1332b16-29

[21] 1278a6-14, 1292b25-29

[22] 1320a29-40

[23] For instance, merely possessing wealth, as we know, is no indication of excellence. Nor will the hard work involved in a small plot of land, even if privately owned, allow for much time in political participation. Even so, it satisfies a minimum property qualification required for citizenship under most circumstances.

[24] 1319b1-33

[25] 1319b32-33

[26] 1253b35-40;1254a1

[27] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

[28] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03abs.htm#p264-5

[29] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch16.htm