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VJMP Reads: Aristotle’s Politics III

This reading continues from here.

Much of this part is devoted to the question of who counts as a citizen. Speaking about a discussion that is still current 2,300 years later, Aristotle wrote “There is no general agreement on who is a citizen.” Citizenship cannot be a matter of residence, because aliens and slaves share in residence but not citizenship. The best definition of a citizen is one capable of sharing in the administration of justice and in holding office. A city is enough of such people for self-sufficiency.

Constitutions, Aristotle holds, primarily differ in terms of who has sovereignty. He believed that to work with one’s hands was servile, and that to include them in democracy is “extreme”. Manual labourers are not capable of reason to the same extent, and therefore must be excluded from decision making: “The best form of city will not make the mechanic a citizen.” The major difference between a manual labourer and a slave is that the latter works for individuals, the former for the community. Both are incapable of reason.

However, Aristotle was not the elitist that some portray him as. Everyone must take turns at being on top and on the bottom: “It is a good saying that ‘you cannot be ruler unless you have first been ruled'”. He also states that the common interest must come before that of individuals: “The good in the sphere of politics is justice, and justice consists in what tends to promote the common interest.” Barbarians tolerate despotism, Aristotle writes, because they are naturally servile.

Presaging modern mass immigration, Aristotle writes that a shortage of population makes cities expand citizenship to those they shouldn’t. This has consequences in damaging social cohesion. Tyrants are fond of doing this. Aristotle writes “Kings are guarded by the arms of their subjects; tyrants by a foreign force.”

Following on from the Nicomachean Ethics, in which Aristotle claims the meaning of life is happiness, he writes here “The good life is the chief end, both for the community as a whole and for each of us individually.” Happiness, not wealth or power, is the purpose of politics.

His theory of right and perverted constitutions is different to Plato’s. Constitutions that consider the general interest are right; those that only consider the ruling class are perverted. Either breaks down into rule by one, the few or the many. The right constitutions are monarchy if ruled by one, aristocracy if ruled by few, and polity if ruled by many. The perverted constitutions are tyranny if ruled by one, oligarchy if ruled by few and democracy if ruled by many. Here we can see that Plato and Aristotle both considered democracy a degenerate system. Aristotle writes that democracy is not in the interests of all, but in the interests of the poor. However, he also writes that cities are now so big that it’s hard for anything other than democracy to exist.

The best claim to contributing to political life comes from culture or goodness, not birth or wealth. In this sense, Aristotle is a true aristocrat, speaking for the higher and subtler qualities as opposed to the lower and baser ones.

Dispassionate people make better lawmakers, he contends, writing that “most people, as a rule, are bad judges where their own interests are concerned.”

The battle to find the right form of political system is, to a large extent, the battle over which form of superiority is recognised: “All forms alike recognise the claim of some sort of superiority, though the kind of superiority in question varies.” Some recognise superiority of goodness, others of wealth or birth, others still of sheer numbers.

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The Alt Centrist Approach To Work And Employment

If politics is about securing the means of a good life, work and employment are how most people primarily achieve this. Both are therefore at the core of the alternative centrist approach.

The average person in our society, not having a spiritual or religious tradition, neither any intellectual or cultural interests, nor any meaningful family connections, imposes order upon their lives primarily through their employment. Prosocial behaviour is taught through the need to cooperate with workmates and submit to the corporate hierarchy. Work gives many people purpose and keeps many bad thoughts away.

The alternative centrist proposal is that the order imposed by the workplace needs to be balanced by an equal proportion of freedom.

The alternative centrist agrees with Julius Evola that spirituality ought to be the primary focus of a life, and a person’s way of earning a living is less important. Productivity is the measure of slaves; happiness is the measure of free people. As such, the alternative centrist state would not indulge in the vulgar GDP obsession that characterises our merchant-ruled age. Although productivity would be important, this would only be as a means to a happy life. The alternative centrist state would constantly emphasise, in contradistinction to a Marxist or capitalist one, the relative unimportance of wealth (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Spirituality).

The problem with work and employment in the West is that we never came to terms with the fact that we now live in an age of abundance. Our economic model was founded in an age when anyone who didn’t labour was likely to become a major burden to their community. The unemployed were mostly left to starve until the advent of unemployment benefits near the beginning of the 20th Century. Now there is so much wealth that there is no need for the workamania of bygone times.

However, the drive of the employer class to pauperise their workers has remained. Hence a battle has ensued, between the representatives of capital and the representatives of labour. Resulting from this battle was a multitude of laws and regulations concerning work and employment. The reasoning is that these laws should provide for a fair balance between the needs of the employer and the needs of the worker, such that the employer gets his profit and the worker gets his means to subsistence.

Unfortunately for the modern Western worker, he has been driven into a state of wage slavery. Even if the job only occupies his body for 40 hours that week, chances are it occupies his mind for many more. Many people go to bed thinking about their work and wake up in a state of dread. Because the alternative is often destitution, homelessness or imprisonment, the worker puts up with his awful conditions.

This situation has come about by design.

The alternative centrist supports a universal basic income (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Welfare). This UBI would be enough for anyone to renounce the world. Thus it would act as a floor on the level of desperation the worker can be subjected to, and finally give him some leverage, for the first time since the advent of neoliberalism and mass immigration.

With a universal basic income, there would be no need for minimum wage laws. So in one stroke, all of the right-wing arguments about inefficiency of minimum wage laws would be accommodated. The right wing likes to argue that they should have the freedom to work for a pitiful wage if they should so choose (e.g. to gain work experience). Under an alternative centrist system with a UBI, you could employ someone for $1 per hour.

There would also be no need for worker protections when it came to security of employment. The concept of “unfair dismissals” relates to a situation where losing one’s job entails a significant disruption to one’s life. A UBI moderates that disruption. Hence an alternative centrist government sees little problem with the “hire and fire” method of employment.

The universal basic income would defeat the argument that agricultural interests need to import cheap labour to do seasonal work. With a UBI, workers would be free to live cheaply in urban areas for most of the year, and then work hard for a season in an agricultural enterprise, before returning to the cities. By this means, the needs of the citizen for income, the employer for labour, and the nation for cohesion can all be met with a maximum of order, freedom and justice.

Anyone who aspires to more than a student’s lifestyle, however, will probably need a job. Unless a person is born into money, a UBI will only pay for the barest essentials. It will cover cheap rent in an undesirable location, basic foods and utilities, some simple clothing and little more. Aristotle noted that desires tend towards the infinite, so there will be plenty of motivation for people to get work and stay employed. Those who argue that a UBI will turn the workforce into couch potatoes don’t understand how unpleasant the student lifestyle is in the long term, and how difficult it is to meet one’s natural social needs without work and employment. The vast majority of people will desire more and they will need to work to get it.

The alternative centrist government would not seek to expand beyond the existing size of Western governments. However, it would maintain a Ministry of Works. This would employ a considerable number of people in national infrastructure projects.

Beyond a Ministry of Works, the alternative centrist government would leave most employment to the free market. The goal would be to facilitate the creation of internationally competitive firms, so as to maximise the nation’s return on the investment in education and infrastructure that made the firms possible in the first place.

Regarding specific jobs, the various schools would seek to link up students to firms in the appropriate industry. In theory, the schools ought to prepare people for whatever employment currently existed in the various realms (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Education). So in the realm of clay, the schools would funnel students towards agricultural, labouring, retail and simple trades. In the realm of iron, towards military, police and security jobs. In the realm of copper, towards more advanced trades, entertainment and the arts. In the realm of silver, towards business and administration jobs. Those in the realm of gold will seldom be employed, other than to learn experience.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

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VJMP Reads: Aristotle’s Politics II

This reading continues from here.

In this book, Aristotle reviews the existing forms of political constitution. Although he is not a fan of democracy, he believes that all groups of citizens must participate in office for there to be justice. The lower classes must get something if they are to support the constitution: “If the constitution is to survive, every part of the city must have a common desire for its existence.” Here also Aristotle emphasises the importance of friendship, which he calls philia, considering it the best defence against factional disputes.

This book contains one of the oldest arguments against communism. In criticising Plato’s proposal for the guardian class of Republic to keep all property in common, Aristotle writes “What is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care.” and “those who do more work and get less of the produce will be bound to raise complaints against those who get a large reward and do little work.”

Phaleas of Chalcedon proposed the equalisation of property many centuries before Karl Marx. But equality doesn’t work, Aristotle contends, because the educated feel like they deserve more.

The best solution, according to Aristotle, is if property is private, but the owners are persuaded to share the proceeds of it through goodwill. This is primarily the job of the legislator, who achieves this by passing laws that create men disposed to sharing and not to stinginess. Correct regulation of property is also important to avoid factional conflict.

Also Aristotle only hints at this here (he assumes the reader is familiar with Nicomachean Ethics), but part of the solution to politics is spiritual: “It is more necessary to equalise people’s desires than their properties.”

The other leftist dogma to get skewered in this section is the one claiming that criminals commit crimes out of poverty and desperation. Aristotle correctly points out that many crimes are committed for fun: “The greatest crimes are committed not for the sake of necessities, but for the sake of superfluities.”

Those aren’t all of the typically right-wing arguments made herein. Aristotle also argues that changing laws in general is a tricky endeavour because people follow them out of habit. If you change the laws too much, people stop obeying the government.

As in Plato’s Republic, Aristotle agrees that selection by means is characteristic of oligarchy, whereas selection by merit is characteristic of aristocracy. There are several different ways of choosing kings and judges. In Carthage, kings were chosen by election from families that were already outstanding.

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VJMP Reads: Aristotle’s Politics I

Next for the VJMP Reads column: Politics by Aristotle. This naturally follows on from Nicomachean Ethics, which I read earlier in the year. This reading is of Book I.

This section is from where we get the quote “man is a political animal”. Aristotle writes that people naturally form political associations for the sake of securing some good, usually ready access to the means of life. Surprisingly, if one considers how individualistic the West is, Aristotle considered the city-state to be the basic political unit. This is because smaller units are not self-sufficient.

Book I also gives us the banger “Man, when perfected, is the best of animals; but if he be isolated from law and justice he is the worst of all.” This is an incredibly deep insight into human and animal nature. The worst humans really are the worst beings imaginable.

Much of Book I is about slavery, which is hard to make sense of from a modern Western viewpoint.

For example, Aristotle writes “The element which is able, by virtue of its intelligence, to exercise fore-thought, is naturally a ruling and master element.” He goes to argue that those capable of reason are naturally masters, and those incapable naturally slaves. The argument that some people are naturally slaves is extremely unfashionable today.

He discusses the possibility that people are enslaved by war, i.e. by force, and considers it illegitimate. Slavery is good and natural when a rational element enslaves an irrational element, but when slavery merely rests on law and force it is not natural: “Just as some are by nature free, so others are by nature slaves, and for these latter the condition of slavery is both beneficial and just.” Aristotle discusses and rejects the might makes right theory of justice.

This fact, when considered, shows that Aristotle was not as pro-slavery as is often believed. Aristotle would likely see a modern workplace, with a boss who presumably knew more about the subject than his employees, and consider it an example of successful slavery.

One idea in particular appears central to European culture. Aristotle considers the relationship between men and women, in barbarian culture, akin to the relationship between master and slave. The woman is subjugated as the slave. But for the Greek, the relationship between men and women is more akin to the relationship between statesman and his fellow citizens. Thus the woman is intermediate between man and slave.

Aristotle is certainly not a feminist. He writes “The male is naturally fitter to command than the female, except where there is some departure from nature.” But his philosophy is vastly more pro-feminine than equatorial culture.

Aristotle speaks out about usury in this section: “Of all modes of acquisition, usury is the most unnatural” and “The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason.” This is very interesting if one considers how totally commercialised life is today thanks to usury.

Being pro-slavery and anti-usury marks Aristotle as an utterly unmodern philosopher.

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