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{"id":17972,"date":"2016-03-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2783"},"modified":"2016-03-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T00:00:00","slug":"democracy-and-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/democracy-and-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy and Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In his forthcoming Democracy: A Life,<\/a> Paul Cartledge summarizes Aristotle\u2019s discussion of democracy in the Politics<\/em> and the disputed Constitution of Athens<\/em>. According to Cartledge, Aristotle \u201cdeconstructs or decomposes demokratia<\/em> as such, that genus of \u2018constitution\u2019 as it were, into four sub-species, ranging along a spectrum from the most radical and \u2018left-wing\u2019 (what he calls the \u2018last\u2019 form of demokratia<\/em>, a category applicable to Athens) to the most moderate, which most closely resembled and indeed overlapped with the most moderate or least \u2018right-wing\u2019 form of oligarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Aristotle, the key component of democracy that distinguishes is from oligarchy is not the rule of the many but the rule of the lower classes, of the poor: \u201cThe real, essential criterion of distinction is not mere numbers but \u2018poverty and wealth\u2019: that is to say, democracy is the rule of the poor, oligarchy is the rule of the rich, and so much is that the case that even in a situation where the rich were per impossible the majority of a city\u2019s or state\u2019s citizens, Aristotle would still classify and label it an \u2018oligarchy\u2019 and vice versa.\u201d <\/p>\n

The wealthy are \u201cthe leisured elite of the citizen body, those who did not have to work for a living, who did not live under compulsion from anyone else to work, and indeed typically would be able and willing to compel others\u2014often unfree, slave others\u2014to work for them.\u201d The poor \u201cwere all the rest of the citizen body, the non-\u2018rich\u2019, a far too broad grouping, of course, although he was forced by the facts to concede that some \u2018poor\u2019 citizens were much less poor than others and indeed that some might better be labelled \u2018middling\u2019, that is, in between the (clearly) rich and the (clearly) poor; and that at the bottom end it might be necessary to separate off the destitute and beggarly, those who possessed virtually nothing, from the merely poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike many modern theorists of democracy, the issue in democracy isn\u2019t the participation of all, or the equality of all. Democracy could and did exist in polities with significant disparities of wealth. The question for Aristotle was about the locus of power: Who had the kratos<\/em>? As Cartledge puts it, \u201cone of its greatest services is that it does full justice to the kratos<\/em> part of demokratia<\/em>, the \u2018grip\u2019 or \u2018grasp\u2019 element. What was it that the demos had in its grasp or power? Obviously, at one level, the \u2018things\u2019 (literally) or affairs of state, the public organs of self-governance. But at another level\u2014and especially when demos was given its full, class-related value of \u2018masses\u2019 or \u2018the poor\u2019\u2014it was the \u2018few\u2019 elite citizens, the oligoi<\/em>, over whom the demos was exerting its power.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Aristotle\u2019s mind, this arrangement of the polity was not good: \u201cAristotle was second to none in deploring the sectarian, self-promoting versions of democracy in which the empowered poor majority of citizens acted in their own selfishly exclusive interests, as they perceived them, at the expense of the unity, harmony, and general well-being of the polity as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"