The main point of this chapter is simple enough: that the acquisition of goods/wealth (chrēmatistikē) is ‘part’ of household management in that the manager must have available a supply of certain necessary articles (food, money, etc.) which have to be acquired from somewhere by some means. True to his principles of natural teleology, Aristotle attempts to delimit a ‘natural’ mode of goods-acquisition (in the widest sense of ‘goods’), by arguing from a comparison between (a) the way animals gain the ‘goods’ (food) provided by nature, by taking it directly and by natural instinct from the environment, and (b) certain modes of acquisition open to men (hunting, fishing, farming, etc.), by which they too take what nature ‘gives’. The methods of (b) he suggests, being similar to those of (a), are natural.
The argument is suggestive, and has the merit of pointing up a certain parallelism of behaviour as between human and other animal life. Aristotle believes that each species is eternal; inevitably and naturally, then, the members of each must and do have some inner cause or drive which ensures they get enough to live on, or the species would not survive; and each animal species seems to live off some other animal and/or vegetable species. On the other hand, an opponent could make various objections. They will centre on: (1) Have men and animals the same nature? If not, is it legitimate to infer anything at all from (a) and (b), however formally similar they may be as patterns of behaviour? (2) The difficulty of deciding what behaviour is ‘natural’. For example, animals sometimes kill and eat their young. Is this practice ‘natural’, or a perversion of nature? If natural, should human beings also kill and eat each other? (3) Even if one could decide what human behaviour is ‘natural’, ought this necessarily to be adopted as an ethical or social norm? The chapter is in fact full of large assumptions and inferences both expressed and unexpressed; and again, as in I ii, his own account of the criteria for what is natural (Physics, II i) would be informative background reading.
One may note also: (a) Aristotle’s inclusion of piracy among the ‘direct’ modes of acquisition – in this he simply reflects the fact that the ancient world took it more or less for granted; (b) the near-equation of men ‘fitted to be ruled’ with animals: both are ‘for’ use by men fit to rule, and slave-raiding against such inferior people is evidently therefore ‘natural’; (c) his disapproval of the pursuit of unlimited wealth, on the grounds that only a limited amount is necessary for the ‘good’ life.
In this set of four chapters on economics (viii–xi), and the related discussion of Nicomachean Ethics V v, Karl Marx found important anticipations of his own ideas; for references, see Select Bibliographies.
1256a1 Let us then, since the slave has proved to be part of property, go on to consider property and the acquisition of goods in general, still following our usual method.1 The first question to be asked might be this: Is the acquisition of goods the same as household-management, or a part of it, or subsidiary to it? And if it is subsidiary, is it so in the same way as shuttle-making is subsidiary to weaving, or as bronze-founding is to the making of statues? For these two are not subsidiary in the same way: the one provides instruments, the other the material, that is, the substance out of which a product is made, as wool for the weaver, bronze for the sculptor. Now it is obvious that household-management is not the same as the acquisition of goods, because it is the task of the one to provide, the other to use; for what other activity than managing the house is going to make use of what is in the house? But whether acquisition of wealth is part of household-management or a different kind of activity altogether – that is a debatable question, if, that is to say, it is the acquirer’s task to see from what sources goods and property may be derived. For there are many varieties of property and riches, so that a first question might be whether farming, and in general the provision and superintendence of the food supply, are parts of the acquisition of goods, or whether they are a different kind of thing.
1256a19 But again, there are many different kinds of food, and that means many different ways of life, both of animals and humans; for as there is no life without food, differences of food produce among animals different kinds of life. Some animals live in herds and others scattered about, whichever helps them to find food, some of them being carnivorous, some frugivorous, others eating anything. So, in order to make it easier for them to get these nutriments, nature has given them different ways of life. Again, since animals do not all like the same food but have different tastes according to their nature, so the ways of living of carnivorous and frugivorous animals themselves differ according to their different kinds. Similarly among human beings there are many varieties of life: first there are the nomads, who do least work, for nutriment from domestic animals is obtained with a minimum of toil and a maximum of ease; but when the animals have to move to fresh pastures, the human beings have to go with them, tilling as it were a living soil. Others live from hunting in all its variety, some being simply raiders, others fishermen who live near a lake, a marsh, a river, or a fish-bearing area of the sea; others live off birds and wild animals. The third and largest class lives off the earth and its cultivated crops.
1256a40 These then are the main ways of living by natural productive labour – ways which do not depend for a food-supply on exchange or trade. They are the nomadic, the agricultural, the piratical, fishing, and hunting. Some men live happily enough by combining them, making up for the deficiencies of one by adding a second at the point where the other fails to be self-sufficient; such combinations are nomadism with piracy, agriculture with hunting, and so on. They simply live the life that their needs compel them to.
1256b7 Such a mode of acquisition is clearly given by nature herself to all her creatures, both at the time of their birth and when they are fully grown. For some animals produce at the very beginning of procreation sufficient food to last their offspring until such time as these are able to get it for themselves; for example those which produce their young as grubs or eggs. Those which produce live offspring carry in themselves sufficient food for some time – the natural substance which we call milk. So obviously, by parity of reasoning, we must believe that animals are provided for at a later stage too – that plants exist for their sake, and that the other animals exist for the sake of man, tame ones for the use he can make of them as well as for the food they provide; and as for wild animals, most though not all can be used for food or are useful in other ways: clothing and instruments can be made out of them.
1256b20 If then nature makes nothing without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must be that nature has made all of them for the sake of man. This means that it is according to nature that even the art of war, since hunting is a part of it, should in a sense be a way of acquiring property; and that it must be used both against wild beasts and against such men as are by nature intended to be ruled over but refuse; for that is the kind of warfare which is by nature just.
1256b26 One form then of property-getting is, in accordance with nature, a part of household-management, in that either the goods must be there to start with, or this technique of property-getting must see that they are provided; goods, that is, which may be stored up, as being necessary for providing a livelihood, or useful to household or state as associations. And it looks as if wealth in the true sense consists of property such as this. For the amount of property of this kind which would give self-sufficiency for a good life is not limitless, although Solon in one of his poems said, ‘No bound is set on riches for men.’2 But there is a limit, as in the other skills; for none of them have any tools which are unlimited in size or number, and wealth is a collection of tools for use in the administration of a household or a state. It is clear therefore that there is a certain natural kind of property-getting practised by those in charge of a household or a state; and why this is so is also clear.