In this long chapter Aristotle discusses ownership of property and the right to its produce, first in very general terms and with wider reference than to Plato’s Republic. Of the various possibilities, Aristotle recommends, broadly, private ownership combined with common use, and an ungrudging distribution of produce. ‘Ungrudging’ is important: Aristotle sees much merit in the spontaneous distribution of goods by customs of generosity, as against enforced distribution by regulation. This suppression of the virtue of generosity is one of several disadvantages he pinpoints in the community of property recommended by Plato for the Guardians in the Republic. In particular, the economic and constitutional position of the rest of Plato’s state is, he complains, left in obscurity; but so far as they can be ascertained, he thinks they are inimical to the unity Plato wishes to achieve.
The justice of Aristotle’s criticisms of the Republic in this chapter provides further matter for debate (see bibliography). ‘Practical men’ of Aristotle’s astuteness never find it difficult to punch holes in Utopian schemes; yet here again, has Aristotle entered into the spirit of what he criticizes? At the end of the chapter, for instance, he claims that Plato deprived the Guardians of ‘happiness’ (eudaimonia), apparently quite unaware that Plato himself had in fact taken trouble to meet this objection. Aristotle may simply have read the Republic with insufficient care; on the other hand, he has made it perfectly plain that his assumptions are quite different from Plato’s. That is, whereas Plato believed that if the Guardians fulfilled the role he allots them they would be happy, Aristotle just cannot see how men and women deprived of the normal and ‘natural’ satisfactions (private property, etc., see 1263a40 ff.) can possibly be anything but miserable; and that therefore the whole state cannot be happy either.
There are very many other points of interest in this chapter, for example (i) the working out of the implications of extreme unification for the accepted virtues, (ii) the shrewd observations on the psychological effects of common ownership, and (iii) the deft adducing of examples of actual practice in Greek states.
1262b37 Connected with the foregoing is the question of property. What arrangements should be made about it, if people are going to operate the best possible constitution? Should it be held in common or not? This question may well be considered in isolation from the legislation about children and wives. A possible answer is that while they should belong to individuals, as is the universal practice, it would be better that either property or its use should be communal. In the latter case the plots of land are in private hands and its produce pooled for common use (as is done by some foreign nations); in the former, the land is communally held and communally worked but its produce is distributed according to individual requirements. This is a form of communal ownership which is said to exist among certain non-Greek peoples. There is also the alternative that both the land and its produce be owned communally.
1263a8 As to its cultivation, a different system will run more smoothly, i.e. if the land is worked by others, because, if they themselves work for their own benefit, there will be greater ill-feeling about the ownership. For if the work done and the benefit accrued are equal, well and good; but if not, there will inevitably be ill-feeling between those who get a good income without doing much work and those who work harder but get no corresponding extra benefit. To live together and share in any human concern is hard enough to achieve at the best of times, and such a state of affairs makes it doubly hard. The same kind of trouble is evident when a number of people club together for the purpose of travel. How often have we not seen such partnerships break down over quarrels arising out of trivial and unimportant matters! In the household also we get most annoyed with those servants whom we employ to perform the ordinary routine tasks.
1263a21 These then are some of the difficulties inherent in the common ownership of property. Far better is the present system – provided that it has the added attraction of being a matter of habit and of being controlled by sound laws. If so, it will have the advantages of both systems, both the communal and the private. For, while property should up to a point be held in common, the general principle should be that of private ownership. Responsibilty for looking after property, if distributed over many individuals, will not lead to mutual recriminations; on the contrary, with every man busy with his own, there will be increased effort all round. ‘All things in common among friends’ the saying goes, and it is the personal virtue of individuals that ensure their common use.
1263a30 And such an arrangement is by no means impossible: it exists, even if only in outline, in some states already, and in well-run ones particularly, where to a certain degree it is in actual operation and could be extended. Each man has his own possessions, part of which he makes available for his friends’ use, part he uses in common with others. For example, in Sparta they use each others’ slaves practically as if they were their own, and horses and dogs too; and if they need food on a journey, they get it in the country as they go. Clearly then it is better for property to remain in private hands; but we should make the use of it communal. It is a particular duty of a lawgiver to see that citizens are disposed to do this.
1263a40 Moreover there is an immense amount of pleasure to be derived from the sense of private ownership. It is surely no accident that every man has affection1 for himself: nature meant this to be so. Selfishness is condemned, and justly, but selfishness is not simply to be fond of oneself, but to be excessively fond. So excessive fondness for money is condemned, though nearly every man is fond of everything of that kind. And a further point is that there is very great pleasure in helping and doing favours to friends and strangers and associates; and this happens when people have property of their own.
1263b7 None of these advantages is secured by those who seek excessive unification of the state.2 And, what is more, they are openly throwing away the practice of two virtues – self-restraint with regard to women (for it is a fine practice to keep off another’s wife through restraint), and liberality with regard to property. The abolition of private property will mean that no man will be seen to be liberal and no man will ever do any act of liberality; for it is in the use of articles of property that liberality is practised.
1263b15 Such legislation might well on first hearing sound attractive and humane;3 it would seem to promise exceptionally warm affection of everyone for everyone, and to have a particular attraction for those who blame the prevalent evils of constitutions entirely on the absence of communal ownership of possessions.4 I refer especially to charges and countercharges of broken contracts, trials for false witness, and sucking up to wealthy owners. But none of these things is due to the absence of communal ownership; they arise out of the depravity of human character. In fact we find more disputes arising between those who own and share property in common than we do among separate holders of possessions, even though, as we can see, the number of those who quarrel over partnerships is small as compared with the great multitude of private owners.5 Again, it would be only fair to count not merely the evils of which sharing would rid us but also the advantages of which it would deprive us. Such a count shows that to live in the way suggested would be really impossible.
1263b29 The cause of Socrates’ fallacy lies in his incorrect principle. Certainly there must be some unity in a state, as in a household, but not an absolutely total unity. There comes a point where the state, if it does not cease to be a state altogether, will certainly come close to that and be a worse one; it is as if one were to reduce concord to unison or rhythm to a single beat. As we have said before,6 a state is a plurality, which must depend on education to bring about its common unity. It is strange that Plato, whose intention it was to introduce an education which he believed would impart a sound character to the state, should think that he could obtain good results by such methods, which are no substitute for the training of the habits and of the intellect,7 or for using the laws to that end. For example, at Sparta and in Crete the legislator effected a sharing of goods by means of the common meals.
1264a1 We must not forget another point that ought to be considered: simply the immense period of time during which this form of organization has remained undiscovered, as it surely would not have remained if it were really good. Pretty well all possible forms of organization have now been discovered, though no complete collection of them has been made, and many are known but are not practised. The force of our arguments would become clearer if we could see such a constitution being put together in practice: it will prove impossible to construct it without keeping its parts separate, dividing it either into messing-groups, or into brotherhoods and tribes. Consequently, new legislation will have boiled down to this, that the Guardians should not engage in agriculture – which is exactly the rule which the Lacedaemonians are now trying to introduce.
1264a11 But what of the arrangements of the constitution as a whole, and how do they affect participant members? In the absence of any positive statement by Socrates it is very hard to say. Certainly the bulk of the other citizens will make up almost the entire population of the state; but no decision was taken as to whether the farming class are to have communal or individual private possession, whether of property or of wives and children. Suppose that they too are to have all these in common, what will there then be to distinguish them from the Guardians? And what good will it do them to submit to their rule, or what inducement will there be to accept it? (Perhaps recourse might be had to some such device as the Cretans use, who allow to their slaves all privileges except those of training in gymnasia and possessing weapons.)
1264a22 If on the other hand we assume that they arrange such things8 exactly as in other states, how will they associate at all? The inevitable result would be two states within one,9 and these in some degree in opposition to each other. For on the one side he puts the Guardians, like a garrison, on the other the farmers, craftsmen and the rest, as citizens.10 This can only lead to disputes and litigation and all the other evils that he speaks of as arising in other states.4 And yet Socrates says11 that, thanks to education, there will be no need for a large number of regulations such as those governing the wardenship of the city and the market, and the like, and this while giving that education only to the Guardians. Again, he makes the farmers owners of their property but requires them to pay rent; but in that position they are likely to be much more troublesome and bumptious than the helots, serfs and slaves in some places nowadays.
1264a36 In any case no final decision was reached as to whether there is the same12 necessity for such arrangements, nor yet about closely related questions, such as the type of constitution they will live under, and the nature of their13 education and laws. This is not easy to discover; and yet the quality of these people will make all the difference to the maintenance of the association of the Guardians. But if he means to make wives shared and property privately owned, who will look after the house, as men tend the fields? And what if both the wives and the property of the farmers are held in common? To argue from an analogy with wild animals and say that male and female ought to engage in the same occupations is futile: animals have no household-management to do.
1264b6 Risky too is Socrates’ way of appointing the rulers: they are to be always the same people. This is a sure source of faction, even among those of no standing – to say nothing of those he calls warlike and spirited.14 But clearly it is unavoidable that the same persons should always rule; for that divine ‘golden’ element in the soul does not vary in its incidence but is present always in the same people. It is, according to his own statement,15 immediately at birth that the admixture takes place, of gold in some cases, of silver in others, and, for those who are going to be farmers or skilled workers, of bronze and iron.
1264b15 Again, though he denies to the Guardians even happiness,16 he maintains that it is the duty of a lawgiver to make the whole city happy. But it is impossible for the whole to be happy, unless the majority, if not actually all, or at any rate some, parts possess happiness. For happiness is a very different thing from evenness: two odd numbers added together make an even number, but two unhappy sections cannot add up to a happy state. And if the Guardians are not happy, who will be? Certainly not the skilled workers and the general run of mechanics.
These are some, but by no means the most serious, of the drawbacks inherent in the kind of constitution described by Socrates.