This long and difficult chapter contains several repetitions and inconsistencies which suggest that the material which Aristotle left has fallen into disarray. Comment is devoted to elucidation of the structure of the chapter as it stands. I have divided it into five sections:
Definitions of democracy and oligarchy.
Democracy and oligarchy are commonly defined in excessively simple terms. Numbers are not in themselves decisive (cf. III viii): e.g. democracy is the rule of the poor, the dēmos, be they few or many; and they are usually the latter. Wealth and status, as well as numbers, are crucial for classification.
The parts of the state, and resulting variety among constitutions (1).
Constitutions are of several kinds, because every state has several parts which can be combined in various ways, just as different kinds of animals could be produced by different combinations of different varieties of ‘parts’ (i.e. different sorts of mouth, stomach, limb etc.). A list of the parts of a state is now embarked upon.
Plato on the parts of the state.
A digression in refutation of Plato’s views in the Republic on the minimum number of parts essential to a state if it is to be self-sufficient.
The parts of the state, and resulting variety among constitutions (2).
A resumption of the list of the parts. Often enough, one man can perform more than one function in the state; but no man can be both poor and rich, so it is easy to regard the large numbers of the poor and the small numbers of the rich as ‘opposites’ among the parts of the state. Hence constitutions are thought to be two: democracy and oligarchy.
Varieties of democracy.
Democracy (and oligarchy) will obviously take various forms according to the type of person dominant in it – traders, fishermen, artisans etc. A list of five kinds of democracy follows. The chapter closes with a discussion of the last and most extreme and tyrannical form, where the people decide everything by decree at the bidding of demagogues, and dispense with the rule of law.
Summarized thus, and surveyed as a whole, the chapter presents an understandable if ungainly sequence of argument. Space forbids discussion of the many points of political and philosophical interest, and I fasten on one only, which we have had occasion to notice before (see introduction to III viii): the constant assumption that dēmokratia means exactly, and starkly, what it says – power exercised by the dēmos, that is, by a particular social class, in its own interest (cf. p. 362).
1290a30 It is a mistake, which some people habitually make today, to describe democracy and oligarchy in terms too simple and absolute, saying that there is a democracy where the mass of the people is sovereign (as if the majority1 were not also sovereign in oligarchies and everywhere), and an oligarchy where few are sovereign in the constitution. Suppose a total of 1,300; 1,000 of these are rich, and they give no share in office to the 300 poor, who also are free men and in other respects like them; no one would say that these 1,300 lived under a democracy. Or again, suppose the poor to be few, but to be stronger than the well-to-do, who are more numerous than they: no one would call such a constitution oligarchical, where a share in honours is not given to the others, the rich. Therefore we should say rather that it is a democracy whenever the free are sovereign, oligarchy when the rich are sovereign; but what actually occurs is that the former are many, the latter few: many are free, few are rich. Otherwise,2 if the offices were distributed on a basis of height, as is said by some to be done in Ethiopia, or of handsome appearance, then there would be an oligarchy, because the numbers of tall or handsome are small.
1290b7 Nevertheless even these considerations,3 on their own, are not adequate to define these constitutions. Both democracy and oligarchy consist of a number of parts; and whenever the free are not numerous, but rule over a majority who are not free, we still cannot say that it is a democracy, nor that it is an oligarchy where the rich rule in virtue of superior numbers. The former situation existed in Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf, and on Thera; for in each of these states honours were restricted to a minority – those persons of distinguished ancestry who had taken part in the original settlements. The other state of affairs existed at one time in Colophon, where before the war with Lydia4 the majority had amassed substantial possessions. A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.
1290b21 That constitutions are several, and the reason why they are several, has now been shown. Let us now start from the point mentioned before,5 and show that they are even more numerous than was stated, and say what they are and from what cause. We agree that every state is composed of many parts, not just one. Now if our chosen subject were forms of animal life, we should first have to answer the question ‘What is it essential for every animal to have?’ And among those essentials we should have to include some of the organs of sense-perception, and something for the processing and reception of nourishment, such as mouth and stomach, and in addition parts of the body which enable the animal in question to move about. If these were all that we had to consider and there were differences between them (several different kinds of mouth, for instance, of stomach, of sense-organs, and of parts to do with locomotion), then the number of ways of combining these will necessarily make a number of different kinds of animals. For it is impossible for one and the same animal to have several different kinds of mouth or ear. So when you have taken all the possible couplings of these one with another, they will produce forms of animal; and the number of forms of animal will be equal to the number of combinations of essential parts.
1290b38 We may apply this to the constitutions mentioned; for states too are made up not of one but of many parts, as has often been said. These are (a) the large numbers of people concerned with food-production, called tillers of the soil; (b) the part called mechanical, by which we mean people who follow those skills in the absence of which a state is uninhabitable (these skills are further divided into the absolutely essential and those who minister to luxury or the good life); (c) the commercial, by which we mean that section which spends its time on buying and selling, merchant commerce and retail trade; (d) the section comprising hired labourers; (e) the element which will defend in time of war. This last is just as indispensable as the others, if the population is not to be a slave to aggressors. For of course no state can possibly have a claim to the name, if it is naturally a slave to others: a state is self-sufficient, which is just what a slave is not.
1291a10 For this reason I find the treatment given to this topic in the Republic6 to be more clever than adequate. For Socrates says that a city is compounded of four absolutely essential elements, and that these are the weaver, the farmer, the shoemaker and the builder; then, deeming these to be not self-sufficient, he adds metalworkers and those in charge of indispensable livestock, then the merchant and the retailer. This becomes the full complement of the ‘first’ state, apparently on the supposition that every state is formed to satisfy minimum needs and not rather for a finer purpose; and also that its need for shoemakers is equal to its need for farmers. To defenders in war he assigns no part until territorial expansion involves them in contact with neighbours and war breaks out.
1291a22 But surely there also ought to be among the four, or any other number of associates, one whose duty it will be to decide upon and render justice. If the soul is to be regarded as part of a living creature even more than its body, then in states too we must regard the corresponding elements as being parts in a fuller sense than those which merely conduce to utility and necessity: I mean such things as the fighting force and all those connected with the judicial administration of justice;7 and over and above these, that deliberative element which represents political wisdom in action.8 It is irrelevant to my argument whether these qualities are to be found separately in several people or in the same; it is quite normal for the same persons to be found bearing arms and tilling the soil. If then those on both lists9 are to be counted as parts of the state, it is clear that at least10 the heavy-armed military element is an essential one.
1291a33 Those who render service11 by their possessions are a seventh part; we call them the well-to-do. An eighth part is composed of those who are on official business, i.e. who render public service11 in connection with the offices – since a state cannot do without officials. So there must be persons capable of holding office and rendering service11 of this kind to the state, either continuously or by turns. There remain those who have in fact just been distinguished,12 the deliberators and those who give decisions where matters of justice are in dispute.
1291a40 Now if these elements must exist in states, and exist in a fine and just manner, it becomes essential that some of the citizens should be possessed of virtue. Many suppose that the other capacities may very well coexist in the same persons: the same people may be defenders, farmers, skilled workmen, and judges and deliberators too. All these have some claim to virtue also, and believe themselves to be capable of most of the offices. But the same people cannot be both rich and poor, and that is why the prime division of a state into parts seems to be into poor and the well-to-do. Further, owing to the fact that the one group is for the most part numerically small, the other large, these two parts appear as opposites among the parts of the state. So the constitutions are accordingly constructed to reflect the predominance of one or other of these, and there seem to be two constitutions – democracy and oligarchy.
1291b14 That constitutions are several and for what reasons they are several, has been mentioned before; let us now show that there are several forms both of oligarchy and of democracy. But this is clear even from what has been said already. There is on the one hand the people, on the other the notables, as we call them. Of each of these there are several kinds. For example, of the people one kind is engaged in agriculture, another in crafts, and yet another in commerce, in buying and selling. Another kind takes to the sea, and there they fight or trade or carry passengers or catch fish. (In many places the sections of the population engaged in one or other of these occupations are large: fishermen are numerous at Tarentum and Byzantium, traders at Aegina and Chios; at Athens many are engaged on triremes, at Tenedos in passenger traffic.) To these we may add the labouring class and those whose possessions are so small that they cannot have any time off, also those who are not of free birth on both sides, and any other similar kind of multitude. The distinguishing marks of the notables are wealth, good birth, virtue, education and the other things listed under the same heading.13
1291b30 The first variety of democracy is that which is so called because it is based chiefly on the principle of equality. In such a democracy the law interprets equality as meaning that the poor shall not enjoy any more advantage than the rich, that neither shall be sovereign, but both shall be exactly similar. For if, as is held by some, freedom is especially to be found in democracy, and also equality, this condition is most fully realized when all alike share most fully in the constitution. But since the people are a majority, and the decision of the majority is sovereign, this must be a democracy. Here, then, is one type of democracy.
1291b39 Another type has a property-qualification for office, but only a modest one, so that he who gets the requisite amount is allowed to share in office, but ceases to do so if he loses it. Another type is when all citizens share unless they fail to pass a scrutiny,14 but the law rules. Another type is when everyone shares, provided only that he is a citizen, but again the law rules. Another type of democracy is the same in other respects, but the multitude is sovereign and not the law. This occurs when the decrees are sovereign over the provisions of the law.
1292a7 It is the demagogues who bring about this state of affairs. When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people becomes a monarch, one person composed of many, for the many are sovereign, not as individuals but as an aggregate. What kind of multiple rulership, collective or of several individuals, Homer meant,15 when he spoke of it as being a bad thing, I do not know. But at all events, such a people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power16 and becomes like a master, giving honour to those who curry its favour. Such a democracy is the counterpart of tyranny among monarchies. Hence its general character too is exactly the same: both play the master over the better sort of person, and the decrees of democracy are the directives of tyranny; the tyrant’s flatterer is the same as, or analogous to, the demagogue, each having special influence in his sphere, flatterers on tyrants, demagogues on peoples such as I have described. They are able to do this primarily because they bring every question before the people, and make its decrees sovereign instead of the laws. This greatly enhances their personal power because, while the people is sovereign over all, they rule over the people’s opinion, since the multitude follows their lead. Moreover, the accusers of the officials claim that the decision ought to belong to the people; the people need no second invitation, and so all the offices are brought low.
1292a31 So if you were to say that such a democracy is not a constitution at all, your strictures would seem to be perfectly right. Where laws do not rule, there is no constitution. The law ought to rule over all, in general terms, and the officials ought to make rulings in individual cases; then we can decide we have a constitution. So if democracy is one of the constitutions, it is clear that this kind of set-up. where everything is governed by decree, is not a democracy at all, in the real sense; for no decree can have general validity. So much for the classification of democracy.