Comparison of the Aristotelean and Liberal Traditions

Based on some feedback I’ve received, I see that I need to say more about the differences between the Aristotelean and Liberal traditions. Here is a section of my doctoral dissertation (2005) that outlines what I see as the most important differences. 

2.6 Comparison of the Aristotelean and Liberal Traditions 

The Aristotelean tradition contrasts with Liberalism on a number of points:

Relation of desire to morality

This is perhaps the most important contrast, yet it can be summed up in very few words: Aristotle’s value theory is based on what people should want; Liberal value theory is based on what people do want.

The nature of the individual 

Both Liberalism and Aristotle posit the individual as a relatively independent entity, and not a mere social construct, as postmodernism claims. But Aristotle’s position is a moderate individualism, while the Liberal position takes individualism to an atomistic extreme. From Hobbes, for whom the “state of nature” is a “war of each against all”, to John Rawls, who bases his “veil of ignorance” thought experiment on the imagined responses of individuals who are completely disconnected from any particular time, place, culture, physical characteristics, or set of human relationships * [...], the individual-as-monad has been a constant metaphysical assumption of Liberalism. Aristotle recognizes that, while the individual is metaphysically independent of his or her culture in some sense (i.e., the individual subsists), a human existence is possible only in the context of a community. An individual who can live utterly separated from this human context is for practical purposes “a beast or a god” (1253a 20), and our “intuitions” about what such an entity would do when confronted with the choice Rawls proposes are of dubious evidential value.

Spirituality and religion

Since the Enlightenment, scientism has become a persistent current in Western thought. By scientism (or naturalism if one prefers) I mean the position that the methods of the natural sciences are the only rational basis for belief, that entities that can be studied using such methods are the only ones that exist, and that questions that cannot be answered using the methods of the natural sciences are pseudo-questions. Most of the major Liberal thinkers have been scientistic to some degree, while Aristotle clearly accepts a transcendent reality in the form of the First Mover. 

There is, however, an important difference between Aristotle’s attitude toward religion and that of certain republican thinkers. Aristotle recognizes that “there are other things much more divine in their nature even than man” (1141a 35), and that the contemplation of such things is the highest form of theōria, which a well-run state should make possible for its citizens [...] religious practice is one of the “purposes of life” that states are formed to fulfill. But in the republican tradition, there is a tendency to idolize the state. [...] Machiavelli presents civic virtue as being in opposition to Christian virtue (and not simply in opposition to the degenerate practices of the religious authorities of his day). James Harrington, on the other hand, gives the state a Christian eschatological character, making the republic an earthly realization of the kingdom of heaven (cf. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment). Either way, religious devotion is effectively subordinated to devotion to the state. In light of the experiences of the 20th century, we must be wary of this kind of nationalistic appropriation of religion, for nationalism has tended to beget fascism. [...]

Applied knowledge 

Concerning the application of knowledge to the concrete problems that people face in their day-to-day existence, Aristotle distinguishes between those that require phronēsis and those that require technē. Aristotle’s teacher Plato was fond of drawing an analogy between politics and crafts such as medicine, particularly in his critiques of democracy--just as one would not decide on a medical treatment by submitting the question to a vote of unskilled persons, neither should one do so for political decisions. Plato suggests that politics is a technē like any other (cf. Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground; Winner, The Whale and the Reactor, ch. 3). Aristotle, however, recognizes the limits of this analogy. The problems confronting statesmen are more complex and less well-defined than those facing craftsmen and require a different kind of intelligence.

Liberals have come to accept a technicism that outdoes Plato in terms of the level of faith it places in experts. Lacking any concept of human telos to guide their moral theories, Liberals have made “desire-satisfaction” the criterion of rightness, science the source of all truth, and instrumental reason the whole of rationality. The result is that efficiency has become a goal in itself, without regard to to the fact that it is better to pursue a good end inefficiently than pursue a bad end efficiently (cf. Dunne; MacIntyre, After Virtue). [...]

Nature, purpose, and value of human association 

The contrast here is multiple. Firstly, there is the contrast between a compact for shared goals (Aristotle) and a contract for separate goals (Liberalism). Secondly, for Aristotle, the most important purpose of government is to enable its citizens to achieve eudaimonia; for Liberals, the most important purpose of government is to preserve property (these different views of government come with corresponding commitments to positive freedom and negative freedom, respectively [...] ). Thirdly, there is the contrast between Aristotle’s recognition of levels of association between the individual and the state which are not reducible to either (especially the family and the household; Aristotle also briefly mentions the village), and the Liberal view which reduces all such associations to aspects of the contract between individuals. Fourthly, Aristotle views political association as intrinsically valuable, while Liberals view it as merely instrumentally valuable.


The set of characteristics that I here ascribe to Liberalism represent a set of Wittgensteinian “family resemblances” rather than a strict definition of Liberalism. I base these generalizations about Liberalism on the views of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Berlin, and Rawls, as expressed in their writings, and on the views of contemporary neoliberals, as expressed in the policies they have promoted during the past thirty years. This is a disparate group, and no single thinker exemplifies all of the above attributes. My purpose in this section is neither to present a comprehensive survey of Liberalism, nor to discern its essence; the extent to which the above currents of thought may be central or merely peripheral to Liberalism is not important. What is important is the way these currents of thought have affected American society, and the way the Aristotelean tradition challenges them. 



 * Rawls asks the reader to imagine a situation in which a person can choose what sort of society to be born into, yet a “veil of ignorance” prevents the person from knowing what specific position he or she will occupy in that society (what sex, race, wealth, abilities, disabilities, etc.). Under these circumstances, Rawls argues, rationality would dictate that the person choose a society that does not oppress people based on these characteristics, lest the person find him/herself born into one of the oppressed groups. Rawls uses this thought experiment to argue that justice is based upon rationality. Rawls presented this idea in A Theory of Justice (1971) and defended it over a period of thirty years, most recently in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001).

Eudaimonia, Plenitude, and Sustainability

[This is the text of a talk I gave at the 2013 annual conference of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry, which follows up and reiterates some of the points I made in the 2008 ISME talk (q.v., posted earlier in this blog).]

At the 2008 ISME conference, I presented a talk entitled “Republicanism and the Eudaimonic Economy”, in which I argued that the massive material surplus generated by the American economy was distributed in ways that threatened America’s political institutions, social fabric, and environment. I focused on the threat to political institutions on that occasion, specifically the current trend toward oligarchy that is evident in American politics. I argued that the Aristotelean tradition offered a coherent normative rationale for a “eudaimonic economy”, meaning an economy that would take surplus wealth away from financial speculation, consumerism, and the military-industrial complex and redirect that wealth toward massive investment in those sectors of the economy that were directly concerned with the realization of human potential, namely education, research, and the arts. Today I would like to look at the other two threats posed by the ways in which the surplus is distributed, those being its destructive effects on the environment and the social fabric. 

 

Aristotle has a lot to say about the social fabric, but he does not explicitly address issues of environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, Aristotelean practical philosophy offers a way of life that is significantly more sustainable than the work-and-spend lifestyle that is typical of middle- and upper-income inhabitants of the developed world. There is a significant overlap in the prescriptions of the Aristotelean tradition and those of certain contemporary advocates of green living and critics of consumerism. I will focus on a recent work by one such advocate and critic, Judith Schor, and compare her prescriptions with those of Aristotle.

The sociologist Juliet B. Schor has built her career upon her critique of consumerism. In her most recent book, Plenitude, she proposes the eponymous concept as an alternative to affluence as it is usually understood. [Incidentally, Lewis Mumford made a similar proposal 50 years earlier using the same term, plenitude (Mumford  393)].

Schor argues that the pursuit of affluence, measured mainly by GDP growth, through what she calls “business as usual” (BAU), is destroying the environment and the social fabric.  “Business as usual” is a term that Schor has borrowed from debates about climate change.  She uses it to refer to "the continuation of current economic rules, practices, growth trajectory, and ecological consequences of production and consumption.  It especially refers to the large corporate entities that dominate the market and are heavily invested in it." (4)

Schor offers four principles upon which her concept of plenitude is based:

Schor’s first principle is “a new allocation of time.”  Schor says, "For decades, Americans have devoted an increasing fraction of their time and money to the market -- working longer hours, filling leisure time with activities that require more income per unit of time, and buying, rather than making, more of what they consume.  It’s time to reverse this trend and diversify out of [. . .] business-as-usual (BAU) economic activity." (4)

Schor calls for a “moderation in hours of work” that would allow people to spend more time on family and community activities and learning the new skills and knowledge that a green economy will demand.

Schor’s second principle “is to diversify away from the BAU market and ‘self-provision’, or make, grow, or do things for oneself.” This ties in with the first principle. If people spend less time in the BAU market economy, they will be able to spend more time in the non-market economy growing their own food, making their own clothes, building and renovating their own homes, and so on. She argues that this can be more than a “marginal craft movement” because “new agricultural knowledge and the invention of small-scale smart machines make it possible to turn household provisioning into a high-productivity -- and economically viable -- use of time.” (5)

Schor’s third principle is what she calls “true materialism”, i.e., “an environmentally aware approach to consumption.” Schor argues that consumers must become more informed about the environmental impact of their purchases, but that doing so need not entail an ethos of sacrifice. Consumers who “downshift” and reject the vicissitudes of fashion and its needless churn of “acquiring and discarding products” can still enjoy high quality clothes, food, gadgets, and travel. (6)

True materialism can overcome what Schor calls the “materiality paradox” (27). The unprecedented affluence of the developed world has led to a consumer culture in which the symbolic value of objects has become more important than the material value. Some more optimistic observers have linked the rise of symbolic value with a “dematerialization” of the economy, meaning that increasing affluence would not necessarily require increasing use of material resources. But Schor says that, paradoxically, the increasing importance of symbolic value may lead to more material consumption rather than less, because consumers will replace clothes, cars, and gadgets that have lost symbolic value long before they wear out physically.  

Schor’s fourth principle is “to restore investments in one another and our communities” (6). Schor reminds us that social capital is a form of wealth that is as important as money or material goods. This is another reason to reduce hours spent in the BAU labor market, because "One casualty of an intense market orientation is that community has gotten thinner and human ties weaker [. . .] By recovering hours, individuals are freed up to fortify their social networks." (6-7)

Schor sums up her principles as follows: “work and spend less, create and connect more.” (7)

Schor’s prescriptions are consistent with a eudaimonic economy. Of particular importance is the emphasis on working less in the market economy. Schor shows that American workers were putting in significantly more hours at work in 2006 than they were in 1979 (104-107; 163-168).  This is an issue of distributive justice, since while working hours and productivity have increased, the share of the nation’s wealth and income that goes to middle- and lower-income workers has declined. In a highly productive, technologically advanced society, no family should have to provide more than 40 hours a week of adult labor to an employer in order to enter or remain in the middle class.   

Aristotle’s account of the relationship between the household (oikos) and the broader political community (polis) supports Schor’s call for restoring social capital. Aristotle recognizes that the household is an intermediate level of organization between the individual and the polity, and that the polity cannot succeed if the households that compose it do not perform their function (Politics, Bk I). Relationships among spouses, parents, and children cannot flourish if the members of the household cannot spend sufficient time with each other due to excessive demands of the labor market.

Aristotle’s concept of the household has an economic dimension as well as a familial one. Economically, the paradigmatic household of Aristotle’s day was where most of the necessities of life were produced. This ties in with Schor’s advocacy of self-provisioning. Emerging technologies such as 3-D printing may make a return to home-based production increasingly feasible. 

Finally, from an Aristotelean point of view, reducing work hours is important because Aristotle’s contemplative ideal requires sufficient leisure (schole) to realize (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 10, ch. 7; Politics, Book VII, ch. 5).

        

Schor also discusses the relationship between the economic theories that have been favored in academic and policy-making circles and the practices that have led to environmental degradation and economic upheaval. 

Schor reviews decades of debate within the field of economics and among economists and researchers from other fields. In the 1970s, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, the systems theorist Jay Forrester, and the Club of Rome group argued that unlimited economic expansion would eventually lead to shortages of key resources and ecological catastrophe; these claims were articulated in the book The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows et al., published in 1972. Their predictions were opposed by William Nordhaus and other economists, who argued that market-driven technological innovation and slower population growth would allow growth to continue (Schor 49-51).

By 1982, it appeared that the economists were correct. Agricultural innovation had increased the food supply, new exploratory and extractive techniques had opened up new sources of oil and minerals, and population growth had stabilized in many countries. But the economists had not taken climate change into account. By the 90s, “an outpouring of scientific data was reframing the discussion away from the fixed resources highlighted in Limits to the renewable systems on which life depends -- atmosphere, forests, oceans, wetlands, and soils” (52-53).  

Today, in 2013, I trust that the reality of the threat posed by climate change has been established, so I will pass over further details of past debates.  Of greater interest to those who study the relationship between theory and practice is Schor’s account of “a fateful methodological choice” made by mainstream economists in the course of these debates and the way it buttressed BAU.

Schor says that standard treatments of markets have either failed to take environmental impacts into account or have treated those impacts as externalities. Schor also notes that mainstream economists have tended to overestimate the rationality of markets and have been unduly sanguine about the replaceability of natural  resources. To the extent that public policy and business strategy are informed by these methodological and ideological biases, prices are distorted. “Goods and activities that degrade the environment . . . are priced too low”, so the market produces too much of them (70). Prices of goods and activities do not reflect the damage being done to the environment, and artificially low prices lead to overconsumption.

Schor also disagrees with mainstream economists about the role of intellectual property. Schor argues that there is a connection between the “open source” movement and sustainability. In order to facilitate the spread of green technology and design, Schor endorses a “knowledge commons” and a “knowledge-intensive economy” based on decentralized production. She cites Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Networks, who says,

"The networked environment makes possible a a new modality of organizing production:  radically decentralized, collaborative and nonproprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, locally connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial comments." (qtd. in Schor, 151)   

So far, I have accepted Schor’s account of how the U.S. economy functions and agreed with her prescriptions concerning how to change it. But I do have some reservations.

Schor is strangely silent about the growth of the service sector. The omission may simply be due to limits of space and scope; she covers a lot of ground as it is. A less charitable interpretation would be that the growth of the service sector does not fit neatly into her narrative of crisis resulting from ever-increasing material consumption.

Schor disagrees with certain observers who believe that a process of “dematerialization” is taking place in the cultures of advanced nations, and that this dematerialization will significantly reduce the strain that consumerism puts on the environment. These thinkers argue that a symbolic economy, represented by such phenomena as the rising importance of branding, is superseding the material economy. Schor accepts the premise that the symbolic value of objects has become more important to consumers than the material value, but rejects the conclusion that this will lead to less material strain on the environment.  Her pessimism on this point is based on the “materiality paradox” mentioned above. Schor may be right about the materiality paradox as it pertains to goods, but she overlooks the possibility that the rise of the service sector may yet play a role in reducing unnecessary consumption. 

Looking at the growth of the service sector from a eudaimonistic perspective, one might ask, given that the majority of the population of a society will be employed in the service sector, is it a matter of indifference what services they spend their days providing? The Aristotelean answer is no; other things being equal, it is better to be a teacher than a mortgage broker. (The classical liberal answer would be to let the market decide.) 

In addition to their connection with human flourishing, education and research place less strain on the environment than consumeristic enterprises because they do not essentially depend on a constant flow of material resources in order to stay in business (this is true to a lesser extent of the arts). A library is greener than a Barnes & Noble store, and a community college is greener than a shopping mall.

I have previously argued that the increasing wealth generated by technological advances must be systematically redirected toward education, research, and the arts in order to counteract the oligarchic effects of current distribution patterns. This redirection can also address environmental concerns by effecting dematerialization without the materiality paradox that has accompanied the rise of symbolic value in the consumer economy.

This brings me to my most serious disagreement with Schor. Schor argues that economic growth must be limited in order to head off environmental catastrophe.  She uses the ecologists’  I=PAT equation (environmental Impact = Population x Affluence x Technological factors) to explain her position. Demographers expect the world population to stabilize at about 9 billion later this century; it is already at or slightly below the replacement level in many developed economies. She presents reasons for thinking that advances in green technology will probably not be sufficient to slow climate change to sustainable levels before irreparable harm is done. That leaves affluence as the remaining variable. She acknowledges a theoretical possibility that rising incomes might be de-linked from rising environmental impact (i.e., dematerialization), but considers it unlikely due to the materiality paradox. She concludes that growth in affluence must be curbed.

This is not feasible because it will either require the poor to permanently accept their lot or the rich to make enormous sacrifices. In an expanding economy, distributive justice can be achieved by allowing the rich to keep what they have while giving other classes a larger slice of the expanding pie; this was in fact what happened in the US between approximately 1932 and 1972. If the economy does not grow, then either the poor must agree to remain poor, or the rich must agree to give up their wealth through confiscatory redistribution. No program that makes social mobility impossible is just, and no program that requires the rich to voluntarily stop being rich is politically realistic.  

Schor says that we must “grow less or grow differently.” She chooses the former; I choose the latter.  We should not give up on dematerialization.  Rather than limiting growth, we should redirect growth toward the goal of achieving a eudaimonic economy. A eudaimonic economy would be one in which the majority of the GDP would come from education, research, and the arts. An intermediate step toward a eudaimonic economy might be a “human service economy” based on the eudaimonic fields, the healthcare industry, and various services that are usually provided or funded by government or nonprofit organizations, such as social work and law enforcement. A human service economy can allow growth in income with proportionately less environmental impact than growth based on material consumption. 

That said, I fundamentally agree with Schor about the way production and distribution should be organized in a post-industrial society. “Work and spend less, create and connect more.”

Works Cited

Aristotle.  The Complete Works of Aristotle.  Jonathan Barnes, ed.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1995.

Mumford, Lewis.  The Myth of the Machine:  The Pentagon of Power.  New York:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.

Schor, Juliet.  Plenitude.  New York:  The Penguin Press, 2010.

Image taken from goodreads review of Plenitudes 

Copyright 2013, M. D. Robertson. The author grants permission to republish, reprint, or distribute this work with attribution for non-commercial purposes.

Optimism from Aristotle

Republicanism and the Eudaimonic Economy

What follows is a draft of a talk I gave at the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry conference in 2008. It lays out some of the themes I will be exploring in this blog.

The Aristotelian tradition can be restated in a way that restores rationality and intelligibility to our own moral and social attitudes and commitments.

With these words Alasdair MacIntyre ends After Virtue and begins Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Taking these words to heart, I shall try to describe some concrete steps we can take in this country to apply Aristotle’s practical philosophy to the political and economic challenges that we face.

In order to understand the nature of those challenges and the applicability of the Aristotelean tradition to them, we must first understand the problem of surplus. Our current economic difficulties notwithstanding, the United States is the wealthiest society that has ever existed. The uses to which we put our aggregate wealth and the way we distribute it will determine whether our descendants will live at peace or war, in a healthy environment or a toxic wasteland, and as citizens of a free republic or as subjects of an oligarchy.

Recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe that our country is headed in the wrong direction. I shall argue that Aristotle, or more precisely, the Aristotelean philosophical tradition, has something to tell us about what is wrong with our present course and what we can do to correct it.

Here are the main points that I would like to make today.

1. We live in a wealthy post-industrial society. 
2. We have developed a consumer economy to distribute our aggregate wealth. 
3. Our current patterns of distribution are not sustainable. 
4. Aristotelean practical philosophy offers an alternative pattern of distribution: instead of a consumer economy, a “eudaimonic” economy, i.e., one in which education and research displace consumer spending as the most important category of economic activity. 
5. Universal access to postsecondary education (UAPSE) is a feasible first step toward a eudaimonic economy. 

So, beginning with point #1, what do I mean by this? By ‘wealthy’ I simply mean that we have more than enough resources to provide for the needs of everyone in our society. In other words, we have a surplus to distribute.

Our great wealth is due to the resources at our disposal, certain national and cultural characteristics, and most importantly, due to our technology. We are not the first society to face the problems that arise when technological changes lead to great increases in wealth. Lewis Mumford has done extensive diachronic and cross-cultural research on the ways in which technological development and the economic growth that goes with it can be directed toward ends that are authoritarian and destructive or toward ends that disperse power and promote creativity. For example, ancient Egypt faced this cultural crossroads when it developed agriculture. Under the Pharaohs, a tiny ruling elite appropriated the surplus and decided how it would be distributed and what it would be used for. Under this system, very little of the surplus went to those who produced it; some went to arts and sciences, but most was expended on luxuries for the elite, monumental architecture, wars of expansion, and coercive control of the populace. Although our current system is less coercive and distributes wealth more widely than that of the Pharaohs, Mumford still draws some uncomfortable parallels between our society and theirs.

What I mean by “post-industrial” will require a bit more explication. I’m using the sociologist Daniel Bell’s account of post-industrial society. Bell defines “post-industrial” in terms of a society’s occupational structure. In a pre-industrial society most people spend their days extracting food or raw materials from the environment. In an industrial society most people spend their days fabricating material goods. In a post-industrial society, most people spend their days performing other kinds of work, much of which Bell subsumes under the rubric of “processing”. Here is a breakdown of the U.S. labor force in 2007, according to the CIA World Factbook:

• farming, forestry, and fishing 0.6% 
• manufacturing, mining, transportation, and crafts 22.6% 
• managerial, professional, and technical 35.5% 
• sales and office 24.8% 
• other services 16.5% 

Notice that the category of professional, managerial, and technical workers is the largest single category of occupation, and that these jobs require postsecondary education.

This brings us to what I mean by “a consumer economy” in point #2. In our post-industrial society, very few of us actually produce anything; most of us make our living by selling goods produced by others or by selling services. Moreover, most of the goods and services that most of us sell are ones that our great-grandparents either would have regarded as luxuries or had never even heard of during their lifetimes. We are of course buyers as well as sellers, and many of us spend more of our earnings on such products than we do on food or shelter.

The result is that our economy revolves around the consumption of these luxuries. We are told that the U.S. economy is “driven” by consumer spending, and reports of retail sales figures have become as much a part of the Christmas season as nativity scenes. It seems that, increasingly, we work more than we want to in order to be able buy goods and services we don’t really need from other people, so that they can buy goods and services they don’t really need from us. But not participating in this distribution pattern based upon the exchange of luxuries is not a realistic option for most of us, for those who fail to participate are denied secure access to even the most basic necessities.

Although consumer spending constitutes over 70% of our GDP, two other components also merit special attention for the role they play in distributing our aggregate wealth: the military-industry complex and the FIRE sector [finance, insurance, and real estate]. But due to time constraints I will focus mainly on the consumer economy.

So why are these patterns of distribution a problem? The benefits of living in a wealthy society are plain enough. But there are also costs associated with our current patterns of distribution, and that brings us to main point #3. The vast surplus wealth generated by the American economy is being used in ways that threaten our social and political institutions, the environment, and our national security. For this talk I’ll focus on threats to our political institutions.

Some alarming trends have emerged in the past 30 years. This was the economic model that guided policymakers from approximately 1947-1972: a growing economic pie, bigger portions for the poor and middle class, and for the rich, a smaller slice in relative terms, but in absolute terms their wealth was still growing. The 70s were a time of transition, and since 1981, we have discarded this model in favor of one in which the pie is still growing, but the rich are getting a bigger slice of that bigger pie, while the poor are losing ground and middle class are treading water (sometimes mixed metaphors are apt).

In his book Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips explores this phenomenon and shows that the U.S. has become, as he puts it, “the most polarized and inequality-ridden of the major Western nations.” (xi)

Phillips writes,

Between 1979 and 1989 the portion of the nation’s wealth held by the top 1 percent had nearly doubled, from 22 percent to 39 percent. By the mid-nineties, some economists estimated that the top 1 percent had captured 70 percent of all earnings growth since the mid-seventies. (xiii)

. . . the unprecedented percentage gains made [during the 80’s and 90’s] by the top strata of 2000 . . . occurred alongside a relative stagnation of the middle class and a decline in the net worths of the bottom 60 percent of Americans. Real disposable (after tax) income for nonsupervisory workers peaked in the late 1960s. Debt taken on by the bottom two-fifths of the population rose so sharply that by 1995 their inflation-adjusted net worths had fallen below 1973 levels. (xviii)

Phillips argues that this concentrated wealth has fueled financial manipulation, speculation, and corruption. The many examples of this include the savings & loan bailout of 1989-1992, the technology stocks bubble of the 1990s, the accounting scandals of the early 2000s (Enron et al.), and the rising costs of political campaigns (we can add the recent real estate bubble to this list). Phillips also argues that, despite rhetorical support of free markets, government policies under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton have intervened on behalf of the wealthy.

Now we come to main point #4. What does Aristotle have to tell us about this? Applying Aristotlean ethical and political philosophy to the current situation generates both a diagnosis and a cure. The diagnosis is that our polity is degenerating from a republic into an oligarchy. The cure is that we must move away from our current consumption-oriented economy toward what I call a “eudaimonic economy”, that is, one in which education and research displace consumer spending as the most important component of our economy.

Let me elaborate. When I speak of Aristotelean ethical and political philosophy I am speaking not only of Aristotle’s works but also of the tradition of republican political thought that develops from the normative framework that Aristotle articulated.

According to Aristotle, eudaimonia – “the good life” -- is a life of contemplation or study, as opposed to a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, honor, or wealth. Achievement of eudaimonia is the ultimate end toward which human activity is directed, and the purpose of a legitimate state is to make eudaimonia possible for its citizens.

Applying the concept of eudaimonia to a post-industrial economy leads to the conclusion that a legitimate post-industrial state should direct surplus resources toward education and research to the greatest extent possible, thereby enabling its citizens to engage in contemplative pursuits (the arts would also merit support if eudaimonia is construed broadly). Let us suppose for the sake of argument that our economy may be called eudaimonic when 51% of working American citizens make their living from occupations that are related to education or research. Although education and research are increasingly important sectors of the U.S. economy, consumer spending is presently bigger both in terms of the share of GDP and in terms of the number of persons employed. Much of our surplus wealth is also directed toward the military-industrial complex and the financial sectors.

Now, what is the connection between eudaimonia and republicanism? Eudaimonia is the goal of a legitimate state. Aristotle and his republican successors theorized about the possible forms that a legitimate state might take, and which of those forms was most stable and least susceptible to corruption. According to this tradition, republic is the form of government that meets these criteria.

For example, here is the schema of Polybius, a historian and Stoic philosopher of the 2nd century BC:







Polybius classifies forms of government according to whether the ruling class consists of one, a few, or many, and whether the government is genuine (legitimate), meaning that it promotes the good life for all its citizens, or perverted, meaning that it promotes the good life only for the ruling faction. Thus there are six basic forms of government. Governments may also be defective in that they misunderstand what the good life really is, but that’s a separate issue.

According to Polybius, the six basic forms are unstable and tend to succeed each other in a cycle, as each genuine form (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) degenerates into its corresponding perversion (tyranny, oligarchy, ochlocracy), which is in turn overthrown by the next genuine form. The way to get off this merry-go-round of instability is to form a republic, which is a mixed (or balanced) government that combines the strengths of the three genuine forms. We see here the germ of the idea of checks and balances.

Republican theorists also concern themselves with the qualities that individual citizens must have in order for the state to succeed. This is the idea of civic virtue, meaning the virtue of a person qua citizen, which is not necessarily identical with the virtue of a person qua human being. Personal independence and a willingness to separate personal interests from public affairs, and to subordinate the former to the latter, emerge as the key components of civic virtue. Republican theorists also recognize that in order for the state to be stable, the middle class must predominate. When the citizenry is polarized between the rich and the poor, community breaks down and the state is prone to civil discord or revolution.

The framers of our Constitution were strongly influenced by this tradition, but they were also influenced by another tradition of political philosophy that arose in the aftermath of the English Civil War, namely Liberalism. (By Liberalism, I mean the school of thought that includes contractarian theorists such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls, Utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill, and mainstream economists from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman.) Liberalism turned out to be much more congenial to the interests of the rising capitalist class than the older republican tradition and largely, but not completely, eclipsed the latter (cf. Sandel).

There are many interesting points of contrast between these two traditions, of which I shall mention only two: firstly, Liberalism denies that there is such a thing as the good life for human beings that a government should promote; according to Liberalism there are only various individual preferences, and government should not promote any one way of life over the others. Secondly, in place of the republican concern with civic virtue, Liberalism emphasizes the importance of secure property rights as a basis for a sound state.

So how would a eudaimonic economy help us avoid degenerating into oligarchy? Let’s take a closer look at the oligarchic threat.

Oligarchy is rule by a wealthy minority; at its worst, that minority is hereditary. The American republic has not remained static with regard to democracy and oligarchy. At any given point in its history, it has been in motion toward one or the other of these poles. During the Jacksonian period, it moved toward democracy. During the Gilded Age, it moved toward oligarchy: the railroad magnates, “robber baron” capitalists, and trusts were able to use their wealth to corrupt government at all levels, including the U.S. Senate and federal judiciary. The instituting of popular election of senators loosened their grip on the Senate, but the ideological imprint they left on the judiciary lasted well into FDR’s presidency.

From 1933-1980, America became increasingly democratic. Income disparity was reduced. Organized labor won the right to organize. Great gains were made in the areas of civil rights for minorities. Regulatory agencies and liability standards helped balance the interests of individual citizens and consumers against the interests of large enterprises. The airwaves were declared to be public property, and the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” allowed citizens with varying views to present their opinions on broadcast media. Control of the media was dispersed.

Unfortunately, our polity has lurched toward oligarchy during the past thirty years, a trend that has accelerated since 1980. Oligarchical moves have been disguised as attacks on “big government”. “Government is not the solution, it’s the problem!” Reagan said; “Starve the beast!” say reactionaries today. This period has seen a number of oligarchical trends, that is, trends that tend to concentrate power and wealth in fewer hands, and to reduce the accountability of those who exercise that power:

• Growing income disparity. 
• Weakened labor unions. 
• Weakened regulations concerning financial practices, environmental protection, product safety, and workplace safety. 
• Concentration of media ownership. 
• Rising costs for political campaigns. 
• De-funding of services for middle- and lower- income citizens, such as student aid, welfare, and healthcare for the poor. 
• International trade treaties that promote global capital but do not address labor or environmental issues, and the abuse of international trade treaties to circumvent national and local laws that do. 
• Decreasingly progressive taxation, which places the burden of supporting government disproportionately on the working poor and middle class, and exacerbates income inequality. 
• Weakening of the idea of a loyal opposition 

A eudaimonic economy would counter these oligarchic trends by redirecting resources away from concentrated wealth and the corrupt uses of it toward large-scale investment in education and research. Put simply, money that is spent on education and research is money that is not spent on political advertising, lobbyists’ salaries, etc. It is also not spent on wasteful consumer spending, or unnecessary military adventures and weapons systems, or speculative bubbles in securities or real estate. But there are less obvious ways in which education in particular is important. For a post-industrial republic, education is essential to two projects: the development of civic virtue and the preservation of the middle class.

The republican tradition has historically emphasized arms and property as bases of civic virtue and liberty, for these were thought to ensure the independence of the citizen. Those who were dependent upon others for livelihood or protection (dependent in the sense that these others could take away that livelihood or protection at will) were subjects, not citizens.

Concerning arms, the citizen soldier was the paradigm of courage for Aristotle, who also said that this sort of courage was the virtue most likely to be present in “the many”, and similarly Machiavelli thought that participation in the militia was essential to civic virtue. The second amendment of the U.S. Constitution is an echo of early modern republican debates about the dangers of a standing army and older ideas about the need for citizens to take part in their own defense. This is a timely topic, but unfortunately I cannot go into it further here. [I will go into it on this blog --MDR 2018]

Concerning property, in pre-industrial times, possession of a suitable amount of land and the equipment necessary to work it ensured economic independence. Lack of independence made one subject to one’s patron’s whims and led therefore to a servile condition. The ownership of a modest amount of land also bred virtue insofar as it required one to attend to the business of running one’s estate, and certain virtues such as liberality could not be exercised without a minimum of means. Such considerations influenced Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of a yeoman democracy, which is prefigured in Aristotle’s endorsement of democracies that limit the vote to husbandmen.

By the time of the founding of our republic, Liberal and republican thinkers agreed that securing property was a vital function of government (the most vital for Liberals, who, unlike republicans, were not concerned about the dangers of owning too much property). Securely held and fairly distributed real property (land) was also important insofar as it ensured the existence of a middle class, recognized by Aristotle and Cicero to be necessary for the stability of the state. Thus, in a republic, civic virtue goes hand-in-hand with a stable and harmonious class structure.

Home ownership is still an important component of the American Dream, but we can no longer conceive of independence as it was conceived in pre-industrial times, with its paradigm of the relatively self-sufficient gentleman or yeoman farmer who produced his own food on his estate and bore arms in a citizen’s militia. The technological basis for our society entails a complex interdependence among citizens who perform various specialized functions. Most of us do recognize this, implicitly or explicitly; those who live “off the grid” are exceptional.

This brings us again to education. For most Americans, economic independence, in the sense of being able to support oneself, is based on being able to exercise skills that are in demand. This means that having a profession or skilled trade, not land ownership, is the basis of economic security and relative independence, and having a profession or skilled trade usually requires post-secondary formation. Therefore, for most Americans, access to postsecondary education is necessary for the economic independence that is one of the bases of republican civic virtue.

Now for point #5. I’m not going to say much about the feasibility of UAPSE because, frankly, proving the feasibility of UAPSE is too easy to be interesting. (There are approximately 18 million college students in the U.S. Giving each of them a grant of $5000/year would cost less than what we are spending on the Iraq war, and this investment would pay for itself well before today’s freshmen retire.)

Moreover, UAPSE is only a first step toward a eudaimonic economy. So, in the time I have left, I’d like to briefly mention some other steps we can take to move in that direction. Here are some more things we could do to shift our surplus resources away from consumerism and the oligarchic concentration of wealth toward a eudaimonic economy:

• Fund more basic research. 
• Promote lifelong education. 
• Reduce teacher-student ratios. 
• Lengthen K-12 school years. 
• Expand offerings (not just university course offerings, but, e.g., foreign language instruction in elementary school). 
• Provide greater access to early education. 
• Increase after-school programs. 
• Provide more opportunities for professional development for educators. 
• Increase support for public libraries. 
• Provide adequate arts, music, and physical education in every school. 
• Shorten the work week. 

That last one is probably the least obvious. A shorter workweek would be conducive to a eudaimonic economy by facilitating lifelong education. Access to lifelong education is of little benefit if people do not have the time to make use of it. A shorter workweek would allow people the option of combining career-oriented work and study, and would enable them to upgrade their skills in response to technological changes. It would also counteract some of the harmful effects of consumerism upon the family by giving people more time to spend with their spouses and children.

America has experimented with large-scale investments in postsecondary education in the past, with the land-grant colleges and the G.I. Bill being perhaps the most conspicuous examples. The successes of these initiatives exceeded the expectations of their authors. The time has come for another round of massive investment in America’s human capital. The Aristotelean and republican tradition of practical philosophy offers a coherent normative rationale for doing so. Unfortunately, Liberalism, which is the dominant political ideology of our society, offers no such rationale and in fact supports the status quo. In order to achieve a eudaimonic economy, it may be necessary to overcome certain Liberal convictions about the role of government and the nature of political association.

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Copyright 2008 M. D. Robertson. The author grants permission to reprint, republish, or distribute this work with attribution for non-commercial purposes.

[Orthographical note: Macintyre and many others prefer "Aristotelian". I prefer "Aristotelean" on etymological grounds. --MDR 2018]