The Labour party’s tagline for the forthcoming general election is: ‘For the many, not the few.’ Aristotle, who understood this as ‘For the poor, not the rich’, thought this a recipe for conflict and proposed a solution of which Mrs May would approve.
Suspicious of monarchy, Aristotle favoured two styles of constitution: oligarchy and democracy. The problem was that both systems ran the risk of creating an inherently unstable state. In a democracy, the poor would be in control by sheer weight of numbers; in an oligarchy, the rich would gain control (presumably) by sheer weight of influence. In either case, the two, at opposite ends of the spectrum, would be in perpetual conflict with each other, and the result would not be a just and well-governed state but its destruction.
For Aristotle, the ‘middle’ class was the answer. This, in the 4th century bc, referred to those citizens well enough off to be able to purchase the heavy armour that enabled them to serve as hoplites in the army —the ‘backbone’ of any state in that aggression-prone world — successful farmers and moderate property holders.
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