Aristotle’s Economic Thought

223 Pages·1997·3.9 MB·English

by  Scott Meikle

Aristotle's Economic
Thought
SCOTT MEIKLE
CLAREl\'DON PRESS OXFORD
1995
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is a pleasure to thank my friends and colleagues Pat Shaw
and Chris Martin for reading large parts of the manuscript,
and for much critical discussion. To Hillel Tickt in and Geoff
Kay I owe a special debt for having introduced me to the
murky depths of exchange value.
Some of the material has appeared in print before. I am
grateful to the Journal of Hellenic Studies, Polis, the Classical
Quarterly, Phronesis, and Basil Blackwell, for permission to
make use of it here.
Lindsay Judson's article 'Aristotle on Fair Exchange' deals
in part with an earlier article of mine on the same subject,
which appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies in 1991, and
which reappears in a slightly altered form as Chapter 7 of the
present book. Judson's article also presents arguments address
ing issues that are fundamental to the interpretation of
Aristotle offered here, but it unfortunately reached me too late
to be taken account of
Translations are always from Ross, Rackham, Barker, or
Irwin. On the few occasions when another translator has been
used, this has been indicated in the text.
I acknowledge the granting of one term of study leave
towards preparing the book by the Department of Personnel
Services (Academic) of Glasgow University.
S.M.
Glasgow
1994
Abbreviations vm
Introduction 1
1 Exchange Value: Nicomachean Ethics, 5. 5 6
2 Ch-reia and Demand: Nicomachean Ethics, 5 28
Exchange: Politics, 1 43
4 The Integrity of the Analysis 68
5 Money: Politics, 1. 8-10 87
6 Neo-Classical Interpretation 110
7 Justice in Exchange: 'As Builder to Shoemaker' 129
8 The Ancient 'Economy' and its Literature 147
9 Nature and Commensurability 180
Bibliography 201
Index 212
ABBREVIATIONS
The works of Aristotle are abbreviated as follows:
Cat Categories
De Gen. An. De Generatione Animalium
De Part. An. De Partibw Animalium
EE Eudemian Ethics
/IA Historia Animalium
M,t Metaphysics
MM Magna Mo-ralia
NE Nicomachean Ethics
Pol. Politics
Rhet. Rhetoric
S. El. De Sophisticis Elenchis
INTRODUCTION
The influence of Aristotle's economic writing has beenjw.l,;
culablv i!eat, yet it amounts to fewer than half a dozen pages
of theftc"1ru1Chean Ethics and the Politics in the Bekker text.
It was the backbone of medieval thinking about commercial
behaviour and matters that we would call 'economic' .1 It still
provides the foundation for Catholic social teaching, and it was
an important influence in Islamic economic thought. It is usu
ally held to be the first analytical contribution to economics,
and histories of economic thought usually begin with it.2
Aristotle's theory of money substantially informed treatments
of the subject into the twentieth century, and most schools of
modern economic thought have had claims of Aristotelian
paternity made on their behalf, including Jevonian utility
theor~, mathematicaJ economics, neo-classical economics, and
The main texts are NE 5. 5 and Pol., l. 8-10. T.k..,inw-
re:tati n o t · · ven t e object of
Aristotle's inquiries is disputed. It has been seen as ~c
analysis, as entirely ~ and having nothing to do with eco
nomic analysis, and as snobbish political prejudice against
traders and money-makers. The chapters are usually thought
to lack intellectual cohesion, and to amount to little more than
an expression of aristocratic anti-business attitudes. Few parts
of the Aristotelian corpus are held in lower esteem, and they
are seldom included in selected editions of Aristotle's works.3
The chaos has appeared only in the past 120 years or so.
Over centuries of commentary the texts did not prove so trouble
some. The ancient commentaries did not make such heavy
1 On 111 rol, ,n med,rval though! about commau and mONey, see O Lan1holm.
\k',alih <111<1' Mor,ey 111 1M Ans1a1,ban T~<!d,1ian: A Shady in &hoki'l'h, &.onom" S011Tus
(Oalo, 1983)
• Plato II u,\Wly high on 1lw: lilt of honaurabl, mfflliona, bu1 h, ttb In.a amwt,on
ba:auw ht: 1, Ins sy1temat1c and uialyt1c.d.
' ~ ,.,. J L Ad.nil (ed.). A N,w Al'\J101k ReatUT (Oxford. 1987)
lnt-roduction
weather of them, and neither did Aquinas, whose analysis of
NE 5. 5 is superior to most modern work.4 The texts have not
been badly mangled in the transmission, the substance of the
chapters is not especially obscure, and the logic of the argu
ment is not particularly difficult to unravel. Since the chaos is
of recent origin, perhaps its source lies nearer home, in some
feature of modern thought which was absent from the thought
of earlier times. If so, the obvious suspicion is that it will have
something to do with the modern subject of economics, which
has loomed so large in recent interpretation.
~_ha~ been a dif~_y!iar to ou~ .QWn ti_me in ~«?_!121·
~h~~0it~d1~~~d~1i~f~ ~T~~::rn~i ~!~f~~e~~
tury, just when economics made its first serious impact on the
study of atltiqu1ty.5 Sincetlien, the discussion Of the social
nature of antiquity has generated a division between 'mod
ernists' and 'primitivists' and the question at issue hefiveen
fnemii.as been the usefulness or otherwise of trying to com
prehend antiquity in terms drawn from modern economic the
ory. The_ '.1'.1'1-QQ~!~i~t' yi_ew is that the ancient economy is,_tQ be
understood a.:Lan._eady.-aAd-retlft'K:&ed version of what we are
f;:i,miliar with.....tada.x-not as something different in kind, al\d
that it is to be studied by bringing to bear the same economic
concepts we use to study the economy of our own time.
Against this, Finley and others (the 'primitivists'l .. h!'-ve argµed
at1n'!_dat talinact! !th!!l:t!~ uecseo .n.o ofm mico'.d aecmtiv .ietyc.o nwoams icm cco(enecde Pdt.Sif fieSr efantta li"n" t Ck) ionudr, ·
atteT.E!ilc 1,cdecstaod it
· A powerful political agenda has lain just beneath the surface
of the dispute. Meyer made this quite clear from the begin
ning. He declared, with no attempt at concealment, that
'Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries stands as much under
• l,qu,n~•-Com......,/,:i,y on lh• Nicoinachmn E1hics. Iran• C I Lniin11:rr (C}11c111".
191'.,4/,I 41728,np -12:Hf
'An ,ntru<llll:101)' ai::cciunl can be found in M. M Auahn and I' \',dal N1qud.
1;,,......,,,,. ,..,JS«,../ /1,.1.,.,. of Anci.ml Gruct An /lurod11e1inn (London. 1977i. pt I.
,h I S.,.. a.Joo f-.d~d W,!l"s account uf the dcbi1c wp un11I the ~ond Wnrld War
,n "Tm1• quartt de .,«le Jc rcclwrchH 1w l'f<:DnOfflic 1rccquc anl1qu~·. ,\n,w/t,, CJ
[IC,.'i4J.722
lnt,.oduction
the sign [unter elem ZeichenJ of capitalism as England has stood
since the eighteenth century and Germany since the nineteenth
century.'6 Such forthrightness is uncommon today, but if the
terms of engagement have become less frank, the agenda is
essentially unchanged.
The dispute extended to Greek 'economic' literature, and
battle lines were drawn over the question of whether there is
anything in Hesiod, Lysias, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Plato,
Aristotle, the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica, and the rest,
that can properly be called 'economic' on any reasonable def
inition of the term. Aristotle's chapters are by far the most ana
lytical and searching of the ancient 'economic' sources; indeed
there is nothing else like them in Greek literature, and their
interpretation has naturally been at the heart of this aspect of
the dispute.
The most striking fact about surviving Greek literature deal
ing with what today we would call 'economics' is how little
there is of it. Laistner's collection of the main texts, question
beggingly entitled Greek Economics, makes only a slim vol
ume.7 What there is of it, apart from Aristotle's contributions,
is not in any sense theoretical or analytical, and more than one
modern commentator has used such terms as 'banal' and 'corn·
monplace' to describe it. Both sides of the dispute have had to
have some explanation of these peculiarities.
On the modernist side it is claimed that it is hard to believe
that the Greeks bothered less than we do about providing for
life's needs and luxuries, and if that is what the study of eco
nomics is all about, as it is on some definitions, then it is sur
prising that the Greeks should have done as little of it as the
primitivists claim. The Greeks were curious and inventive in
just about everything else, so it is a mystery that they should
" E. Mtytr, c1t«I m H. Bollr.esttin. funom1, Life 1n G~uu's Golden Agr. ed E J
Jonkrrs (L..t,dm. 1958). 148 9 Whm Meyer was wntmg, the SPD (Soz1al
demohall!!Cht Paru:1 Deutschluids- German social-democrahc party). ltd by
K.iutslr.y, Btnuttm, and L1ebknecht, was growing vigorously and causing alarm
Bollr.n1em noted 1ha1 Mtyer's opinion, and its pretty clear underlying mtsS.1.gt that
c1v1hzauon is to be iden1ifitd wilh !he syswn of market economy or cap1tahsm, w;u
mdor$00 by mmy scho]ill"$, especially in Germany
1 M L. W Luslner, GTu/c &t,n,,mic, (London. IQ23)