Aristotle's Class Consciousness

That the rich and the poor should have a naturally antagonistic relationship seems to have been accepted as a matter of course by Aristotle. Since rich and poor exist in most societies, their opposition to one another plays an influential role in establishing the nature of the government. Where the rich hold upper hand in a state an oligarchy can be established; where the poor are powerful a democracy can be formed. Aristotle feels that neither the poor nor the rich are the best suited to rule, however, because the poor will always be seeking to take the riches of the wealthy while the wealthy must always be worried about fending off the poor. The middle class, being neither poor enough to want to steal from the rich nor rich enough to be targeted by the poor, is less encumbered with wealth and not overwhelmed with need, and so is naturally better able to govern. Aristotle also praises the form of government that is midway between oligarchy (essentially rule of the rich) and democracy (usually rule of the poor) which he calls polity -- it is a blending of elements of oligarchy and democracy that can, like all of the forms of government Aristotle discusses, take various forms.

I feel uneasy with some aspects of Aristotle's class analysis, though I acknowledge there are universal truths to be found in his words as well. Aristotle too often seems to dismiss the poor as either criminals in fact or would-be criminals who are simply awaiting favorable circumstances to seize the wealth of others. That the poor should be more likely to steal than others makes sense; desperate circumstances can bring out the worst as well as the best in men. Crime statistics bear this out, but the numbers are not so overwhelming that the poor should as a class be assumed to be criminals, in my opinion. The criminals among the poor do not necessarily target the rich, either, as the rich have the greatest means to protect themselves; middle class and even other impoverished people are frequently victims of convenience for the criminals who live near to them. Additionally, the phenomenon of corporate, white-collar crime seriously brings into question the notion that any person can ever be assumed to be content with what he or she has merely because he or she has "enough" from our perspective. The middle class cannot be trusted to act fairly just because of their position in society. Of course, I completely give Aristotle a pass for not knowing about insider trading and other forms of modern white-collar crime, and I absolutely acknowledge that Aristotle was writing about the world as he knew it in his time, not in ours. At the same time, I do think he could have been fairer to the poor and more skeptical of the middle class.

Book link: Aristotle's Politics