Aristotle's Economic Thought SCOTT MEIKLE CLAREl\'DON PRESS OXFORD 1995 OxfcmJ Un,wr111)1 Pms, Wallon Simi'!, OxfcmJ ox2 6or Oxf<ffll. N""' Yori, CalcuAllt<h1m ie aA,u.c lTil OaUn11d1 &Dlalfrl lato lSi aBlaoammb aDy ,/hi Flor-H.,,., Kon, /naMIII Karat:hi Kuala Lumpur Madros Madrid Mtlbouffll' Mt:nco Cicy Nairobi Paru Sin«aport Tai,,_; Toliyo Toronlo andassa,;;.,kacampan~ ,n Bnlin/bcidan Oxford. ti a tTad, marli of Orford. Uniwnil)I Prm Publuhed in IM Uni/GI Scald by Oxford Un1wml)I Prm /,u:, Ntiu Yori, eseoc1Mrilikl99.5 AU ri,rhi. rtlnWd. No part of lhis pubhcah"" may I,,, rq,rodtsaJ. sr.,rfd 111 a retrieval J)IJ/<!111. orira,umirka. ill anyfurm.orby<1ny inuaru. wiclwut tM prior pnmwion in wrilin« of Oxford Uniwnil)I Pru, W11h,n lht UK, uc,p11ons au <11/owtd in mptd of any f<1ir CU<1hn,f for //u, pu,p<m"ofuu<1rchorpriuatesludy, orr;nlirinnor.....-,..,,ospnm,cka undn clu, C"P.)'r1'111. Derigns and Pai.mi. Act, 1988, or in IM cau of '"P'llf'"ph1ercproduc1ion inac:cord.i11Uwilh 1/wkmuo/rh, /iunc.es wwd by Che CCIJ'Yl"'llhl Licmsin,f A,gmcy. Enqu,nn conum,..,. rq,...ducrion<n1ind.elhtukmuondinolM'«>11nlriashot,ldbr unr co clu, R;,hi. D.,,..r1111m1, Oxford Uniwnil)I Pross. <1l1Maddroudbow British Liln-,iry C:11<1/opin,f in Pultlia11ion 0414 D<11<1<111<111.aWt L1br<1ry of Cong,tss C:ilalogi"l ,n Public..1,on O..ra Mnlrlr,S,;ou Ansro1k", uonomit 1ho,ch1 I S,;o11 M~lilt /ndPdu ln"blicgrophic<I/ ,efnen«1 <Ind indft J Aruror/,-Conrnbuhorum"""'"°"'"" 2 Econmnia History I T,tl, 11B77 M-4.5 199.5 330 dc20 95 -10594 ISBNO J98UOl)24 13579108642 St1bylPlan,n,.kSatr iVn 1(Ui,1,.(.,A b8ni1n<1,d1>o1 n)Lld on.u,d-f,..p<1pnby BidrllnL1d, Guildford f!f Kine'• Lyr1n To Kirsten 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)