Justification of the State and Anarchist Alternatives

A Dissertation for a Masters Degree in Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand

Author: Tristen Taylor, Copyleft 2007

Student Number: 9510766A

Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Thaddeus Metz, Acting Head of the Department of Philosophy, University of the Witwatersrand

Number of Pages: 137

Word count: 43,339

DECLARATION

I declare that this thesis is my own work. It is being submitted for the degree of Masters in the discipline of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand and I confirm that it has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination at any other University.

NAME: Tristen Robert Spencer Taylor

SIGNATURE:

DATE: 13^th of February 2007

Acknowledgments

As Aristotle clearly points out, individuals belong to communities and have friends. Nothing they do is in isolation and this work has been no exception to that truth. In no particular order, I'd like to thank: Ben Gale for loaning me laptop after laptop, my comrades at Umzabalazo we Jubilee for allowing to take some of the ideas expressed here and putting them into practice, Prof. Thad Metz for his patience and understanding during the long and silent intervals of between submissions, Doctors Myra and Rob Taylor for their moral support and urgings to get the beast finished, Dale Morris and Helga Halverson for their patient listening (and reading) to my ideas and their critical comments, Prof. Mark Leon for inspiring me to begin this project, Oliver and Keri Taylor for buying books in the US and sending them to me, Netisha Moodley for her understanding, and Katelin Taylor who has provided me with the ultimate necessary and sufficient reason to seek social justice and structural political change. If I've missed you in this list, my apologies and, please, take no offense for none was meant.

Table of Contents

I. Part One—Introduction pg. 5

II. Part Two—The State pg. 22

III. Part Three—A State of Perfection pg. 62

IV. Part Four—The Polis pg. 104

V. Reference List pg. 134

Part One: Introduction

“Yet even the debased recent version of the New Economy had an important utopian component—a dream of meaningful work, flattened hierarchies, and the democratization of ownership.”

--Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, pg. 262¹

We are in trouble. The 20^th Century was marked with genocide, war, famine, hatred, and deeply disturbing economic trends. Current levels of inequality mirror that of the 1920s. Globalisation has resulted, through the mobility of capital and lack of mobility amongst workers, in twenty-something financial traders sitting behind desks in New York and Tokyo and controlling economies of countries across the globe.

Africa has faced some of the worst of the 20^th Century. Colonialism, imperialism, repeated famines, Apartheid, genocide, and continued naked exploitation by the West. Three point eight million dead in the DRC from 1998 to 2003, 800,000 killed in 100 days in Rwanda, and the current genocide in Darfur. HIV/Aids is decimating the continent's youth; what do South Africans do on Saturdays? They go to funerals.

Furthermore, the entire global economy is based on fossil fuels (coal and petroleum). To witness the depths to which we have a petroleum economy, take a look around you. Without petroleum, modern agriculture could not exist, there would be no cars or airplanes, no computers, no modern medicine, no electricity. There would be no plastic materials. There would be no modern economy, and we would all (those of us alive that is, the 20^th century growth in population has been made possible by petroleum) be riding horses to and from our subsistence farms. Quite simply, if the supply of petroleum dried up tomorrow, the world would enter a period of such utter economic collapse that terming it the “apocalypse” could be considered an understatement. Many of us would starve to death within weeks.

And, both petroleum and coal are running out. You might be unlucky enough to live to see the day when the Saudi taps run dry. We have reached the ecological limits of capitalist growth, global warming being the most prominent of these limits.

So, what are we to do? Could political philosophy help? In the 19^th Century, Marx thought he had the answer. Communism, mostly through the faults of his followers, failed in the 20^th century. In 1873, the contemporary and great adversary of Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, warned of the dangers of Marx's political theory:

They [Marx and the Communists] will concentrate all administrative power in their own strong hands, because the ignorant people are in need of a strong guardianship; and they will create a central state bank, which will also control all the commerce, industry, agriculture, and even science. The mass of the people will be divided into two armies, the agricultural and the industrial, under the direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute the new privileged political-scientific class.²

Quite so. But Bakunin's great enemy wasn't Marx or communism. It was the State itself. There has been a recurrent stream of thinking running through political philosophy that our problems start with the State, and, in order to have moral autonomy and freedom, we'd have to do away with the State. This is the basis of anarchism.

Radical elements within (mostly) Western societies have advocated abandonment (or destruction) of the State at least since William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793. Subsequent to Godwin, there has been a stream of revolutionaries and thinkers who have from an ethical basis promoted the anarchist ideal, from both the left and the right, up until the present: Pierre Proudhon, Max Stirner, Mikhail Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Murray Bookchin, Murray Rothbard, and Noam Chomsky, to highlight a few.

Further, these individuals have been highly influential in world affairs. For example, Ghandi's principle of non-violence were inspired by Leo Tolstoy (who based his opposition on the inherent violence of the State and the Christian belief in doing no evil); the results of Ghandi's application of non-violence resistance and village community economics (inspired by Kropotkin's writings) kicked the British Empire out of India.³ When Peter Kropotkin died in 1921, a funeral procession five miles long and flying the black flag snaked its way through Moscow. Murray Rothbard, along with others, has been responsible for installing a radical, stateless version of capitalism into the economic consciousness of some of America's current elite. The dismantling of the welfare state in America and globalisation were, in no small measure, born from this idea. Noam Chomsky remains a thorn in the side of American administrations since the Vietnam War, with his books currently being punted in the UN's General Assembly.

The idea of a stateless society has not been confined to only Europe and America. During early 20^th century, anarcho-syndicalism (the mobilisation of the working class into unions that would then smash the State and install a new non-State order) was alive and well in South Africa. Moreover, the anarcho-syndicalist tradition in South Africa pioneered interracial working class solidarity, and in 1917 formed the first African trade union—the Industrial Workers of Africa. This tradition also pre-dates the Marxist tradition in South Africa.⁴

However, all of the above anarchist thinkers & movements were born during or after the rise of the modern State, which is a relatively modern phenomenon. As pointed out in Part Two, the modern State arose some time after 1490AD. Is the idea that the State cannot be justified (especially in relation to an alternative form of societal organisation) as recent as the rise of the European nation-state?

Currently, the concept of philosophical anarchism (political philosophy's version of skepticism) lurks in journals and university halls like Nietzsche's blond beast, seeking to rip apart the foundation of most political philosophy and theory. Robert Paul Wolff coined the phrase 'philosophical anarchism' during his attack on the State, based upon an individual's right to moral autonomy. He has concluded that:

The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled. It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative authority of the state...Hence, the concept of de jure legitimate state would appear to be vacuous, and philosophical anarchism would seem to be the only reasonable political belief for an enlightened man.⁵

The attack on the State has come from other quarters within the liberal philosophical tradition. A. John Simmons has contested that consent theories (and the principles of gratitude and fair play) are unable to provide the basis of political obligation; i.e. that individuals are under no obligation to obey the State. If true, this guts the argument of consent theorists like Locke and Rousseau and has great implications for political philosophy. As Simmons states:

...another consequence of my conclusion about political obligation is that, at least on traditional models, it involves denying that there are any governments which are legitimate....⁶

The doubts brought about by these philosophers and others regarding the State's justification are so grave that Christopher Morris, in the excellent An Essay on the Modern State, can defend the State against anarchist alternatives only on practical grounds; he virtually declares the consent-based justification of Locke, Rousseau, et al. dead, and arguments against the State based on choice-protecting natural rights justification killers. Morris believes that non-State societies cannot exist in the modern world—they would be conquered by States, for example—and, thus, is willing to declare a State legitimate if it is reasonably just and minimally efficient.⁷

This thesis claims that the question of the State's justification has its roots much deeper than the Industrial Revolution or even the Enlightenment. The State's justification was fought out between Aristotle and Plato. Right at the beginning of Western philosophy, 2,300 years ago, there was a choice between two fundamentally different and competing visions of how best we should organise ourselves. We had a choice between Plato's Republic and Aristotle's polis, and, while the former was preferred option and in one form or another (if you'll excuse the pun) is still being replicated today. The central claims of this thesis are that Aristotle's polis is not a State, that Aristotle's ethics justify the polis relative to the State, and that a theoretical and revised version of the polis is justified relative to the State under Aristotelean ethics.

It is important to explore what was on offer from Aristotle's side. Not only has the entire body of Western philosophy been a response (in varying degrees) to the works of Ancient Greeks, Aristotle also had something that modern political philosophers don't have, a working, viable model of a non-State society. He had the Athenian polis, which provided him with a start. Aristotle's best polis was, by and large, a reformed version of Athens during the Golden Age. Aristotle believes that human perfection is only possible in such a society, and, if he is correct, then that has tremendous implications for how we should live. It could be that the last couple of millennia have been something of a mistake, and that the human race has lost its collective way.

Aristotle has become a much-misunderstood philosopher, primarily because of difficulties surrounding translations of his work (the fragmentary and seemingly contradictory nature of his works doesn't help either). As Carnes Lord (who has translated The Nicomachean Ethics) states:

Probably the greatest weakness in virtually all current work on Aristotle's practical writings is a lack of attention to the fundamental issue of translation. That the very real problems relating to the composition and transmission of the Aristotelian corpus have long overshadowed other hermeneutic is certainly not surprising, but the effect has been an unjustifiable neglect of what is arguably a more basic neglect of what is a more basic matter...In the case of Aristotle's practical or political writings, the question of purpose takes on acute importance for the reason just suggested.⁸

As this work hopes to explain (see Part Three & Four), English does not have equivalent terminology for many of Aristotle's key concepts; for example, polis does not equal city-state (or the State, as some translations have it), eudemonia is not mere happiness, and philia is more than we commonly see as friendship today⁹. Further, modern values (such as universal human rights) are often superimposed upon Aristotle's work and Greek history, and this distorts the picture. Throughout this work (but especially in Part Three) attempts will be made to clarify these concepts. This will require a fair amount of historical understanding.

However, one important concept so far has been assumed but nowhere near proved, the State. What is a State? Or, to be exact, what is the definition of the State? In order to effectively prove that the polis (or a variant thereof) is justified relative to the State according to Aristotelean ethic, we need to know what a State is.

At first glance, this seems to be a funny sort of query. States are all around us (in fact, they are the dominant form of social organisation), and we have no problems in talking intelligibly about them. Yet, pinning down what a State is and how it differs from empires, churches and other organisations is a devilish task. There are great grey expanses in declaring something a State; are Somalia and Afghanistan States? Is the European Union? Robert Nozick warns about the dangers of providing a solid definition of the State:

Formulating sufficient conditions for the existence of the state thus turns out to be a difficult and messy task.¹⁰

Despite that dire warning, Part Two will attempt to do just that. Starting with Lawrence Krader's maxim, “If you would know what a state is, look around you.”¹¹, a definition of the State will be arrived at via an analytical dissection of the few major definitions that do exist. The legal definition of a State (the Montevideo Convention of 1933) will be examined and found wanting, as will the substitution of government for the State. Max Weber's benchmark definition that the State, “The state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory”¹² will be addressed in some detail. This work will take and defend the alternative view that the legitimacy Weber talks about is a legal legitimacy and not a moral one. Further, it will also be contended that Weber's State is an ideal one and that really doesn't help as the institutions analysed are all non-ideal.

During this process, this definition of the State will be arrived at and defended: A State is a form of social organisation that essentially has A) a defined territory, B) a population, C) a government that is engaged in the organised use of force, D) a hierarchical structure.

A) to D) are essential conditions. In order for something to be a State it must have all four of these conditions. This definition of a State will be used to explain how other forms of social organisation (like empires) differ from States, and the concepts behind it will be elaborated in a pre-emptive defense.

If successful, Part Two will have have accomplished a great deal. It would have met Nozick's challenge and formed the basis from which the State can be philosophically analysed. Having a vague and elusive target is hardly conducive to clear rational thought. Let us hope this definition is argued well

Part Three's understanding of Aristotle's perfectionist ethics will set up the political discussion in Part Four (the role of the polis, modern polis and the State in promoting eudemonia). But what is perfectionism? Thomas Hurka, a neo-Aristotelian, in his aptly titled book, Perfectionism, provides an answer:

This moral theory starts from an account of the good life, or the intrinsically desirable life. And it characterizes this life in a distinctive way. Certain properties, it says, constitute human nature or are definitive of humanity—they make humans, human. The good life, it then says, develops these properties to a high degree or realizes what is central to human nature. Different versions of the theory may disagree about what the relevant properties are and so disagree about the content of the good life. But they share the foundational idea that what is good, ultimately, is the development of human nature.¹³

There seems to be an intuitive appeal to this kind of moral theory. Shouldn't we promote all that is good about us? Shouldn't the goal, even the reason for the existence, of humankind be to realise its full potential? When human beings deteriorate into communal violence, when neighbours hack to death the people they've know for thirty years as they did in Rwanda, when humans sink below beast and smash the skulls of infants, we not only feel shock and horror, but also a lingering feeling of utter and terrible waste. Human beings, as the only conscious and intelligent creatures we know of, are capable of so much more; that there is staggering potential for greatness, for perfection.

To achieve a perfectionist justification for a form of social organisation (say the State or the polis) doesn't require an agreement (or even an imaginary agreement) between the citizen and the State or polis. Neither does it necessarily require upholding certain inalienable rights. This kind of ethical theory requires the form of social organisation to promote the good life (for either all, many or a few of its citizens) in accordance with a particular view of human nature. The degree to which human perfection is obtained marks the value (if it is good or bad) of the form of social organisation. Maybe the likes of Christopher Morris would find more hope in this kind of theory for a defence of the State, or it might be that the State has another black mark against it. Analysing the State in terms of perfectionism could be the next great philosophical background, and a refuge from the beast of philosophical anarchism. But, as this work will show, Aristotle's perfectionism is best suited to the polis, not the State.

Perfection, it is also worthwhile noting, means more than happiness or pleasure, and is very distinct from utilitarianism in its most complex and simple forms. A society geared along perfectionist principles may not produce happy citizens or the maximisation of pleasure for an entire society, far from it. As Alfred Naquet remarked in L'Anarchie et le Collectivisme:

The true rôle of collective existence...is to learn, to discover, to know. Eating, drinking, sleeping, living, in a word, is a mere accessory. In this respect, we are not distinguished from the brute. Knowledge is the goal. If I were condemned to choose between a humanity materially happy, glutted after the manner of a flock of sheep in a field, and a humanity existing in misery, but from which emanated, here and there, some eternal truth, it is on the latter my choice would fall.¹⁴

If pleasure were to result from a perfectionist society, it would be a most welcome by-product, but not the end goal. Aristotle makes this point quite clearly in the Nichomachaen Ethics¹⁵ and dramatically in the following quote from Book I, Ch. V:

To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and men of the most vulgar type, seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. For there are, we may say, three prominent types of life- that just mentioned, the political, and thirdly the contemplative life. Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts, but they get some ground for their view from the fact that many of those in high places share the tastes of Sardanapallus¹⁶.

In Part Three, Aristotle's basic claim that the good life is attainable only by belonging to the correct kind of society (a polis) which educates its citizens in moral virtues will be set out. Moral virtues (such as courage and honour) and what this thesis will term “practical virtues” (friendship, health, long life) are integral components to the good life, which is a life lived in accordance with two specific types of rational action.

To understand this claim requires a fair chunk of history for coming to grips with the ancient concepts underpinning Aristotle's philosophy, especially in regards to what a citizen and a man are.¹⁷ Further, a detailed understanding of Ancient Greek attitudes to slavery also helps in understanding what Aristotle was up to. Part Three will spend a fair chunk of ink in establishing ancient values and concepts, and this helps in figuring out how Aristotle has been misunderstood.

Finally, Part Three will decant the key components of Aristotle's ethical theory. The aim is to find those parts of Aristotle ethics that are attractive and organise them in a manner that can be taken forward to the discussion in Part Four. In particular, this work will find the societal aspects of Aristotle work the most important.

But why should we focus on Aristotle alone? Surely philosophy has moved on, over two thousand years of thought must have produced something better; it can’t all be footnotes. There are a couple of reasons: As mentioned before, Aristotle (along with Plato) stands at the beginnings of Western philosophy, and it is always nice to start at the beginning, especially when Aristotle and Plato defined two distinct possibilities for the “correct” kind of society (see below) based upon ethical systems. This is worth investigating. Also, Aristotle's ethical theories, as Ian Johnston has pointed out, also conform to commonly held notions of ethics and is remarkably similar to how we teach our children to behave¹⁸ (see Part Three for further elaboration). We tend to this that a moral person is a virtuous one and that certain types of lives more worth living than others (for example, the life of a heroin addict is less worthwhile in moral terms than that of a committed social worker). In addition, Aristotle has been remarkably influential on other philosophers such as Marx and McIntyre. And, finally Aristotle treats ethics as integral to political action. He not only tells us how to live in accordance with the good life, but also how we should get there as individuals and as a collective whole. He answers the one of the big questions—How should we live?—of modern times by combining both ethics and politics. As A. D. Linsey states:

For Aristotle did not separate, as we are inclined to do, the spheres of the statesman and the moralist. In the Ethics he has described the character necessary for the good life, but that life is for him essentially to be lived in society.... It is the legislator's task to frame a society which shall make the good life possible. Politics for Aristotle is not a struggle between individuals or classes for power, nor a device for getting done such elementary tasks as the maintenance of order and security without too great encroachments on individual liberty. The state is ‘a community of well-being in families and aggregations of families for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life.’ The legislator is a craftsman whose material is society and whose aim is the good life.¹⁹

In Part Four of this work, the argument will be that Aristotle's polis is not a State, but an entirely different kind of social organisation. The polis fails to meet some of the essential characteristics of a State. However, as will be pointed out in Part Four, the Ancient polis has its own problems (such as slavery) that make it an unacceptable form of social organisation, despite it being best suited (at least for Aristotle) for human perfection. This does not mean that the idea behind the polis is dead, for there are key elements of the polis (mostly concerned with the citizen's political role in society) that can be incorporated into a theoretical modern polis²⁰.

This modern polis will then be defended against a series of practical objections regarding its viability. Could a modern polis produce electricity or enable its citizens to have the time for political and philosophical pursuits? While the modern polis will be reasonably defended against such objections, a huge hole in the theory will be exposed, that of the modern polis's economic structure (or lack of knowledge thereof). Much more work needs to be done on this point, for not only would any such economic structure have to meet the material requirements of a modern polis, it would also have to be in line with an Aristotelean-style perfectionism. Finally, the State's ability to provide the good life and install the correct kinds of virtues will be examined, with little solace for defenders of the State. In conclusion, Aristotle's ethics do not justified the State in relation to either the polis or the modern polis.

What won't be found in Parts Two, Three or Four is a basic overview of Plato's theory of the State. The Republic is not only vastly different from Aristotle's polis, but it was also different from the Athenian polis in which Plato lived. Further, as a student of Plato, Aristotle was fully aware of Plato's Republic and chose not to emulate it (this last point will surface in Part Four).

Plato's ideal society consists of three classes; the rulers (the Guardians), the military (soldiers), and the people (who's fate is to be ruled). This vision is of a highly stratified society, with a political elite comprised of philosophers making the decisions with a military enforcing those decisions internally and protecting the Republic from external attack (Republic, 414b). The people obey like good children. The philosophers (the Guardians) make collective decisions (although the best would be if a philosopher of great virtue were a king (Republic 473c-e, 474b-c), and are fit to rule for they have the best conception of justice (Republic, 411c-d). For Plato, the people do not have the intellectual ability to comprehend justice and make the correct decisions, only those who have been trained to do so (Republic, 374b-e). The Republic is an aristocracy where politics is a vocation for only the few.

Further, in the Crito, Plato provides a version of a contract theory as a reason to obey the State (to the best of this work's knowledge, this is the first, written contract theory regarding political obligation). As Socrates is about to be put to death, he is given the chance to escape. He refuses because it was Athens that supported him and he, in a kind of debt, is bound to obey the laws of Athens. He has a contract with the Athens, and it must be fulfilled, even if it means his death:

For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him...But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him.²¹

Is not Plato's Republic a State? It has a defined territory, a population (the people), a government (the Guardians make the decisions, the soldiers enforce them), and a hierarchical structure. Plato also gives a philosophical reason as to why the State should be obeyed. While the definition of a State in Part Two is aimed primarily at modern States, Plato's Republic fits the bill.

And, is not the Republic a lot like what we have today? Every country is controlled by a thin, elite political class that operates on the mostly unsaid assumption that it knows what is best for the populace, not the people themselves. Economic and geopolitical decisions are noted to be too complex for the ordinary working class person. The decisions of this elite political class are executed, with the sanction of organised force, through governments. Dissent is often marginalised with arguments similar to that of Socrates's; if you don't like it here, then emigrate, leave.

Hyperbole it is not to say that the Republic triumphed. We certainly didn't choose the Aristotelean polis.

To sum up, this work aims to be an important undertaking, for it strikes at the heart of all that we are. From birth to death, the State shapes our lives. The State demands strict obedience to the law, even to the point of demanding, at the point of a bayonet, that we wear a uniform, pick up a rifle and kill our fellow man. There seems to be something awfully suspicious about the current situation, and the mainstream liberal approach has been to invoke the mantel of reform: representative democracy over monarchy, bill of rights vs. arbitrary whims of dictators, socialism vs. capitalism, forty-hour week vs. serfdom, and so forth. All well and good, but what if there is a problem in the actual basic structure, in our choice of social organisation, of the State? Isn't that worth evaluating? True human flourishing might be possible only for individuals free from the State, not bound to it in life and death like Socrates. The modern polis may be our hope. For as Emma Goldman once said:

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence—too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King.²²

Part Two: The State

“The state itself has acquired a myth of power, endowed with a (mythical) will of its own, and is often an object of worship. Those who adore power for itself venerate the state, and create thereby a cult of the state.”

--Lawrence Krader, Formation of the State, pg. 63

Why define the State? Surely, as citizens of States, we already know what a State is. Like obscenity, we'll know a State when we see one; intelligent individuals can and do have deep, engaging and insightful conversations about how a State should act, its history and its future without ever needing to define it. Perfect strangers can meet in the night and discuss statecraft, never once referring to a dictionary, let alone obscure philosophical texts.

Further, the reader of this ill-written and badly-argued tract, it could be pointed out, has made it this far sans definition, so where's the need? Why bother? Save some paper, save a forest, save the species. Couldn't the State be evaluated (according to whatever moral theory happens to be this month's flavour) with the commonly held but unarticulated concept of the State?

Well, no. The commonly held, unarticulated concept of the State is vague, open to interpretation, and quite unhelpful in justifying the State, if for no other reason that this unspoken, unwritten 'definition' is impossible, by definition, to either verify or disprove. This endeavour, as pointed out in Part One, is an important one, far too important to rely on a subjective definition of this sort; what Takamiya thinks a State is may not be exactly what Chang-Ho thinks it is, and vice versa.

Without a clear, precise and objective definition of the State, this enquiry cannot move forward with any degree of certainty. The author would be like some nineteenth century European explorer arriving on the African Continent with an armful of mostly blank and highly inaccurate maps, a pith helmet, and bucket loads of hubris. No doubt travelling towards a sticky end.

Furthermore, the analogy between obscenity and the State breaks down like Detroit rolling iron circa 1979. The I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it definition²³ was used to make a legal ruling by a legal system that had not yet defined what constituted an article of pornography. This is not the case with the State. A legal definition—from a regional convention binding in the Americas—of the State was created over seventy years ago. There are actual words on paper to ponder.

However, before this legal definition is examined, it is useful to note that the commonly held but unarticulated definition has at least one important function. It can serve as a litmus test for more precise, written definitions. Any proper definition of the State should be rejected if it clashes too violently with the commonly held conception of the State; a definition of the State should articulate, to a degree, what we perceive a State to be, in the same manner that ethical theories tend to loosely match common conceptions of ethical acts. This is what will be termed the Krader Doctrine of, “If you would know what a state is, look around you.”²⁴

Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933) declares that:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualification (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other states.²⁵

Be warned, just because a bunch of ministers of foreign affairs sat around a table and declared Article 1 to be the definition of the State doesn't necessarily make Article 1 the correct definition—the ministers could have got it wrong. Yet, Article 1 provides the beginning of a true definition, especially when converted into a more philosophical rendering:

The State has the following essential characteristics (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other states.

The phrase “as a person of international law” was rejected because it is an unnecessary (for our purposes) legal phrase designed to make international treaties and laws enforceable on a State, and, more to the point, the phrase does not signify an essential characteristic of the State. A State doesn't have to be a person of international law to be a State; a State (or even a collection of States) could exist in a world devoid of international law. Or, it is possible to imagine a world with only one State, and, hence, no international law.

However, “should possess” can be safely converted into “essential characteristics”; Article 1 seems to indicate that if a State lacks (a), (b), (c), or (d), then it is not a State but something else. For example, if a State has no government²⁶ under this definition, it is no longer a State, as such has been the case in Somalia. Somalia has a defined territory (i.e. “Somalia” starts and ends at recognised borders), but no government to speak of (current and unsuccessful efforts notwithstanding).

At least two of these characteristics seem to hold true as essential characteristics; (a) permanent population and (b) defined territory. In regards to (a), it is exceedingly hard to imagine any form of human organisation of any description that is devoid of human beings (or the minimum equivalent thereof²⁷). Even if one could be imagined and even if such a vision were coherent, what would be the point? The reason for this enquiry into the State and anarchism is to examine the moral justification of the State and its alternatives; how should we live?²⁸ Examining a State without people—if such was possible—won't answer that question.

Yet, must a State have a permanent population? What does that mean? What about nomadic or transient populations? Requirements of permanency/transiency are dubious precisely because they are hard to define. How long must a population stay in one geographical area for it to be determined permanent? One year? Five hundred years? Two weeks? The same kind of questions could be raised around the issue of a stable population. What counts as stable? Tricky and best avoided.

Anyway, States are not eternal institutions. Every State you see, will fall, will tumble and shatter and only be half-remembered in ancient books mouldering in dark, pre-nanotech libraries. Barbarians may cavort again amongst the architectural remains of once glorious capital cities.

Therefore, the concept of permanent population can be safely abandoned for a simpler and clearer essential characteristic, a population. States must have populations, which must not be seen as applying to citizens (formal members of States) alone. What constitutes a citizen of a particular State is a matter of political science, and not relevant to this discussion. All that a State needs is a population; the privileges and the responsibilities of that population in regards to that State have nothing to do with the State having a population; those privileges and responsibilities could vary widely.

The concept of a defined territory (or absence thereof) has a greater depth than that of population, and will, as the argument progresses, have a vital role in distinguishing the State from other forms of human organisation, in particular empires. For the present, an examination of the concept of defined territory will suffice. States have starts and ends to their rule. Walk far enough in any direction and you'll either have to invest in a boat or you pass from the domain of one State and into another. You will reach a border, and the likelihood is that you will not pass unchallenged.

It is conceivable that the entire world could be ruled by a single State. If such an all-world State could be created, what would happen to the concept of borders and defined territory? Either the all-world State's borders would be the earth's atmosphere or other points beyond, or it would have no borders and the self-declared right to rule the universe. If it is the latter case, as will clear from later arguments, the all-world State is no longer a State but an empire.

Borders serve as geographical containments of a State's rule. Of course, the influence and power of a State can extend past its borders, but this is seen as an imposition (welcome or not) into another State's area. Within a particular area, States maintain that they are the sovereign power (at least in theory) and that (again in theory) that their rule does not exceed that particular area.

There is one area of possible confusion regarding the concept of defined territory, and that is, who defines the territory? Is it other States? Is it a 'neutral' third-party such as the UN? Neither of these two can be the providers of definition for it is conceivable to have a world with only one State (surrounded, for example, by hunter-gatherers or pastoralists) and no 'neutral' third-party. Who then?

States define their own borders (other States may not agree with a particular State's declaration of its borders, and this often ends in a condition men term warre). A State makes a declaration that its rule ends at one spot or another, and then dares all others to disagree; i.e. this declaration is not derived from other States, non-state societies, or third-parties, but from the State itself. A defined territory is the result of a particular State's vision of its place in the world. The unitary vision of a State may not be correct in terms of international relations, but it is the State that defines its territory, even if in error. For example, China declares that Taiwan is a province of China. Some countries do not agree with China on this matter, including the Taiwanese. However, the Chinese are not in doubt about Taiwan's status. The dispute over the borders has lead to a sticky situation internationally, with the Chinese ready to invade Taiwan and the Taiwanese mobilised to defend with support for the USA. Another example is the long running border dispute between Pakistan and India, with Pakistan declaring all of Kashmir belong to it and India declaring only a part (and, at times, that part is fairly ungovernable). This description of a defined territory allows for this kind of doubt (see discussion on ideal vs. non-ideal definitions of the State later on).

In regards to (c), Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention is also correct. It is impossible to conceive of a State without a government (see below for a definition of government), and even if it were, it would clash violently with our commonly held, unarticulated conception of a State. Further, there seems to be every reason to declare that possessing a government is an essential characteristic of the State. So much so that the definition of the State has often been conflated with that of government, especially amongst Americans, who often use the phrase “the Federal Government” to indicate the State.

This confusion is not limited to Americans. Some anarchists have also toyed with the notion that notion of the State is equivalent to that of the government. For example, Errico Malatesta, in his pamphlet “Anarchy”, puts forth that:

Anarchists, including this writer have used the word State, and still do, to mean the sum total of the political, legislative, judiciary, military and financial institutions through which the management of their own affairs, the control over their personal behaviour, the responsibility for their personal safety, are taken away from the people and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or delegation, are vested with the powers to make the laws for everything and everybody, and oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the use of collective force.

In this sense the word State means government, or to put it another way, it is the impersonal abstract expression of that state of affairs personified by government....²⁹

Malatesta, after a brief discussion on other meanings, definitions if you will, of the word “State”, concludes with:

For these reasons we believe it would be better to use expressions such as abolition of the State as little as possible, substituting for it the clearer and more concrete term abolition of government. Anyway, it is what we shall do in the course of the pamphlet.³⁰

In addition to conflating notions of State and government, Malatesta gives us a definition of government, which can be reduced to:

A government is a series of institutions (legislative, judicial, military, political, and financial) which impose, through collective force, a social order on the people.

While this does seem to be a workable description of current governments—you could run with it, and will be used as this work's definition of “government”—it does seem linked somehow to the reduction of the State to government. Insert “State” in the place of “government” in the definition above, and you'd have a workable definition of the State, similar to Max Weber's famous definition, which is soon to appear in this discourse. Does this work? Are “government” and “State” interchangeable? Or is this a shining path to failure?

As tempting as it may be to declare the State synonymous with the government for reasons of clarity or even simple laziness, it, like most temptations, would be bad idea in the long term.

The State is not equivalent to the government if the government of a State can change without the State changing, and/or if governments can exist without States (e.g. human beings clumped together in some sort of non-State social grouping can have government). To take the former qualifier first, recent South African history seems to prove the point. In 1994, citizens of South Africa stood in long queues to vote in the first democratic election. The National Party was promptly voted out and the African National Congress was voted in, there was a new Constitution, and several institutions disappeared while new ones were created. The NP and the ANC were two very different parties, resulting in two very different governments. Yet, it must be asked, did the South African State disappear with the Nats?

Again, the answer is no. The South African State remained the same (the name didn't even change to Azania). The replacement of one particular government with another did not equate in the replacement of that State.

Even if this recent example of a State remaining while its government changed weren't so readily at hand and looking through history for others was too much of a bother (one wonders how many governments have ruled the Chinese State, for example), a closer examination of the concept of government helps to differentiate between it and a State. A government is, quite simply, a decision making and enforcing body. Schools can have governments (the School Board or what have you), churches can have governments, and, more germane to the topic, groups of human beings can be ruled by a government without being in a State. Such groupings have existed, as real as concrete.

For example, the Crow Indians of the western plains of North America had a government that policed the buffalo hunt to the extent that it punished serious offenders with death. Four Crow associations (delightfully called Foxes, Lumpwoods, Dogs and Bulls) alternated governing the buffalo hunt. While the police function ended with the hunt, the associations did not disband. In a sense, they acted like corporations existing in perpetuity. Outside of the hunt, the associations took on the responsibilities of defending all of Crow society, rehearsal of social and religious dances, and providing mutual aid to members of each association (e.g., the Dogs association would look after the welfare its own members).³¹

While the Crow Indians had a government, they hardly had a State. They had a society with a government but 'outside' of a State. Other, more 'primitive' societies have had governments without States. Eskimos dealt with disputes between parties via a 'song-duel' held in front of the entire community which would gather especially for the occasion and later pass judgment. Eskimo society had no formal methods of solving disputes; no policemen, officers of the court, chiefs or councils. In a sense, when a problem arose, all of society then became the government armed with the mandate to judge the dispute. Once the dispute was solved, the government dissolved, to form again at another song-duel.³²

In his discussion on Eskimos and governance, Lawrence Krader concludes that:

The Eskimos have a simple form of governmental regulation of social behaviour: their court is not a permanent institution; it is convened as the occasion warrants, and after the judgement the court is disbanded without fixing a time for reassemblage.³³

Common sense tells us that neither Eskimos nor Crow Indians (or any other example even the most casual student of anthropology or archaeology could drag forth) lived in States. Furthermore, the government of the Eskimo and Crow people's was hardly the kind of government we think States possess, unless, as some anthropologists have done, we declare that States exist in all societies, no matter how simple or complex (or, to put it differently, all societies have States). Eduard Meyer and Wilhelm Koppers, in particular, have proposed that all societies have States; essentially, the dominating group in any society that maintains the unity of that society is the State.³⁴ This definition of a State is so watered down that it has no use in political philosophy, and, in fact, Meyer and Koppers have confused government (as the decision making body of a society) and the State.

To return to Eskimos and the Crow, while they had governments, their societies seemed to lack something that States have, some other essential characteristic. Could that characteristic be the capacity to enter into relations with States, as declared in the Montevideo Convention?

Well, no. Of course States do have the capacity to enter into relations with other States (hard to think of a State that couldn't do this), but, then again, non-State societies can also enter into relations with States and have done so (Native Americans signing treaties, for example) before. Further, what happens in our hypothetical world with one State surrounded by hunter-gatherers and pastoralists? It doesn't have the capacity to enter into relations with other States for there are none. There is also the case of the first State, which, by virtue of being the first State in creation, also cannot have the capacity to enter into relations with other States for, again, there are none. And, anyway, this still doesn't define the State.

For example, a tribal society can have a defined territory, a population, a government (big man chief, for example), and could have the capacity to enter into relations with States; the historical precedents for such a society are not unknown. Yet, despite having all of these characteristics, such a society is not a State. A State is something different, and to determine what makes that difference, the Montevideo Convention must be left to 1933. Still, the Montevideo Convention did give us the essential characteristics of population, government and defined territory, and for that we must be grateful. Onwards into the past.

Fifteen years before the Montevideo Convention, the German sociologist Max Weber stood up in a Munich lecture hall and said:

The state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory.³⁵

This is one of the more celebrated definitions of the State, and has been adopted far and wide, copied and pasted into uncounted Internet tracts and obscure email debates. Not only is it a clear definition, it is also concise and simple. There is even an intuitive appeal; the State does seem to be a violent agent. Almost every State on the planet and throughout history has had an army. Each one has had a police force, and many have had a variety of other security services. All of these various organs (to borrow Alexander Solzhenitsyn's description of the Cheka, KGB, etc.) of the State are engaged in the use of sanctioned force. If an individual transgresses the State's law, the State (or other forces sanctioned by the State) then uses to force, via the organs, to punish that individual.

States regularly detain people against their will for decades, many States kill lawbreakers, some chop off body parts, and others have clumped lawbreakers together in penal battalions, cannon fodder in a State-sponsored exercise in the finer points of mass murder. And, in the use of force, States typically don't allow others outside of its sanction to use force. States seem to be the sole sources of allowable force.

If we, as Krader suggests, look around us, we'll find States engaged in the sole, use of allowable force inside their defined territories. So much so that in the pursuit of maintaining their status of the sole source of allowable force, States have seriously contemplated nuclear winter, megadeath, and how to deliver extremely lethal and utterly artificial strains of influenza to opposing populations. They have condoned (to paraphrase Dostoevsky) cossacks impaling babies on the points of lances.

One important difference between the Weber and Montevideo definitions is that Montevideo defines the State in terms of form while Weber defines it in terms of function; the functionality in the Weber definition is the successful claim of legitimate force. While form has its place, defining the State in terms of function is also very important since function is an essential characteristic of the State.

Of the other parts of Weber's definition, the concept of defined territory has already been explained, and the term 'human community' seems to mean that the State is comprised of human beings (it could be comprised of nothing else) and that its functions are carried out by human beings. In a sense, for these purposes, the Weber definition could be said to build upon the usable parts of the Montevideo definition.³⁶

The key phrase, the characteristic function of the State, is its successful claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This is the critical part of Weber's definition, on which the validity of the whole is dependent. Two questions need to be answered here: 1) What sense of 'legitimate' is at play? The legal or the nonnormative? and 2) What qualifies as a monopoly on the use of legitimate force?

For something to be legitimate, it is has an ethical sanction (justified), or it is permissible in terms of the law. Weber is using the latter sense of the word, and this sense of legitimacy (on one interpretation) comes out in his less-quoted but more explanatory definition of the State, a definition worth reproducing in its entirety:

The primary formal characteristics of the modern state are as follows: It possesses an administrative and legal order subject to change by legislation, to which the organized corporate activity of the administrative staff, which is also regulated by legislation, is orientated. This system of order claims binding authority, not only over members of the state, the citizens, most of whom have obtained membership by birth, but also to a very large extent, over all action taking place in the area of its jurisdiction. It is thus a compulsory association with a territorial basis. Furthermore, to-day, the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it. Thus the right of a father to discipline his children is recognized—a survival of the former independent authority of a head of a household, which in the right to use force has sometimes extended to a power of life and death over children and slaves. The claim of the modern state to monopolize the use of force is as essential to it as its character of compulsory jurisdiction and of continuous organisation.³⁷

This longer definition brings out two elements not readily apparent in the shorter definition. The first is that legitimacy spoken seems to be very much of the legal sort (there is another interpretation, see below). The use of force within society and the mechanics of force (judiciary, executive) are bound through legislation. Therefore, it is the State that declares itself (via laws) what it can and cannot do in regards to force. This even in the case of an absolute and arbitrary monarch as the monarch's decrees, acts, commands, etc. are laws in and of themselves (not quite a written code typical of today's states, but law the same for law can be both written and oral). Further, this declaration can be traced back to the State itself and nowhere else (according to this definition, force can only be sanctioned by the State, there are no 'natural' rights to force as in the case of a father over his children or a master over a slave). The degree of force that an individual may use (from the merest of subjects to the highest of the State's agents) should be entirely dependent upon what the State decrees; the State and the State alone should rightly decide what degree of force (if any) a individual can use in any given particular situation, and it by and large does so. Look around, what State doesn't have a set of highly complex laws surrounding the issue of self-defence? How many States restrict access to weaponry?

But, could a State's claims to legitimate use of force be somehow involved in whether or not its population (presumably a majority, but this could prove to be extremely problematic) considers the State and its government to be justified? This has sometimes been described, in technical terms, as nonnormative (conventional) legitimacy.³⁸ By the way, this is yet another interpretation of Weber's definition; a State is something that is seen (presumably by the populace) as having a successful claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This also shows, as it is the third interpretation of Weber's definition, that there is defect in Weber's definition, it is rather vague. The more exact a definition can be, the better.

South African history does provide a counterexample to this conception of legitimacy. During Apartheid, the State and the government were not thought as being legitimate by the majority of the population (or having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, witness self-defence units), and yet South Africa remained a State. There is a good chance that groups of South Africans still think that the government is illegitimate; for example, individuals on the far, far right.

Even if this counterexample is valid, the question may be worth a bit more print, but from a slightly different angle. Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, takes a different tack, albeit in a footnote:

Attempts to explain the notion of legitimacy of government in terms of attitudes and beliefs of its subjects have a difficult time avoiding the reintroduction of the notion of legitimacy when it comes time to explain the precise content of the subject's attitudes and beliefs....³⁹

Replace “government” with “a monopoly on the use of force” in the quote above, and the point remains. Leslie Green, in Authority of the State, drives home Nozick's point:

It is absurd to say, as some political scientists do, that a state is legitimate if it is believed to be legitimate by its citizens; for what are we to suppose they believe in believing that?⁴⁰

Even if these beliefs could be tracked and nailed down, the issue behind the issue here is that it is first necessary to define the State before it can be decided if a particular State is justified. Christopher Morris helps to clarify and simplify this potential minefield. He starts with contrasting procedural legitimacy with more substantive and normative notions of legitimacy:

While lawfulness may be an important attribute of legitimate states or governments, it is hard to believe that it confers the normative and substantive status we seem to be thinking of when attributing legitimacy. A state or government may be legitimate in a procedural sense by being lawful or by functioning in accordance with its rules or procedures. This would be a type of consistency, an attribute presumably of the “rule of law”....But it is not the sort of legitimacy we wonder about when we raise the questions central to this inquiry. These require a substantive notion.⁴¹

And, according to Morris, a substantive notion of legitimacy is connected to the issue justification. This is so much so that in order for a State to be legitimate (in the substantive sense) it has to be justified. This in turn puts the spotlight on justification, which Morris cheerfully deals with:

To show a state to be legitimate, then, would be to justify its existence and (some of its) powers. This may be helpful but only if we become clear about justification....Broadly, to justify something is to show it to be just or right, to be reasonable, or to be warranted; it is to validate or vindicate. In epistemic contexts, justification pertains to beliefs or statements. For practical matters, it is principally acts or powers that are called upon to be justified. To justify a state, then, might be to show its powers to be just (or right) or reasonable.⁴²

What is emerging with brief discussion on justification and legitimacy is that procedural (or legal) legitimacy does not require justification, which is about what is right and what is wrong and degrees thereof. An action is done in accordance to the law or it is not, and the morality of the action has no bearing on its legal status. Normative and substantive (i.e. moral) legitimacy, however, does require justification. An action has substantive legitimacy if that action is justified, i.e. if the action is morally permissible.

As a slight deviation and way of clarification, claiming of legitimacy can be achieved through the act, but justification requires more. Hard proof.

The beauty of Weber's definition of the State (at least on the legalistic interpretation of legitimacy; i.e., what Morris terms the “procedural” notion of legitimacy, see above) is that it encompasses all possible States, even those that are despised by their populations, or parts thereof, and those that are engaged in morally repulsive acts of force—kidnapping, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing—which are officially sanctioned. It hardly seems, without getting into much ethical theory, that the Group Areas Act of 1950 and the US “Jim Crow” laws were not morally permissible, and, still, the American and South African States stood. Weber's definition (on the legalistic interpretation of legitimacy) encompasses justified and non-justified States, and, thus, avoids complications regarding substantial and normative legitimacy and justification.

Weber's second point is somewhat new to the discussion. The State's jurisdiction is binding on all, and it is primary. For example, in the case between a religious ruling that A should do X in Situation 1 and a law that orders A to do Y (where Y is the direct opposite of X) in Situation 1, it is the State's law that should be obeyed, from the State's point of view that is. There is no higher authority than the State; that's what compulsory jurisdiction boils entails.

The two questions raised—what qualifies as a monopoly on the use of legitimate force, and what constitutes a successful claim—raise some doubts about Weber's definition. Is the monopoly that Weber conceptualises a virtual or an absolute monopoly?

Well, it would seem that if the monopoly applies to legal force and the State is the agent that defines what is legal, then the monopoly would have to be absolute. If, within a bounded territory with a human community, there is more than one agent declaring what constitutes legal force, there are two or more separate law-making agents, then there is no State. So, for example, Somalia is not a State because, within a bounded territory, there are multiple sources of claims of legitimate force (varying warlords and clans).

The same could be said about Medieval Europe. Charles Tilly, in Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1990, describes a situation where more than one party has claim to the use of legitimate (allowing for a broad interpretation of legality and legal systems) force:

None of these half-familiar place names, however, should disguise the enormous fragmentation of sovereignty then prevailing throughout the territory that would become Europe. The emperors, kings, princes, dukes, caliphs, sultans, and other potentates of AD 990 prevailed as conquerors, tribute-takers, and rentiers, not as heads of state that durably and densely regulated life within their realms. Inside their jurisdictions, furthermore, rivals and ostensible subordinates commonly used armed force on behalf of their own interests while paying little attention to the interests of their nominal sovereigns. Private armies proliferated through much of the continent. Nothing like a centralized national state existed anywhere within Europe.⁴³

In fact, even where an agent in Medieval Europe claimed to be a ruler of an area, his rule hardly extend beyond his nose. Free cities, guilds, medieval corporations, religious orders, cults, liege-lords all claimed the right to rule and co-existed. At one time (around 1000AD), the Holy Roman emperor, the Byzantine emperor and the Pope all claimed to rule the Italian peninsula; only one small snag, cities throughout the peninsula ruled themselves as independent and legitimate (in their eyes) political entities.⁴⁴

What does seem clear, apart from anything else, is that Weber was on the right track. States do seem to be the sort of things that do not allow unauthorised use of force. So was Weber correct? Is the missing essential characteristic an absolute monopoly on the use of legitimate force?

No, and, once again, the look around method can help us out, provided we look away from Western Europe and North America, where the State does seem to have an absolute monopoly on the use of legitimate force. Time to go South. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda are two examples of States that don't have an absolute monopoly on the use of legitimate force. Inside Uganda and the DRC, there are significant geographical areas where the State's rule breaks down. Areas devoid of the State's agents, areas where the rules of social conduct and societal ordering come not from presidents and parliaments, but from rebel groups or even traditional authorities (rural Indian villages in Bolivia) who lay down their own sets of laws. In other words, inside the bounds of the States of Uganda and the DRC, there are multiple sources of legitimate force, keeping in mind Weber's legalistic interpretation of legitimate (or the nonnormative-Weber interpretation for that matter).

Uganda and the DRC aren't the only examples of States with more than one source of legitimate force; the Sudan (the south of the country is completely divorced from the North) and Columbia (FARC controls areas and makes laws within those areas) are two other examples. The Weber definition appears to break down if it is moved outside of the stable 'mature' States of Europe.

Unless, of course, one accepts that countries like Uganda and the DRC are not States, proto-states or some such similar not-quite-a-State description. Then, it might be possible to hold onto the Weber definition. Some philosophers, for their own reasons no doubt, have decided to throw such States out of the category of statehood. Christopher Morris is one:

In our world there may be a number of alternatives [to the State]. Some may not be appealing. The “quasi states” of Africa are states only in name, recognized as such by the international order of states.⁴⁵

And,

For one thing, the killings in Rwanda, at best a “quasi state”, as well as those of Pol Pot, were not carried out by states.⁴⁶

Once again,

As we have seen, common conceptions of a state have to be very diluted if Andorra, the Vatican, and the “quasi states” of Africa can all be regarded as states.⁴⁷

While it would be helpful to know which African countries are “quasi states”, Morris's concept still merits some discussion. For Morris, are quasi states what others call “failed States” (Somalia, Afghanistan)? We don't know, for he is silent on the topic. Or, are they merely weak States, unable to project the State's power on part of its territory (Uganda, for example)? Again, nothing.

If the former, then Morris's target seems to be the definition (or theory, if you will) that State A is a State if other States (B, C, and D) recognise it as such. This has been dealt with previously in a slightly different context; what of the world with only one State, which is surrounded by non-State societies? Or the all-world State?

Or, imagine the following: There exists an international order of four State-like societies. Societies A, B and C get together and recognise each other as States. However, society D was not invited to the conference (A, B and C don't like D), despite being functionally equivalent to A, B, and C (i.e. a member of any of those societies who emigrated would find life and governance in D similar to life and governance in A/B/C). In fact, A, B, and C dislike D with such intensity they ignore D to the point where they refuse to admit D is a State and isolate D as much as they can; they close the borders to D, refuse ambassadors from D, publicly call D a non-State (quasi-State or proto-State), and so on.

In this case, D would not be a State (despite being functionally equivalent to A, B, and C) because A, B, and C had not been recognised it as such. This seems inherently wrong.

In regards to the strength of States (for Morris, it could be that a State is only a State if it has strength of arms, if a State cannot enforce its rule to all corners at all times, it is not a State, e.g. the DRC), it would be wise to remember that even traditionally strong States have had internal areas where, for significant time-periods, they have been unable to enforce their rule. The United Kingdom, hardly a weak State and a nuclear power, was unable to enforce its rule over parts of Northern Ireland, where, in parts, it was the IRA that was the 'legitimate' power. Native American rebellions in the USA, such as the Apache under Geronimo (rebellion from 1875-1886), were other cases where a strong State (on the cusp of world domination, it might be added) couldn't enforce its rule over all its territory; was the UK during the 1970s a proto-State? Of course not. Was the USA in 1876 a quasi-State? Absurd. What might be important in these examples is that while the State sought a monopoly of the use of legitimate force, it did not have it all the time over every square inch of its territory, and a definition of a State must be able to accommodate this sort of flexibility or else every rebellion would, in effect, mean the end of the State.

Wishing away, then, examples of States where the State does not have a absolute monopoly on the use of legitimate force by declaring such States non-States is not only semantically confusing but also doesn't work philosophically. Yet, even on a more generous, virtual definition of monopoly, which may be a kinder way to read Weber, Weber's concept comes unstuck when religious authority enters the fray.

An early draft of the recently approved constitution of Iraq was reported to have an article recognising religious authority (in effect, a alternative source of legitimate authority). An Iraqi blogger had this to say about that article:

Article (12): The religious Marja’ia is respected for its spiritual role and it is a prominent religious symbol on the national and Islamic fronts; and the state cannot tamper with its private affairs.

Marja’ia in Arabic means ‘reference’. Basically, this article discusses the ‘religious reference’ which should mean, I suppose, any religious Marja’ia in Iraq. However, in Iraq, any time the word Marja’ia is used, it is in direct allusion to the Shia religious figures like Sistani and the other Marja’ia figures in Najaf and Karbala.

Why is it that the state can have no influence on the Marja’ia but there is no clause saying that, in return, the Marja’ia cannot tamper in matters of state or constitution? The Marja’ia has influence over the lives of millions of Iraqis (and millions of Muslims worldwide, for that matter). The laws of the Marja’ia for some supersede the laws of state. For example, if the Marja’ia declares the religiously acceptable marrying age to be 10 and the state declares the legal age to be 18, won’t that be unconstitutional? The state cannot pass laws that do not agree with the basic principles and rules of Islam and for millions, the Marja’ia sets those rules.⁴⁸

While this draft of Article 12 wasn't instituted into law, it does show that the there can be competing sources of legitimate (in the legal sense) use of force. It is imaginable that a State could exist where, in a uneasy tacit agreement, the economic and diplomatic affairs and law enforcement of a country are the State's domain, while all cultural laws⁴⁹ (how to dress, marriage laws, divorce laws, etc.) are the sole domain of a religious authority and are enforced by the same religious authority with that particular brand of blind ruthlessness favoured by fundamentalists the world over.⁵⁰ Such a State could have a total control of the business world, complete command of the army and police, and would require complete obedience (jurisdiction) on these matters, but would be powerless, for example, to decide if a husband could beat his wife. Furthermore, any attempt to bring the State into the cultural sphere would incite a terrible revolution. In this case, the State wouldn't have even a virtual monopoly on the use of force.

While the previous counter-example could be problematic—wouldn't the religious authority be acting as an organ of the State, akin to a police force?—it may not matter. Perhaps this discussion on what constitutes a Weberian monopoly and what he means by legitimate is all besides the point. Robert Nozick has this to say on Weber and the monopoly on the use of force:

As Marshall Cohen points out in a unpublished essay, a state may exist without actually monopolizing the use of force it has not authorised others to use; within the boundaries of a state there may exist groups such as the Mafia, the KKK, White Citizens Councils, striking unionists, and Weatherman that also use force. Claiming a monopoly is not sufficient (if you claimed it you would not become the state), nor is being its sole claimant a necessary condition....⁵¹

What does seem to be important, what seems to be core of Weber's definition is that States are heavily engaged in the organised use of force and that they require compulsory jurisdiction. With those two points, it is now possible to provide a definition of the State. Time to ante up, and the stakes, to continue with a somewhat worn metaphor, are fairly high as it is this definition that will be used to determine the justification (on perfectionist grounds) for the State.⁵²

What is a State? A State is a form of social organisation that essentially has:

a) a defined territory

b) a population

c) a government that is engaged in the organised use of force

d) a hierarchical structure

Please also note that characteristics a) to d) are essential characteristics. If a form of social organisation has all of them, then it is a State. If a form of social organisation is missing one or more—say a) and d), for example—then it is not a State, but something else. States necessarily possess these four characteristics, and do so in all possible worlds where States could exist.⁵³

There may also be other characteristics typical of States—they may have flags, they may have armies or secret police, they may have national holidays and creation myths—but none of those are essential characteristics. For example, States are often thought to have armies as integral to their existence. So much so that an army is thought to be one of the basic building blocks of a State—if you want a State, you had better budget for uniforms, rifles, tanks and then find a couple of pieces of deadwood to pin some stars on—and that premise is hardly ever debated in the public discourse. Yet, Costa Rica disbanded its army on the 1^st of December 1948. Costa Rica is not alone, for 24 other countries do not maintain an army including Panama, Iceland, Grenada, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, and a good chunk of the Pacific Island nations. While maintaining a standing army may be typical characteristic of States, it is not an essential characteristic.

It is important to recognise that the State is highly involved in the social sphere, in how we live. In fact, the State is a form of social organisation (which includes but is not limited to political organisation), and the State organises society (and, in turn, becomes an expression of society) in a particular way. Weber alludes to this in his longer definition of the State:

This system of order claims binding authority, not only over members of the state, the citizens, most of whom have obtained membership by birth, but also to a very large extent, over all action taking place in the area of its jurisdiction.⁵⁴

Other thinkers have also highlighted this critical point, sometimes with a bit more force than Weber. The State shapes, limits and regulates society, and, if left unchecked, will do so until society resembles the State and the State resembles society. As a mode of social organisation, the State cannot be divorced from society, whilst remaining theoretically distinct. In The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship, Murray Bookchin lays out this distinction and relationship:

In recent years, however, serious attempts have been made to probe the distinction between 'society' and 'politics,' which has traditional roots in theoretical distinctions between society and the state. The anarchists have been saying for years what everyone either knows or feels; the state is the not the same kind of phenomenon as the family, workplace, fraternal and sororal groups, religious congregations, unions and professional societies, in short, the 'private' world that individuals create or inherit to meet their personal and spiritual needs. This personal world can be designated as 'social,' however much 'government' penetrates, regulates, or, in totalitarian states, absorbs its forms.⁵⁵

As Bookchin alludes to, the degree to which the State organises a society varies from mere regulation to building anew in its own image. Sometimes, maybe even often, we tend to consider the State existing independently of society, that the State is only few buildings located in a faraway capital city and filled with eager bureaucrats. This seems to be the view of a few philosophers, David Copp being one of them:

The state is the system of animated institutions that govern the territory and its residents, and that administer and enforce the legal system and carry out the programs of government. A state corresponds to the legal system that is in force in a territory. It governs the people in all of the territory in which its legal system is in force. It rules, or has jurisdiction, in this territory. It is the animated institutions of government.⁵⁶

Actually, Copp's definition is the first sentence of the above quote—he gets kudos for being concise—the rest gives him all the room he needed to add what is missing, i.e. that the State is a form of social organisation. The importance of not overlooking this is quite high: Populations are not merely governed. The State structures societies in very particular ways, often at very deep levels of social interaction; for example, States often determine who can marry whom (try marrying your sister), the education of your children, what the available (i.e. legal) economic activities are and how one should go about them (fishing with dynamite), what clothes you can wear (attend your next public event in nothing but a see-through raincoat), how one can get from A to B, and so on in millions of different facets of our everyday life. This is what is referred to as the “need for law and order” by commentators when discussing instances where the State's power and presence has disappeared from an area for a meaningful period of time; Iraq during the great looting spree of post-April 2003, post-communist but pre-Taliban Afghanistan, Germany in 1918 when rifles, prostitutes and cocaine occupied street corners across Berlin, and other temporary and limited Hobbesian states of nature. It is not so much security that is lacking in such environments, but the particular kind of social ordering that States bring. That is what is craved and often with good reason.

Of course, people, populations, and societies don't need to have states in order to have social organisation, even fairly sophisticated societies. Several examples of such have already been given—Eskimo and Crow—and need not be repeated. Other kinds of historical examples could also be brought forth, including feudalism and the great empires (Roman, Mongol, Macedonia) of antiquity, both of which were highly structured forms of social organisation whilst being non-State systems, but there is no great need at present. The Ancient Greek polis represents something of a unique case and will be examined in Part Four.

Even further, technological advanced, culturally diverse, educational deep non-State societies have been conceived of, especially in the realm of science fiction. Writers such as Ursula Le Guin (Dispossessed; anarchocommunism), Ken MacLeod (The Star Faction, The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division; mostly anarchocapitalism with some primitivism and mutualist organisations), and Iain M. Banks (Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, Excession; utopian/individualist anarchism) have all brought forth fairly complete visions of non-State societies technologically superior to ours but organised along radically different lines. This is not to say such societies (or dreams of societies) are actually feasible, could be made practically real (quite tellingly, all three authors either embrace or flirt with fairly substantial genetic modification of human DNA), but, again at present, that's beyond the point. Technologically advanced but non-State societies are at least conceivable.

This point may even seem trivial, almost akin to Meyer and Koppers's assertion that the dominating group in any society that maintains the unity of that society is the State. Okay, the State may be a form of social organisation, but, then again, almost all groups of people (i.e. populations) will have some sort of form of social organisation, what's so special about that?

Essentially, it is the particular form of social organisation that makes States special. The State, as a form of social organisation, been tremendously successful over a fairly long period of time. Apart from the Antarctic, States have got all the landmass covered and there is no meaningful or competing alternative, even non-States like Somalia and Afghanistan are heading towards statehood, throw in the “quasi states” of Africa into the same pot if you so desire. There are very few chances for human activity outside of the State's sphere of control. States are exceedingly powerful.

Also, the development of the State has, historically, coincided with great advances in science, technology and human welfare; while we've been living in States we've put people on the Moon, created antibiotics, and freed ourselves from the curse of toothache. Further, it was never guaranteed that, at least after the fall of the Roman Empire, we would indeed live in States. One of the great observations of Charles Tilly's Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1990 is that in 990AD there was no reason to suppose that the State would become the overarching, dominating form of social organisation; it could have all been very different, and that the modern State system was born out of coercion (force) and the accumulation and concentration of capital:

It took a long time for national states—relatively centralised, differentiated, and autonomous organizations successfully claiming priority in the use of force within large, contiguous, and clearly bounded territories—to dominate the European map. In 990 nothing about the world of manors, local lords, military raiders, fortified villages, trading towns, city-states, and monasteries foretold a consolidation into national states. In 1490 the future remained open; despite the frequent use of the word 'kingdom', empires of one sort or another claimed most of the continent. Some time after 1490 Europeans foreclosed those alternative opportunities, and set off decisively towards the creation of a system consisting almost entirely of relatively autonomous national states.⁵⁷

Something is quite special about the State. What is so special is often a matter of controversy regarding its desirability and even its nature. While you may not agree with his conclusions and at this stage there is no reason to do so, Proudhon's classic diatribe (it is one of great ones, spittle covers the page and rage fumes from the spine) against being governed suggests to the completeness of the State's social organisation:

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice, that is its morality.⁵⁸

So then, what is the State's engagement in social organisation? And how? The how is covered by the third essential condition; c) a government that is engaged in the use of organised force. The what is covered by the last essential characteristic; d) a hierarchical structure.

A quick caveat. The range of different ways that States organise societies is quite varied and covers a fair amount of ground. States can organise societies from everything from the enforced totalitarian pageantry hell of North Korea to the invisible-hand fantasies of proponents of ultra-minimalist States. States can have aristocracies, liberal democracies, conscription, book weeks and book burnings, female presidents, gay rights, impale-a-gay day, children's rights and child labour. States can promote cricket and horse riding, or serve horse at State galas and ban track & field for women. States can shoot prisoners and bill their families for the bullets, or they can worry obsessively about penal reform and have campaigns to save hedgehogs. All well and fine, but this enquiry is looking for what is common to all in the range of States, and that is a government engaged in the use of force and a hierarchical structure; the relative merits of starving because the government has given all the food to the army and has none left for you vs. starving because you have no access to capital and the government has finally managed to scrap the last vestiges of the welfare state are for other discussions.

In the discussions of Weber and legitimate monopolies, the issue that States are engaged in use of force was put forth, and this seems, as much as anything is in the piranha pen that is philosophy, fairly uncontroversial. States, via their governments, use force, and not just to protect the realm from barbarians at the gates. States use force to implement social organisation; it is as simple as do this or else. And, let us not deceive, this force is physical force. States may try a variety of different tactics to institute the social order—convincing, showing the truth, plain lying, taxation, etc.—but, at the base, there is always physical force.

This is a simpler formulation than Weber's, and also recognises the fact, often ignored by mainstream theorists, that the State does use illegal force. There's probably no State that has graced the surface of this planet that didn't, at one time or another (and most likely in periods of State formation and death), use force that was outside its (self-imposed) legal sanction. Black death squads, extrajudicial killing, secret kidnapping, torture, vanishings. Nazi Germany was gangster incorporated, and the gangsters in charge had figured out that, with enough physical force, any act could be made legal; still, when problems developed such as Rommel, Nazism remain true to its street-bawling roots and just dealt with them. These things happen. While it is possible to have a State without the illegal use of force, it does seem, at the barest minimum, that a State cannot exist without the organised use of force.

The social order that the State imposes is hierarchical with the State at the apex of that hierarchy (or hierarchies). In particular, the State stands above the body politic. The body politic is subservient to the State, and, in this relationship, compulsory jurisdiction is not only possible but the logical endpoint of the State's structuring of society. This hierarchy is maintained primarily by the government's use of force.

To lift from the title of his main work, the emergence of hierarchy has been Murray Bookchin's lifelong intellectual pursuit. His basis thesis is that hierarchy in human societies is the result of a long historical process. The generalised pattern starts with a hierarchy that develops between the young and the old in hunter-gather and pastoralist societies. The old, through years of accumulation of wisdom (weather patterns, animal migration, plant knowledge), become an indispensable fount of information to the society at large. This then translates into power, and gerontocracy results. A similar hierarchy develops between men and women, each occupying separate realms. The men begin to take over the political realm while the women (often bound by childcare) take over the household realm. This translates into the political domination of men. The gender hierarchy sparks off a process of elite domination, mostly warrior and religious classes.

The agriculture revolution of the Middle East changes the economies of societies enabling the specialisation of certain classes. The society wide domination of the few over the many begins with kings and emperors.

The emergence of the nation-state (post 1490AD) marks a watershed in human history. The domination of the few becomes the domination of a bureaucratic entity, the State. The State attempts to organise society regimented manner in which it, and it alone, is the final arbitrator over the lives of its citizens and demands obedience. The relationship that the State has over the individual is akin to that of father over his child (although the State also defines this relationship). Murray Bookchin states:

'Patriotism,' as the origin of the word indicates, is the nation-state's conception of the citizen as a child, the obedient creature of the nation conceived as a paterfamilias or stern father, who orchestrates belief and commands devotion. To the extent that we are the 'sons' and 'daughters' of a 'fatherland,' we place ourselves in a mindless, indeed infantile, relationship to the state.⁵⁹

Neither is Bookchin alone on this point, for Hegel also stresses the hierarchical nature of the state, which is at the apex of society, and he believes this hierarchical structure is no bad thing. While Bookchin and Hegel certainly disagree with each other on the justification of the State, both have highlighted the structure of the State. Hegel states:

The state, which is the realized substantive will, having its reality in the particular self-consciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state.⁶⁰

The hierarchical nature of the State cannot be stressed enough. A State can exist only if structures power in a hierarchical, top-down manner, which is inherent in the State's structure. Any attempt by individuals to alter this power relationship results in a charge of sedition, often punishable by death. To actively reject the rule of the State (refusing to obey laws, not paying taxes) inevitably brings the individual into violent conflict with the State. The only ways that an individual (or group of individuals) can avoid jail, death or other sanction is to triumph in a conflict with the State in a force of arms or wills. There is a zero-sum equation in such a conflict.

One further point about hierarchy and social organisation. Different States will have different depths and scopes of hierarchical structuring. Some States structure their economic systems in centralised and rigorous manners, whilst others will see no role for the State in economic affairs. Modern States regulate so much of society—for example, every economic transaction is regulated, often taxed, and what qualifies as an education and who can provide it are defined by the State—this point is best seen in issues such a sexuality, public health, free speech. Some States have passed laws banning homosexuality or oral sex. Other States have legalised prostitution, and others have said that rape doesn't exist between a married couple. Some States have outlawed negative comments against the government, and a few States have tried to enforce quarantines on HIV-positive people.

The range of social organisation along hierarchical lines of States can be very wide indeed, and is dependent upon both the ability of a State to project itself (the strength of force it can bring to bear) and will to do so. Some States won't regulate the internal dynamics of religious organisations because they don't have the will to do so, despite having the power to do so. Other States have the will, but don't have the power to do so.

In effect, then, the provided definition is not a definition of an ideal State. Another way, and maybe the best way, to read Weber is that he has provided a definition of an ideal State, the State all others aspire to be. If this holds, then many of the problems experienced in regards to the Weber definition fall away, including the issues regarding nonnormative vs. legal legitimacy.⁶¹

However, this is not an ideal world, and the provided definition recognises that. Some States organise their societies better, some are more obviously hierarchical (such as aristocratic State) than others (Scandinavian welfare States). Other States are fairly weak, unable to bring physical security to part of its territory. In the Iraq case (see above), it may seem, had Article 12 been passed, that the State is not at the apex of hierarchy with religious institutions having authority over people's lives. However, it is the constitution of the Iraqi State that would have granted this authority. The State of Iraq would have ceded its authority, mostly likely because of a genuine weakness on its part and not because of a genuine desire. If Iraq is a State, it is certainly a very weak one.

Just like there seems to a fair variety in the different forms and characters of governments, the same applies to States. And, a non-ideal definition, encompasses that, and takes into account the Krader doctrine of looking around oneself.

There is a disadvantage to a non-ideal definition; around the edges, things go grey. This seems to happen with weak States. Those States in political turmoil and structural decay. Ivory Coast and Liberia, at the moment, may be such examples. The questions are: At what point has the State lost the ability to organise society with any kind of meaning? How much of its territory and to what degree must the State control? When is the exact moment the rule of a State-run society starts and that of warlordism ends? What about wars of succession, one State or two?

To these questions, there may not be exact, theoretical answers. Instead, actual States will need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and that, thankfully, is part of job of political science. Let those students of politics examine, research, and then pronounce. Fair enough, and, as an example of how such thinking could occur, the case between States and empires is quite handy. An empire and a State have a lot in common; populations, governments, and hierarchical structures. The difference seems to be that empires don't have defined borders. They have frontiers.⁶² A State declares its rule to end at some point or another (i.e. a line on the four-colour map), whilst an empire declares no end to its possible rule; it merely hasn't got around (or is able to) conquering what lies beyond. While this is a difference, it is not such a substantive difference as to preclude arguments working for and against the justification of the State to be applicable to an empire.

The words of Genghis Khan, founder of the largest empire of all, the Mongol, are fairly illustrative:⁶³

With Heaven's aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for you [his sons].⁶⁴

And again:

Heaven has appointed me to rule all the nations, for hitherto there has been no order upon the steppes.⁶⁵

When describing the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, explicitly mentions frontiers:

In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour.⁶⁶

And, on the desire to conquer:

The seven first centuries [of Rome's history] were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus, to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils.⁶⁷

Christopher Morris is well-aware of this distinction and points out that the Roman Empire saw itself of having charge of the world⁶⁸, whilst Friedrich Kratochwil puts the issue to rest:

The Roman Empire conceived of the limes not as a boundary, but as a temporary stopping place where the potentially unlimited expansion of the Pax Romana had come to a halt. The political and administrative domain often extended beyond the wall or stayed inside it at a considerable distance...The ager publicus, or public domain, had no boundaries; it ended somewhere, but this end was not specified by the means of a legally relevant line.⁶⁹

Incidentally, something similar could be said about a religion, which could enforce hierarchical structuring, have a government and a population (the faithful). The domain of a religion is not bound by a defined territory, instead it (on a minimal account) is over believers wherever they may be. In addition, religions often claim domination over unbelievers, again regardless of location. Hence, a religion is not a state. If there's a Catholic on a minor planet orbiting an obscure star a gazillion light-years away, the Vatican still holds sway and she had better not have an abortion.

So, there it is. The State is defined, for ill or worse. Time to see whether it is amenable to the good life, and to do that, we need to know what the good life is.

Part Three: A State of Perfection

“Progress is not an accident but a necessity. Surely must evil and immorality disappear; surely must men become perfect.”

--Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851, pg 31⁷⁰

Aristotle's basic claim is that the good life is attainable, and that to obtain the good life is to belong to the correct kind of society (a polis) that educates its citizens in moral virtues. Both moral virtues (such as courage, friendship⁷¹, and honour) and what I call “practical virtues” (such as health and long life) are integral to the good life (eudemonia); eudemonia is best thought of as a package of virtues and actions. A person with these moral and practical virtues would be well equipped—provided rational ability—to find the right action in any particular circumstance. However, eudemonia is more than having these virtues, as specific types of actions (or lives) are part of it. For Aristotle, there are two types of lives worth living. The first (and best) is the contemplative life (which is best because it is an end in itself), the second is the political life.

The primary aim of Part Three is to provide the groundwork for the argument in Part Four, which is that the polis is not a State, and that an adapted, modern version of the polis is more in line with key parts of Aristotle's ethics than the State is. Part Three will identify these key parts, which are mostly wrapped up in Aristotle conception of a human being and humans' societal relationships.

For Aristotle, politics and ethics are not separate subjects, but two sides of the same coin. Political action (as it is a fundamental part of human nature) is not merely a means to create the correct sort of society (a polis that promotes vitrue), but is, and more importantly, constitutive of the ethical. Political action is part of living the good life. A fundamental part of human nature is political, and Aristotle seeks to perfect human nature.

One of the great value of an Aristotelean approach is that it provides not only the individual qualities needed to live a good life but also the collective qualities needed for society at large. According to Aristotle it is not even possible fully to be a man outside of the polis, and the good life is, to a large degree, dependent on a person's social conditions. Aristotle tells us not only how individuals should live but also how society should live, and great potential value can be gained from that.

Aristotle's moral theory belongs to the perfectionist canon, and that is where this section will start. After Aristotle has been broadly placed within the tradition of perfectionism (there are other theories on how to achieve perfection besides Aristotle's), the discussion will move towards reasons as to why Aristotle has been misunderstood in regards to his social theory. This will require looking into Ancient Greek socio-economic conditions and views of the world. The author has found a historical understanding of Aristotle, Greek values, political structures, and conception of human beings (especially in regards to slaves) extremely helpful in deciphering the ethical and political thought. In particular, it will help in comprehending what Aristotle's conception of a man is (and isn't). This historical discussion will also be useful in Part Four, when analyzing whether or not the State is a polis and the implications thereof.

Furthermore, and as a critical aside, Aristotle has a very limited conception of who is eligible for eudemonia. As will be shown below, Aristotle thinks only men who belong to a polis are capable of eudemonia (which requires the obtainment of moral virtues and rational ability). This is a serious claim that has great implications for both his ethical and political thought. In one fell swoop (1097b12-16), Aristotle basically cuts women, children, slaves, and non-Greeks out of the perfectionist equation. For these groups, the good life is unobtainable for they are not members of the polis, they are non-citizens. And, as non-citizens, they will not receive the education required to habituate moral virtue. Nor will they have the ability to engage in the political operations of the polis or, even, participate in the friendship that Aristotle thinks is necessary for living well. For these people, the best they can do, according to Aristotle (1098a5-10, 1329a21-26), is to fulfill their function as providers of material goods for citizens, thus giving citizens free time to get on with the political and contemplative life.

Why? Why does Aristotle's ethics do this? One reason is economics, and this point is addressed in Part Four. The other reason is that Aristotle, like many of his contemporaries, didn't think that these peoples were human beings. They were beasts, and, as such, weren't subjects worthy of or eligible for moral action. They were not subjects for an ethical theory seeking eudemonia for people. The historical discussion below will attempt to prove this contention. For, it is only after this contention is proved, can we understand what Aristotle was up to. Aristotle's theories may not be as elitist as they first appear to be. If the division between Greek men and everyone else is grasped in both its depth and intensity, then we can get to grips of what Aristotle was saying. Aristotle thought that every human being (citizens of a polis) should have his potentialities perfected in a very specific manner.

This doesn't mean that this work accepts the conclusion that only some people are fit for the good life while others aren't (because they are less than human or can only perform limited functions like digging ditches). Quite the contrary. That conclusion is highly regressive, and goes very much against the assumption that each and every adult (excluding those with mental retardation, which is an issue that will be bypassed) has the capabilities to attempt perfection. This work will seek to rescue what it sees as the critical elements of Aristotle's ethical theory (in particular, that eudemonia requires societal relations of a particular type) and have them apply to all of us, to all the people who are alive right now.

Aristotle was up to something quite different from what we are doing today politically, or what Plato wanted us to do. Instead of forming a society based on hierarchical domination of the few or many, Aristotle was saying that a society (which is an expression of his ethics, for ethics are the foundation for society and laws) should be constructed so that the citizens exist in a politically equal relationship with each other, that they not be governed but govern, and that they act as a collective. This is the antithesis of today's atomised individuals, and becomes conceptually possible only if we understand to whom Aristotle applied his ethics and why.

The Athenian polis and Aristotle's ideal polis are expressions of humankind's logical triumph over its bestial origins. They prove, to a great extent, that we can urbanise and live without recourse to the State or hierarchical domination. Further, in order to live well, to realise perfection, we have to live in such a society. This work attempts to save the core of why Aristotle thought that. And, if correct, this work's conclusions suggest strongly that Aristotle belongs, to a degree, towards that radical stream of political philosophy, anarchism.

After the historical discussion, the focus in this part will be on Aristotle's conception of a human being and citizenship. This, in turn and working slightly backwards⁷², will lead to an elaboration of Aristotle's ethics (including a conception of virtue and the good life), ending with a distillation and defense of, in this work's opinion, the most important parts. The critical parts of Aristotle that this work finds attractive and vital to carry into current political philosophy are the social element of his ethics and what is integral to the good life; the function argument (1098a11-17), while explained, has a lesser importance in this work's analysis, as does the doctrine of the mean (1106a1-b9). The doctrine of the mean and splitting hairs over the exact composition of particular moral virtues pales in comparison to the claim that human perfection ought to focus on the political and societal aspects of humankind. Also, throughout this section, it will be pointed out that translations of Ancient Greek to English are often difficult and the problematic words will be explained. So then, let us begin.

Examining the State from a perfectionist stance may not be a common position today, but perfectionism has had a very long history and has marked some of the great and influential philosophers. Karl Marx, with his view that humans beings' capabilities are best realised under communism, is a perfectionist, and his theories have fundamentally changed the course of history. Even after the fall of the Berlin wall, the withering away of the communist ideal and the Fourth International, after the apparent triumph of American-style state capitalism, Marx's ideas still find resonance amongst the oppressed and powerless. For Marx, at least on superficial level⁷³, the State would be justified if the working class controlled it:

We have seen...that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling as to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy top wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

On the other end of the scale, Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas have also touched and continue to touch countless individuals and leaders (Adolf Hitler being a prime example, for as Primo Levi puts it, “It is certain that his [Hitler's] personal obsessions, his capacity for hatred, his preaching of violence, found unbridled echoes in the frustration of the German people, and for this reason came back to him multiplied, confirming his delirious conviction that he himself was the Hero prophesied by Nietzsche, the Superman redeemer of Germany.”⁷⁴); individual human beings reach perfection when they exercise their will to power maximally, and many try to do so with the aim of accumulating so much power that they would then become 'superhuman'. Mussolini, as another example, wrote in 1908 that, “To understand Nietzsche we must envisage a new race of ‘free spirits’, strengthened in war, in solitude, in great danger.”⁷⁵

The übermensch or Overman (also translated as “Superman”) is the pinnacle of Nietzsche perfectionist ideal as an expression of absolute will to power, and all is justified in creating the Overman. Nietzsche states, “...the consumption of man and mankind...aims to bring to light a stronger species, a higher type that arises and preserves itself under different conditions from those of the average man. My concept, my metaphor for this type is, as one knows, the word 'overman.'”⁷⁶ For Nietzsche, the State would be justified if it were to facilitate (or support) the rise of the übermensch, regardless of the fate of lesser men. As Jacob Golomb states:

Nietzsche did not reject the state where it was conducive to authentic life aspirations--a vital element in his philosophy. But once this legitimate (and "natural") creation changed its nature and became a manifestation of extreme nationalism that hindered free and spontaneous creativity, Nietzsche vehemently opposed it and wished to curb its destructive effects. Perhaps under the influence of Hobbes, Nietzsche would call this kind of state ‘the coldest of all cold monsters.’ However, where it encouraged individuals to shape and form their cultural identity in an authentic way, Nietzsche regarded the state as a ‘blessed means.’⁷⁷

Yet, the most influential of all has to be Aristotle with his conception of the good life (eudemonia)⁷⁸. For Aristotle, a certain type of political structure (the polis) is needed to promote the good life amongst individuals. Because the polis can best promote the good life, it should be adopted over other forms of social organisation. In fact, Aristotle's claim is stronger than that. He thinks that it is part of the good life. Living and engaging in the polis is a crucial part of eudemonia. To view Aristotelian ethics outside of Aristotelian politics is a mistake, for they are two parts of one system of living with a clear goal: the production of eudemonia.

One point about Aristotelian ethical and political thinking is that it is teleological in structure (like perfectionism in general); the ethics of individuals and the politics of a society have an end goal⁷⁹, something to which they should both be working towards (the good life). This is an end-orientated way of thinking, and has the primary advantage of answering a very germane question: What is the point of society (or the State, if you wish) in first place? The achievement of the good life. To the age-old question—why are we here?—the answer is to live the good life.

Of course, a teleological moral theory may have meta-issues regarding it (in metaphysics, for example) and its validity, again, is outside the scope of this project. Incidentally, both Aristotle and Plato were the first to systematically describe in writing how, based on ethics and metaphysics, a human society should be organised. In the case of Aristotle, the basis for the best kind of societal structure had already been achieved, as will be pointed out later, during Athens’s Golden Age, which is powerful reason to subject his theory to the State.

Aristotle's perfectionism is not a lightweight moral philosophy, has been mulled over for nearly two thousand and four hundred years, and, in this work's opinion, has become so misunderstood, twisted, deformed, and misrepresented that Aristotle has been used to justify the State. Open up a political philosophy primer and you'll find Aristotle's defense/justification of the State; modern politicians point out that Aristotle argued for democracy and, by implication, that they are carrying on the tradition of freedom and of Athens itself through modern representative, two-party democracy. Horse swill. Athenian democracy is neither equivalent to nor even vaguely resembles modern democratic systems. If anything, today, we have Plato's republic, not Aristotle's polis. There is confusion regarding Aristotle.⁸⁰

And, in this process of confusion, the greatness of the polis and the Ancient Greek thought on how people should best organise themselves in accordance with the ethics of eudemonia and virtue has been cast aside, cast so far that we are in danger of losing sight of it forever. Why has this come to pass? How, after thousands of years of study, has the beauty of Aristotle's thought been lost? Has there been a secret society of Platonists, existing for millennium, working subtly at the margins, perverting our thoughts to the stage where Aristotle's politics becomes the Republic? Probably not. Instead, society and its values have changed. Language has changed considerably. For example, English does not have equivalent terms for the polis, philia, eudemonia, or paideia. We are left only with the vague translations in fragmentary texts of city-state⁸¹, friendship, happiness, and education. Aristotle was not saying that in order to be happy, individuals must hang out with friends and be citizens and college students of a city that happens also to be a State (say Singapore). No, he was saying something very different, and something that has no current political analogue, and will require some effort to uncover.

Before we can understand what Aristotle was saying, we need first to get a grip on the ancient mind and ancient politics.⁸² Without such a comprehension, we cannot understand Aristotle properly, especially as our understanding will inevitably involve the imposition of our modern values onto Aristotle's political and ethical theory. In fact, it is precisely this imposition that causes some of the problems and leads to the erroneous position that Aristotelian ethics can justify the State (see Part Four).

Our modern values are the products of thousands of years of history, thought, paradigm shifts, revolution, oppression, revision and counter-revolution, and, yet, some of our more important values are relatively modern. Slavery was not only legal just under a 150 years ago but one of the economic foundations of transatlantic commerce. However, in that 150 years, slavery has been transformed into an institution that no one dares to defend, and the vast majority of people wouldn't even consider defending it. Slavery has become taboo, pushed far to the margins of criminal society, and, consequently, when we read Aristotle's defense of slavery (The Politics, Book I) it sounds hollow and easily dismissed with a wave of the hand; the man was obviously wrong about slavery, as everyone knows. Of course, some philosophers have deconstructed and torn apart his defense; Nicholas Smith, for example, has done just that, and it appears an easy task.⁸³ Aristotle does not prove, with anything approaching great vigour, his claim that slaves are beasts, whose only redeeming feature seems to be their masters' reason. Aristotle's metaphor is as soul is to body, master is to slave.

In fact, Aristotle's defense of slavery seems a bit lazy, a quick wave of the analytical hand. This, at first, seems puzzling, but for only as long as we see it through the lens of our modern values. Given the context, the institution of slavery was not controversial within Ancient Greek society. Just as today, where the wrongness of slavery is taken for granted, the ancient Greeks (and, by no means were they alone on this point⁸⁴) took the rightness of slavery for granted.

Slaves were not deemed to be men in Ancient Greece; when Aristotle talks about men being born for citizenship (see below), he was excluding slaves for they were not part of the set of men. For Ancient Greeks, the thought of including slaves in the brotherhood of men would have been heterodox in extreme. Or, in the sake of clarity, slavery was not an occupation of men but rather a separate existence for a different (and inferior) creature, separate and not equal.

Aristotle had no intellectual reason to make a complete and detailed defense of slavery for precisely this reason; slavery was too natural to be in question, and Aristotle's main reason for defending slavery was not to defend the institution but to begin to limit membership of the polis (well, that and a couple of more digs at Plato, something of an Aristotelian hobby)⁸⁵. In The Politics (1277b15-35), Aristotle discusses whether workers (i.e. non-slaves employed in crafts & services) should be considered citizens of a good polis. Even though they are free and not in bondage, Aristotle believes that they have neither the time nor the ability to participate in citizenship. A requirement of being a citizen in a good polis is the education and the time to engage actively in practical and theoretical wisdom (the political vs. the contemplative life, which will be discussed later), and those engaged in menial services, which are the realm of the household, were far too busy to engage properly in the running of the polis.

It would be wise to remember that Ancient Greece was a preindustrial society where the basic commodities of life (food, clothes, materials) primarily came from the household level. Households were more that today's nuclear or even extended families; they were hives of production in and of themselves with attached workers and slaves (barring the truly poor citizens who hardly had habitable dwellings, let alone slaves). When combined with agricultural (both estates and peasant farms) and small craft workshops and maritime trade, this economic arrangement was able to supply not only the basics of life but also the luxuries. The Roman Republic supplied its entire military, which between 13% to 35% of its male citizens served in at any give time (225BC to AD14)⁸⁶, with precisely this kind of economic setup. Aristotle also highlights the role of the household in providing the basics of life and need to manage it, but keeps it very much distinct from the political activities of the polis (see The Politics, Book I, Chapters 3-13).

When answering the charge that everybody should be a citizen, and with an eye to excluding workers, Aristotle states (1278a1-2):

After all, slaves do not belong to any of the above-mentioned categories, nor do freed slaves. And we do not for a moment accept the notion that we must give the name citizen to all persons whose presence is necessary for the existence of the state.

The others who are necessary for existence of the polis yet who should be excluded from the citizenry are women, children (male children being qualified citizens as they have the potential of becoming citizens with the appropriate education and birth⁸⁷), free men not born to citizens (to be a citizen of Athens both mother and father had to be third-generation citizens⁸⁸), foreigners (i.e. Greeks from outside the polis), barbarians (all non-Greeks), and, presumably, idiots (who have no capacity for practical or theoretical wisdom). While Aristotle points out throughout the first half of Bk. III of NE that the citizenry of one polis will differ from another depending on constitution—for example, a tyranny would have an extremely limited citizenry, a oligarchy slightly less, a democracy even more—he does have a clear idea of what a citizen should be and in what context. As he states (1275b4-6):

The meaning of citizen is best applied in a democracy; in the other constitutions it may be applicable but it need not necessarily be so.

Owing to the “lost in translation” and “lost over 2,300 years” factors, it is hard to understand what Aristotle means by “worker” with a great deal of precision; not to mention he was something of a snob (the best life one could live was as a philosopher, which, incidentally, he was) and, on this score, his proposed exclusion of workers could have been a reflection of literary arrogance that afflicted some Athenians of learning and leisure⁸⁹.

Tied to this prejudice against manual labour, at least in Athenian thought, is the notion of autakry (usually translated as “self-reliance”). Athenians considered it to be not only wise but the expression of a full life if they were self-reliant, that is, they were able to feed, clothe, house, educate, etc. themselves, and this equated to actual freedom.⁹⁰ This meant that the self-sufficient farmer was almost idealised, and, to this end, many Athenians owned rural holdings in Attica that provided not only food but also as a source of revenue that enabled them to support their city lifestyles. This concept of freedom is somewhat far more expanded than some of today's notions. Wage slavery, as Robert Flacelière (from whom most of the stated information on manual labour in Athens derives) seems to state, was the antithesis of freedom:

To a Greek, obsessed as he was with the idea of freedom, to be dependent on some other person for one's daily bread seemed an intolerable condition of servitude. A truly free man should be altogether his own master; and how could he be that if he was drawing a salary from someone else?⁹¹

Aristotle is also quite concerned about autakry. He seems to think that an individual cannot be a good citizen if he, as will be elaborated on later, does not have virtue, and it is the role of the polis to help install virtue in its citizens. Also, one cannot be a good citizen if one is dependent on others for one's survival (i.e. wage slavery). Therefore, a good citizen for Aristotle is one that possesses virtue and is self-sufficient. Likewise, a good polis is a virtuous and self-sufficient one. The difference, and it may not be a worthwhile distinction, between a virtuous polis and a virtuous citizen is between collective and individual virtue.⁹² Collective virtue is the ability of the citizenry to pass laws and make decisions of the polis in a collective manner. For example, if the citizens run the polis's budget in a state of neither excess nor deficiency (not running up a huge debt or saving money and not spending it on vital social goods such as public buildings or defense), the polis has the collective virtue of liberality (NE Bk. IV, Ch. 1).

However, while Aristotle's dislike of workers being citizens reflects a certain degree of prejudice, the most important lesson is that Aristotle believes that manual labour should be avoided as it consumes too much time, and thus prevents contemplative and political lives. The issue of manual labour will resurface in Part Four, as a possible objection to the viability of a revised polis.

Allied to the question of workers as citizens is the actual makeup of Athens during its Golden Age (fifth century BC) of democracy, which seems to be the reference point for Aristotle, who was writing after the disastrous Peloponnesian War with Sparta; this war destroyed the democracy and reforms of Pericles, and ended with occupation and oligarchy, eventually followed by revolution. In pegging his claim to democracy, Aristotle states (1289a39-1289b5), “And just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.”

The citizenry of Athens, during the Golden Age, was open to Athenian offspring (remember Aristotle was quite keen on having citizenship requiring both mother and father to be citizens)⁹³. Others could be granted citizenship, but this was rare and granted only by the Assembly. Citizenship via parentage may have been a holdover from the tribal epoch; modern people still make distinctions between first-generation citizens and those who can trace back citizenry for many generations. Further, it would be wrong to hold the opinion that the citizenry of Athens did not solely consist of wealthy men of leisure who, owing to households filled with slaves and floating on the riches of Athens's maritime trading dominance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The undercurrent of all politics at the time was the struggle between rich and poor citizens. Some citizens were said to be financially worse off than slaves; in fact, until Solon instituted his famous reforms, poor citizens who defaulted on loans could be sold into bondage (slavery) by their creditors in order to recoup their loans.⁹⁴

The poor were, according to M. I. Finely, “...all the free men who laboured for their livelihood, the peasants who owned their farms as well as the tenants, the landless labourers, the self-employed artisans, the shopkeepers.” The rich were those who could live upon the labour of others. Ancient Greece (with Sparta excepted)⁹⁵ had two basic classes (in the loose sense of the term, not in the strict Marxist sense), and the politics of the time revolved around the conflict of these two classes and the resulting patronage.⁹⁶

The reader may recall that Aristotle, in The Politics (1289b27-33), divides the citizenry into three classes, rich, poor and middle. This division of citizenry seems to been based upon who can afford hoplite (Greek infantry, and the backbone of Greek military structure) armour. In addition to this classification, Solon also made economic divisions. He came up with four, based mostly on agricultural output. Despite these economic divisions, the evidence on a whole points to Ancient Greek society having only two classes of citizens⁹⁷. Aristotle was most likely inserting the doctrine of the mean into economic structure, a case of the tail wagging the dog.

This division is so crucial to Athenian society that it flows (as would be natural) throughout Aristotle's political thinking. The true difference between democracy and oligarchy is that democracy is for the free (which would include the poor but not exclusively) while oligarchy is for the rich. As Aristotle puts it (1290b1-4):

Therefore we should rather say that democracy is the form of government in which the rulers are free, and oligarchy in which the rich rule; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few.

From the above, we can see the importance of this division and how it refutes the idea that numbers (i.e. mob rule) is what constitutes Athenian democracy. Rather, the status of being free is inherent in democracy. And, once this is understood, the reforms of Solon, for example, become truly intelligible, as do other facets of the polis. The structure of the Athenian polis reflects the political strength of the free (vs. the rich). Poor Athenian citizens were paid to sit on juries, direct taxation only applied at times of extreme crisis (such as the Peloponnesian War), and the navy served as a source of employment for those citizens (as rowers) unable to afford hoplite armour. As time passed, the offices of the polis lost their property qualifications. Further, the rich were required to fund the community activities of the polis such as festivals and naval galleys. To use modern terminology, capital was subordinated to the greater good of society.⁹⁸

The Ancient Greeks were not touchy-feely people. Sentimentality was not one of their graces, and neither did they have our relatively modern (post French Revolution) conception of human rights. They were, by today's standards and actions, hard people living in hard times. Famine, illness, armed conflict, plague and death haunted the average Greek at every turn. Newborn babies were routinely exposed, ethnic cleansing common, selling and trafficking of people the basis of an economy, and war (in which almost all Greek citizens participated in) constant.⁹⁹ Wars, in particular, were fairly brutal experiences with the victors often massacring and/or enslaving the losing population. Grain insecurity dominated everyday thought, and death often came early. This kind of situation and without, it must be stressed, a conception of human beings invested with value and rights just for being human, must have produced a mindset very different to our own. The results of such that are most relevant to this inquiry are twofold.

One, Greek citizens had a very strong mental divide between themselves and non-citizens, much deeper than today's bourgeoisie has with the proletariat. The modern bourgeois class recognises the proletariat as human beings in the moral sense of the term, and has resorted to a variety of arguments to provide a moral basis for their domination under the capitalist system: Social Darwinism being at the root of most of them, coming out strongly in current libertarian political, moral and economic theory, and aped in World Bank and IMF policies. Even divine sanction is still a part of this moral underpinning of economic and political domination, both by the continuing aberration of monarchical dynasties and by the current use of evangelical Christian teachings in regards to the accumulation of wealth (the largely unspoken thinking being that the rich have been blessed by God in return for belief, and that the poor remain poor because their belief is not strong enough). Further, modern society has inherited some ancient prejudices, such as xenophobia, racism, sexism, and paternalism, that continue to play themselves out in the mostly unconscious domination of the few over the many.

Ancient Greeks had no need to resort to such intellectual lengths, as Aristotle's defense of slavery shows. They were made of sterner stuff. Like we would never dream of including the tools of industrialisation (trains, steel, factories, etc.) in our political decision-making and the human family, neither would they included slaves and women. Not only were they considered incapable of making political decisions, they weren't considered to be fully human in the moral sense of the term. Therefore, to exclude them from political life and subjugate them to lives of mere economic and breeding activities required no great moral justification. Such was the way of the Ancient World.

The second result of the Greek mindset, or worldview if you prefer, was an intense notion of freedom that was, in many respects, greater than what is commonly held today. Not only did they seek, at great lengths, economic freedom (being the ability to provide for oneself, and not to be dependent on another for the basic means of civilised life), they also valued their political freedom. It was this cherishing of freedom that prevented the unification of Greece for centuries. No sooner than a particular city gained dominance over another Greek city, would there be a revolution by the citizenry of the subject city or a short-lived alliance struck with a rival power. Revolutions were common and the makeup of alliances between cities (leagues and confederacies) was ever-shifting; no sooner had the Greeks banded together to defeat Darius were they at each other's throats, again. Perhaps, it was this intense notion of freedom, more than the Homeric virtues of honour, glory, and vengeance, that was the cause of much of Greece's constant warfare.

Further, this sense of freedom was not only directed towards domination from without, but also from within. Athens's history is rife with examples of internal uprisings and banishments of potential tyrants. The notion that freedom equated with substantial political decision-making was something worth fighting for. Authority was to be resisted.

This somewhat long discussion on Greek history, psychology and socio-economic conditions has an important conclusion in relation to Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle is concerned with human perfection for all human beings but has a limited view of the set of human beings. This limited view is a result of ancient prejudice and ignorance, and thus should not be followed. If that set of human beings were expanded to include the entire human race, then Aristotle's theory should apply to that larger set. The restriction of who is eligible to achieve perfection to include us all, not just male citizens.

If we could build a time machine and go back to 330BC and abduct Aristotle, bring him to the present, give him a thorough induction into our conception of a human being, then he would surely agree that his moral theory should be widened to apply to us all. The point is that Aristotle's perfectionism cannot be dismissed because Aristotle thought that some people weren't human. Logic should prevail over prejudice and free his theory from the (in our eyes) paternalism, sexism, and xenophobia that plague his works.

Whilst on the general scope of Artistotle's theory, it is worth pointing out that this version of perfectionism is consequentialist, and thus should maximise perfection whenever possible. As Thomas Hurka states, “A consequentialist perfectionism tell us first to desire the state in which human nature is developed to the highest degree and then, assuming we are rational, to promote it.”¹⁰⁰

This certainly does capture what Aristotle was up to: If we can, Aristotle urges us to live one of two desirable lives and to live them as best we can.

Now that the Greek mindset has been established to a reasonable degree, it is possible to turn towards Aristotle's political and ethical thought in greater detail. Without such an understanding, much would have gotten lost and the reader would be well-advised to continually keep the Greek mindset in his/her consciousness as he/she reads on.

Let us turn to Aristotle and start with his conception of what a man is for that is the crucial part of his ethical theory. Knowing what human nature is provides the foundation of perfectionist theory, and Aristotle's ethics are no different. In The Politics, Aristotle informs us that man is a political animal, due to his ability to determine right from wrong, just from unjust, and that man cannot live outside of the polis and fulfill his potential as man. Human nature is political. Further, Aristotle sees that men who are outside the polis are inclined towards senseless violence and fairly deficient in the good life; either that, or they are gods (1253a2-6).

Aristotle makes a similar point in Book I of Nicomachean Ethics. In fact, when reading the Nicomachean Ethics, Book I provides a series of clear signposts to the content and direction of the entire work and the theory itself. Aristotle states (1097b12-16, bold added):

Now by self-sufficient [autakry] we do not mean that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship.

This implies that men, having been born into citizenship, also are born into the duties of citizenship; Aristotle seems quite clear on the idea that no man is an island and that a man's ethical (and political) success requires him to interact with others. Of course, citizenship does not necessarily mean living well (i.e. eudemonia requires more than mere citizenship). Part of what is integral to eudemonia, however, is that a citizen takes an active role in the polis, as Aristotle points out in The Politics (1278a35-1278b5):

That there are many sorts of citizens, and that he may be said to be as completely who shares the honours of the state, is evident from what has been already said... From what has been said it is plain whether the virtue of a good man and an excellent citizen is the same or different: and we find that in some states it is the same, in others not; and also that this is not true of each citizen, but of those only who take the lead, or are capable of taking the lead, in public affairs, either alone or in conjunction with others.

Furthermore, Aristotle believes, like Pericles before him, that those citizens who do not take part in the political life of the polis are useless.¹⁰¹ Aristotle states (1275a23-24):

But the citizen whom we are seeking to define is a citizen in the strictest sense, against whom no such exception can be taken, and his special characteristic is that he shares in the administration of justice, and in offices.

This signifies a conceptual difference between a legal classification of a citizen (born to a Athenian father), and the moral conception of a citizen (i.e. one who engages in the polis via attending the Assembly, sitting on a jury, fighting in the wars, proposing legislation, sitting on the Council of 500, working within his deme for the education of the youth, etc.). While Aristotle does address the former (as has already been shown), he is most concerned with the latter and, hence, his discussion on what is virtuous for a citizen to do and what kind of polis should exist to perfect the virtue of the citizens. There is more to being a citizen (and hence a human being) than mere protection against injustice, it requires political duty (1280b11-13).

For Aristotle, the politics of a society are not only for the production of the good life for members of that society, politics are integral to the good life. Aristotle stakes the claim that the use of virtue and rational thought in one's own life is indeed a good thing and should be done its own sake, but it is better (more worthwhile) to use virtue and rational thought in the good of the whole (other members of the polis). He states (1094b3-11):

For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end for merely one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term.

Whilst on this point, note that Aristotle's primary concerns regarding the polis were twofold: What should be the correct structure of the polis, i.e. the structure of society, the Assembly, who is a citizen and other such matters? And, secondly, what is the virtue of the polis? The latter question regards the virtue of the citizens, as they constitute the polis, and the polis is nothing but the collection of its citizens. Obviously, these two questions are related, and cannot be dealt as if one has no effect on the other.

A virtuous citizen is one who will act towards the maximisation of the polis's virtue, and, at the same time, a citizen can be virtuous in a polis only with the correct constitution. A citizen who finds himself in a polis with the incorrect form (say an oligarchy) should work towards the installation of the correct form, democracy, and should do this in accordance with others; he should do this for his own sake and those of others for people cannot obtain the correct virtue under an incorrect constitution. Virtue is both collective and individual. Put another way, a collection of citizens with a low level of perfection (call it Level 1) will engage in both politics and contemplation. This rational activity will lead them to realise that there is a greater level of perfection, Level 2. In order to achieve Level 2 in their own lives, they then seek to promote Level 2 perfection throughout the polis via legislation. This will increase the political and contemplative ability (through the promotion of virtue) of the citizens who will then seek Level 3 perfection. Aristotle's claim is that this can only be done in a specific sort of society, the polis. A polis with low levels of perfection will have, by necessity, low levels of perfection amongst the citizenry. This seems to make sense: To use a favourite phrase, take a look around. Societies seeped in butchery, hatred, and bloodshed tend to produce angry and bloodthirsty people. The Third Reich was a case in point.

Ian Johnston sums up how Aristotle saw humans engaging in a collective manner with admirable simplicity:

To introduce an analogy to which I shall return from time to time, one might say that Aristotle sees the individual as inevitably part of a team—a large and complex but clearly identifiable group of team members of all sorts of capabilities, an environment which shapes the purposes and value of that individual life in relation to other members of the team community and to the team as an overall unity. And just as a team player, in a sense, has no identity or purpose without a team in which he or she can participate as a fully integrated member, so the human being has no complete identity or purpose without the polis to which he or she belongs.¹⁰²

Allied to Aristotle's conceptions of citizenship and politics is the notion of friendship. As people are fond of pointing out, Aristotle sees men as political animals bound together by the bonds of community and friendship. The notion of an ‘atomized’ individual would have been abhorrent to Aristotle, perhaps enough for him to don Athenian battle-amour and impale Ayn Rand, and with good cause. Once again, our modern values hinder our understanding of Aristotle: Ayn Rand is one of the 20^th Century high priestesses, the cult of the individual has become engraved in our psyche, and Nietzsche's Overman in the form of global financiers (what Tom Wolfe calls 'masters of the universe') makes more sense to us than Aristotle's citizen. The Athenian citizen is a different being in its entirety; citizenship cannot exist without community, and it is community that defines individuals, not the other way around.¹⁰³ For Aristotle, the good life is comprised, in part, of friendship (1169b14-23).

Friendship is best thought of as interdependence, and friends are more than the causal acquaintances of the modern era, something that goes astray in translation. Aristotelean friends, as Murray Bookchin states, are more akin to a tightly knitted community based not on bloodlines but common cause and aims:

Underlying these various ‘means’ is Aristotle’s emphasis on human solidarity or philia, which includes friendship (the common English translation for the Greek term) but which is a word more far-reaching in its connotation of civic commonality. The intimacies of friendship may be reserved for a limited few, but philia implies an expansive degree of sociality that is a civic attribute of the polis and the political life involved in its administration. Man is “by his nature” a political animal or zoon politiken, which is to say that he is destined not only to live in a community but also to communize.¹⁰⁴

Friendship is one of the virtues makes up eudemonia. And, before addressing the other virtues, it would be wise to get to grips with what eudemonia is exactly. Eudemonia (usually translated as “happiness”, “living well”, or “the good life”) is living in accordance with a collection of moral, intellectual and practical virtues, and is the pinnacle of human perfection. For Aristotle, there are two types lives that individuals need to live in order to achieve eudemonia, the contemplative life (the best good life that can be achieved) and the political life (the second-best good life). The contemplative life is the best as it is the most self-sufficient, while the political life ideally aims for both for the individual and the community at large and, thus, is not as complete (1177a31-1177b15). This distinction between political vs. contemplative lives and their relative worth will be returned to later on in some detail.

To return to virtue in general, it seems, once again, that English language does not carry through the complete meaning of the Greek word “arête”. Arête is usually translated as virtue or excellence (sometimes also as valor), and, pre-Sophist times, was thought to defy being taught, and one can assume a more complete meaning than simple virtue. The concept of arête has a long history within Ancient Greek thought, back to Homer, it seems, and the idea of defining it seems to have taken a while to formulate. A.R. Burn states:

He [the poet Phokylides, 6^th Century BC] also said, 'All virtue is summed up in justice,' which was original in his time. Virtue in Homer, arete, was quite compatible with aggression. A horse or a sword could have arete as well as a man. What Phokylides was saying is that human virtue is moral virtue.¹⁰⁵

Luckily enough, the concept of arête went under more intellectual rigour since the days of Homer, or Phokylides for that matter. Aristotle explains what virtue is exactly; it is a state of character that is in neither excess or deficiency (1106a1-b9). Aristotelian ethics has often been described as virtue ethics, which is a fair enough assessment. In order to obtain perfection, or eudemonia, one must achieve the following moral virtues (each of with is the mean between excess and deficiency): Courage, temperance, liberality, munificence, high-mindedness, right ambition, good temper, friendly civility, sincerity, wittiness, modesty, and just resentment¹⁰⁶.

If in possession of these moral virtues, an individual will be able to choose the correct moral action to take in a particular situation. Aristotle's approach to determining how we should act when faced with a moral question (Do I steal because I'm hungry? Should I kill to defend strangers from attack?) is to equip an individual with the toolkit needed to solve that problem. An analogy to this approach is like providing a mechanic with a well-stocked workshop and basic mechanical theory, and then giving him any old motorcycle to fix. This approach avoids the problem of having an ethical rule set, and finding counterexamples that prove the rule wrong.

Further, it seems to fit our commonly held views on morality and moral action; we educate our children in a similar manner. Education in this context means something wider than schooling. Parents teach virtues to their children as they group. Parents berate their children when the lie and praise them when they are honest. Courage is stressed each time parents tell their children to “stand up for themselves.” People are routinely rounded on by relatives and friends for being stingy and caging drinks, and learning how to share is a big part of growing up.

How does this translate into moral action? Well, for example, suppose your child at third man is playing in a school cricket match and you've installed in her the virtues of fair play and honesty. The batsman heaves at the ball and send it skyward to your child. She dives forward to catch it but grasps it at the same time as it hits the ground. No one at the ground besides your child can tell if the ball touched the ground or not. But because of the virtues installed, your child will declare to the umpire that she didn't catch the ball. She doesn't need to refer to moral rules or theory to do this, she just does it.

How do these moral virtues relate to the intellectual virtues of contemplation and political activity as discussed above? The intellectual virtues are an expression of man's rational element (1103a1-10) into activity. Aristotle believes that men are fundamentally different from plants, animals, and material objects because of their rational ability. The function of a man is to use his rational ability (the famous function argument). Aristotle states (1098a11-17):

...and we state the function of a man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence...

Eudemonia requires that a citizen choose the right kind of life according to Aristotle, which is the contemplative life or the political life. The usual way to read Aristotle is that he is claiming that the contemplative life is the best life with the political life coming in a close second.

It is certainly amusing to note that Aristotle found that the life he was leading (and that of his friends) was the highest or best form of good life—primarily because the contemplative life is an end in itself and requires the correct moral and intellectual virtues, but also because the contemplative life, that of a philosopher, is divine, as stated in Bk. X, Ch. 8 of NE (1178b20-25), “Now if you take away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but contemplation? Therefore the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness.”—he has a great regard and respect for the political life.

Aristotle is somewhat difficult to read on the good life and virtue. While he says that the contemplative is supreme on one hand because it is an end it itself in regards to rational thought, is the most self-sufficient, and is divine (it is what gods would do), he does state that (1176b4-7), “Now those activities are desirable in themselves from which nothing is sought beyond the activity. And of this nature virtuous actions are thought to be; for to do noble and good deeds is a thing desirable for its own sake.” This seems to suggest that all virtuous acts (including moral and practical vitures) are ends in themselves. At times like this, one is tempted to throw up one's hands and remember Johnston's warning remarks, “The existing text (it is assumed) is the result of editors dealing with lecture notes, or, as one philosopher has put it, with notes pulled out of the waste paperbasket.”¹⁰⁷

To square this circle, it is worth noting the difference between eudemonia and virtue. Eudemonia is best thought of as living in accordance with a collection of virtues (moral, intellectual, and practical). It is an entire package (1099a31-b6). What one does with the entire package is the difference between living the contemplative, political or some other life. Individual virtues (acts such as liberality) are worthwhile in their own right (an end), and one should act according to these regardless of the life that one lives. Even if one is not living the good life (maybe one doesn't have the opportunity to read philosophy), one should act according to individual virtues as they are inherently good to do.

The political life seems to mean that a citizen engages himself, as much as is possible and within the doctrine of the mean, in the political life of the polis, which would include the education of the polis. One gets the feeling from reading Aristotle that this is no bad thing, and is, in fact, required for others to live the contemplative life. If one cannot live the contemplative life, then there is no shame or dishonour in living the political life, which is in accordance with virtue, use of rationality and autakry. Aristotle makes the point that the wishes of a citizen engaged in the political process is to make citizens good through the formation of good habits, and what separates a good polis from a bad one is whether or not this is achieved (1103b3-7).

If Murray Bookchin is correct about the translation of philia (usually translated as friendship), then it becomes obvious, especially in light of everything else already said, that the best life a citizen can lead requires an engagement in the polis. The contemplative life cannot be a life of seclusion; it must be the life of a citizen contributing to the good of the polis as a whole (educating one's children, interacting with friends, and having a degree of political influence). Socrates, who can be said, regardless of his philosophy, to have lived the contemplative life, was fully engaged in the polis as a citizen, to the extent of serving as a hoplite and having a wide circle of friends. As Aristotle states in an important passage in the Nicomachean Ethics (1099a31-b6):

Yet evidently, as we said, it [the contemplative life] needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment. In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instruments; and there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from happiness—good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and perhaps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death.

In this quote, Aristotle is stressing the importance of practical values. A decent way of understanding these values is as material values. These are things that one must acquire during one's life, and, while good in and of themselves, they are also necessary for the good life. These practical values are autakry, friendship, luck (it must be a complete life according to Aristotle, and that doesn't happen in one summer (1098a20-23)), family, and the correct political structuring of society (i.e. the polis).

For Aristotle, there are only three ways citizens can obtain moral and intellectual virtue, through natural endowment, intellectual teaching, and habituation¹⁰⁸. Natural endowment is beyond control, and intellectual teaching is wasted on the young, according to Aristotle. Both of these defy reason, and virtue requires reason. In the case of natural endowment, reason obviously does not apply, and natural endowment is capricious as it strikes some and not others. Aristotle doesn't believe that virtue should be only the domain of those gifted enough to figure it out by themselves, and that those who aren't talented philosophers can also obtain virtue (via habituation, see below). This seems to be in keeping with this idea that all citizens should be eligible for perfection. (1179b20-24)

Intellectual teaching is wasted on the young as they require hard work and reason and these are not of the domain of the youth. Instead the youth should be brought up in a polis with the right kind of laws, and this will provide the platform for their later philosophical education. Therefore, the propagation of virtue amongst the citizens of a polis cannot rely on “divine cause” or intellectual teaching (for it does not work on the youth). (1179b25-30)

Aristotle then goes on to explain that the only way virtuous action amongst citizens can be achieved is through habituation, which requires not only education but laws (1179b31-1180a5). Socrates's remarks in Crito help to indicate the deep feelings toward the law that Athenians held; although, as with most of Plato, his words may have been doctored to suit Plato's political vision, which is the antithesis of Aristotle's (see Part One). Without preempting the discussion on the polis, it will suffice to say that the Athenians (and here Aristotle was no different) considered the law to be something not external to themselves but something to which they belonged. Aristotle believes that the law should be used, as it has a power greater than that of the family. The power of the collective whole provides the rules of behaviour that are in accordance with virtue, as he states in NE Bk. X, Ch. 9 (1180a14-28):

However that may be, if (as we have said) the man who is to be good must be well trained and habituated, and go on to spend his time in worthy occupations and neither willingly nor unwillingly do bad actions, and if this can be brought about if men live in accordance with a sort of reason and right order, provided this has force, if this be so, the paternal command indeed has not the required force or compulsive power (nor in general has the command of one man, unless he be a king or something similar), but the law has compulsive power, while it is at the same time a rule proceeding from a sort of practical wisdom and reason. And while people hate men who oppose their impulses, even if they oppose them rightly, the law in its ordaining of what is good is not burdensome.

Viewed in isolation, this entire quote seems to suggest an almost totalitarian approach to politics and societal organisation. This is not hyperbole, for some historians have read Ancient Greece in this light. The esteemed classicist Robert Flacelière, for example, has done so:

'With sovereign power over the various individual citizens who compose it'-the ancient city was an end in itself, an absolute which left none of its members any great measure of liberty, and severely restricted all individual activities. In this sense, it was a basically totalitarian concept, which is obvious enough when we look at Sparta. In Athens, however, the more liberal aspects of the Athenian character may tend to mask this profound truth though they cannot ever eradicate it.¹⁰⁹

This, as is slowly being argued, is an incorrect reading of the Aristotelean polis. This view, and similar views outline earlier, can make sense only if the Aristotelean polis is a State (as has previously defined), which it is not (see Part Four).¹¹⁰ Further, Aristotle's basic ethical position would not support the State (again, see Part Four). Before either of these claims can be proved, we need to analyse the contemplative and political lives and distill what this work considers to be the important elements of Aristotle's perfectionism.

In regards to the contemplative life vs. the political life, it seems that the contemplative life (even if it is the best life) is comprised partly of political action. Aristotle's conception of human nature, the duties of citizenship, and the practical virtue of friendship all point to the same thing, human beings must be able to participate in the politics of society in a deep and meaningful manner. This, then, should be stressed in any form of social organisation.

Further, the argument for the superiority of the contemplative life has some significant weaknesses. One of the reasons why Aristotle thinks it is best is because it is what the gods would do, and we should emulate them. Quite frankly, there seems to be no evidence for the existence of gods (especially for those residing on Olympus) and we are focused on human beings, so this argument can be abandoned. Even if we suppose that gods do exist (or imagine a world where they did), the nature of gods would be different from human nature. Perfectionism seeks to improve human nature and not that of other creatures. It is best to stick to human beings.

Nor is the contemplative life as complete as Aristotle likes to think it is. The knowledge produced by contemplation has to be used in human activity for it to have increased value and that use is the domain of political action.

Imagine the following, there is a philosopher (call him Bob) who has come up with the Grand Unified Theory (GUT), which is about as complete an act of contemplation that could exist, but who has done so in an isolated room in a deserted office tower. Bob tells no one of GUT, publishes nothing, and on his deathbed burns his only copy of the rock solid proof of GUT. What value then does Bob's GUT have? Some value, but not as much as if he shared it with friends or the rest of the world. GUT would improve our lives in a variety of ways. The value of GUT resides not only in the theory itself, but also in its social application.

The point here is that while an act of contemplation for Bob is worthwhile for Bob, the good of others must also be considered. The Aristotelean conception of humankind (friendship and interconnectivity, see below for more on this) is unlike our modern, isolated conception of human beings. The Aristotelean conception of the good is not located only in the individual but also amongst friends and society at large (in the case of Bob & GUT, this is aspect of the good is not being realised). Aristotle would have been horrified at the suggestion that philosophers should not teach, debate and attempt to persuade individuals and public opinion. After all, that is what he did during his life. One should not be focused only on the good of oneself but also of one's neighbour, and that involves political activity (even the encouragement of others to contemplate is a political activity). While contemplation have value in and of itself, political activity brings added value to contemplation.

Further, it would be fairly surprising if Aristotle declared that some other life than the one he was leading would be the best one. That, at the very least, should raise a suspicion or two.

From all of the above, the following six key elements, according to this work, of Aristotle’s position are clear, hopefully. These six points are taken forward in the discussions of Part Four as a consequentialist Aristotelean perfectionist theory to evaluate the polis and the State:

1) Political life is part of the good life. Eudemonia is comprised, in part, of certain political activity.

Since the good life is a package of virtues and from what has been stated before regarding the nature of man and citizenship, this key element seems to be true. There is no obvious reason as to why it is not the case. People are gregarious beings, and being a player in society is a natural state of affairs. We are constantly jockeying for position and influence within our home, work, and recreational lives, and the bun fights that often consume academia are prime examples of this point. Heck, throw four people in a room, lock the door, and a political dynamic peculiar to that situation will evolve.

Aristotle takes this one step farther. He is saying that this social activity must also take place in the political sphere of greater society, and that this is the right thing to do. He's quite right in this regard. It is hard to see how human nature can be perfected if one abandons action in one of the main characteristics of human existence. Slavery is wrong is because it takes this vital aspect of a person's life away and places it in the hands of another, and slavery is hardly a good example of someone's essential property of human nature being perfected.

2) Even the contemplative life requires a person who is engaged in it to play an active and meaningful role in the political activities of the polis.

3) Even if the contemplative life is to be preferred to the political life, this does not absolve a scholar from playing an active and meaningful role in the political sphere. It is that person's function as a citizen.

Elements 2) and 3) are derived from the discussion around the political vs. contemplative life. Even if Aristotle is correct about the contemplative life being the best life, this still requires political activity, as it is integral to eudemonia, as the defining condition of human nature. Let us further suppose that Aristotle is incorrect about the contemplative life being the best life and there is another best life (call it Life X). Even then, political action will be integral to Life X for human nature is political, and no perfection of human nature can avoid this.

Another important characteristic of human nature is associated to this notion. Part of human nature is that individuals are parts of the societies they belong to; an Aristotelean-style analogy would be that individuals are bricks in the wall that should be society. They are interconnected in a deep and meaningful manner that precludes real independent action. It is exceedingly rare (if not impossible) for individuals to act on their own without the assistance of others. One's actions (including success or failure in life) are dependent upon the goodwill of others. Examine one's own life and all the accomplishments (or failures) and one will find that other human beings played an important part in those accomplishments. This work could not have been written without the support and assistance of a huge number of people (some of whom have been complete strangers), and can rightly be said not to be the result of just one person's activity.

By way of another example, one of the more effective methods of industrial disruption (or sabotage) is “white mutiny”, which is the following of all instructions to the exact letter and with minimal activity by an employee. This subtly wrecks organisations and causes a distinct lack of success in the implementation of projects. The author has used this method before, and has found it to be highly effective. But why? Precisely because this strategy seeks to minimise the interconnectivity of human relations via the withholding of substantive assistance. This work's supervisor could have killed this work by employing such a strategy. A supervisor is not required to lend books, meet outside of working hours (the author has a full time job), etc., and without those and related activities this work would have never been completed. Human beings work better in systems of mutual aid than as isolated cogs in a machine.

What Aristotle seeks to do is both to identify this condition and to focus upon it for improvement, especially within the political realm. Again, this seems to be the correct approach. The conception of what a citizen is—an individual involved in the administration of justice (by sitting on juries) or holding offices—is both correct and greater than today's commonplace notions of citizenship. Mere voting in an election once every four years for a political party doesn't capture this notion. What appears to be required for the political life is, in conjunction with others, to debate, decide, and implement the activities of one's society.

4) However, being involved in the political life is not enough for an individual, he must also act in a virtuous manner (which he gains through education, habituation) and his use of rational ability.

Aristotle's point is quite simple. Political activity without the correct kind of virtue is often what leads to tyranny, corruption, and self-centered ambition. However, with a strong understanding and internalization of virtue (particularly moral virtues such as friendship and justice) such political evils can be avoided.

In regards to the particular moral virtues, Aristotle's list seems to be a good one. If someone were to live according to those virtues, we would be hard pressed not to consider her a good human being and it seems unlikely she would engage in immoral activities. Perhaps additional virtues could be added in an effort to improve the list, and that would be a fine expression of contemplation, but the list seems to be, at the very least, workable. Nor would any alterations to the list affect the overall direction or structure of the theory.

“Education” is the usual translation for the Greek term “paideia.” Paideia encompasses more than mere schooling. It is a life long process of character development, growth, absorption of culture and training in skills and knowledge.¹¹¹ Aristotle seems to confirm this when he states in Bk. V, Ch. 11 of The Politics, “Now by education for a constitution I do not mean simply teaching the young to do the things that oligarchically-minded or democratically-minded people enjoy doing, but that their teaching should enable them to live as an oligarch in an oligarchy, as a democrat in a democracy.”

Aristotle has a point here. Education is tied intimately to the concept of citizenship. It would be asking a great deal of a person to assume the duties of citizenship without a through education in them. Aristotelean ethics seem to require that individuals receive this type of complete education. The skills training of modern education (basic mathematics, reading and writing) would not be sufficient, as it ignores the political aspect of our human nature. Education should be aimed at improving the individual overall, and not merely equipping her with the skills she would need to find a job. This is in line with the aim of perfectionism.

5) The citizen needs to live in accordance with a strong and deep sense of friendship, and have material goods such as health and leisure.

Friendship has been discussed at length above, and is connected to the discussion on the interconnectivity of human beings. In regards to material goods, Aristotle seems to be quite right (this point will resurface in Part Four). It is hard to see how one can live a good life is one is starving, constantly sick, or is too busy working 15 hour days. These are the basic conditions for human existence and are required in order to attempt perfection.

6) Furthermore, a citizen must also have a fair degree of self-reliance; one cannot live the good life if he is under the domination of another for the basic needs of life.

This last point is often tied in with the notion of wealth, and the definition of wealth for the Ancient Greek is one who's household provided him the means to engage in the political and/or contemplative life. Richard Kraut notes that half of the Book I of The Politics is devoted to the subject of household management and makes the following point:

We should also notice that although Aristotle expects his readers to leave most crafts to others—he does not take himself to be talking to cooks, cobblers, and horse trainers—there is nonetheless one craft, at least, that every one of his readers needs: household management (oikonomia). They must have or develop the virtues by which they can exercise proper management of their property (including their slaves) and family. If they cannot handle these material and personal goods, they will not have the leisure needed to engage in politics and philosophy.¹¹²

There is also a further point. Self-sufficiency is really an economic expression of equality. If one is dependent upon another for the basic goods of life, then one is in an unequal power relationship. Such is the case of working for a salary in the modern world. A salary (hopefully) enables one to have a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear, money for philosophy books, and so on. Without that salary (unless one inherits wealth) one cannot do these things and ends up starving and sick. This gives whoever pays that salary (through the threat of withholding the salary) a powerful and dominant position in that relationship. Equality seems to be a good thing—hard to think of a compelling reason why it wouldn't be—and, thus, so is self-sufficiency.

This was recognised not only by Aristotle, but also by other Athenians. The Athenian polis had a version of a social welfare system that allowed political equality. Through the subordination of capital and payment to the poor (via jury duty and rowing on galleys), a system was developed where the poor would have the means to engage in the political system as equals. What seems to be prized is the notion that wealth should not be a barrier (through the economic subordination of individuals) to equality, and the best way this can be achieved is through material self-sufficiency. Essentially, this is a case of economics beings designed according to virtue, and this is a point that will be further explored in Part Four.

To sum up, even in the contemplative life a citizen must be engaged in the polis's political sphere, as has been shown. It is impossible for a man to be a citizen without such an engagement¹¹³; what one does with this engagement seems to rest on a variety of factors such as luck, opportunity, and natural inclination. Only after a man has become a citizen of a democratic polis, has achieved self-sufficiency, engages in the polis through friendship, takes on the duties of the polis such as educating his children and serving when necessary in the military, and lives the virtuous life can he choose to live the good life, either via the political life or the contemplative life (or even some other better life, Life X). Neither of these lives demands a withdrawal from the polis, in fact, much the opposite.

And now, finally, it is time to engage with the polis and the State in light of this version of Aristotle's ethics.

Part Four: The Polis

“That perfect liberty they sigh for—the liberty of making slaves of other people”

-- Abraham Lincoln, Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 1854¹¹⁴

Part Four will seek to answer one major question: Is the State justified relative to the polis in light of an Aristotelean ethic? In order to achieve an answer, there will first have to be a historical understanding of the Athenian polis of Athens's Golden Age, which Aristotle based his best polis upon. In conjunction with the rather long discussion on Greek thought and socio-economic conditions in Part Three, this historical understanding will help to illustrate what kind of social organisation a polis is. After finishing that, the next step is to determine whether the polis is a State and the implications of an Aristotelean approach to perfection with respect to it. It will be argued that Aristotle's polis is not a State. However, this isn't the end of the road for the State, for declaring that the ancient Greek polis is not a State doesn't preclude the possibility of a State realising Aristotelean perfection. Alas, for the state supporter, a modern version of the polis could be better suited for human perfection (see below). Further, there are major issues with the historical polis regarding its exploitative economy.

It will be necessary to see whether the key elements of the polis (including an Aristotelean approach to the good life, as stated in Part Three) can be realised through the State. It may be that Aristotelean ethics & politics may be best actualised in a State, it may be that it is impossible to have the time required to engage in politics and contemplation in the modern world, a “modern polis” (of some kind) may be not possible, and it might occur that a radical revision of how we live, work, and interact will be required to achieve the good life. Only then will there be an answer to the major question of justification of the State in line with Aristotelean ethics, which is one of the aims here.

One quick caveat, do not expect a complete and total answer in regards to what kind of society should we live in or how it would work. Such issues will require further research, development of theory, and practical experimentation, and, at best, this work hopes to be suggestive rather than absolute.

The polis, of which much has already been said, is a community of citizens ideally working towards the realisation of eudemonia; on an Aristotelean approach, a good polis would be one that provided the practical virtues needed for eudemonia, a bad polis would be one that failed to do so. This working towards eudemonia, in the case of Athenian democracy, worked primarily through the Assembly, which met at the agora (a wide open and common place). The Assembly was free to all citizens and met on a pretty much constant basis. Any citizen was free to propose and debate any decision of the Assembly, and it was the Assembly, by majority vote, that made the decisions of Athens. The Assembly was the highest decision-making authority and none had the right to overturn, circumvent or ignore its decisions, which encompassed all spheres of Athenian life (including economic, social, military, and foreign).¹¹⁵

In addition to the Assembly, there was a Council of 500, which prepared the agenda for the Assembly (but of which the Assembly could reject or alter at will) and helped in resolving technical issues. The Council of 500 was made up of citizens drawn by lot from Athens's demes (similar to neighbourhoods), and the term of service was a year. Given that Athenian citizenry seems to have peaked between 30,000 to 60,000¹¹⁶ individuals, there was a strong chance that an individual citizen would serve on the Council of 500 during his lifetime. In addition, there were a variety of offices empowered to carry out specific tasks such as commanding the army. These offices were either by lot or by election, short in duration, and subjected completely to the Assembly. Any officer had to give a complete accounting to the Assembly at the end of his term. Finally, there were the juries, which comprised of up to a total of 6,000 citizens and determined disputes (trade, criminal, etc.). Once again, jury duty was determined by lot, and citizens on a jury were given a modest stipend, enabling the poorest of citizens (for a discussion on the economic makeup of Athenian citizens, see the historical discussion in Part Three) to attend and complete their civic duties. The average citizen, through no real effort greater than that of the majority of his peers, would be called upon to decide on and play a practical role in the vital actions of the polis at least once during his lifetime.¹¹⁷

Education has been mentioned in passing and the subject needs some clarification. The education of the Athenian youth does not seem to have been the responsibility of the state/government. Instead, Athenian fathers paid fees to individual teachers for their sons' education¹¹⁸, physical and military training seems to have been the responsibility of the entire polis but devolved down to the level of tribes and demes (see below), and intellectual training (what we would call tertiary training) the domain of philosophers, who entered into private relations with individual students. The point is that education was, when compared to how today's States educate their young, an overwhelming private affair but backed up with considerable social pressure. It seems highly unlikely that a young Athenian would refuse to attend his military service at the age of 18 or avoid the wrestling and boxing matches at the gymnasia.¹¹⁹

Physically, the polis encompassed a city and the surrounding countryside and had a fairly limited (by today's standard) citizen population. Size varied dramatically amongst Greek poleis. As Johnston states:

The city-states (meaning the city and the adjacent land) were generally quite small in area and population (made up of citizens, slaves, resident aliens, women and children). The most populous city state, Athens, with an area of about 1000 square miles, had in 431 BC a population of about 310,000 (about 45,000 of whom were citizens). Sparta, by contrast, although occupying a larger and more fertile area of about 3000 square miles, had a population of about 12,000, the majority of whom were not citizens. Most of the city states were considerably smaller in area and population than Athens or Sparta.¹²⁰

A proper polis was completely independent. Not only could it meet its material needs (which it did primarily through levies on the rich and on trade), it was ideally free of any foreign intervention. The Athenian polis of the Golden Age seems to have been free from external control (Sparta and the Persians, for example) and powerful enough to play a role in the lives of other Greek societies.

Beyond the above, there was also a spirit of community amongst the citizens of the polis. While hard to describe in English, it seems to have had a common identity and ethos which all citizens obeyed. The polis had an identity that could not be separated from that of any individual citizen. The success of the polis was that of the citizen, likewise for defeat. To turn against the polis was to turn against oneself. And precisely for this reason, the citizens of the polis were the military of the polis, and, in fact, there was no division between the two.

Further, the Athenian polis was no accident. Through a series of political reforms (more like revolutions), the polis's citizens gained a greater and greater share of political power until political power was spread equally across the entire citizenry; power became distributed horizontally and decisions made entirely through a face-to-face, fully participatory democracy. This distribution of power was achieved precisely through the kind of legislation that Aristotle advocates. As Aristotle himself states in The Politics (1274a7-10):

Ephialtes and Pericles reduced the power of the Council of the Areopagus, and Pericles introduced payment for service in the jury-courts; in this way each successive leader of the people made the constitution more and more democratic.

In addition to the horizontal distribution of power, no bureaucratic class or hierarchical power structure was allowed to develop within the citizenry. The previous discussion (see Part Three, pg. 78) on how capital was subordinated is a prime example of preventing any one sector from achieving political dominance, and ostracising problematic individuals was used as a method of getting rid of potential tyrants. Murray Bookchin sums up the polis and its genesis:

Within a span of three centuries, the Athenian people and their renegade aristocratic surrogates such as Solon, Kleisthenes, and Perkiles were to dismember the traditional feudal system of Homeric times, wage a steady war against privilege within the citizen body, and turn the popular assembly from a lifeless, rarely convened mass meeting into a vital on-going forum for making major decisions, thereby opening public life to every Athenian adult male. Power ceased to be the prerogative of a small, well-born stratum of the population. It became a citizen activity. Athens's historic calendar is marked by seething upsurges of the people, startling fluctuations between aristocratic rule tyranny, limited popular government, until, by the latter half of the fifth century B.C., Athenian political life stabilized around a face-to-face democracy of the most radical kind.¹²¹

Of course, Aristotle wasn't content with the polis of Athens's Golden Age. He thought it could be reformed. Aristotle thought that if men of perfect and absolute virtue could be found (godlike even), then we should allow them to rule. However, he does realise that such men are difficult to find and that in their absence what has been called the middle constitution should be adopted.¹²² This middle constitution essentially sets out to reform the quality of citizens; they should neither be too rich as to use wealth as a lever of domination, nor too poor to be unable to have the time (leisure) to engage in the polis. Aristotle saw it vitally necessary for the access to some of the important practical virtues to be enhanced for the majority of the Athenian citizens. This would enable the citizenry to engage in the polis and begin the road to eudemonia.¹²³

Aristotle had other reforms in mind. He was unhappy that education was an essentially private affair, that it was conducted in the same realm as that of the activities of the household. He suggested that it be transferred to the realm of the polis, that the education of the youth become a common affair. This does not require that the polis becomes a State, for if the polis could manage wars, it could manage education and on occasions had done so. Again, Aristotle could have chosen the Spartan model of education, but declined to. He must have believed that the polis could have achieved the transition of education out of the private realm and to the public realm without losing its vital political structure. Still, this is only a reform.

What Aristotle seems to have been suggesting in The Politics was: There was a Golden Age of Athens. There was the right kind of polis during the Golden Age, but to be the best polis (in terms of producing the most virtuous citizens) there would have to be improvements. However, the basic interactions of citizens were to remain. Not only that, human perfection could not be obtained without it. It was an practical virtue.

And yet, Aristotle's ideal and the Athenian polis have been labeled States in the vast majority of the literature. Even on Lawerence Krader's “look around you” definition of the State, the polis, as described above, can't be called a State. The polis was very different from any of the societies all of us happen to live in; take a look around and you'll find nothing like Ancient Athens. On the definition arrived at in Part Two, the polis isn't a State: While there was a defined territory (somewhat fuzzier than today's borders to be sure, but defined nonetheless) and population, it can hardly be said to have the same hierarchical structure. The polis did not stand above its citizens; it was its citizens in a certain relationship with each other that was not mediated by another power such as the State. To illustrate this point, the State has dominion over its subjects; it and it alone claims final authority and decision-making power as the apex of hierarchy, and the individual citizen is subordinate to it, regardless of their relations with other citizens. That kind of hierarchical control did not exist within the polis. Instead, the polis had, by its very nature, a horizontal structure (what is called flat management in today's business parlance) with an equal distribution of power amongst all citizens. While the State structures society in a way that institutionalizes power relations between people through functions granted or regulated by the State, the polis did no such thing, and it could not have done so and remained a polis.

Neither did the polis have the kind of bureaucratic government that characterizes States. There was no permanent bureaucratic class with fixed military, judicial, and executive branches. The Assembly, with its shifting composition, served as the polis's decision-making apparatus in a way that is remarkably different from the governments of modern States. It is hard to say one is governed when you yourself make and enforce the laws under which you live; Proudhon's description of what it is to be governed could not have been uttered by an Athenian citizen.

What the polis did not have also immediately characterises it as different from modern State-controlled societies; there was a distinct absence of the cult of the individual. The individual Athenian was the polis but only in cooperation and unity with all the other members of the polis. This is a hard concept to grasp, for it is the antithesis of current Western values and traditions. We can say that a person is can be complete without her community being present (or even belonging to a community). This cannot be the case under Aristotelean ethics. The societal aspects are key to Aristotelean ethics; one cannot be a complete human being without being part of a community and being part of a community requires one to play an active and meaningful role. Those who are outside of a society of men are beasts or gods, and gods are in short supply.¹²⁴

Yet, despite a lack of hierarchical control, the polis was remarkably resilient, destroying the myth that a State is required for defense and internal security. It withstood a multiple of wars with other Greek cities and even Persian invasion. The spirit of the polis was strong enough to be passed down the generations, and the citizens maintained an eternal vigilance against loss of power and both internal and external dominance of the few that must have made Thomas Jefferson bitter with envy.

The only way the polis could be described as a State—and this, perhaps, is what has lead to so many translations of Aristotle labeling the polis a “city-state”, and legions of intelligent philosophers calling the polis a State—is viewing Athens with the inclusion of women, foreign Greeks, barbarians and slaves. If this viewpoint is taken, then Athens begins to look an awfully lot like a State. The citizens of Athens formed a government, and there was a hierarchical ordering of society with Athenian men forming an elite governing class and the rest of society in a sharply delineated hierarchical structure with slaves occupying the lowest class. This domination was institutionalised, and from a woman or slave's perspective Athens had a very feudal, aristocratic feel to it.

While this is a valid criticism of the Greek world and is a very good reason not to turn back the clock and start living as if it were 450 BC, it misses the point in its entirety. Great lengths have been taken to explain the Greek mindset and the relationship between citizens and non-citizens. This definition takes modern values and thoughts and imposes them on the Ancient World, and that is foolish. As pointed out in Part Three, there was a total disconnect between Greek men and everyone else, and this disconnect is fundamental to their way of thinking in regards to political philosophy. It wasn't that Aristotle needed to prove that women and slaves had to be excluded; they were excluded because of their very nature. They were a part of the polis in the same way computers and antibiotics are part of today's society; they existed so that citizens could live well.

This is undoubtedly harsh (hard people in hard times, remember) and the incorrect view to take of humanity, but it is wrong to apply this stance in relation to Aristotle and the polis. If one can accept the Greek mindset for a few minutes, the beauty of the polis unfolds. In a way, the citizens were the sole occupants of the set called humanity, and, therefore, the political structuring of Athens can apply only to them; in a very real sense, the polis (ideally) gave political power to all of humanity. If the reader cannot make this mental transition, then all that is said here is without hope or meaning.

However, if looked at from the Greek citizens' point of view, the Athenian polis was something quite remarkable and definitely not a State. The polis had diffused power so that individuals held equal share and treated each other with the equality and comradeship that Marxists and unions would ideally like for all workers. There was no call for the citizens to unite, for they were already united in quite possibly one of freest, egalitarian, and open complex and urbanised societies to have ever existed in the history of humankind.

Therefore, it is entirely incorrect to call the polis a State. Anyway, Aristotle doesn't. Aristotle's conception of a proper polis is miles different from what was going on in Sparta (which he often compares with in The Politics). Unlike today's philosophers, who only have the State, Aristotle had an amazing variety of different working models to choose from. While much of the actual text has been lost (perhaps in the burning of the library at Alexandra)¹²⁵, Aristotle had before him a range of Greek constitutions to choose from and plenty of non-Greek examples (including Persia and his homeland of Macedon) to point to. He looked to Athens, not Sparta, not Asia, not Europe. Heck, he could have sided with Plato and Socrates, demanding some sort of social contract with a government/State. He could have picked a State-like structure—they existed at the time—but, instead, chose the polis as being the one form of societal organisation best suited to the promotion of human perfection.

For Aristotle, the State is the wrong kind of instrument to achieve perfection, an improved version of the Athenian polis is the correct society in which to achieve perfection. What the State lacks is the participatory, non-hierarchical structure that allows for meaningful participation, and the spirit of community that marks the polis. Therefore, the State is not justified according to Aristotle. However, as has already been and will be shown, that doesn't mean Aristotle was right. The Ancient Greek polis has great problems with it.

Where Aristotle's theory comes unstuck is in the field of economics, which is, after all, a sub-discipline of ethics and politics. In order for citizens to have the time and financial well-being to engage in the political and contemplative lives, others would have to grow crops, make shoes, clean houses, build roads, etc. The economic solution Aristotle provides is entirely unacceptable if we are looking towards him on how best to achieve human perfection across the board. His solution is that women, slaves and barbarians should do all the physical work while citizens manage that work and get on with running the polis and studying philosophy. He states (1329a21-26):

...for happiness cannot exist without excellence, and a city is not to be termed happy in regard to a portion of the citizens, but in regard to them all. And clearly property should be in their hands, since the farmers will of necessity be slaves or barbarian country people.

To condemn human beings to lives filled only with mindless labour without the chance of perfection is a crime against humanity. This is now a fair criticism, and leads any philosopher who subscribes to a version of Aristotelean ethics a major problem: In order to achieve eudemonia, an individual must belong to a polis-like structure and have the economic freedom to fully engage in the political and contemplative life. This will require a fair degree of freedom from work, and this seems achievable only with a large underclass of workers. Yet, this runs straight against our hard-earned (both in intellectual and physical blood) conception that each and every human being should have the opportunity to perfect him or herself and that no one should be the slave of another.

Thus, if Aristotelean thinking is to survive in practical terms, the ethical/political philosopher has a tremendous challenge ahead of him. The open, direct, and horizontal democracy has to be preserved; people must have the time to engage in political and philosophical pursuits, and without the economic enslavement of others. There cannot be those who are deprived of the ability to gain perfection. Can one keep the democracy, openness, community and self-reliance of the polis without its supporting economic structure?

Before that can be achieved it is wise to distill the key elements of the polis, for it is obvious that a return to 450BC is unacceptable. Not only is the economic structure of Aristotle rejected (and subsequently the notion that some human beings have only the function of slaves and domestic workers), but also we want to keep some of the technological (especially medical) benefits of the last 2,300 years. Any future society would, we'd hope, have antibiotics, electricity, communications, etc.

What seems key to the polis and the obtainment of the good life are:

1) Citizens have sufficient time to engage in contemplative pursuits and meaningful political action.

2) That citizens and the polis have a fair degree of self-reliance and good health.

3) The polis is engaged in the education and habituation of moral virtue.

4) Citizens do not only have the opportunity and ability to play a part in the political life of the polis, but also can do so in a significant manner in line with a very strong kind of participatory democracy (similar to that of the Athenian democracy) and are expected to do so.

5) There is a spirit of community and philia (in the Aristotelean/Ancient Greek sense, see Part Three) within the polis.

In order to avoid confusion with the Athenian polis and its inherent faults, let us call this version of the polis “the modern polis”¹²⁶. The modern polis also faces constraints not faced by the ancient polis, and, while they have been mentioned before, it is worth recapping them. The modern polis must include all people, not an only elite stratum, in its judicial, security and political decision making systems. It must also seek to increase the level of perfection across the populace and not only the perfection of an elite few. In addition, the modern polis must be able to provide some of the technological improvements that States are currently able to. The modern polis doesn't have to be able to reproduce all the technology (argued below) that a modern State does, but, at least, the technology best geared to achieving perfection.

The modern polis faces a variety of challenges from proponents of the State. These challenges fall into two broad categories. The first is that the modern polis is an unattainable ideal that will never be realised. It is a pipe dream, and because it will never be constituted the Aristotelean ethics behind it must be abandoned for an ethical theory that will bring about a real society. This does have a degree of relevance, if for no other reason than Aristotle was quite keen to for people to act in the political manner he describes (1177b6-7). Further, if a discussion on whether a modern polis would be significantly impractical is worthwhile in its own right.

The other category of potential challenges is that the State is able incorporate all the key elements of the modern polis. Essentially, this line of argumentation states that there is no need to look for a non-State solution, Aristotelean perfection is possible under the right kind of State. Not every State may be able to promote virtue and the good life but a special State would be able to, and the citizens should engage in reforming their current States, making them States that promote Aristotelean virtue.

Starting with the first category of objections, an objection that a proponent of the State may wish to raise is, “But would a modern polis be able to provide internal and external security? Other societies would invade and conquer. The hierarchical structure enables the State to be able to mass the resources of society to defend its territory. Athens fell to the hierarchical society of Philip of Macedon and again to the Roman Empire. A modern polis would be easy pickings in a world of States.”

This objection has sparked serious debate in similar philosophical contexts, especially in the libertarian tradition with an almost unhealthy obsession with protection agencies. A protection agency is an organisation that an individual (in a non-State environment) pays to provide her with security. For example, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia deals with protection agencies in great detail.

Protection agencies for internal security seem not to be an issue for the modern polis. Current communities with a strong internal ethos and a lack of outside interference are able to provide internal security, and so have voluntary associations, primarily through the threat of ostracism. The payment of fees to a protection agency in the libertarian vision seems contrary to the vision of the modern polis for it would create a hierarchy in society and remove the collective responsibility of the modern polis. Further, if Nozick is correct, dominant protection agencies become minimal States, thus defeating the purpose. He states:

Since the dominant protective association judges its own procedures to be reliable and fair, and believes this to be generally known, it will not allow anyone to defend against them; that is, it will punish anyone who does so. The dominant protective association will act freely on its own understanding of the situation, whereas no one else will be able to so with impunity....We therefore conclude that the protective association dominant in a territory, as described, is a state.¹²⁷

The modern polis avoids this problem with its community-wide approach to achieving security, and internal security (crime control) doesn't seem to be unachievable with the modern polis, based upon limited historical evidence. While crime existed in the Athenian polis, justice seems to have been served through the Athenian jury system. The objection would be valid only if the modern polis had a significantly greater internal insecurity than a modern State does, and levels of insecurity can be quite high, as are in South Africa, Russia and Brazil today.

Part of the problem in defending the modern polis in this regard (and others) is that it is hard to conceive of such a society. None of us have lived outside of a State, and there is an idea that it is a representative of the only practical form of social organisation. Further, so the notion goes, outside of a State there is no social organisation. The modern polis, as conceived, has a very definite form of social organisation, but one which is non-hierarchical. A modern polis would not be a hotbed of chaos and random destruction, and there seems to be no a priori why internal security couldn't be maintained.

External security provides a greater challenge, and can be sub-divided into two different parts. The first being that a modern polis could not come into being, for the creation of such a society within a State's territory would be a direct affront to that State's hierarchical control and would be subsequently squashed. Historically this seems to be the case, the most famous example being the Paris Commune of 1871 and the most recent is the Otaxca uprising in Mexico of 2006. History is not on the side of the modern polis. As Karl Marx stated in The Civil War in France:

The civilization and justice of the bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery and lawless revenge.¹²⁸

The second part deals with aggression from other societies, particularly the State. One could hardly ever argue that a modern polis would be able to defeat a modern State bent on invasion (such as the USA) in a conventional war. Athens was able to defend herself from external aggression from the Persians and other Greek societies only by working in league with other poleis, and, even then, it was a highly militaristic society with each and every citizen under arms and fighting at some point in their lives. Conventional war has changed since then, transforming into a battle between industrial production and technological achievement.

Militarily-speaking, in the face of external aggression a modern polis (unless in a powerful confederacy of modern poleis) would appear to have four options. The first is to develop and adopt a policy of mutually assured destruction through the nuclear and/or biological weapons. The second option is to allow invasion and then engage in asymmetrical warfare, the Baghdad option. Both of these options tend to have rather negative consequences if engaged. Nuclear obliteration or wholesale slaughter hardly seem to be great results for perfection. The third option would a high degree of militarisation in some kind of citizen militia system. The success of this strategy would depend on the strength of the opposition. A 5,000 strong militia won't defeat a 50,000 strong army, let alone a million man army. The fourth option would be diplomacy and the prevention of war itself; in Aristotelean terms this would be significant engagement in the political life. As he states (1177b7-11):

Now the activity of the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be unleisurely. Warlike actions are completely so (for no one chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of being at war; any one would seem absolutely murderous if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring about battle and slaughter)...

To survive in conflict situations, the modern polis would have to seek allies and engage in collaborative mutual defense arrangements, whilst employing considerable diplomatic charm. Although, such a collective approach could only work once several modern poleis came into existence in the same generalised locale. This would leave the first modern polis in something of a sticky situation, bait surrounded by hungry sharks. Unless, of course, a modern polis could make an alliance with a powerful State or league of States.

The assumptions behind this objection—that a modern polis would be overrun by States—has tremendous implications for how we view the State. If the State is the sort of creature that will inevitably engage in hostile actions against communities seeking political self-actualisation, either on the State's territory or outside of, that says a great deal about the State and its failing to provide people with true political choice and moral autonomy. Put another way, do we really want a form of social organisation that prevents alternatives, engages in wars for power, and demands a Old Testament God style obedience? Is that not slavery?

The objection that the modern polis would be at the mercy of conquering States is actually a objection against the State itself. Might does not equal right, and the activities of contemplation and politics should be employed to determine how the modern polis could survive against violent entities.

The proponent of the State might then ask, “Even if dealing with economic affairs is part of living the good life, how would this be organised? Who would organise the economy? Surely that needs a body like the State.”

Well, no. The Athenian polis didn't require a State-like body to conduct its economic affairs, despite having a wide trade network. Free cities and guilds didn't require States to conduct economic affairs, and Barcelona in 1936 was successfully (but briefly) run along anarchist principles and flew the red & black flag of anarcho-syndicalism. George Orwell gives us a glimpse of what it was like to live in Barcelona during the summer and autumn of 1936:

Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes were painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared...There were no private cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black...In outward appearances it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving.¹²⁹

Moreover, a deep strand of capitalist thinking seems to suggest that the market (via Adam Smith's invisible hand) can run a complex economy without State interference. There seems to be no reason as to why economies require States. While this does prove that economies don't require States, this find of free market fundamentalism seems at odds with Aristotle's perfectionism, as explained in the next paragraph.

Where a modern polis would differ from modern States is that there would be significantly less power accorded to merchant classes. Current corporations could not survive in the modern polis; they require a large degree of State support, and they have hierarchical structures and patterns of dominance that are contrary to the spirit and structure of the modern polis. The inequalities that arise out of current capitalist economic models create barriers to human friendship (by dividing society on strict Marxian classes) and create conditions such as wage slavery that violate the principle of self-sufficiency¹³⁰. As has pointed out before, Athenians dealt with this problem through a social welfare system that allowed the poor to participate. Further, the generation of wealth in the modern polis is only a means to an end, and how much is really required to engage in contemplation and politics seems to be a lot less than today's rich people seem to require. Per capita it would be far less resource intensive than today's developed economies (but more than, say, Somalia).

The proponent of the State could then say, “It seems that the modern polis would be a small society of a limited geographical area, no bigger than a small city and the surrounding countryside, and so how is this compatible with today's large urban environments? Would Johannesburg have to cease to exist?”

It is true that the key elements of the modern polis seem to require societies of limited size. How big is impossible to determine, and would differ in size from each other dependent on local circumstances. A strong spirit of community and a strong version of participatory, face-to-face democracy would necessarily mean independent societies much smaller than today's States. Further, self-sufficiency will mean small population sizes; Kirkpatrick Sale has analysed self-sufficient communities over history and has concluded that self-sufficient communities have between 5,000 to 10,000 members, and even Medieval Cities were broken up into units of 5,000 to 10,000¹³¹.

The Ancient Greek poleis and other historical variants (such a New England town meetings) existed in largely agrarian economies. The world has changed significantly since then, especially since 1950 (which was the watershed moment of modern capitalist economics and rising urbanisation). One answer to the objection would be to abandon the notion of large cities, and, subsequently, shift population distribution; Pol Pot attempted to reorganise Cambodian society in a similar manner. This seems a poor solution, primarily because of the extreme social hardship that it would entail, and also because it may be a fantasy. Human population has grown dramatically, and maybe too far for such a solution to be possible.

However, the question must be asked, why can't cities be broken up into smaller units? In a way, they already are with wards, municipalities, districts, neighborhoods. Like Wolff has pointed out, this may mean that the production of goods and services across the entire urban environment may be more inefficient than today's cities (but not necessarily so). However, that doesn't seem to an impediment to perfection, as they are only means to an end.

The second category of objection deals with the idea that the State is better suited to increasing Aristotelean perfection than a viable modern polis would be. Issues raised in support of this would be along the lines of social welfare, use of resources, economic planning, and so on. For example, the proponent of the State might argue, “Achieving the political and contemplative life requires, as has been pointed out, a hefty chunk of free time. This was possible during Aristotle's time only through the use of slave and bonded labour, which has been rightly rejected. How would the modern polis be able to provide both the free time of politics and contemplation and, at the same time, produce all the basic goods of a modern society? If everyone is engaged in politics, contemplation, and on increasing their levels of virtue, who will grow the food, build houses, clean streets, man clinics, educate children and so on? A starving, illiterate, sick populace can hardly be said to be perfecting their virtues whilst shivering in the rain.”

Good point, if somewhat misleading. Aristotle didn't say that individuals should be engaged in the political and contemplative life twenty-four seven. He holds the reasonable position that the political and contemplative life requires external goods (1099a31-b6) and that a citizen should look after his household (1256b26-40), which is his economic resource. Obviously, this will require time away from contemplation and politics. How much time? While Aristotle doesn't tell us how many hours a day we should spend on economic activity and how many on developing virtue, he seems to suggest that we should do just enough to meet our needs. Economic activity is only a means to an end, and should be treated as such (1096a1-8).

While this doesn't answer the question entirely, it sets up the basis of the rest of the answer. In the modern world, people often work long hours and spend several hours in transit, working far from home. Often people work far more than is necessary to either accomplish the work or to achieve the basic goods. Often work is fairly useless and pointless. Living in the modern polis will require individuals to look after their economic well-being, but that might not take as long as it does today. So, to answer the question, the citizens will have to do some work (less than what is done today) but this doesn't have to get in way of developing virtue. Even in the case of manual labour—which Aristotle abhorred—it seems entirely conceivable that someone does some hours (say four) a day of manual work and then spends another couple of hours on improving virtue, engaging in politics, contemplating ethics, etc. Working on achieving the imperfect virtues does not seem to preclude achieving perfect virtues within the same time frame. What can't be stated is some sort of time allocation for politics/contemplation vs. work. It is impossible to say that if someone works three hours and contemplates Kant for seven then she is living the good life. The balance between work and perfect virtues seems to have to be a reasonable one dependent on circumstances.

To which, the proponent may reply, “Yes, but what about technology? Growing crops and making clothes may be achievable, but what about CAT scans, space flights, computers, jets, high technology, electricity? How could the modern polis make, maintain, and use life support systems, for example?”

There are some who say that technology has reached a point (or will reach it sooner or later) that will enable the modern polis to come into being. Instead of human beings doing all the labour, we would have machines. Then again, people have been saying this since the 1950 (remember the Eisenhower era “atoms for peace”, cheap electricity for all), and what may be at fault is not technology itself but its use. Several philosophers have grappled with this problem, Robert Paul Wolff being one of them. He states:

Only extreme economic decentralisation could permit the sort of voluntary economic coordination consistent with the ideals of anarchism and affluence...we might be able to break the American economy down into regional and subregional units. The exchanges between the units would be inefficient and costly...But in return for this price, men would have increasing freedom to act autonomously.¹³²

According to Robert Wolff, what is required for this to occur is a local, cheap source of power and small-scale manufacturing capabilities. These are not impossible to achieve with current technologies. Take the issue of electricity in South Africa, for example.

Access to electricity is a determining factor in one’s position within society under the South African State, and the withholding of access to electricity, either through refusing to provide access or through tariffs, is an act of controlling individual access. In the power relationship between the citizenry and Eskom/State, those who control the generation and distribution of electricity hold all the cards. There is very little citizens can do if the price of electricity is increased (for the poor with access, a rise in price means that their access becomes further restricted) or if supply is diverted to industry.

Put another way, the individual citizen is dependent entirely upon the State to provide him/her with a basic condition of modern life. This gives the State undue power over the circumstances of the fortunes of citizens, communities, organisations, and business, resulting in an insidious form of patronage. Further, the total centralisation of energy conversion has enabled the government to use electricity as part of its macroeconomic policy; witness the pre-paid meter wars in Soweto, the staggering amounts of disconnections and evictions for non-payment, preferential pricing for domestic and foreign corporations, an attempt at privatising Eskom, and a continued reliance on coal. Using only coal to generate electricity provides an effective market-subsidy to the coal mining and export companies (such as Anglo Coal and TOTAL).

Fortunately, there do exist alternative technologies for a modern polis—such as solar, wind, biogas—and methods of using energy with greater efficiency that have the potential to localise electricty conversion. Technologically speaking, we are close to point of having a carbon-based paint that can be applied to a wall and will generate electricity using solar radiation¹³³.

It is possible to devolve electricty generation to the point that each household would be able to generate not only enough electricity for its own use but also excess electricity that can be fed back into the national grid. This is not impossible to achieve; the laws of physics do not prevent it, and it is not beyond current engineering capacity. This can be achieved today, and it is not science fiction. The technology will have to be renewable and use materials available at a local level; wind and solar provide two potential sources for such a system, and, because they are free to all, cannot be controlled by the few. To use a slightly different terminology, the means of production regarding electricity would be in hands of the users themselves.¹³⁴

Another point regarding technology is the assumption that the production of complex technology necessarily requires the State. This doesn't seem to be true, with software providing a counterexample to the claim. This work has been typed on a computer running open source software. The open source revolution and the Internet provide working examples of how complex technological goods are produced in a decentralised, non-hierarchical manner. Essentially, hackers in garages have been responsible for writing computer code that is, arguably, safer and better than systems such as Microsoft Windows, and have done so in a gift economy (good open source code brings kudos not dollars).¹³⁵

The final point behind technology deals with another assumption posed, that a modern polis would exist in isolation. Just like the Athenian polis (which, to simplify things, basically traded wine for grain), a modern polis would trade for items that it could not or didn't want to produce. Nor would a modern polis be required to trade with other modern poleis, it could also trade with States and other non-State societies. A modern polis wouldn't have to produce everything for its existence, just as long as it produced enough desirables to trade with (less would violate the principle of self-sufficiency). Further, there also would be no barrier against the sharing of information with other societies.

However, there is a big question left unanswered, by both the response to this objection and the previous objections, namely, what sort of economy would a modern polis have? Given the scale of the modern polis and requirements of obtaining eudemonia, what sort of economy is both possible and best suited? Would free market fundamentalism be the best system as Murray Rothbard¹³⁶ has advocated for? Given the brief discussion here, that's unlikely, but greater analysis is required to properly substantiate that claim. On the other end of the scale, what about Michael Albert's¹³⁷ participatory economics?

These economic systems need to be addressed in terms of their viability and their ability to promote eudemonia. This would be an interesting topic of research and thought, but one that would require a couple of years of contemplation. However, until this topic is adequately addressed, a complete answer regarding a modern polis and its economy (that is the provision of the material of imperfect virtues) is unattainable.

A more telling objection in this line of thought deals with multiculturalism. The Ancient Greek poleis were fairly uniform societies with a single broad culture. Could different cultures exist without a State to provide a mediating influence? Maybe, but only if negative aspects of cultural difference—racism, sexism, religious & ethnic intolerance, xenophobia, sexual discrimination, paternalism—are accepted. A modern polis would seek, as the Ancient polis sought to curb the power of the rich, to prevent these ideologies becoming cancers on the community; not only because they have no logical basis, but also because they are destabilising and destructive. The success of a modern polis would be in education and habituation of virtues contrary to these ideas, which is something no State has managed to achieve.

Another (and more important) answer to all of these different facets of the second category of objection can be boiled down to an ethical objection against the State, based upon the Aristotelean ethics described in Part Three and the discussion at the beginning of this section regarding Aristotle's polis and the State.

Because the State necessarily has a hierarchical relationship with the citizens, in which economic, political, legal, military and social decisions are made by the government (which is separate and above the citizenry), the individual citizen in unable to engage in any of these sphere as an equal partner. The social context that is vital to achieving eudemonia is missing. For example, the face-to-face democracy, in which each and every decision of the modern polis (or Athenian polis) is subjected to any citizen's political review, is completely absent in the State. Without such a mechanism, it is hard to see how the political life can be engaged in. The political life demands that citizens have the power to alter, implement (share in the duties of the modern polis), propose and reject any function and law of the society in which they live. The best that a citizen can do in a State is to vote once every couple of years for a political party or individual politician, and, in the process of voting, the citizen effectively gives away her political control; at best it is abdicated involuntarily, at worst she never had it to begin with.

The previous objections have dealt with the issue that, in certain areas, the State can provide compensating types of virtue (technology, for example) that help to perfect us in other areas than the political. As the political aspect is key to the Aristotelean ethic, these compensatory virtues would have to be very high in comparison. The responses to the previous objection have shown that this is not the case.

The effect that the State's hierarchical structure has on the power of the citizenry is explained through Marx's description of what has become of workers when the means of production are divorced from them:

...mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrade him to become a mere appurtenance of the machine, make his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed; estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in very proportion to the extent to which science is incorporated into it as an independent power...¹³⁸

The State could never reform its political system to approximate that of the modern polis for two reasons: One, it would cease to be a State for hierarchical decision-making and political control are essential features of the State. Two, the scale of the State appears to be wrong for such a system. How could 40 million people engage in this kind of participatory democracy? How could a billion people?

While there could be some sort of technological approximation (virtual debating rooms for those interested in a piece of legislation, for example) of face-to-face interaction, getting a couple of million people involved in that debate doesn't seem possible. Also, the political life involves fulfilling some of duties of society (such as sitting on juries, joining a militia, educating children), which isn't included in discussing legislation only.

Further, the spirit of community that plays such a vital role in the realisation of eudemonia is absent in the State. Nationalism has replaced it, and that is a mockery of conception. Nationalism is pride (and often love) in one's State or country. The Aristotelean spirit of community is an acceptance of interdependence and common aims of people, not an entity.

Therefore, Aristotelean ethics and politics cannot be used to justify the State for the State is the wrong kind of political structure for eudemonia to flourish. And, this new kind of society must be beyond the State for its inherent structure is contrary to the self-reliance and political freedom required for eudemonia. However, this conclusion is weakened significantly due to outstanding problems and/or deficiencies in economic and defensive theory in regards to the modern polis. Both of these issues need further work and exploration before the case can be sealed. The good is in the complete and this is incomplete.

If so and in way of conclusion, what is the value of the notion of a modern polis? The modern polis represents an idea of an alternative society, one the aim of which is eudemonia for each and every citizen. It would be a society of incredible openness, and the citizenry would have direct control over all political decisions. They would be the masters of their own destiny, working in a collective manner to improve themselves. This is currently an ideal, but an ideal in which, in however a limited manner, individuals can and should strive towards.

Aristotle has given us a great gift: a vision of another society, somewhere on the horizon, but with great reward, that of the good life. Given a choice, which would you choose? Domination in the hierarchical society of the State, or freedom in the modern polis? Wage slavery or self-sufficiency? Can it ever be that a thin bureaucratic class engaged in the machinery of statecraft could possibly know your interests better than you do and are more competent than you to decide upon them?

Even if such a society is unobtainable, a pipe dream for romantics, the struggle towards it would bring great benefits. If the struggle brings about a greater degree of political control to the individual, if it reduces the cancers of racism, sexism, etc. within our societies, if it helps to abolish wage slavery and brings technology (as a mode of production) into our hands, and if it reduces the current domination of the few over the many through the devolution of power, then we should bow our heads in thanks to Aristotle. As George Woodcock states:

Obviously it [anarchism] is not immediately realizable, it will probably never be realized. But the very presence of such a concept of pure liberty can help us to judge our conditions and see our aims; it can help to safeguard what liberties we still retain against further encroachments of the centralizing state; it can help in the urgent task of mere survival, of living out the critical decades ahead until the movement of world centralization loses its impetus like all historical movements, and the moral forces that depend on individual choice and judgement can reassert themselves in the midst of its corruption.¹³⁹

Two thousand and three hundred years ago humanity was faced with a choice between Plato's Republic and Aristotle's polis. We chose Plato. Time to choose Aristotle.

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