Aristotle's Critique of Common Property

Within the circle of political philosophy, the Aristotelian critique of common property is well-known. It is not all that different from the modern, commonsense criticism of socialism today. What Aristotle said in Book II of his Politics (πολιτικά) is that, "If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much." Aristotle continued in the next paragraph, "[W]hen everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because everyone will be attending to his own business." Translating this in the contemporary vernacular, Aristotle was writing about the problems of collective action — he merely did so in an ancient, non-quantitative sort of manner.

This photograph is credited to xuniap Aristotle from DeviantArt.

Yet, I do not want to discuss the problems of collective action here. I want to zero in on another critique of common property, within the Politics, that has fallen by the wayside in recent times. And this was Aristotle's criticism from the vantage point of virtue ethics. In my humble opinion, this is probably the better argument — coming from someone who holds high regard for the virtue ethics tradition. Aristotle stated:

"And further, there is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or companions, which can only be rendered when a man has private property... No one, when men have all things in common, will any longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal action; for liberality consists in the use of which is made of property." (Politics, Bk. II).

It should be noted that Aristotle drew a distinction between three forms of ancient communism — I ask you to forgive my anachronistic, Marxian-flavored language in advance. In the first, the means of production are commonly owned, but the products themselves are apportioned for private use. In the second, the means of production are privately owned, but the appropriation of those products is common. The last possibility is an economic system wherein both the production and appropriation of the products is common, from beginning to end. It appears that Aristotle's virtue-ethics criticism only applies to the last two forms of common ownership.

The logic of his thesis proceeds thusly: it is a human virtue for people to be beneficent, and therefore, it is moral for people to act with liberality. By having all the products of labor communally owned, it removes one of the virtues which is crucial for human beings to be properly moral. In other words, it is in some sense virtuous and moral for one to shower his or her friends and family with gifts and benefits, from his or her bounty. It makes one virtuous to be giving. Yet we cannot be giving if we have nothing to give. Such does not necessarily mean that one has to be wealthy in order to have this virtue. Even Christ says that the widow is virtuous beyond all the Pharisees because she gave the last two mites that she had — an ethic of proportionality. Though the point remains, she could not have done such an act, had she not had the private possession of those last two coins.

Contemporary communists tend to hold a mixed conception of the first and third kinds of communal ownership. So at least to a certain extent, I imagine that communism and the personal ownership of non-productive assets are compatible (certain products such as mass transit and parks will be consumed commonly, as is the case with public goods in capitalism). As I said above, Aristotle's critique is only applicable to the second and third forms of communism. For the sake of argument, I want to push the logic of communal ownership of finished products and reason whether there is the possibility for liberality in that schema.

This artwork is credited to ivangod from DevaintArt.

It is my proposal that liberality should still exist within the sphere of production itself. There are two ways to give charity: (i.) you donate your money and/or your resources; or, (ii.) you donate your time, your labor. The second and third kinds of common ownership would not allow us to be charitable by the first method. However, there is nothing in common appropriation preventing charity/liberality through the second method. Just as people nowadays donate their time to working in hospitals and at animals shelters, those under communism would show their liberality by the same token — and this is the crux of this post.

To show liberality towards friends, or the community as a whole, one could cook a special meal or work extra hard in constructing a desperately needed home. In truth, we tend to ascribe virtue to those who donate their labor rather than their wealth. A rich woman may donate millions of dollars to charity, and from a utilitarian perspective help many more people with her largesse, but we ascribe the greater virtue to the woman who spends a summer in Haiti reconstructing homes after a devastating earthquake. Again, the logic is comparable to Christ's parable of the widow's two mites.

I should like to conclude very briefly that Aristotle did not believe in the modern-liberal notion of inviolable, private property rights. The community always has an interest in private affairs, and must insure that the common good is being secured. Aristotle thus wrote:

"[S]ince we advocate not common ownership of land, as some have done, but community in it brought about in a friendly way by the use of it, and we hold that no citizen should be ill supplied with the means of subsistence. As to common meals, all agree that this is an institution advantageous for well-organized states to possess; our own reasons for sharing this view we will state later" (Politics, Bk. VII).

Therefore, Aristotle's critique of common appropriation should never be mistaken for a defense of the liberal notion of private property. Aristotle even declared that private property should be shared with one's friends and that travelers should have access to the use of private resources. In a word, private property is contingent on other-regarding behavior. The exclusionary-egotism of liberal private property revolts against the whole of Aristotelian philosophy.