On Good and Bad Governments

of which the West are only Bad

As a political science major, I had a grand total of three useful lectures. These covered Strauss, Machiavelli and Aristotle. Every new theory and new PhD struck me as either contrived or utopian. Their work had little applicability to the actual, real world (or, their findings were trivial). “Political science” ought to establish a philosophical base first, and through the classics only. The “science” portion, meanwhile, ought to just be comparative history–and not called science at all. Then, through the application of varying “systems” to different nations and epochs, one could generate general principles, and apply them to their State or any State.

I was stunned to realize that this was actually the schema of self-education for almost every political thinker of note. But formally, this mode has been abandoned. Instead, a chunk of my degree was wasted dumping huge volumes of data into STATA and SPSS. Every trick from Statistics 101 was applied to said data, and we pretended that by generating values between -2 and 2, we were somehow doing “science.” The other half of my degree was sheer, moral utopianism; which succeeded only in producing left wing fanatics . . . who in turn made some of their classmates into reactionary rightists. 

In any case: Aristotle. 

In his Politics, it is simple. All governments are good or bad, based on whose interests they serve. Those seeking the common good are virtuous. Those seeking elite or self-interest are “deviant.” The forms of government vary, but this telos holds up, and is the backbone of Aristotle’s framework. The good governments are Kingship, Aristocracy and Polity. We recoil at the first two, but the meanings of both have altered. The bad forms of all three are called “deviant.” Kingship degrades into Tyranny, Aristocracy into Oligarchy and Polity into Democracy. This is an over-neat system but its diagnostic power is strong, as we’ll see.

Kingship

A potential king was justified by the possession of Virtue. But, since the advent of Christianity, this word has lost its original meaning. Today, virtue (I am purposely decapitalizing) alludes to faith in God, selfless love, abstention from sex and repentance. It corresponds more to a moral state than it does to an exercised attribute. Christian virtue, in fact, has much to do with not doing things. The word closest to “Virtue” in Greek is Aretē. But the word Aretē is translated to English as “Excellence.” Herein lies the clue. Greek Excellence and Greek Virtue is not about achievement, praise, wealth, power, ribbons, trophies or any of the sort; it is about the total fulfillment of one’s potential. A virtuous person is one that has very high effectiveness as a human being. They are of good conduct, skill and high rationality, everywhere and at all times. To Aristotle, the person that has the most of this . . . should be king.

Kingship is obviously the rule by one, and Aristotle further asserts: a rule by one who is Good. We ought to remember the correlation of Virtue with Excellence. Goodness is not just abstention from bad conduct, but great skill and reason too. With ancient Greece being meritocratic, it seems Aristotle envisioned a situation in which a resigning, abdicating or dead king was replaced by an unrelated person of Virtue. If a king tried to make his office hereditary, Aristotle asserts that the Kingship is now a Tyranny. When the king was well-loved, the people did not detect this subtle shift and invited it. But wherever a king was unpopular, he had to give recourse to violence, or to the use of decrees to get his way.

The law (nomoi) and decree (psephismata) are recurring topics in Aristotle’s writings because they are primary mechanisms by which governments change. Since decrees could be made very quickly and easily, they sometimes outsped the law and activated despite being illegal. Tyranny, and the other deviant forms as well, make frequent use of decrees. Aristotle expects an educated Polis to notice when a “king” is using decrees excessively or illegally. But if he is well-liked, they will not. If he is evil, they will resist, but then be met with violence (and this could always escalate into Civil War).

The tension between the law and decree is palpable, and we actually see an echo of this here in the United States. Occasionally, an executive order or state law does moral, social and material damage for months and sometimes years . . . only to be declared “unconstitutional” later. By then, there are many dead, poor, violated or demoralized persons. Since authority enables the use of decrees, and since decrees are inherently faster than the law, they are a favored mode of pushing through illegal policies and all bad governments use them (oligarchy and democracy included). The incoming Trump administration has already signaled a decree-over-law mindset (although the technical terms are obviously different). We should also note the tendency to “legalize” decrees later, through the formal law.

But to summarize:

Kingship degrades into Tyranny when the king: (1) pursues self-interest; (2) makes illegal decrees; (3) makes his office hereditary and/or; (4) is violent to citizens. If a Kingship displays any of these, Aristotle calls it a Tyranny. This is important, because depending on the popularity of the king and on surrounding economic factors, the people may not realize this, or they may help him become a tyrant.

Aristocracy

Here is where we ought to focus the hardest, since we have been cleverly conditioned to call our government a Democracy. Our Founder’s opposition to Democracy as a form of government is somehow well-documented and not known. But beyond that, if an American described their “Democracy” to Aristotle or an Athenian, they’d receive either a blank stare or an incredulous laugh. 

Aristocracy is the rule by a few who are the best (aristoi). What makes these few the “best,” is their Virtue (aretē). Theoretically, any citizen could enter the Aristocracy upon the display of enough talent. But in the text, it seems implied that a Virtuous person will receive gifts (i.e. land) and acclaim and will thereby ascend to the Aristocracy naturally. A formally described mechanism by which to legally ascend a citizen to this status is not described in the Politics. 

Regardless, this begs the question: if Virtue/Aretē is a universal Greek ethic, why should an Aristocracy emerge over Kingship? Aristotle’s answer is not satisfactory. He contends that a Kingship will emerge wherever one individual’s Virtue far exceeds that of the rest, and that an Aristocracy will emerge where the Virtue of an upper class is relatively equal. All the same, an Aristocracy is the rule by a few who are the “best,” and this does not have a hereditary connotation. It is not the blood or name that makes one Noble, but their level of Aretē. That the sons of Virtuous men become likewise is not a rule, but a general tendency (and one that greatly diminishes over time).

Aristocracy deviates into Oligarchy; which is, and always has been, the governmental form of the United States. We need only envision Washington, chewing on sugarcane, looking out at his plantation, and polemicizing Daniel Shays. Oligarchy is the rule by a few who are rich. Both of these conditions must be met for it to qualify. There must be a few (relative to the whole population) and they must be rich. Wealth must determine access to power; if not your own, then someone else’s (think of campaign donors, PACs and Super PACs). Oligarchy is actually super-exaggerated in the United States, because the law treats corporations as legal persons, and defends their “rights” more vigorously.

In Aristotle, Oligarchies: (1) pursue the interest of the wealthy; (2) make illegal decrees; (3) increase the property requirements for holding office and voting; and/or (4) make their offices hereditary. It is in the Oligarchy and Democracy that we uncover a special political type: the Demagogue. Since the Demagogue truly needs a whole separate article to delineate, I will only summarize. This is a highly charismatic individual who seeks to concentrate power in his person. He attempts this by either breaking the oligarchy into factions (whereafter his faction rises and positions him for a coup) or by declaring a mandate through popular will (Napoleon is the best example of this, and likewise, launched a coup).

The introduction of the Demagogue tends to throw the students of Aristotle off, but essentially, it means that an Oligarchy and Democracy can further deviate into Tyranny; Tyranny is not just the degraded form of Kingship.

Polity

Aristotle makes it clear that he views Polity as the most superior form of government, but frustratingly, he discusses it the least. The word Polity is closest to what we call a Republic, or at least the idea of it. Modern republics are almost entirely representative, and since the achievement of office is costly, Aristotle would likely see them as just a peculiar Oligarchy; one in which offices are bought. Regardless, the ideal described by America’s founders is very close to Polity, although they actually wanted an Aristocracy and got its deviated form.

Aristotle calls the Polity a mixture of two bad forms: Oligarchy and Democracy. When this mixture leans more towards Oligarchy, and when Virtue wins out, the result is an Aristocracy. When the mixture leans more towards Democracy, and when Virtue wins out, the result is a Polity. This tilt towards Democracy that makes the Polity what it is, seems to be two things: manageable property requirements (for holding office and voting) along with legal institutions that prevent both rich and poor from robbing each other. In an Aristocracy, only a special elite will rotate in and out of the offices, but they won’t mistreat the poor. In a Polity, both rich and poor will hold office, with neither being able to predominate. Finally, it goes unsaid explicitly, but seems to be implied that the Polity does not degrade into either Oligarchy or Democracy on account of the people having Virtue (aretē). 

Democracy is a rule by the many who are poor. They must be many, they must be poor, and they must be free (not slaves). We should emphasize that Greek Democracies were always Direct Democracies. In fact, they did not have a way of distinguishing between Representative and Direct Democracies. The second it became “Representative,” they would have viewed the form as having changed to Kingship, Tyranny, Aristocracy or Oligarchy. That Directness, furthermore, did not mean popular elections! It meant the mass of poor ascended to political office through the routine drawing lots (or some similar mechanism). The many and poor were the government. 

Now Aristotle calls this a bad form because when the mass of poor are in power, they tyrannize and take from the rich. We are apt to see this as a positive today, but Aristotelian Ethics hinge on something called the “Golden Mean.” Polity is Aristotle’s favored form of government because it was between the two most frequent Greek occurrences: Oligarchy and Democracy. It balanced the interests of the rich and poor; neither could dominate the other. Democracies had the tendency to devolve into madness and to let wanton appetite overwhelm Reason and Virtue. This tendency enabled demagogues, who tended to bring about Tyrannies. If Polity is the best form, Tyranny is the worst, and Aristotle was of the view that would-be Tyrants had it easiest in Democracies.