Liberty Matters
Oligarchies Ancient and Modern
One thing that all response essays have in common so far is that they successfully highlight the continued relevance of ancient philosophical and historical thought when it comes to the question of democracy and its tragically fragile nature. Richard and Evrigenis, in particular, are right to point out that ancient political thinkers—and especially Aristotle—were well aware of the threats posed to a stable popular government by the accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of a few, and the corresponding erosion of a previously solid middle class.
Without a doubt, the problem is familiar to observers of the relationship between economic imbalances and democratic process in the early twenty-first century, especially since the landmark Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 prohibited restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations. In Federalist 10, James Madison already sounded alarm bells:
[...] the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern Legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the Government.
As a consequence of all this, for Madison, representation is a double-edged sword. The sheer size of the republic might make the number of representatives either too large or too small; and, of course, “enlightened statesmen” who can lay aside their private interests in the name of the common good “will not always be at the helm.” Most importantly, representation is inextricably entangled with the emergence of factions based on economic inequality. At the same time, as Evrigenis reminds us, representation itself is “still an important part of those valuable checks and balances” that make up the backbone of popular government.
In his outline of an ideal constitution, Aristotle had acknowledged that representation and participation in office require resources and that, correspondingly, the application of political rights can never be independent from the way in which wealth and resources are distributed. Are those rights themselves equally distributed, if their ultimate underpinning is highly uneven across society? To be sure, our ancient sources stop short of framing the question in these exact terms.
Plato and Aristotle, in particular, did not regard equality as desirable per se in either a political or an economic sense (with the only partial exception of land distribution in Plato’s second-best city: Laws 5.736-46). And yet, if there is one thing the ancients have taught us about the political world, it is precisely the never-ending change that constitutions and government forms are subject to over time. One hopes that we will not forget their warnings as we keep wondering about the future of popular government and democracy itself.
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