Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 5679384" data-attributes="member: 56035">In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor&nbsp; and rich, you can’t talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy&nbsp; has to be what we call today a welfare state — actually, an extreme&nbsp; form of one, far beyond anything envisioned in this century.(When I pointed this out at a press conference in Majorca, the&nbsp;&nbsp; headlines in the Spanish papers read something like, If Aristotle were&nbsp;&nbsp; alive today, he’d be denounced as a dangerous radical. That’s probably&nbsp;&nbsp; true.)The idea that great wealth and democracy can’t exist side by side&nbsp;&nbsp; runs right up through the Enlightenment and classical liberalism,&nbsp;&nbsp; including major figures like de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Jefferson and&nbsp;&nbsp; others. It was more or less assumed.Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect&nbsp;&nbsp; democracy, a small number of very rich people and a large number of&nbsp;&nbsp; very poor people, the poor will use their democratic rights to take&nbsp;&nbsp; property away from the rich. Aristotle regarded that as unjust, and&nbsp;&nbsp; proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty (which is what he&nbsp;&nbsp; recommended) or reducing democracy.[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://chomsky.info/commongood02/[/URL]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rickyb, post: 5679384, member: 56035"] In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor and rich, you can’t talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy has to be what we call today a welfare state — actually, an extreme form of one, far beyond anything envisioned in this century. (When I pointed this out at a press conference in Majorca, the headlines in the Spanish papers read something like, If Aristotle were alive today, he’d be denounced as a dangerous radical. That’s probably true.) The idea that great wealth and democracy can’t exist side by side runs right up through the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, including major figures like de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Jefferson and others. It was more or less assumed. Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect democracy, a small number of very rich people and a large number of very poor people, the poor will use their democratic rights to take property away from the rich. Aristotle regarded that as unjust, and proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty (which is what he recommended) or reducing democracy. [URL unfurl="true"]https://chomsky.info/commongood02/[/URL] [/QUOTE]

Verification