The Relevance of Aristotle to Modern Politics

[pullquote]…the current political system is quite dire… one in which egalitarian values are subsequently buried and the “wealth of the nation” is more powerful than ever.[/pullquote]

To measure precisely how powerful the “wealth of the nation” is today, let’s raise a hypothetical question: What if Aristotle were elected president by a large popular majority and his political party took both houses of Congress? He enacts several badly needed social welfare reforms similar to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA jobs program. He nationalizes large banks to the community level. Congress passes more progressive taxation and proposes higher corporate taxes.

The answer is the U.S would experience an enormous amount of capital flight (businesses, the rich, capital, jobs, etc. would leave), which would drain the economy and plunge the country into a recessionary period. Capital would flow elsewhere, because investment is simply too much of a gamble when the investors lose political power. There are countless examples of this, usually in the third world or countries victimized by colonization.

Take Nicaragua, which experienced extreme capital flight under the Sandinista regime (1980s). The Sandinistas tried to carry out a social democratic state after years of colonial-style oppression. The result was capital (investment, money, jobs, etc.) fleeing or threatening to flee the country for ‘better climates for investment and business’. Even the threat of a capital strike is capable of destroying an economy as fragile as Nicaragua’s in the 1980s. In response, the Sandinista government had no choice but to try to convince corporate elites (who believed the Sandinistas just had the wrong priorities) to return or stay, and this became a cycle of economic despair.

The power of what the courts describe as “collectivist legal entities” has arguably eclipsed the boundaries of Madison’s prophetic framework. One could make a strong case that the framers, including Madison, would have been appalled by the modern attacks on classical liberal values. While the relevance between Aristotle and modern democratic values may be close, it’s unimaginably far from the reality of our current political situation.

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