Aristotle’s Politics: The Middle Class Extol

In his politics Aristotle claims that the city entails three main groups of people, which include the wealthy, the less fortunate, and the middle class. Currently, people believe that the people falling under the wealthy category are the most fortunate of the three classes, but Aristotle seems to disagree with this view. According to him, the most fortunate people are the middle class. He also outlined that it is easier for a middle-class person to be obedient and enhance equality than it is for either the wealthy or the poor to be obedient (Jowett & Davis, 1920). This is because the wealthy are prone to being arrogant and the poor are prone to becoming spiteful. Thus, many injustice actions are perpetrated either via arrogance or hatred which can only be solved by middle class politics.

Aristotle went ahead to extol the middle-class people by stating that people in the middle class are free of the arrogance of the wealthy and the envy of the impoverished. This is because they have similar and equal measures of wealth, which results in them regarding each other with equal respect. Further, they will be submissive, cooperative, and obedient to each other as they rule and be ruled compared to how the wealthy and the poor.

This is due to the fact that the wealthy are seemed to be arrogant, and dictators with the poor having no power as they merely have resources. This indicates that the middle class are the best people to have power with the collaboration of either of the other two groups. Moreover, Aristotle stated it clearly that the wealthy and the poor don’t believe in equality. This means that, when either of the two rules, the city will entail an extreme form of an unmixed oligarchy that can result in the emergence of tyranny compared to when the middle class rules.

Aristotle’s position in the middle-class interconnects with his constitutional rule (polity) in that both believe the middle-class people are better than others. In his polity, he outlines the effectiveness of merging the middle class and either of the other groups in politics. He stated out that the plurality of the middle-class people can establish a better political ruling especially when they combine with either the wealthy or the poor (Jowett & Davis, 1920). But it is so difficult for the middle-class people to work together with either the rich or the poor because the rich are arrogant and the poor are malice. This results to either the rich or the poor gaining political or ruling power for their personal interests instead of the cities.

As a result, neither party desires equality, preferring instead to control the other in the belief that dominating the other is the only way to prevent being ruled in turn. Instead of a long-term rule, this is a prescription for instability, unrest, and eventually civil war (Jowett & Davis, 1920). The rest of Book IV is devoted to the many types of authority and positions in the city, as well as how they can be divided democratically or oligarchically.

This depends on the group of people holding more resources which means more power and the means of acquiring it. These technicalities result to faulty regimes that are compromised by Aristotle’s polity whose main agenda is to bring a mean constitution between the wealthy and the poor. His idea ties with the middle-class thing as it is the group of people between the rich and the poor meaning that they can rule effectively and solve the faulty regimes.

Reference

Jowett, B., & Davis, H. W. C. (1920). Aristotle’s Politics.Clarendon Press.