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NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006YouthBeyond private property and communismby Alex Maktoob Many youth today are asked to read classical Greek works in their philosophy, political science, and literature courses to lay the groundwork for much of the rest of Western thought. Politically and philosophically, the groundwork lies in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Plato gives us the concept of the Forms--the abstraction of ideas--while Aristotle’s direct critique of the Forms allows for a more pragmatic and empirical view of the world. However the academic courses that discuss these philosophers do not often touch on how dramatically radical these proposals are, from the abolition of private property to the equality of women--ideas that are throughout investigated in the writings of the young Marx, and indeed, are not complete without these writings. PROPERTY 'SAVIORS' Regarding property, Plato’s Guardians, the governing class in his REPUBLIC, are not to own any property and are to live on property that belongs to the community. He holds that being without property and wealth will keep the Guardians incorruptible and that "[t]his manner of life...will make them the saviours of the commonwealth." In THE POLITICS, Aristotle opposes this idea of common property, remarking that property should be owned in private and used in common. However this is not an accurate attack on property held in common, since the property may very well be owned in private by another class and allowed for the Guardians' common use. However we do not know who owns the Guardians' common land, Aristotle states, since Plato does not describe the material state of living for the farmers, artisans, and the rest of the lower classes. If they, farmers and so on, do hold property in common, then there is no need for the Guardians, since there would be nothing differentiating these classes from their rulers. Thus these classes would not gain anything from the Guardians' rule. But if property is held in private, then there will be class conflict between the non-ruling classes and the Guardians, not exaltation to the level of "saviors" as Plato has proposed. Plato also does not consider the corrupting power of power itself, whether it is through acquisition of land or not. In the same vein, not to leave "The Philosopher" unscathed, Aristotle writes that for those that hold private property, "moral goodness will ensure that the property of each is made to serve the use of all." That, however, conflicts with his earlier statement, that there are those whose sole goal is to acquire wealth, "as though to make money were the one aim and everything else must contribute to that aim." Here the Greek philosophers are at a stalemate, and a different view is needed to come to a logical conclusion. MARX'S ALTERNATIVE That alternative can be found in Karl Marx’s ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS OF 1844. Marx states that the kind of private property suggested by Aristotle cannot be maintained by "moral goodness," but rather another sustaining factor. In a section titled "Rent of Land, " Marx says: "The landlord being interested in the welfare of society means, according to the principles of political economy, that he is interested in the growth of its population and manufacture, in the expansion of its needs--in short, in the increase of wealth; and this increase of wealth is, as we have already seen, identical with the increase of poverty and slavery." That is, the landowner is one of those that Aristotle suggests is concerned with the "art of acquisition" and not in the welfare of his city. However Plato’s form of communism for the Guardians is what Aristotle has described as property held in common, such that it will be neglected and not cared for as much as by one who owns the land privately. Marx calls this kind of property distribution "crude communism," or the first negation of private property. In the section known as "Private Property and Communism," he writes: "Just as woman passes from marriage to general prostitution...so the entire world of wealth (that is, of man’s objective substance) passes from the relationship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community." To resolve the conflict between Aristotle’s miserly private property and Plato’s "crude communism," Marx proposes the transcendence of both of these forms in the second negation of private property. In this "higher phase of communism," human beings are not self-estranged and separated from their humanity. Indeed, human beings return to their place as social beings and reclaim their humanity. This communism is humanism, since "[t]he abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human." In reading Marx in regard to the Greek philosophers’ works, we can realize the shortcomings of their proposals: Plato’s lower form of communism producing a "general prostitution" of property, and Aristotle’s private property serving to benefit only the landowner. Marx thus poses an alternative to Plato’s community of Guardians and Aristotle’s criticisms, one that works to return humanity to the human. |
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