Chomsky on Madison

[Ken Hanly]

But the original Chomsky stuff that was quoted noted that
women and slaves were not citizens as well as I recall. The
point is that polity is a form of rule of the many. We still
mean by oligarchy rule by the few.On size of a state. I
recall that Aristotle wanted to be able to call citizens to
meetings
and have them able to show up. Didn't someone recently write
about small being beautiful? At least in Aristotle's polity
citizens had a genuine say in policy and did not just elect
someone once every few years who then decides how to vote on
the basis of the biggest lobbyist. Indeed, modern bourgeois
democracy is arguably a form of oligarchy, exactly as
Aristotle understood that term--rule by the few in the
interests of the rich. 

	With the new global village you could have an online
meeting of the village :) We could include women, free the
slaves, and ban neo-classical economists as running dogs of
the oligarchs.

	In his attitude to women Aristotle was conservative
compared to Plato but on slaves he was a bit more radical
than standard views in that he thought that Greeks should
not be slaves even by conquest. Of course barbarians, who
did not speak Greek, were a different matter.

   Cheers, Ken Hanly

Brad De Long wrote:
> 
> >
> >Aristotle suggests that polity is probably the best that can
> >be achieved in practical terms and this is a form of rule by
> >the many not the few....
> >     Cheers, Ken Hanly
> 
> Touche...
> 
> But Aristotle's "polity" looks a lot more like what we would call an
> "oligarchy"--slaves and metics and women, no? And Aristotle does not
> think that "polity" is a form of government that can sustain itself
> over any extent of territory greater than what we would think of as
> one small town...
> 
> Brad DeLong