Forwarded message >Sender: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Citizens Council on Corporate Issues Newsletter) >Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 21:50:24 -0800 >From: Gil Yaron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >This is from an interview with Noam Chomsky in The Sun magazine titled "The >>Common Good", November 1997. It was too juicy to not share around! >>Paul Cienfuegos >> >> >>"...I started from the beginning, with Aristotle's POLITICS, which is the >>foundation for most subsequent political theory. Aristotle took it for >>granted that a democracy would be fully participatory - with the notable >>exception of women and slaves - and would aim to promote the common good. >>But he argued that, in order to achieve its goal, the democracy would have >>to endure "lasting prosperity to the poor" and "moderate and sufficient >>property" for everyone. If there were extremes of poor and rich, or if you >>didn't have lasting prosperity for everyone, Aristotle thought, then you >>couldn't talk seriously about having democracy. >> >>Another point Aristotle made was that if you have a perfect democracy, yet >>have big differences of wealth - a small number of very rich people and a >>large number of very poor - then the poor will use their democratic muscle >>to take away the property of the rich. He regarded this as unjust and >>offered two possible solutions. One was to reduce poverty. The other was to >>reduce democracy. >> >>A couple of thousand years later, when our Founding Fathers were writing >>the Constitution, James Madison noticed the same problem, but whereas >>Aristotle's preferred solution had been to reduce poverty, Madison's was to >>reduce democracy. He said quite explicitly in the Constitutional Convention >>that, if we had a true democracy, then the poor majority would use its >>power to demand what nowadays we would call agrarian reform, and that >>couldn't be tolerated. The primary goal of government, in Madison's words, >>is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." He also >>pointed out that, as time went on, this problem was going to get worse, >>because a growing part of the population would suffer serious inequities >>and "secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of [life's] blessings." He >>therefore designed a system that would ensure democracy didn't function. >>As he put it, power would be in the hands of the "more capable of men," >>those who held "the wealth of the nation," and the rest would be >>factionalized and marginalized in various ways. ..." >> >________________________ > >Gil Yaron >Citizens' Council on Corporate Issues >Website: http://www.corporateissues.org
