THE FUTURE IS MADE OF MARBLE

vol. 2, no. 1, January 2009, $ 1.00

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Aristotle’s idealism as a standpoint for living in society

In an early Treatise, Difference between the democritean and epicurean philosophy of nature, Karl Marx, wrote: “The objective history of philosophy in Greece seems to come to an end with Aristotle […] Thus it would not have been surprising if Greek philosophy, after having reached its zenith in Aristotle, should then have withered. But the death of the hero resembles the setting of the sun, not the bursting of an inflated frog.” (Collected Works, vol. 1, International Publishers, New York, 1975, p.34-35).

The Politics stands amongst Aristotle’s best known works. Hence, he affirmed: “And yet Socrates says that, thanks to education, there will be no need for a large number of regulations such as those governing the warden ship of the city and the market…” (p.118). He recognizes that society lives, altogether and whenever in the Antiquity, divided in social classes, “a farming class and a defensive fighting class, while out of the fighters a third group is formed which deliberates and is in sovereign charge of the state.” (p.121). Of course, Aristotle could not foresee comprehensively the future of the society, its economy and concurrently the development of capitalism, thus the industrial revolution and the birth of the working class. Naturally, he does not enlarge his analysis of democracy in relation with this new class. Furthermore, he criticizes the political evolution by stating that possession in general (land, slaves, coins…) influences the application of different Greek State-Cities’ constitutions, while some became “over-democratic; for it ceased to be possible to appoint to office only persons from the specified property-classes.” (p.128).

On this issue, especially with the lack of democracy in today’s world and beyond twenty centuries later, Lenin pointed out that: “To break the resistance of these [actually ruling] classes, there is only one mean: find out in the society itself that surround us, [the forces] to be educated and organized for the struggle, – and starting from their social status- capable to sweep the old and create the new.” (Oeuvres choisies, Editions du Progrès, Moscou, 1980, (p.20). He had in mind the working class.

In his book, the Greek philosopher spoke of the ideal constitution of a state. (The Politics, Penguin Books, London, 1981). Here, he already laid bare the somehow modern efforts of political parties to have a detailed approach onto all problems of society, overtaking eventual difficulties beforehand, regardless of whatever may occurred in society’s life. Friedrich Engels, in this train of thinking in 1891, analyzed reluctantly – for lack of time- the program of the German social-democrats, known as the Erfurt program, under the pressure of revolutionary leaders of the socialist movement confronted to opportunism and eager to defend the very principles of the communists of those days.

In Québec, both nationalist social-democratic parties, one being the traditionalist centre Parti québécois and the other the recent left Québec solidaire, amply elaborated their program respectively. However, the working people expect generally simpler and more concrete measures. Russian communists understood it, at the wake of the October revolution, when the Bolsheviks claimed that they will solve the dire problems of peace, land and bread. That is the basic commitment that Lenin took in 1917. As for the agrarian reforms, the communists borrowed the manifesto of a “social-democratic” party (Narodnaya Volya) and applied it.

Now, to the friend of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Aristotle’s “chief merit is the return to dialectics as a supreme form of thinking. Greeks philosophers of this era were all inborn dialecticians. With the most encyclopaedically knowledge, by comparison to all of them, Aristotle had already and more deeply studied the most essential forms of dialectical thought.” (Anti-Dühring, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1950, p. 52).

While reading The Capital, the masterpiece of Karl Marx, one may note that Aristotle left imprints in the economic works of the father of the communist movement. On the other hand and generally speaking, in Québec, the university professors are very often akin to the great Greek thinker and teacher; however, and in a narrow-minded spirit, they oppose him and his philosophical idealism to materialist representatives of the Left, such as Karl Marx and Lenin or the former general secretaries of the Communist party of Canada, Tim Buck and William Kashtan. The Roman Catholic Church amongst others has not excluded the thought of Aristotle from the Bible’s teachings and the statements of the Vatican, especially in regard with moral and social values, notably in the education of the workers.

Commenting history and the emergence of the Church, the French philosopher Voltaire, stressed that the death of Jésus-Christ had a lot to do with the one of Socrates, whom we dealt with upper hand: “The Greek philosopher died of the hatred of the sophists, priests and the leaders of the people: the Christian lawmaker succumbed of the scribes’ hatred, of Pharisees and priests. Socrates could have avoided death, but he did not want: Jésus-Christ the same.” Both forgave. (Oeuvres philosophiques, Classiques Larousse, Paris. p. 75).

The economic crisis

The current capitalist crisis was foreseeable, being even inherent in a system of happy few. The Communist party of Canada expressed it in its program, especially for a modern and democratic constitution based on workers rights and their full participation in the political process of society. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels rightly described the capitalist world as: “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the subterranean world which he has called up by his spells.” (The Communist Manifesto, Washington Square Press, New York, 1977, p. 66-67).

Since the late 1990s, communist and workers’ parties meet yearly to discuss the world situation and prepare the ground for cooperation and solidarity. In 2008, the conference took place in Sao Paolo, in Brazil. Previously, such meetings took place originally in the “cradle of democracy”, Athens (Greece). Aristotle would have appreciated highly such meetings. The Canadian communist newspaper People’s Voice reported that the appointed group to prepare the conference dwelt earlier on “the growing instability of the capitalism system, which results in sharper exploitation of workers.” Over 80 parties were present on Nov. 21-23, at the special invitation of the Communist party of Brazil that “was one of the original forces in the broad coalition which eventually won the election of Workers’ Party candidate Lula da Silva as President in 2002.” He is still in power…

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