Discuss Aristotle's communism of women.
Ans. Women and Family:
Aristotle provided a common-sense defence of the family. he did not abolish private households, for the family was a source of pleasure for both men and women, since it created and established a bond that united members, allowing them the space for the exercise and development of their individual talents.
Aristotle was critical of the Socratic-Platonic conception of communism, on the premise that to abolish the family would mean its destruction as a school of moral and civic virtues for the young. The family fostered love and friendship, and established a bond between its members in an orderly way. Its natural hierarchy ensured stability, and offered the preconditions for the pursuit of virtue. His defence of the family was similar to the arguments developed by Hegel. He was appreciative of the attention that Socrates and Plato gave to women's education, but he was critical of their proposal for sexual equality as it ignored the diversity that existed in the private sphere. For Aristotle, the private sphere was the foundation on which the public was organized. To ignore this link would result in an unstable and unnatural enterprise (Saxonhouse 1985:83086).
Aristotle was equally critical of the Sarpan model, which granted unrestricted freedom to its women, resulting in divisiveness and disunity. By emphasizing virile power, men were made martial and ascetic, while women were left uncontrolled by bo trditions and the laws of the state making them self-indulgent and luxurious. As a result, women could not be trained in the art of courage, nor did they learn to submit th authority, thus leaving them to pursue their private interests rather than common good. he concluded that to ignore women was to overlook one-half of the happiness of a society, making the latter unstable and vulnerable. Aristotle was emphatic that women should be made a part of the city and its educationa process, but could be left out of the political process.
For Aristotle, women and the family belonged to th eprivate realm, which was really the world of the particular rather than the universal. Like Plato, he regarded the world as hierarchically structured, where the better ruled over the inferior, the strong over the weak, and the soul over the body. The male being superior, stronger and better, ruleld over the female-a defective, incomplete male. He described a l"woman as an infertile male", "a male is male in virtue of a particularl ability and a female in virtue of a particular inability". The male was the active partner and the female passive, required primarily for sexual production.
The family, for Aristotle, was a natural aristocracy where the man had a say on things that were worthy of his consideration, leaving the rest to the woman. Violation of this norm within the family would pervert an aristocratic relationship into the oligarchic one, for self interest rather than the intrest of the community would then become the overriding concern. A wel-ordered family was one that took into acount differences between its individual members, and ensured that each worked in a manner so as to contribute to the common good. Accepting this differentiation made it easy to distribute to tasks and authority that were naturally nordained and readily accepted.
A husband wife relationship differed from the one between a governor and the governed, which kept changing. In a political communityk, the position of the ruler and the ruled interchanged depending on circumstances and the dictates of justice. But in a husband-wife relationship, the former was endowed with a natural gift for command, and the later for obedience. It was constitutional, with adequate space for constant negotiation, debate and arbitration, as in the case of normal politics. It was not despotic, like the one between a master and his slave.
A woman's rightful place was her house because of her special abilities as a wife, mother and householder. While a man acquired, a woman's function was to "keep and store". In that sense, her role was similar to that of a statesman within the city-preserving what had been acquired and ensuring stability. The family was a sphere of inequality, with differentiation in power and authority arising from sex, age and ability. Interestingly, Aristotle considered the family to be the seat of inequality, and hierarchy gave rise to the more majestic and important polis, the sphere of equality,
A woman as a mother spent a great part of her youth and time in bearing and rearing children, unable to enjoy leisure that a man had, and therefore was decisively disadvantaged. Women were to be excluded from the public realm because their deliberative faculties were inconclusive and lacked authority.' Political life, for Aristotle, required participation by those who were equal both with regard to leisure time and possessions, for they had to engage themselves in reasoned discourse about (un)just issues. Women did not have these so they could not play a direct political role. Using this criterion, he also ruled out slaves and workers. "His concern that the public realm serves as the arena for the highest human activities (after philosophy) led to his demand for such an intellectual engagement".
Aristotle did not, like Plato, advocate equality of the sexes. But this did not mean that he did not accord any role for women. He granted a woman distinct role in society, a position within her family and the home. It was here that she could demonstrate her unique abilities as a wife, mother and a homemaker, preserving and stabilizing the family and home, and giving birth to and educating the young. The woman, though free, was like a slave, for she lacked reason, which was why she should submit to the superior wisdom of men. While a slave helped in the orderly functioning of a household, a woman managed her family and home.
Property
Both Plato and Aristotle regarded economic activity as highly significant for the purpose of political analysis. Economic activity had to be subordinated to political, since the former was concerned with a single good, while political was concerned with good life as a whole in its multidimensional sense, in discussing acquisition of wealth, Aristotle distinguished two modes: natural, and unnatural. The natural included hunting (brigandage, fishing, pursuit of birds and bees), grazing and husbandry. It was natural, because nature not only gave them to all individuals for fulfilment of their needs, but also fixed a limit on its consumption in accordance with subsistence.
The intermediate stage was barter, which was natural to the extent of allowing one to acquire whatever was needed for the purposes of life. The use of money, however, led to other forms of acquisition. Retail trade was one form with no limits on acquisition, and hence was an illiberal occupation. Aristotle, following the Greek prejudice, rejected retail trade on moral grounds for the end of wealth, whether household income or that of a state, should be good life. He was critical of small businessmen, shopkeepers and petty usurers, for they were corrupted by a desire for financial gain. He preferred landed property to trade and commerce. The important thing was not the greater or unlimited, but the right amount of wealth. Aristotle remained sufficiently ambiguous about what could be regarded as the right amount of wealth. Good life was his main focus. He saw an intimate link between the pursuit of bodily pleasures and a man's ethical character. He stressed that material goods were necessary for leading a good and happy life, though they were not an end in themselves. In his scale of values, happiness of the sou! was infinitely superior and higher than any other pleasure in the world.
The most basic form of good economic activity was directed towards the use of the product. In this context. Aristotle cited activities like fishing, shoemaking and fanning. In activities where the producer and his family directly benefit, in the sense that their needs are fulfilled. it would have use-value. However, as society become more complex. trade increased and specialization of labour became the organizing principle, products were made for purpose of exchange. Thus, products assumed an exchange value in adition to use-value.
Aristotle was the first to pay attention to the economic basis of political institutions by focusing on the character and distribution of wealth and its influence on the form of government. He considered extreme inequality of wealth as an imporant cause of revolutions. he defenced private property but was a great believer in well-distributed wealth.