Opinions, Passions, and Interests
Commentary on Chapter Two of "The Ancient Regime in Classical Greece", by Dr. Paul Rahe
Contents
The “Choice” Between Ancient and Modern
For all the advantages we might credit to the ancient regime, it comes with a very high price. The ancient regime demanded a lot out of individuals, the citizens had to work very hard, and sacrifice much:
For the excitement of political life, the Greeks paid a very high price. Honor, fame, and glory are, by their very nature, the rarest and the most fragile of all the goods accessible to man. To distribute them in equal measure to all is to annihilate them altogether; indeed, to make any concession to the claims of equality in this regard is to debase the coinage of distinction. Unavoidably, then, the quest for immortality and the longing to be the best and to be superior to all others set political communities and the individuals within them at each other's throats.'
For the Greeks who said “yes” to this way of life, faction became a perpetual thorn in their side. Citizens of an ancient polis were essentially soldiers always at war:
Where a community gives primacy to politics and devotes itself not just to the attainment of security and well-being, but also the achievement of immortal fame, to the noble conduct of life, and to the exercise of logos in prudential deliberation regarding the advantageous, the good, and the just, that community incurs the clear and present danger of stasis and it insures the eternal prevalence of war.
For now, let’s ignore the question of if we moderns truly even want to go on a “quest for immortality and longing to be the best and superior to all?” Rahe is focusing on the “costs” of living in the ancient regime and the pursuit of the “the most fragile of all the goods accessible to man.” I would say that there are also “costs” of living in the modern regime and the pursuit of the lowest of all the goods accessible to man. Let’s rephrase Rahe’s prior statement:
Where a community gives primacy to economics and devotes itself not just to the attainment of security and well-bing, but also the ahievement of nihilistic nothingness, to the ignoble conduct of life, to the exercise of anti-reason in perverted deliberation regarding the advantageous, the good, and the just, that community STILL incurrs the clear and present danger of stasis and it STILL insures the eternal prevalence of war.
One of the key distinctions I see between the ancient and modern regimes is the spirit of the citizenry. In the ancients, the citizens are full of life and great striving. For the moderns, the citizens are reduced to a dead inert mass, they want to be left alone to enjoy their private pleasures, and they defer everything important to a hostile cabal. We moderns may look at the ancient regime and think, “that looks a bit harsh and uncomfortable,” but do we ever think if some of that is actually necessary? What if we must go “on a quest for immortality and longing to be the best and superior to all?” Is this uncomfortable thought? Do you gnash your teeth when you hear this? The ancient regime was hard and the modern regime is soft — if citizens today wish to be free and project a vision of life for themselves and their posterity beyond mere bug-life, they must BECOME HARD.
Modern Bourgeois v Ancient Citizen
Rahe delivers some very critical remarks on the difference between modern liberal democracy and the ancient Greek polis. In addition, he draws a distinction between the ancient and modern citizen. Again, for me, the comparative study between ancient and modern does not leave me with a sense that there is a “choice” between the two. The modern regime, and its decision to emphasize economics over politics, sets the citizen up to degenerate into vapid individualism and ultimately degenerate into Nietzche’s last man. The question for me is not how to return to the ancient regime (for such a return is impossible) but how to integrate certain aspects of the ancients into a vision for a future regime. If the modern regime is soft, how do we become hard? If the modern citizen is weak and degenerate, how do we make him strong and noble? If the rulers of the modern regime are corrupt and hostile, how do we position better men to rule?
Modern liberal democracy and the ancient Greek polis stand, in their fundamental principles, radically opposed. The ancient city was a republic of virtue-first by its very nature, and then also because it had to be one in order to survive. Its cohesion was not and could not be a mere function of incessant negotiation and calculated compromise; it was and had to be bound together by a profound sense of moral purpose and common struggle.
Alexander Hamilton captured the difference between the two regimes succinctly when he wrote, "The industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain, and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers, which was the true condition of the people of those [ancient Greek] republics."
The point is a simple one: the modern citizen is a bourgeois; his ancient counterpart was a warrior. Commerce defines the terms on which life is lived in the liberal polity founded by George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and their associates: the ordinary American may not be a merchant himself, but the concerns of trade and industry regulate his labor with respect to time and govern the relations that unite him with his compatriots.
In contrast, commerce was peripheral to the ancient economy: the ordinary Greek was a more or less self-sufficient peasant proprietor, and he needed his fellow citizens as unpaid bodyguards against the city's slaves and for the defense of his family and land against foreigners far more than for any exchange of goods and services." Many communities took steps to exclude those engaged in trade and industry from participation in politics; even where the marketplace was allowed to intrude upon political life, the merchant and craftsman were generally objects of contempt, ridiculed on the stage, if not banished from respectable society.
Go back to the first paragraph from this excerpt: “[the ancient regime] had to be bound together by a profound sense of moral purpose and common struggle.” I fear that modern man has such a bad conscious about this on two fronts. Everything grand to them appears ironic! Anyone who wants to set out to unify a people for some great moral purpose would be laughed at. In the next, the idea of giving oneself over to a profound sense of moral purpose and common struggle would eat the older generations alive. But as things continue to degenerate, I believe each new generation will be more and more receptive of some organizing genius with grand visions and longing for distant shores. Already we can see this happening. If the promise of liberal democracy is only the continual enjoyment of meaningless private pleasures, I think it will ultimately burn out and be overcome in the end. Either man will destroy himself or overcome himself.
Ancient Greece Was a Struggle for Mastery
The question of ancient v modern is often reduced to a question of war or peace. The ancients lived a hard life and were always at war, and the moderns have supposedly figured out how to live easier lives where they can be at peace (despite all the drugs people take). Rahe again provides a very strong comparison between ancient and modern:
No ancient thinker could have written of any Greek city what Montesquieu said of England — that it was a nation devoted to a "commerce of economy," that it sought "gain, not conquest," and that it was so "pacific from principle" that it would sacrifice "its political interests to the interests of its commerce." The Enlightenment vision of the benign effects of trade — so central to the understanding of political economy which guided America's revolutionary generation — would have seemed absurd to the ancients.
The Greeks were not a nation of shopkeepers. Their cities were brotherhoods of peasant warriors, not associations of merchants, and one community's-freedom was understood to entail another's subjection. As a consequence, Hellas rarely knew peace — and when she did, it was generally a peace purchased at the price of freedom. Greek history was a struggle for mastery: turmoil was the norm, and tranquility the exception.
I do not see this as a question of war or peace, but a question of freedom or slavery. Either you have citizens that are full of life and struggling for mastery or you have citizens that ignore the political and sheepishly submit to masters that do not interfere with the enjoyment of their petty pleasures. The founders often talked about how there would be competing ambitions and so many warring interests vying for power that one will never be able to gain a decisive advantage for any significant period of time. This only works when the citizens maintain a vigilante in manly spirit… what happens if they grow weak and effeminate? Unfortunately, it seems that the average citizen has been domesticated and is no longer interested in subjecting themselves to a power contest. “A ‘struggle for mastery?’ Relax dude. Let’s just continue to grind and make money. Then this weekend we can go have a chill day at the beach! How about we catch the game after and enjoy a six-pack of that new hazy IPA? Sounds much better, right?”
As a result, the citizens have taken a backseat and retreated from this political struggle for mastery. Now, very powerful interests and a rotten establishment lord over every aspect of their lives. There are now systems of control in place that make any effectual resistance to the leviathan almost impossible. But once a few cunning citizens become excited about participating in this struggle for mastery again, they will begin to lead others in taking back control of their lives and their nation. Politics is not about economics, it is not about ideas or securing more material comfort — all of these things are secondary. Politics is a question of “who rules?” Politics is first and foremost a struggle for mastery.
Confronting the Problem of Faction
The Founders of the American Republic thought deeply about the problem of faction. James Madison famously stated that the “causes of faction are latent in the very nature of man.” So while faction will always be present, the ancient and modern regimes came up with different understandings of how to confront this problem:
For this reason, James Madison's well-known antidote for faction could never have been applied within the Greek polis. No one in antiquity would have countenanced economic differentiation and the multiplication of religious sects. If the commonwealth was to ‘survive, it was vital for the citizens "to act in unison with each other." As a consequence, the ancient republic sought to solve the problem of faction not "by controlling its effects," but rather "by removing its causes." As Madison himself had occasion to observe, the Greeks attempted this not by granting free rein to opinion and by encouraging a proliferation of special interests, but rather "by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests."
Harmony, unanimity, solidarity, or like-mindedness regarding the advantageous, the just, and the good: this was the goal; and the market economy, though tolerated as a necessity, was perceived as a threat. Where the Greeks distinguished the free from the commercial agora, where they excluded the merchant and the craftsman from political life, and where they simply held the tradesman in disdain, the cause was not some bizarre and irrational prejudice against men of business. Instinctively, the Greeks recognized that the differentiation of interests inevitably fostered by trade and industry was a danger to the hard-won solidarity that enabled them to survive.
Eliminating the causes of faction or controlling their effects? Using the power of the state to actively force unity among a people or limiting the power of the state and allowing the proliferation of many myriads of opposing views? For confronting the problem of faction, do you prefer the ancient or modern regime? CHOSE NOW!
Simply compare the outcomes of the two different options.
In the ancient regime, a great emphasis was placed on communal solidarity. As a result, they ended up creating very strong and energetic citizens. However, in the modern regime, where a great emphasis has been placed on individualism, we ended up creating very weak and demobilized citizens. So the ancients had the problem of energetic men rushing into public life and treating politics as a struggle for mastery. Consequently, the unity they had hoped to inspire often did not last long and quickly faded away. All these capable men began to form rival factions and started tearing the state asunder in order to establish some sort of tyranny. But with the modern regime, we have the opposite problem of lethargic men retreating from politics and allowing the state to grow in size. Eventually, with no one interest strong enough to animate and tie citizens together, the powers of government were easily seized by small ambitious cliques. Nobody was looking! And before we knew it the state came to encompass virtually every aspect of ordinary life and the citizens are reduced to slaves in everything but name.
There doesn’t seem to be a good solution. Whether the regime places primacy on politics or economics, communal solidarity or individualism, faction remains a problem. So the entire discussion around faction becomes circular and frustrating, but maybe up until now we have had an incorrect view and our entire calculus needs to change. Generally, unity is seen as the supreme object of politics and faction is something negative that gets in the way of people getting along and living happily together. But what is “unity” other than to say that some factions have power and dominate while other factions have no power and exist on the periphery? “Unity” is the prevalence of the “good” factions and the suppression of the “bad.”
In the ancient regime, factions were always warring and power was constantly in flux. “Good” factions could easily be subverted by “bad” factions, but then a swift reversal was always possible. When the “good” factions were out of power, they simply died off or began plotting their return. With the modern regime, things certainly seem to be more stable but the “good” factions became systematically handicapped because they always needed to tolerate the bad factions, no matter how destructive they were. When “good” factions think about power, they have a bad conscious about extirpating “bad” factions, but when “bad” factions get into power, they are not morally conflicted and will show you no mercy. Machiavelli reminds us: “The Romans never, to avoid a war, allowed the enemy to go unchecked because they knew that there is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”
So maybe reducing the modern view of faction to a Machiavellian power contest frustrates the entire subject even more. But I think it is nonetheless helpful in revealing something deeper about the “choice” between ancient and modern. The ancient view of faction allows for a lot of “landscaping.” Power is in flux, the cycle of uprooting the old clearing the way for the new is always in motion. If you get a wicked and bad faction, the scope of their designs is naturally limited. A few ugly weeds may sprout up, but it is easy to go out and pull them up. The modern view of faction leaves little opportunity for “landscaping.” Once a faction is in power, they become entrenched and the regime they establish becomes incredibly difficult to reform or modify. If a wicked and bad faction secures power, the scope of its designs is nearly unlimited since its opposition will be so weak. You won’t be dealing with a few overgrown weeds, for Nietzsche says, “In some circumstances, the vapors of such a poison-tree jungle sprung up out of this putrefaction can poison life for years ahead, for thousands of years ahead…”
Ultimately I do not believe their is a choice between ancient and modern, and their different views on controlling faction leave one wanting. We rolled the dice with the modern regime and Madison’s calculus for dealing with faction, and while the country remains in name, its citizens are being reduced to a dead inert mass. Ironically, we need faction more now than ever to disrupt the current regime and to rescue the citizenry from its lowly state. So I call for the development of a new virtue to inspire a future regime not yet known. Men must learn how to oscillate and dance between individualism and communal solidarity, they must understand when to give primacy to economics and when to give primacy to politics. With this, they will know where the causes of faction need to be removed, and where the effects just need to be tolerated and controlled.
Maintaining Viable Citizen Households
One challenge republics, especially the modern variety, never seem capable of solving is disbursing a property interest broadly across the citizenry. Whenever economics triumphs over civic courage/patriotism, the propertied interest grows smaller and smaller:
Adam Smith touched on the central issue, for he not only contended that merchants and their like were cosmopolitans unattached to any particular community; he added as well that "the proprietor of land is necessarily a citizen of the particular country in which his estate lies." If the ancient farmer was a figure far more respectable than the potter, the huckster, and the money changer, it was not just because he was free from a degrading dependence on customers. Above all else, he was a man securely tied to the territory of the community.
Montesquieu says “to preserve a republic you must have citizens who love the republic.” Education, in the fullest sense of the word, preserves the love of the “idea.” But the surest “real” guarantee is a propertied interest broadly disbursed across the citizenry. It is quite astonishing that there is no active force in our society working to ensure this end. So much wealth is squandered and mismanaged across generations, and people are free to sell family farms and small businesses to large corporations. Today the average young adult is saddled with debt, faced with stagnating wages, and on the path of being a long-term renter. However, they can always yolo whatever money they do have or may have inherited in stocks, crypto, or sports gambling. Nobody said getting ahead would be easy! A nation of landless, debt-ridden, wage slaves. Is this all America has to promise its citizens? If you were in charge, why would you want this to happen?
Even where measures of this sort were never enacted, the city took precautions to prevent the wealthy from using their influence to dispossess the smallholder and his heirs. There was little chance that a peasant would willingly court disgrace and choose to imperil his own livelihood by selling or giving away the family farm. But it made good sense to restrict the size of the dowry he might bestow and to deny him the testamentary freedom to disinherit or make unequal division of his property among his legitimate sons. One city imposed a fine and, for repeated infractions, a loss of citizenship rights on anyone who squandered his inheritance. Another limited the proportion of a man's estate that he could encumber as security for loans, while a third barred his sons from selling or mortgaging their patrimony in anticipation of receipt. The laws designed to safeguard the smallholder from expropriation had as their principal aim not the protection of the individual citizen's rights but the welfare of the city as a whole.
In ancient Sparta, a few noble families came to possess nearly all of the public land allotted to full-citizen Spartiates. In 480BC, there were about 10,000 Spartiates. However, by the end of the Peloponnesian War less than a century later there were only around 2,000. Similarly in Rome, all the land got swallowed up and the whole idea of the citizen-farmer-soldier disintegrated. The many became crowded and dependent on the grain dole. Rahe concludes here with something that should be cemented in our minds: any new political movement needs to have as its central plank the increase and continued maintenance of viable citizen households:
As a brotherhood of warriors, the polis had a stake in maintaining the number of viable citizen households; and if liberty was to be preserved, it was essential to facilitate the establishment of that modicum of economic equality prerequisite for the growth of fraternal affection within the community.
Colonization, Wealth, and Opulence
Imagine if you had leaders that were continuously striving, extending territory, and opening up new opportunities for their people. In ancient Greece, the rulers of cities did not share the same bad conscious we hold in regard to colonization. The rich and powerful were always looking to extend their reach in real ways — they did not labor over creating a business empire, fund non-profit foundations, or worry about marketing a brand. Think about how the American government has squandered trillions of dollars over the past twenty years. If they have a bad conscious about conquest, they could have at least purchased some land and distributed it out to American citizens to colonize. Why don’t we do anything exciting like this anymore? Don’t we owe it to ourselves?
With aristocratic largesse and the example of the tyrant Peisistratus in mind, he argued that democracies should employ public revenues to purchase land for the poor or to help them set up shop…These three renowned orators considered the situation in fourth-century Greece so desperate that it demanded concerted action on the part of the various cities. Gorgias first sounded the theme in 392; Lysias took it up shortly there-after; and, again and again, over a period of more than forty years, Isocrates returned to the same point: calling for a cooperative Panhellenic effort to conquer the Persian empire, appropriate its great wealth, and populate its vast reaches with colonies of Greek poor. Well before Alexander the Great did just that, Plato urged Dionysius II of Syracuse to repopulate the cities of Hellenic Sicily in much the same fashion; in due course, Timoleon of Corinth managed the feat.
Additionally, in modern regimes, the wealthy make awful and absurd displays of their opulence. A wise regime would take great care in directing the energies of the opulent towards great ends. So many wealthy people achieve success and just funnel it all way into stupid and meaningless foundations. Nobody wants to build monuments that will stand for thousands of years or help establish new colonies in distant lands.
Virtually all of the cities enacted sumptuary laws to stop the wealthy from making offensive display of their opulence, and many required or pressed the prosperous to devote part of their substance to public works adorning the polis or filling its needs.
Within any political community, wealth disparity is going to cause factions and strife. Again, a wise regime would take great care in guarding the national interest from the lowly desires often expressed both by the poor and rich. The laws should breed love of the national interest in all ranks of citizens:
Here, an important principle was at stake: in antiquity, no one supposed that a man had a natural or god-given right to the fruits of his own labor; if a given individual possessed property, he held it in privilege and as a public trust. A particularly acute observer summed up the situation at the time by saying that public policy had two guiding principles: that "the laws turn the multitude away from plotting against those possessing property, and that they engender in the wealthy a love of honor sufficient to cause these men to spend their riches in liturgies serving the public.
I don’t know if this relates, but I just watched an Instagram video where this guy said by 2030, 45% of working women will be single, unmarried, and have no kids. You are going to have a large percentage of the population that is extremely dispossessed while maintaining political rights. Do you not think this demographic will take out their frustration with their cultural and political views? First of all, a wise government would never lead such a large proportion of its population to such an unhappy place. Secondly, if a large disaffected demographic exists, there must be colonies that they can be sent off to. If neither of these options is considered, you will create large pockets of resentful citizens that will unleash their hatred of the world onto everyone else and rip apart the body politic. Kim Kardashian is very rich. There are many other girl bosses that have considerable wealth. They should petition the American government to sponsor the creation of a colony on the West African coast. I’m sure Sierra Leon would be willing to sell a few square miles of its coast for a handsome sum. Has anyone ever even asked them what the price would be? Perhaps a remote part of Baktria? From a pro-regime perspective, the “dissident right” is certainly a thorn in their side. The regime should use its imperial might to take control of several Greek islands and ship the dissident youth away. We need to be asking these questions and using our great wealth for greater ends.
Republics Cannot Survive on Ideas and Commerce Alone
For the ancients, they worried extensively about the negative impacts of commerce, the influx of foreign customs, and anything that carried the citizen’s attention away from patriotism:
The threat posed to communal solidarity by the market economy had more than one aspect. The ancients feared commerce not simply because it encouraged economic specialization and contributed to a differentiation of interests.
They worried also that trade would erode the fragile moral consensus of the community by exposing its citizens to a flood of foreigners and to the alien notions these travelers brought with them. Cicero argued that maritime cities risked not only seaborne assault, but also "a corruption and degeneration of morals." In such polities, he remarked, "there is a mingling of strange tongues and practices; and with foreign merchandise, they import foreign ways — so that nothing in their ancestral institutions remains intact. Those who reside now in these cities do not cling to their dwelling places, but are always being seized and carried off by winged hope and flying thought — and even when they remain bodily at home, they wander in an exile of the mind."
In Cicero's opinion, this spiritual deracination was a danger not only for trading centers like Corinth, but for the rest of Greece as well: "Even the Peloponnesus itself — almost in its entirety — lies next to the sea," he wrote. The Hellenes had dispatched colonies to a great many places — "to Asia, to Thrace, to Italy, to Sicily, and even to Africa" — but the Roman orator could think of only one such settlement that "the waves do not wash." As for "the Greek islands," he noted, "girdled as they are by the flood, they seem almost to swim-and the institutions and the mores of their cities swim with them." It was difficult for the citizens of such communities in flux to hold to the same opinions. Patriotism thrives on isolation, and trade imperils like-mindedness.
Commercial republics continue at their own peril if they do not take seriously the need for cultivating patriotism and insuring communal solidarity. They must go out of their way to provide for these things and would be foolish to leave this to chance.In the opening to the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton set out a daring challenge for the American people:
It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
How can citizens possibly decide this important question without patriotism and a meaningful sense of unity? As a commercial republic, what are we doing to ensure our citizens are fit to maintain good government? Are we really going to put all of our hope in having a multiplicity of so many factions constantly warring with each other so no single one gains a decisive advantage? Has experience not destroyed this hope ten times over? Are we going to trust in ideas and principles to keep us united? Does a booming stock market and strong economy constitute the life force of a people?
An institution as unstable as commerce could not provide a proper foundation for a martial republic. The suspicion which the Greeks reserved for the philosopher and that which they directed at the merchant have the same root.
We cannot get by on ideas and commerce alone. We must not deny the real foundations of a great civilization; we cannot afford to ignore the cultivation of public-spirited men who love their republic. Our greatest energies must be devoted to this end.
Morality in a Commercial Republic
Naturally in a comparative study, many things will be restated. Rahe is great because he can artfully reiterate points in a way that is refreshing and insightful with each pass. In the next three passages, Rahe will layout the morality of a commercial republic, the morality of a martial republic, and comparison of both:
The bourgeois virtues are not a fraud perpetrated on an ignorant public; they have a certain content. In Hamilton's liberal polity, the merchant will be assiduous; the husbandman, laborious; the mechanic, active; and the manufacturer, industrious. Montesquieu's "democracy founded on commerce" will foster "frugality, economy, moderation, labor, prudence, tranquility, order, and regularity." Its citizens will exhibit a "politeness of morals" and "a certain sentiment of exact justice."
The habit of honesty, and the expectation that it will be reciprocated, link the merchant with his suppliers and with his customers: he assumes that they will abide by their contracts and pay their bills, but he does so only because it is in their interest to sustain their own credit and because he can ultimately depend on their dread of punishment as a guarantee. He does not look for generosity from his fellows, and in the course of hammering out deals, he rarely encounters it. Except (if he is fortunate) within the bosom of his immediate family, his is a life governed by self-interest, by caution, and by distrust.
The businessman's anxious hunger for money and his sense of propriety mask a more fundamental and less respectable passion — the love of mere life. As one Greek writer of the late fifth century had occasion to note, most men hold possessions and money dear because of the things that cast them into fright: things like disease, old age, and the losses caused by fire; things like the deaths of animals and of members of the household — as well as other misfortunes. If the tradesman craves lucre and supports law and order, it is only because he senses that both are a hedge against death. As Madison acknowledged, the foundation of liberal theory and practice is "the great principle of self-preservation."
The morality cultivated within a commercial republic appeals to the lower aspects of human nature: the love of mere life.
Morality in a Martial Republic
Friendship and honor inspire morality in a martial republic. It can be difficult for us moderns to think of a political society set up in this way. Anytime we hear about communal interests over individual interests, we recoil and think “communism and socialism.” But where these modern collectivist ideologies establish centralized authorities to dominate the masses, the camaraderie existing between citizens in the ancient regime was something else entirely.
Warrior communities embody an entirely different morality. They tend to emphasize friendship and honor even in the realm of commodity exchange. This propensity helps explain the remarkable character of the discussion which Aristotle devotes to the function of coinage in the Nicomachean Ethics.
The Stagirite was perfectly aware that the introduction of money eased considerably the task of the profiteer, but — when assessing the import of coinage — he chose to underline, instead, the role that it played as an instrument of reciprocity within the political community: standing in place of need (chreía) and enabling each citizen to share with his fellows through something like an exchange of gifts (metádosts) his own contribution to the common weal. "This is why," Aristotle explains, "we establish a temple for the Graces where the citizens will stumble across it — in order that there might be reciprocal giving. Exchanges of this sort are a peculiar characteristic of graciousness, for it is required of a man who has received a boon that he serve in turn — and again subsequently repay the debt by taking the initiative in conferring a favor himself." Aristotle's discussion of coined money may seem strange to us, but his understanding of the place reserved within the community for what we might mistake for commerce would not have been thought odd in ancient times.
To grasp Aristotle's point, we must keep in mind that it is camaraderie which links the citizen — soldier with his fellows. When he is in danger, he expects them to risk their lives to come to his aid, and he knows that the greatest obstacle to their support is that very fear of violent death which sustains the minimal decency at home in the autonomous marketplace of the liberal polity. If a soldier is not joined to his compatriots by bonds of warmth and trust on the day before battle, he may not be able to depend on them in his hour of need.
Morality of Martial and Commercial Republics Compared
In all the comparisons between ancient and modern, this is one of Rahe’s best. The key danger of a commercial republic is the degradation of the citizenry. They turn from true peers to mere confederates, coworkers, and demobilized individuals simply occupying shared space:
The contrast between these two regimes and the radically different ways of life that they foster can be put simply: the passions nurtured by commerce are at odds with those required by a warrior band. As Montesquieu put it, the "sentiment of exact justice" is opposed not only to "brigandage," but also to "those moral virtues" which make men "able to neglect their own interests for those of others." The spirit of commerce causes men "to forget the laws of friendship and those of hate"; it renders them "confederates rather than fellow citizens." Herodotus made this point with a parable: in the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Asia Minor and the subsequent Lydian revolt, when Cyrus the Great pondered the means for preventing future rebellion, he was purportedly advised to ban the possession of arms at Sardis and to require luxurious dress, musical training, and the profession of retail trade. "If you do this," he was told, "the Lydians will quickly become women instead of men, and there will no longer be any danger that they will revolt."
Similar reasoning caused men in the late eighteenth century such as Adam Ferguson and, less emphatically, Adam Smith to worry that the emerging capitalist order would be accompanied by a decay in national spirit fatal to the long-term prospects of political liberty. As they recognized, liberal democracies are forever in danger of degenerating into what Aristotle called "an association for residence on a common site existing for the sake of exchange and for the prevention of mutual injustice." In such a polity, Aristotle had warned, "the law" is "unable to make the citizens good and just" because it is nothing more than "a covenant . . . a pledge to respect each other's rightful claims."