By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY
For an honest account of what the future portends, one may be advised to look to business leaders rather than to politicians, economists, or academicians. The business world seems to know where the country is headed and is acting accordingly.
We read daily of hundreds of employees being let go at once-flourishing manufacturing or retail establishments. Union leadership has been unable to prevent large-scale reductions in government employees at all levels.
“Scaled down for modern living” has become a real estate slogan. Seemingly upscale has become the province of an elite class. It wasn’t all that noticeable in times past when middle-class accommodations were available to those who knew there was a first class, something they might enjoy from time to time, if not on a regular basis.
We now read that the venerable Waldorf Astoria with 1,100 rooms is being turned into a condominium, save for 300 to 500 rooms that are being groomed for first-class patronage. A few years ago Chicago’s Ambassador East, and more recently, New York’s Plaza, were similarly reconstructed to serve an increasingly smaller clientele.
A recent newspaper headline proclaimed, “Dining out falls victim to the economy,” though you may not know it if you lived in or near the nation’s capital or in other centers of affluence.
It is well known that employment opportunities for a middle class have shrunk as a result of major corporations seeking lower production costs abroad for products that are then imported into the United States. Couple that with the Federal Reserve’s policy known as “quantitative easing,” a policy that robs the thrifty middle class of reasonable interest on retirement savings, and we have, apart from adverse tax laws and overregulation, two factors contributing to a loss of middle-income purchasing power. Business leaders sense this and act accordingly, though politicians ignore it.
One may ask: Does it matter whether a middle class exists? Is upward mobility possible without it? Is a middle class essential to the maintenance of national order?
To the last question Aristotle would answer, “Yes.” In book 4, chapter11 of the Politics Aristotle discusses the role of the middle class in a well-functioning state that is analogously applicable in our own time.
“A city ought to be composed,” he writes, “as far as possible of equals and similars, and these are generally the middle classes. Wherefore the city which is composed of middle-class citizens is necessarily best constituted in respect to the elements of which we say the fabric of the state naturally consists. And this is the class of citizens which is most secure in the state, for they do not, as the poor covet the goods of the rich; and they neither plot against others, nor are themselves plotted against; they pass through life safely. Wisely did Phocylides pray — Many things are best in the mean: I desire to be in the middle condition in my city.”
The whole of book 4 is worth reading. Aristotle goes on to say, “Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well governed in which the middle class is large, and stronger, if possible than both the other classes. The middle class turns the scale and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of the state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property” (translated by Benjamin Jowett, available in Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon).
In book 3, Aristotle’s discussion of who is a citizen has implications for immigration and trade policy. A citizen is more than a mere resident. An acknowledgment that the resident has certain rights pertaining to his person does not make him a citizen. A citizen, Aristotle says, is ordinarily one who possesses what may be called a political franchise, one who has the ability to sit on juries and who participates in the assembly.
In practice a citizen is defined as one whose parents are both citizens. But this definition will not do. Citizenship can be duly conferred by magistrates, even on the resident aliens, under certain circumstances. Foremost is the recognition that the citizen is a member of a community of similars. One citizen is different from another but the preservation of the community is the business of all.
Aristotle spends considerable time discussing the virtues expected in a citizen. While his teaching cannot effortlessly serve as guidance in our present, the principles he identifies after a host of distinctions remain relevant. Neither human nature nor the requirement of a politically structured order have changed since antiquity.
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(Jude Dougherty is dean emeritus, School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America.)
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