ARISTOTLE’S GANG: Our system of representative government is supposedly based upon ideas regarding human rights and responsibilities that were first expressed by the Greeks back in ancient times. Before that, the theory of human organization and governance was pretty simple: every region or village or gathering had one boss whose word was law. You listened to what he or she said, period. No discussion, no voting, no nothing. Just how was that leader to be selected? Oh, that was mostly a function of circumstance. Whoever was the strongest or most fearsome or most crafty would emerge as the grand poobah by winning fights and killing off his rivals. Later on, the notion that leadership should be inherited was developed so as to cut down on the squabbling that happened when a leader dies. But there were still squabbles and many a king’s son didn’t get to the throne; or if he did, he didn’t have it for long.

The economics behind this form of organization were pretty simple too. The king or grand duke or maximum ruler owned everything and lived the good life. Most everyone else was a peasant who got just enough to stay alive, bare subsistence.

The ancient Greeks assumed a different form of economics and political science. They felt that things worked best when everyone had about the same level of wealth and shared in the management of the community. Not that they were exactly socialists. They didn’t impose such a solution. Things just worked out that way. A lot of people back in old Greece were farmers with rights to a small patch of land, fertile enough to support the family. There were still people who were very poor and very rich, but there were a lot of folk in the middle. And that was a good thing to the ancients. They invented the concept of the “polis”, the local community defined by geographic proximity, which was governed in a way that shared the rights and responsibilities of power. Everyone was ultimately responsible for the day-to-day things like roads, policing, taxation, sanitation, public health, and defense. Not that everyone was a jack of all trades, but all citizens at minimum had to contribute by paying their taxes and by fighting for the city when needed. The local armies were set up to fight in “phalanx” fashion, i.e. using rows of soldiers behind shields. It was expected that all citizens would take part in the phalanx when some squabble with the neighboring polis couldn’t be solved through discussion.

The phalanx was out of fashion by 1776, but otherwise our American forefathers used a lot of Greek concepts regarding citizenship when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So, you might expect that our form of government would work well when the basic presumptions of the Greeks are satisfied, and might have some troubles when they aren’t. Thus, the big question for today is this: do we still meet the basic Greek presumptions? One of the biggest presumptions was that the great majority of citizens would be in the economic middle class. For example, Aristotle said:

“This is the class of citizens which is most secure in a state, for they do not, like the poor, covet other men’s goods … as they neither plot against others, nor are themselves plotted against, they pass through life safely … the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large … ”

For most of the 20th Century, America was the home of the middle class. There were still rich folk and lots of poor folk, but overall the poverty rate went down significantly after 1950, and democracy really seemed to hit its stride. It had a big show-down with socialism and communism, and guess what? Socialism and communism lost. We were doing something right.

You’d hope that America could keep on doing things right. But the trends these days seem to be going away from the middle class. The number of rich people has expanded somewhat, but the percentage of overall wealth that is collectively controlled by the rich has shot way up over the past 20 years. On the other end of the spectrum, the number and percentage of poor people stopped declining about 20 years ago, and is arguably creeping up again.

Income distribution in America is definitely becoming a problem. More and more, American politics seems to be a game for the rich; quite a few Senators and Representatives these days are millionaires (both of New Jersey’s Senators, for instance). The President and his family ain’t no paupers either. Right now there don’t seem to be any apparent problems because of this; the average citizens still have to elect the rich guys, so they still feel OK about it. But if this continues for another 50 years or so, you’ve got to wonder if the “theory of the polis”, i.e. the feelings of loyalty and patriotism expressed by the great silent majority, will start to get frayed around the edges.

You would expect the first signs of trouble to come from the poor part of town. But for now, the ghetto seems pretty calm. The urban riots of the 60’s were definitely cause for concern, and that flare-up out in LA in 1992 caused a bit of a scare. But at present things seem OK. The worst thing happening in the streets right now is the explosion of youth gangs; but that doesn’t appear to threaten social order given that it’s a capitalistic form of crime, an affirmation of the basic American urge to get rich (only expressed in an unlawful manner). It’s no more of a threat to the basic presumptions of our nation than the Mafia or any other organized crime syndicate ever was.

Well, for now I’d agree with that. But every now and then, some of the street gangs start voicing political theories that seems downright un-American. If a couple of spoiled young suburban types ever come along seeking some rabble to rouse just for the hell of it (akin to what Osama Bin Laden did out in the Middle East, and let’s not forget what Adolph Hitler did in inter-war Germany), they might find fertile fields to plow within the American ghettos.

History is usually made when a tiny insignificant spark somehow finds a mound of gasoline-soaked waste just sitting there quietly enough. If Aristotle could visit our city streets and our jails these days and talk with some of the gang-bangers, he might well smell the fumes.