Aristotle's Politics: Oligarchy and Democracy
In Aristotle's Politics, he focuses much on the regimes of an oligarchy and of a democracy. Democracies exists when the free and poor, being a majority, have authority to rule, and have an equal share in the city. Oligarchies exists when the few wealthy and better born have authority and grant benefits in proportion to a person's wealth (1280a:10-30;1290a:5-10). Within each regime, there are the farmer, the working element and craftsmen, the marketing element and traders, the laboring element, the warrior element, the priests (Aristotle skips this sixth element but suggests this possibility), the rich, and the magisterial (1290b:40; 1291a:5-35). Within regimes are two distinctive classes and forms of government which are the well off and the poor. While the well off are few and the poor are many, these parts of the city oppose the other. Regimes are instituted accordingly on the basis of the sorts of preeminence associated with these which holds to be two sorts of regimes: democracy and oligarchy (1291b:5-10). Within the two regimes, there are several kinds of both the people and of the notables. Within the people there are the famers, those engaged in the arts, the marketing element, the element connected with the sea, the menial elements having little property, and the free element. Within the notables there are kinds distinguished by wealth, good birth, virtue, education, and whatever is spoken of as based on the same sort of difference as these (1291b:20-30). Aristotle defines five different kinds of democracy. First, everyone is equal by law regardless of wealth and majority rules. Second, there is a modest minimum property qualification to hold public office. Third, only the nobly born hold public office, but the law rules. Fourth, anyone can hold public office, but the law rules. Lastly, anyone can hold public office and the multitude rules, not the law. The last form is vulnerable to becoming a demagoguery of the majority