Comment: “Polity is the best practicable form of government.” (Aristotle) (1998)
In Politics Book IV, chapter 11, Aristotle asks what is the best constitution for most states, and the best life for most men. Assuming no superhuman virtue or ideal city, his answer is polity (politeia), a constitution resting on a large middle class. “Best practicable” marks his break with Plato’s ideal state. As a theory of stability it has lasted, though it shows the conservatism and exclusions of his politics.
Why “Practicable”
- The four tasks of political science (IV.1). The statesman must know the best constitution in principle, the best under given circumstances, the best on a stated hypothesis, and the constitution suited to most states. Plato’s Republic stopped at the first question.
- Best in principle needs rare virtue. Kingship and true aristocracy need one or a few men of rare excellence. Polity requires only the ordinary, largely military, virtue that many citizens can have (III.7).
Why “Best”: the Middle-Class Argument
- The mean. If the happy life is a life of virtue lived in the mean (Nicomachean Ethics), the best common life is also found in the middle.
- The extremes corrupt. The very rich will not obey and rule only as masters; the very poor are too degraded to rule and obey only as slaves. It becomes a city, not of freemen, but of masters and slaves, divided by envy and contempt.
- The middle stabilises. Moderate owners neither covet nor are coveted; a city should consist as far as possible, of equals and similars. The middle is also the trusted arbiter between rich and poor (IV.12), and the best lawgivers, Solon, Lycurgus and Charondas, came from it.
- Safeguards. Open offices, rule of law and rotation make polity the least factional and most durable constitution.
Modern Echoes and the Indian Anchor
Seymour Martin Lipset (Political Man, 1960) tied stable democracy to prosperity and a broad middle class. Barrington Moore Jr. (Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 1966) put it bluntly: no bourgeois, no democracy. India’s Directive Principles are Aristotelian in spirit: Article 38(2) asks the state to minimise inequalities of income, and Article 39(c) to prevent concentration of wealth. A 2024 World Inequality Lab study co-authored by Thomas Piketty found India’s top 1% holding 22.6% of income and 40.1% of wealth in 2022–23, a “Billionaire Raj” more unequal than colonial India.
Limits
- Narrow membership. Polity still excludes slaves, women and labourers. “Middle” means middle among the propertied.
- Stability over justice. A stable but unjust order passes his test.
- Rarely realised. Aristotle admits that the middle constitution has rarely, if ever, existed, which strains the word “practicable”.
- Marxist. Karl Marx expected the middle strata to sink into the proletariat as society polarised.
- Indian counter-evidence. India founded universal adult franchise in a poor society. Yogendra Yadav‘s “democratic upsurge” of the 1990s showed poorer and lower-caste voters sustaining democracy, not only the middle class.
Conclusion
Aristotle’s claim is sound in its core: a regime is most durable where property is moderate and widely spread, and where law and rotation restrain the extremes. Democracy has widened his citizen body; his lesson, that constitutions fail when inequality divides a people into masters and slaves, is especially relevant to India today.