Though Aristotle defines money as representative wealth, like Plato, he fails to apprehend its meaning as representative, and therefore productive capital.697
In his eyes, such a use of money is unjust and contrary to nature. He counts usury (τοκισμός) to be a large part of that false finance, which turns money from its true function to be made an object of traffic.698
Those who lend small sums at a high rate of interest are contemptible,699 and petty usury (ἡ ὀβολοστατική) is the most unnatural and violent form of chrematistik, since it makes money reproduce money.700
It is to be observed, however, that his criticism is directed chiefly against petty interest, and that he does not appear to be thinking of “heavy loans on the security of a whole cargo, but of petty lendings to the necessitous poor, at heavy interest.”701
Though his entire account of false finance exhibits an animus against the precious metals, as its basal cause, and as the source of individual and national degeneration,702 yet he clearly appreciates their necessary function in the state, and his hostility is actually directed against the spirit of commercialism. Money, the means, has usurped the place of the end, until domestic and public economy alike have come to mean only the vulgar art of acquisition.703
The usual explanation of the fact that the Greek theorists failed to grasp the fact of the productive power of money is that loans were almost entirely for consumption, and hence seemed like an oppression of the poor.704 This explanation, however, does not accord with the facts of Athenian life, at least for Aristotle’s day. It is clear from the Private Orations of Demosthenes that there did exist an extensive banking and credit system for productive purposes in the Athens of his time.705 Moreover, the hostility to interest and credit was not