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nydus/A History of Greek Economic ThoughtPublic

This volume provides a reinterpretation of Greek economic theory by examining the relationship between ancient thought and modern humanitarian economy. The text analyzes Greek economic ideas within the context of the contemporary economic environment and provides a bibliography of relevant scholarly works.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

prejudging the issue as to the actual extent of capitalism in ancient Athens, we need only to think away the vast international scope of our modern commercial problems, our giant manufacturing plants with their steam and electric power, our enormous wealth and its extreme concentration, the untold complexity of modern business and finance, the vast territorial expanse of modern nations, almost all our luxuries and commonplace comforts, to begin to appreciate something of this ancient simplicity.2 However, as a direct result of this limitation, the Greeks were led to deal with their problems more in terms of men than in terms of things, and thus their economic vision was sometimes clearer and truer than our own. Aristotle struck the keynote in Greek economic thought in stating that the primary interest of economy is human beings rather than inanimate property.3

  1. Confusion of private and public economy.—As a result of this simplicity, the terms οἰκονομία and οἰκονομική were, both in derivation and largely in usage, referred to household management rather than to public economy.4 Domestic and public economy were regularly defined as differing merely in extent.5 Aristotle, however, distinctly criticizes the confusion of the two.6 Moreover, there is no warrant for the frequent assertion that Greek thinkers never rose above the conception of domestic economy. Xenophon’s treatise on the Revenues of Athens, and Aristotle’s entire philosophy of the state are a sufficient answer to such generalizations. The statement of Professor Barker that “political economy,” to Aristotle, would be a “contradiction in terms,” is extreme.7 There is also a certain important truth in the Greek confusion, which has been too generally missed by modern critics and statesmen—that the public is a great property-holder, and that politics should be a business which requires the application of the same economic and ethical laws as are admitted to govern in private affairs.
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