included in unnatural finance.579 Aristotle has thus often been compared to the physiocrats, who distinguished between creative and parasitic classes of workers, upheld the “natural” order as the ideal, and eulogized agriculture and the “extractive” industries as the only productive ones. As Souchon580 has observed, however, the resemblance is only superficial. Yet the fact that he fails to see that exchange is productive of a time and place value, and the fact that he includes hired labor, skilled and unskilled, among the unnatural activities, are sufficient evidence that he had only a superficial grasp of the principles of production.581 But the frequent assertion that he includes brigandage and war among the productive arts is unwarranted, for he classifies them only among the acquisitive means.582
Aristotle almost outdoes Plato in his subordination of all production to ethics, though he keeps their respective aims more distinct. According to him, the productive arts are not ends in themselves. They are means to the supreme end of the moral life, whose first interest is not in production, but in right action.583 As seen in our discussion of Plato, such a doctrine is not fruitful, economically. If interpreted too rigidly, it stifles commerce and industry. Yet, at bottom, it holds a great truth which modern economists are emphasizing—the fact that wealth and production alike must be subordinated to the general individual and social good. Moreover, the philosopher should not be interpreted in too hard-and-fast a manner. Barker is extreme in his statement that the economic theory of Aristotle is a mere treatise on “the ethics of family life” and that “the fundamental characteristic of his idea of production is a reactionary archaism, which abolishes all the machinery of civilization in favor of the self-supporting farm and a modicum of barter.”584 Bonar’s assertion is also unwarranted, that “Aristotle thinks it beneath the dignity” of his discourse to give the practical details of agriculture and industry “more than a cursory notice.”585 Such details were not germane to the plan of his work, and would certainly be considered out of place in a modern general text on economics. Aristotle’s economic doctrine, as a