Why Aristotle Would Have Hated Communism

He knew private ownership was vital for a healthy society

A Roman copy of a marble bust of Aristotle, date unknown. The original was made by Lysippos in 330 BCE (Wikimedia Commons — image resized by author)

In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed their own economic system: communism. They wanted to replace private ownership and the free market with a state-regulated economy founded on the principles of equality.

This utopian ideal is still attractive for some people today. Yet, those with even a vague knowledge of the twentieth century know that communism was a disaster.

Aristotle — who is arguably the greatest philosopher of all time — knew that communal ownership and absolute equality were flawed principles. And though his ideas predate the works of Marx and Engels by more than two thousand years, there’s no doubting he would have hated communism.

The flaws of public ownership

In Politics, Aristotle’s objections to communal ownership are essentially a response to the ideas Plato proposed in The Republic.

Whilst Aristotle acknowledges the attraction of equality and how easy it is to blame society’s problems on private ownership, he doesn’t agree with either of these sentiments. Rather, he proposes that character flaws are the primary cause of societal issues.