Re: [Marxism] Aristotle versus Ahmadinejad

["Carlos Eduardo Rebello" <crebello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nestor: 

This is an aside, but not an uninteresting aside. I think it was the
Greek philosophers who established openly that without slavery human
civilization was not possible, thus slavery was not only necessary
but, since the slaveowning regime was civilization itself, also
_natural_. Every free institution (democracy, people, citizen,
sovereignty, etc.) was applicable, only, to males who were by nature
free and equal.

Even more interstingly, cf., e.g., Ellen Meikisins Wood, Aristotle's thory of 
Natural Slavery didn't actually "catch" in the Ancient World, as the more 
commonly accepeted  theory was that adopted by Roman Law: slavery is against 
Natural Law, but all right according to historical custom (Ulpian, Digest, 
50,17,32). Therefore the fact that it were the Romans, who fared very poorly in 
trems of general democratic feelings when compared to the Greeks - but were 
neverthless dyed-in-the-wool pragmatists - who allowed us to understand that 
there are institutions that "make sense" in terms of a particular historical 
situation, but who in another situation can be safely ascribed to "vanish from 
the page of time"...

CR


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