Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
treated, leading many to feel cheated, which could increase antagonisms, and in ex-
treme cases could lead to civil war within the city state. So fairness in distribution,
one part of Aristotle's 'particular justice', was regarded as a necessity to prevent
societal conflict in a city-state. However, we must be careful of interpreting this in
contemporary terms. There seems little doubt that Aristotle was referring primarily
to commercial and labour exchange, and honour transactions at his time. Indeed,
Hardie (
1980
, p. 191) has convincingly dismissed interpretations that Aristotle's
redistribution principle was seen at the time as being related to the use of the com-
mon funds of the state to reduce wealth inequalities, similar to modern ideas of re-
distribution on welfare grounds. Certainly, during the classical Greek era there were
occasional examples of the distribution of foreign grain, as well as the allocation
of lands in new colonies, to the underprivileged citizens of the city-states. But it is
difficult to argue that these were ever related to Aristotle's principle. Moreover, Ra-
vallion's (
2013
) review of historical attitudes to poverty has shown that throughout
history most people believed that redistribution was inappropriate, since poverty
was assumed to be a person's own fault. This view was buttressed by the mer-
cantilist views of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries which argued that poverty
was socially useful since it guaranteed supplies of cheap labour to owners of land
and factories. In Britain the various Poor Laws were only implemented to provide
minimum relief for the poorest and to reduce the shock of unusual harvest failure
or other major events, not to raise their condition. Despite Adam Smith's mild sug-
gestion that redistributive taxation was appropriate to relieve poverty, few took up
the case for redistribution; indeed many in the growing field of economics argued
that since the rich saved and invested the most, any reductions in their wealth would
reduce aggregate growth, which was assumed to be the motor for growth. It was the
increasing humanitarian views of the Enlightenment combined with public realiza-
tion of the squalor of the impoverished in cities, revealed in the novels of Dickens
(Tomalin
2013
), and the late nineteenth century cartographic and statistical works
of Charles Booth (1902) and Seebohm Rowntree's study of poverty (1901), that led
to changes of opinion about the condition of the poor and the need for redistributive
measures through state action.
The social and economic arguments for a redistributive form of justice must
be complemented by the changing religious and political beliefs that increasingly
supported such policies. The foundational belief of many religions was based on
the idea that there is a moral imperative to share goods, to distribute alms to those
in need, and to treat neighbours fairly. Unfortunately the very hierarchical nature
of most urban societies in the past marginalised the application of these ideas in
most cases, except within some religious orders. Also in political terms the innate
reciprocity of relationships in most hunting and gathering groups was lost and the
emergence of status levels created different amounts of possessions and power in
classes. So an inequality in the distribution of goods and power was perpetuated
through time by the strength, traditions and religious beliefs of the powerful elite
that were increasingly based in cities. Certainly, many of these societies provided
relief for the poor and the weak, especially through religious organizations, but the
overall belief in the right of the elite to control both society and goods was rarely
