¹ Finley, M. I., ‘Aristotle and Economic Analysis’ in P&P xlvii (1970)Google Scholar; published in Finley, M. I., ed., Studies in Ancient Society (London 1974)Google Scholar. All page references to this article will be to the latter publication, and all references to Finley will be to this work unless otherwise indicated.

² See, e.g., SirGrant, A.'s The Ethics of Aristotle ii (London 1874) 117–20Google Scholar.

³ The relevant works of Soudek, Spengler and Hardie are cited by Finley and references given on pp. 31 and 35 respectively. Other works in the same genre are: Kauder, E., ‘Genesis of Marginal Utility Theory’ in Econ. J. lxiii (1953) 638Google Scholar; Gordon, B. J. ‘Aristotle and the Development of Value Theory’ in QJE lxxviii (1964) 128Google Scholar.

⁴ Schumpeter, J., Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theorischen Nationaloekonomie (Leipzig 1908) 50ff.Google Scholar (It is worth noting that Schumpeter was writing against the same historical background as Eduard Meyer, cf. n. 29.) For an account of Schumpeter, and other movements away from Political Economy see Grossman, Henryk, ‘Archive: Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics’ in Capital and Class ii (1977) 32Google Scholarff.

⁵ I have used the translations of Barker, Rackham and Ross.

⁶ The translation is Rackham's, with ‘chreia’ substituted for his misleading ‘demand’.

⁷ Ross's translation, with the same substitution of ‘chreia’ for his ‘demand’.

⁸ The passage in question is 1133b18f. I have taken the view that Aristotle is to be understood as throwing in the sponge on the theoretical problem of commensurability because he cannot solve it. The alternative view is that we are to understand his statement that things cannot really be commensurable as if it were a positive conclusion that flowed from this analysis, which it clearly is not. If it is taken in that way, then the absurd consequence is that Aristotle would be saying that the problem of commensurability, which he has spent the bulk of the chapter chasing hither and thither without success, is not a problem. It seems clear that the significance of the statement is that it evinces Aristotle's bewilderment at a problem he can see no way of resolving. It is to be noted that this passage, in manifesting Aristotle's own low estimation of his suggestion that chreia is the basis of commensurability, is very damaging to those interpretations that seek to read into Aristotle some version of modern Subjective, or Marginal Utilitarian, Theory of Value on the basis of chreia. Karl Marx, who concluded that Aristotle failed to arrive at any theory of value, based his view in part on this passage; Capital i (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1970) 59. Van Johnson, who explicitly sets out to overturn Marx's evaluation, fails to mention the passage in arguing that Aristotle held that ‘“demand” (χρϵία) … is at bottom the real unit of value’, and that ‘χρϵία is as much a “concept of value” for Aristotle as labor is for Marx’, ‘Aristotle's Theory of Value’ in AJP lx (1939) 450.

⁹ Marx, , Capital i (London 1970) 60Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See n. 3.

¹¹ Hardie, W. F. R., Aristotle's Ethical Theory (Oxford 1968) 196–7Google Scholar.

¹² Finley 35; he writes: ‘For Karl Marx the answer is that, though Aristotle was the first to identify the central problem of exchange value, he then…’.

¹³ Barker, E., The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford 1952)Google Scholar, reproduces the structure and detail of the thought more systematically and perspicuously.

¹⁴ Ross has an individual view of Aristotle's views on this subject. Instead of understanding Aristotle to be thinking of the internal evolution of exchange relations and its transitions between less-developed and moredeveloped forms, Ross, 's evaluation is that ‘This notion of money as facilitating barter, instead of (practically) driving it out of the field, is a curious one.’ But he explains that ‘it must be remembered that in economics,…Aristotle was almost the earliest worker’. Aristotle (revised edn, London 1949) 213Google Scholar.

¹⁵ For a discussion of this see Clark, S. R. L., Aristotle's Man (Oxford 1975)Google Scholar chs II. 1 and IV. 2.

¹⁶ Finley 42. It is not strictly accurate to say that Finley passes directly from barter to kapelike. However, the only recognition he gives to the form that lies between them appears in the remark that following barter ‘then, because of the difficulties created by foreign sources of supply … money was introduced, and out of this there developed kapelike’. It cannot be said that this strongly suggests Aristotle's awareness of the intervening form C–M–C, or that it recognises its legitimacy in Aristotle's view, or the important place Aristotle gives it in his account of the successive and interpenetrating phases in the development of exchange relations.

¹⁷ Finley 40.

¹⁸ Finley 38; the quotation immediately following is from the same page.

¹⁹ These two quotations used by Finley, 26 and 44, derive from Schumpeter, , History of Economic Analysis (N.Y. 1954) 1Google Scholar and 60 respectively.

²⁰ Finley 39–40.

²¹ Finley 39.

²² Finley 44.

²³ Aristotle was aware of this as a presupposition of the existence of exchange relations and of exchange relations as a presupposition of the existence of the polis. See Ethics 1132b31 f., and Pol. ii 2, 1261a30 ff. See also Ritchie, D. G.'s subtle but incomplete appreciation of the significance of ‘proportionate reciprocity’, in ‘Aristotle's Subdivisions of Particular Justice’, CR viii (1894) 192Google Scholar.

²⁴ Finley 39.

²⁵ It is obviously impossible here to go into Marx's analysis of the commodity, and such of the criticisms that have been made of it as are pertinent. What I shall try to do is give an impressionistic account adequate for the purposes of the present argument, and hope to avoid parody in the attempt. Marx's own systematic exposition of the core of his analysis is in Capital i, Pt I, ch. 1. An explanatory and exploratory treatment, and by far the best, is to be found in Rubin, I. I., Essays on Marx's Theory of Value (Detroit 1972)Google Scholar. A more introductory treatment is given by Sweezy, P., The Theory of Capitalist Development (N.Y. 1968)Google Scholar. See also Meek, R. L., Studies in the Labour Theory of Value (London 1973)Google Scholar. The classical reply to Marx, which has not been surpassed or even paralleled by non-Marxist economists to the present day, is that of von Böhm-Bawerk, E., first published in 1896, Karl Marx and the Close of his System (Merlin Press, London 1975)Google Scholar. This edition also includes the response to Bawerk by Rudolf Hilferding. A perceptive critical evaluation of Bawerk's uniquely serious attempt to understand and criticize Marx's theory is given by Kay, G., ‘Why Labour is the Starting point of Capital’, Critique vii (1977) 53Google Scholar ff.

²⁶ See Capital i, Pt I, ch. 1, section 3 A.

²⁷ Cf. Marx's letter to Kugelmann, 11th July, 1868.

²⁸ Lysias xxii and xxxii, Demosthenes xxxii, xxxv and Ps.-Dem. lvi. On these ancient sources see de Ste Croix, G. E. M., ‘Ancient Greek and Roman maritime loans’, in Debits, Credits, Finance and Profits, ed. Edey, H. and Yamey, B. S. (London 1974) 41–59Google Scholar, and Seagar, R., ‘Lysias against the corndealers’ in Historia xv (1966)Google Scholar 1972 ff. See also Mossé, C., La fin de la démocratie athénienne (Paris 1962)Google Scholar ch. 1.

²⁹ ‘Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries stands as much under the sign (unter dem Zeichen) of capitalism as England has stood since the 18th and Germany since the 19th century.’ Meyer, E., Kleine Schriften (1st edn 1910) i 79Google Scholar ff.; cited by Bolkestein, H. in his Economic Life in Greece's Golden Age, ed. Jonkers, E. J. (Leiden 1958) 148–9Google Scholar. Meyer was writing against the background both of the zenith of Hohenzollern Germany's capitalist rivalry with Britain, and of the frightening (to some) and mighty development of the first mass Marxist revolutionary party of the working-class, the SPD led by Kautsky, Bernstein and Liebknecht. It is not surprising, therefore that Meyer's opinion, and its pretty clear underlying message that civilisation is to be identified with the system of capitalism, was readily endorsed by many scholars, especially German (as Bolkestein notes).

³⁰ Just as positivism in the more general areas of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of science is leaving the bankruptcy court in destitution, it can still be party by proxy to a venture afoot in classical studies.

³¹ Finley 44 and 39 respectively.

³² Cf. Meillassoux, C., ‘From reproduction to production’ in Economy & Society i 94Google Scholar.

³³ Roll, E., A History of Economic Thought (London 1961) 31Google Scholar.

³⁴ Schumpeter, , History of Economic Analysis 57Google Scholar.

³⁵ Finley 28.

³⁶ Schumpeter ibid. 64–5.

³⁷ Finley 37–8.

³⁸ Finley 44–5.

³⁹ Finley, M. I., The Ancient Economy (Berkeley 1973) 22Google Scholar. Here again, Finley adopts the orthodox idea of what ‘economic analysis’ might be, only here he is adopting Roll rather than Schumpeter.

⁴⁰ Ibid. 22.

⁴¹ Ibid. 23.

⁴² G. E. M. de Ste Croix touches indirectly on this contrast between modern orthodox thought on the one hand, and ancient thought and modern Marxist thought on the other. He cites Marx's general characterisation of the history of Republican Rome as ‘the struggle of small versus large landed property, specifically modified, of course, by slave conditions’ (letter to Engels, 8th March, 1855), adding that this was ‘precisely as many Greek thinkers … from Solon to Aristotle’ thought of the history of states, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London 1972) 90. The general point lying behind this is that the ancients were able to consider history in such a way because the development of commodity relations had not yet reached a level where the real ground of historical change, social relations, had become obscured by ‘commodity fetishism’, that is, the tendency in orthodox thought to de-historicise the categories of market society and universalise them into quasi laws of nature. Marx achieved the same view of history, in a period when the commodity form had already developed its full obscurantist potential, by penetrating the mysteries of the commodity form. The Greeks had an un-fetishised view; Marx had to achieve a de-fetishised one.

⁴³ This, and the preceding quotations, are from Finley 32.

⁴⁴ Finley 36 n. 35.

⁴⁵ Hdt. i 152–3.

⁴⁶ Polanyi, K., ‘Aristotle Discovers the Economy’, in Dalton, G., ed., Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (N.Y. 1968) 110Google Scholar. All further references to Polanyi are to this work.

⁴⁷ Polanyi 107.

⁴⁸ Polanyi 95.

⁴⁹ Polanyi 109.

⁵⁰ Polanyi 96.

⁵¹ Polanyi 97, 106–7, 109. See de Ste Croix, 's review, EHR xii (1959–1960) 510–11Google Scholar.

⁵² Polanyi 108.

⁵³ Polanyi 81, int. al., Polanyi attributes what is his own misunderstanding to Aristotle's ‘naïveté’, in the manner of Ross, see n. 14.