Politics of Companies (II) - Book I Part I

Curiously, the idea of using Aristotle's Politics to consider the development of company law seems novel. This cannot be right - I must be searching badly. In the meantime, here's the Jowett translation of Book I Part I of the Politics (hat tip to MIT for this), amended to refer to companies. What do people think ?

"BOOK ONE

Part I

Every trading entity is a community of some kind, and every community is established
with a view to some good; for people always act in order to obtain
that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good,
the market or commercial community, which is the highest of all, and
which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than
any other, and at the highest good.

Some people think that the qualifications of a chair of the board, chief executive,
director, and manager are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only
in the number of their subjects. For example, the ruler over a few employees
is called a manager; over more, the director of a firm or company; over a
still larger number, a chief executive or chair of the board, as if there were no
difference between a great firm and a small PLC. The distinction which
is made between the CEO and the chair is as follows: When the
running of the company is personal, the ruler is CEO; when, according to the
rules of the socio-economic science, the members rule and are ruled in
turn, then he is called the chair.

But all this is a mistake; for trading entities differ in kind, as will
be evident to any one who considers the matter according to the method
which has hitherto guided us. As in other departments of science,
so in the social sciences, the compound should always be resolved into the simple
elements or least parts of the whole. We must therefore look at the
elements of which the market is composed, in order that we may see
in what the different kinds of corporate governance differ from one another, and whether
any scientific result can be attained about each one of them."

I don't think that I'm always choosing my re-wordings well, but the idea seems to have legs. Also, I suspect Jowett stuck close to the original when in doubt, and that a more committed (at the risk of error) translation would read better.

I guess - tho' I'm not sure - that Aristotle would have allowed a community a separate legal [/whatever] personality from its citizens. I wonder at what point ?

Watch this space ...