Population Theory by Malthus

The Prelude to Malthus

The eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, a time when the goodness of the common person was championed. This perspective, that the rights of individuals superseded the demands of a monarchy characterized by a great deal of enthusiasm for life and a belief in the perfectibility of humans. In France, these ideas were well-expressed by Marie Jean Antoine, Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet. Condorcet thus saw prosperity and population growth increasing hand in hand, and if the limits to growth were ever reached, the final solution would be birth control.

Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influences on Morals and Happiness appeared in its first edition in 1793, revealing his ideas that scientific progress would enable the food supply to grow far beyond the levels of his day and that such prosperity would not lead to overpopulation because people would deliberately limit their sexual expression and procreation (Godwin, 1793).

The Malthusian Perspective

The Malthusian perspective derives from the writings of Thomas Robert Malthus, an English clergyman and college professor. His first Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the future improvement of society; with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers was published anonymously in 1798. Malthus’s original intention was not to carve out a career in demography, but only to show that the unbounded optimism of the physiocrats and philosophers was misplaced. These “difficulties” are the problems posed by his now famous principle of population. He derived his theory as follows:

I think I may fairly make two postulata. First, that food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state. . . . Assuming then, my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. . . . By the law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. (Malthus 1798)

Malthus believed that he had demolished the utopian optimism by suggesting that the laws of nature essentially prescribed poverty for a certain segment of humanity. Nonetheless he proceeded to document his population principles and to respond to critics by publishing a substantially revised version in 1803, slightly but importantly retitled to read An Essay on the Principle of Population; or a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which It occasions. In all, seven editions of Malthus’s essay on population were published, and as a whole they have undoubtedly been the single most influential work relating population growth to its social consequences.

Causes of Population Growth

Malthus believed that human beings, like plants and non-rational animals, are “impelled” to increase the population of the species by what he called a powerful “instinct,” the urge to reproduce. Further, if there were no checks on population growth, human beings would multiply to an “incalculable” number, filling “millions of worlds in a few thousand years” (Malthus, 1872). 

According to Malthus, the ultimate check to growth is lack of food. In turn, the means of subsistence are limited by the amount of land available, the arts or technology that could be applied to the land and social organization or land ownership patterns. A cornerstone of his argument is that populations tend to grow more rapidly than the food supply does, since population has the potential for growing geometrically (two parents could have four children, sixteen grandchildren, and so on) while he believed that food production could be increased only arithmetically, by adding one acre at a time. He argued then, that in the natural order population growth will outstrip the food supply, and the lack of food will ultimately put a stop to the increase of people. 

Malthus was aware that starvation rarely operates directly to kill people, since something else usually intervenes to kill them before they actually die of starvation. This “something else” represents what Malthus calls positive checks. There are also preventive checks e.g. limits to birth. In theory, the preventive checks would include all possible means of birth control, including abstinence, contraception, and abortion. However, to Malthus the only acceptable means of preventing a birth was to exercise moral restraint; that is, to postpone marriage, remaining chaste. Any other means of birth control, including contraception (either before or after marriage), abortion, infanticide, or any “improper means,” was viewed as a vice that would “lower, in a marked manner, the dignity of human nature.” Moral restraint was a very important point with Malthus, because he believed that if people were allowed to prevent births by improper means (prostitution, contraception, abortion, or sterilization) then they would expend their energies in ways that are not economically productive.

Consequences of Population Growth

Malthus believed that a natural consequence of population growth was poverty. This is the logical result of his arguments that 

1. People have a natural urge to reproduce, and 
2. The increase in the food supply cannot keep up with population growth. 

Malthus believed that the urge to reproduce always forces population pressure to precede the demand for labor. Thus overpopulation would force wages down to the point where people could not afford to marry and raise a family. At such low wages, with a surplus of labor and the need for each person to work harder just to earn a subsistence wage, cultivators could employ more labor, put more acres into production, and thus increase the means of subsistence. Malthus believed that this cycle of increased food resources leading to population growth leading to too many people for available resources leading then back to poverty was part of a natural law of population. Each increase in the food supply only meant that eventually more people could live in poverty.

Avoiding the Consequences

Borrowing from John Locke, Malthus argued that “the endeavor to avoid pain rather than the pursuit of pleasure is the great stimulus to action in life”. Pleasure will not stimulate activity until its absence is defined as being painful. Malthus suggested that the well-educated, rational person would perceive in advance the pain of having hungry children or being in debt and would postpone marriage and sexual intercourse until he was sure that he could avoid that pain. If that motivation existed and the preventive check was operating, then the miserable consequences of population growth could be avoided.

You will recall that Condorcet had suggested the possibility of birth control as a preventive check, but Malthus objected to this solution. Malthus believed that the only way to break the cycle is to change human nature. Malthus felt that if everyone shared middle-class values, the problem would solve itself. He saw that as impossible, though, since not everyone has the talent to be a virtuous, industrious, middle class success story, but if most people at least tried, poverty would be reduced considerably.

To summarize, the major consequence of population growth, according to Malthus, is poverty. Within that poverty, though, is the stimulus for action that can lift people out of misery. So, if people remain poor, it is their own fault for not trying to do something about it. For that reason, Malthus was opposed to the English Poor Laws, because he felt they would actually serve to perpetuate misery. They permitted poor people to be supported by others and thus not feel that great pain, the avoidance of which might lead to birth prevention.

Critique of Malthus

The single most obvious measure of Malthus’s importance is the number of books and articles that have attacked him, beginning virtually the moment his first essay appeared in 1798. The three most strongly criticized aspects of his theory have been 

1. The assertion that food production could not keep up with population growth.
2. The conclusion that poverty was an inevitable result of population growth, and 
3. The belief that moral restraint was the only acceptable preventive check. 

Population Theory by Karl Marx

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both teenagers in Germany when Malthus died in England in 1834, and by the time they had met and independently moved to England, Malthus’s ideas already were politically influential in their native land, not just in England. Several German states and Austria had responded to what they believed was overly rapid growth in the number of poor people by legislating against marriages in which the applicant could not guarantee that his family would not wind up on welfare (Glass 1953). As it turned out, that scheme backfired on the German states, because people continued to have children, but out of wedlock. Thus, the welfare rolls grew as the illegitimate children had to be cared for by the state (Knodel 1970). 

Causes of Population Growth

Neither Marx nor Engels ever directly addressed the issue of why and how populations grew. They seem to have had little quarrel with Malthus on this point, although they were in favor of equal rights for men and women and saw no harm in preventing birth. Nonetheless, they were distrustful of the eternal or natural laws of nature as stated by Malthus. The basic Marxian perspective is that each society at each point in history has its own law of population that determines the consequences of population growth. For capitalism, the consequences are overpopulation and poverty, whereas for socialism, population growth is readily absorbed by the economy with no side effects. This line of reasoning led to Marx’s vehement rejection of Malthus, because if Malthus was right about his “pretended ‘natural law of population’”, then Marx’s theory would be wrong.

Consequences of Population Growth

Marx and Engels especially quarreled with the Malthusian idea that resources could not grow as rapidly as population, since they saw no reason to suspect that science and technology could not increase the availability of food and other goods at least as quickly as the population grew. Engels argued in 1865 that whatever population pressure existed in society was really pressure against the means of employment rather than against the means of subsistence (Meek 1971). Thus, they flatly rejected the notion that poverty can be blamed on the poor. Instead, they said, poverty is the result of a poorly organized society, especially a capitalist society. Implicit in the writings of Marx and Engels is the idea that the normal consequence of population growth should be a significant increase in production. After all, each worker obviously was producing more than he or she required. And if there were more people, there ought to be more wealth, not more poverty (Engels 1844).

Not only did Marx and Engels feel that poverty, in general, was not the end result of population growth, they argued that England was enough wealth to eliminate poverty. Engels had himself managed a textile plant and he believed that in England more people had meant more wealth for the capitalists rather than for the workers because the capitalists were skimming off some of the worker’s wages as profits for themselves. Marx argued that they did that by stripping the workers of their tools and then charging the workers for being able to come to the factory to work. For example, if you do not have the tools to make a car but want a job making cars, you could get hired at the factory and work eight hours a day. But, according to Marx, you might get paid for only four hours, the capitalist (owner of the factory) keeping part of your wages as payment for the tools you were using. The more the capitalist keeps the lower your wages and the poorer you will be.

Furthermore, Marx argued that capitalism worked by using the labor of the working classes to earn profits to buy machines that would replace the laborers which would lead to unemployment and poverty. Thus, the poor were not poor because they overran the food supply, but only because capitalists had first taken away part of their wages and then taken away their very jobs and replaced them with machines. Thus, the consequences of population growth that Malthus discussed were really the consequences of capitalist society, not of population growth per se. Overpopulation in a capitalist society was thought to be a result of the capitalists’ desire for an industrial reserve army that would keep wages low through competition for jobs and, at the same time, would force workers to be more productive in order to keep their jobs. To Marx, however, the logical extension of this was that the growing population would bear the seeds of destruction for capitalism, because unemployment would lead to disaffection and revolution. If society could be reorganized in a more equitable (that is, socialist) way, then population problems would disappear.

It is noteworthy that Marx, like Malthus, practiced what he preached. Marx was adamantly opposed to the notion of moral restraint, and his life repudiated that concept. He married at the relatively young age of 25, preceded to father eight children, including one illegitimate son, and was on intimate terms with poverty for much of his life.

Critique of Marx

Marx actually cannot give any new idea of population control, he only criticize Malthus.

Marx, the Malthusian principle operated under capitalism only, whereas under pure socialism there would be no population problem. Unfortunately, he offered no guidelines for the transition period. At best, Marx implied that the socialist law of population should be the antithesis of the capitalist law. If the birth rate were low under capitalism, then the assumption was that it should be high under socialism; if abortion seemed bad for a capitalist society, it must be good for a socialistic society.

Furthermore, Soviet socialism was unable to alleviate one of the worst evils that Marx attributed to capitalism, higher death rates among people in the working class than among those in the higher classes. Moreover, birth rates dropped to such low levels throughout pre-1990 Marxist Eastern Europe that it was no longer possible to claim that low birth rates were bourgeois.

In China, the empirical reality of having to deal with the world’s largest national population has led to a radical departure from Marxian ideology. As early as 1953, the Chinese government organized efforts to control population by relaxing regulations concerning contraception and abortion. Thus, despite Marx’s denial of a population problem, the Marxist government in China dealt with one by rejecting its Marxist-Leninist roots and embracing instead one of the most aggressive and coercive government programs ever launched to reduce fertility through restraints on marriage, contraception, and abortion. 

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POPULATION by John R. Weeks

What are the Major Ancient and Medieval Writings on Population or Demography?

Until about 2,500 years ago, human societies probably shared a common concern about population: They valued reproduction as a means of replacing people lost through universally high mortality. Ancient Judaism, for example, provided the prescription to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Indeed, reproductive power was often deified, as in ancient Greece, where it was the job of a variety of goddesses to help mortals successfully bring children into the world and raise those children to adulthood. In the fifth century B.C., the writings of the school of Confucius in China discussed the relationship between population and resources (Sauvy 1969), and it was suggested that the government should move people from overpopulated to under populated areas. Nonetheless, the idea of promoting population growth was clear in the doctrine of Confucius (Keyfitz 1973).

Plato, writing in The Laws in 360 B.C., emphasized the importance of population stability rather than growth. Specifically, Plato proposed keeping the ideal community of free citizens at a constant 5,040. Interestingly, Charbit (2002) has suggested that “what inspired Plato in his choice of 5,040 is above all the fact that it is divisible by twelve, a number with a decisive sacred dimension”. Nonetheless, the number of people desired by Plato was still moderately small, because Plato felt that too many people led to anonymity, which would undermine democracy, whereas too few people would prevent an adequate division of labor and would not allow a community to be properly defended. Population size would be controlled by late marriage, infanticide, and migration (Plato 360BC). Plato was an early proponent of the doctrine that quality in humans is more important than quantity.

Plato’s most famous student, Aristotle, was especially concerned that the population of a city-state not grows beyond the means of the families to support themselves. In The Politics, written in 340 B.C., he advocated that the number of children be limited by law, and that if a woman became pregnant after already having all the children that the law allowed, an abortion would be appropriate (Stangeland, 1904). This is a reminder of how ubiquitous abortion has been in human society, and echoes of this idea are found today in the one-child policy in China.

In the Roman Empire Julius and Augustus Caesar were marked by clearly pronatalist doctrines—a necessity, given the very high mortality that characterized the Roman era (Frier, 1999). In approximately 50 B.C., Cicero noted that population growth was seen by the leaders of Rome as a necessary means of replacing war casualties and of ensuring enough people to help colonize new lands. Several scholars have speculated that by the second century A.D. the birth rate in Rome may have been declining (Stangeland, 1904; Veyne, 1987). 

The middle Ages in Europe, which followed the decline of Rome and its transformation from a pagan to a Christian society, were characterized by a combination of both pronatalist and antinatalist Christian doctrines. Christianity condemned polygamy, divorce, abortion, and infanticide—practices that had kept earlier Roman growth rates lower than they otherwise might have been. But the writings of Paul in the New Testament led the influential Christian leader, mystic, and writer Augustine (A.D. 354–430) to argue that virgins were the highest form of human existence. Human sexuality was a supernaturally good thing but also an important cause of sin (because most people are unable or unwilling to control their desires) (O’Donnell 2001). He believed that abstinence was the best way to deal with sexuality, but the second-best state was marriage, which existed for the purpose of procreation. His Christian philosophy held that the world has a beginning, middle, and an end, the end being eternal life in the city of God. Thus, his doctrine of other world lines held that if all men would abstain from intercourse, then “so much more speedily would the City of God be fulfilled and the end of the world hastened”. 

By the fourteenth century, one of the great Arab historians and philosophers, Ibn Khaldun, was in Tunis writing about the benefits of a growing population. In particular, he argued that population growth creates the need for specialization of occupations, which in turn leads to higher incomes, concentrated especially in cities. Ibn Khaldun was not a utopian. His philosophy was that societies evolved and were transformed as part of natural and normal processes. One of these processes was that “procreation is stimulated by high hopes and resulting heightening of animal energies”.

The Renaissance began with the Venetians, who had established trade with Muslims and others as the eastern Mediterranean ceased to be a Crusade war zone in the thirteenth century. In that century, an influential Dominican monk, Thomas Aquinas, argued that marriage and family building were not inferior to celibacy, thus implicitly promoting the idea that population growth is an inherently good thing.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed an historically unprecedented trade of food, manufactured goods, people, and disease between the Americas and most of the rest of the world undertaken largely by European merchants, who had the best ships and the deadliest weapons in the world (Cipolla, 1965).

This rise in trade, prompted at least in part by population growth, generated the doctrine of mercantilism among the new nation-states of Europe. Mercantilism maintained that a nation’s wealth was determined by the amount of precious metals it had in its possession, which were acquired by exporting more goods than were imported, with the difference (the profit) being stored in precious metals. The catch here was that a nation had to have things to produce to sell to others, and the idea was that the more workers you had, the more you could produce. Furthermore, if you could populate the new colonies, you would have a ready-made market for your products. Thus population growth was seen as essential to an increase in national revenue, and mercantilist writers sought to encourage it by a number of means, including penalties for non-marriage, encouragements to get married, lessening penalties for illegitimate births, limiting out-migration (except to their own colonies), and promoting immigration of productive laborers. It is important to keep in mind that these doctrines were concerned with the wealth and welfare of a specific country, not all of human society. 

Mercantilist doctrines were supported by the emerging demographic analyses of people like John Graunt, William Petty, and Edmund Halley (all English) in the seventeenth century and Johann Peter Süssmilch, an eighteenth-century chaplain in the army of Frederick the Great of Prussia (now Germany). In 1662, John Graunt, analyzed the series of Bills of Mortality in the first known statistical analysis of demographic data. Here he discovered that for every 100 people born in London, only 16 were still alive at age 36 and only 3 at age 66 and he suggesting very high levels of mortality. 

In 1693, Edmund Halley became the first scientist to elaborate on the probabilities of death; Halley came across a list of births and deaths kept for the city of Breslau in Silesia (now Poland). From these data, Halley used the life-table technique to determine that the expectation of life in Breslau between 1687 and 1691 was 33.5 years (Dublin et al.1949).

Then, in the eighteenth century, Sussmilch built on the work of Graunt and others and added his own analyses to the observation of the regular patterns of marriage, birth, and death in Prussia and believed that he saw in these the divine hand of God ruling human society. His view was that a larger population was always better than a smaller one, and, in direct contradistinction to Plato, he valued quantity over quality. He believed that indefinite improvements in agriculture and industry would postpone overpopulation so far into the future that it wouldn’t matter.

The issue of population growth was more than idle speculation, because we know with a fair amount of certainty that the population of England doubled during the eighteenth century. More generally, during the period from about 1650 to 1850, Europe as a whole experienced rather dramatic population growth as a result of the disappearance of the plague, the introduction of the potato from the Americas, and evolutionary changes in agricultural practice—probably a response to the Little Ice Age—that preceded the Industrial Revolution. The increasing interest in population encouraged the publication of two important essays on population size, one by David Hume 1752 and the other by Robert Wallace 1761, which were then to influence Malthus.

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POPULATION by John R. Weeks

What are the Sources of Data in Demography

I have offered you a variety of facts thus far as I described the history of population growth and provided you with an overview of the world’s population situation. To analyze the demography of a particular society, we need to know how many people live there, how they are distributed geographically, how many are being born, how many are dying, how many are moving in, and how many are moving out. Let me begin the discussion, however, with sources of basic information about the numbers of living people, births, deaths, and migrants.

Sources of Demographic Data

We collect all information or data mainly two sources

1. Primary Sources: Through census or sample we collect data through a particular variable is called primary sources of data.
2. Secondary Sources: UNDP, UNISEF, BBS, IMF, HDR, BD all of its reports are called  secondary sources of data

In demography there are three sources of demographic data collection 

1. Census of population.
2. Registration of vital statistics 
3. Sample survey

Other sources of demographic data 

• Administrative data.
• Historical data.

(Sources: weeks, 2008)

These types of sources of data collection are described in the below:

A. Census of population 

For centuries, governments have wanted to know how many people were under their rule, who the taxpayers were, or they wanted to identify potential laborers and soldiers. The most direct way to find out how many people there are is to count them, and when you do that you are conducting a population census. The United Nations defines a census of population more specifically as 

“the total process of collecting, compiling and publishing demographic, economic and social data pertaining, at a specified time or times, to all persons in a country or delimited territory” (United Nations 1958:3).

Who is included in the Census?

There are several ways to answer that question, and each produces a potentially different total number of people. At one extreme is the concept of the de facto population, which counts people who are in a given territory on the census day. At the other extreme is the de jure population, which represents people who legally “belong” to a given area in some way or another, regardless of whether they were there on the day of the census.

Most countries (including the United States, Canada, and Mexico) have now adopted a concept that lies somewhere between the extremes of de facto and de jure, and they include people in the census on the basis of usual residence, which is roughly defined as the place where a person usually sleeps. College students who live away from home, for example, are included at their college address rather than being counted in their parents’ household. People with no usual residence (the homeless, including migratory workers, vagrants, and “street people”) are counted where they are found. On the other hand, visitors and tourists from other countries who “belong” somewhere else are not included, even though they may be in the country when the census is being conducted. At the same time, the concept of usual residence means that undocumented immigrants (who legally do not “belong” where they are found) will be included in the census along with everyone else.

Errors in census 

There are several possible errors that can creep into the enumeration process. We can divide these into the two broad categories of non-sampling error (which includes coverage error and content error) and sampling error.

Non-sampling errors: The two most common sources of error in a census are coverage error and content error. 

• Coverage errors: A census is designed to count everyone, but there are always people who are missed, as well as a few who are counted more than once. The combination of the undercount and the over count is called coverage error, or net census undercount.
• Content Error: Although coverage error is a concern in any census, there can also be problems with the accuracy of the data obtained in the census (content error). Content error includes non-responses to particular questions on the census or inaccurate responses if people do not understand the question. Errors can also occur if information is inaccurately recorded on the form or if there is some glitch in the processing (coding, data entry, or editing) of the census return.

Sampling errors: If any of the data in a census are collected on a sample basis (as is done in the United States, Canada, and Mexico), then sampling error is introduced into the results. With any sample, scientifically selected or not, differences are likely to exist between the characteristics of the sampled population and the larger group from which the sample was chosen. However, in a scientific sample, such as that used in most census operations, sampling error is readily measured based on the mathematics of probability. To a certain extent, sampling error can be controlled— samples can be designed to ensure comparable levels of error across groups or across geographic areas (U.S. Census Bureau 1997). Non-sampling error and the biases it introduces throughout the census process probably reduce the quality of results more than sampling error (Schneider 2003).

B. Registration of Vital Events

When you were born, a birth certificate was filled out for you, probably by a clerk or volunteer staff person in the hospital where you were born. When you die, someone (again, typically a hospital clerk) will fill out a death certificate on your behalf. Births and deaths, as well as marriages, divorces, and abortions, are known as vital events, and when they are recorded by the government and compiled for use they become vital statistics. These statistics are the major source of data on births and deaths in most countries, and they are most useful when combined with census data.

Registration of vital events in Europe actually began as a chore of the church. Priests often recorded baptisms, marriages, and deaths, and historical demographers have used the surviving records to reconstruct the demographic history of parts of Europe (Landers 1993; Wall, Robin, and Laslett 1983; Wrigley 1974; Wrigley and Schofield 1981).

C. Sample Surveys

There are two major difficulties with using data collected in the census, by the vital statistics registration system, or derived from administrative records: 

1. They are usually collected for purposes other than demographic analysis and thus do not necessarily reflect the theoretical concerns of demography, and 
2. They are collected by many different people using many different methods and may be prone to numerous kinds of error. 

For these two reasons, sample surveys are frequently used to gather demographic data. Sample surveys may provide the social, psychological, economic, and even physical data I referred to earlier as being necessary to an understanding of why things are as they are. Their principal limitation is that they provide less extensive geographic coverage than a census or system of vital registration. By using a carefully selected sample of even a few thousand people, demographers have been able to ask questions about births, deaths, migration, and other subjects that reveal aspects of the “why” of demographic events rather than just the “what.” In some poor or remote areas of the world, sample surveys can also provide good estimates of the levels of fertility, mortality, and migration in the absence of census or vital registration data.

D. Administrative Data

Knowing that censuses and the collection of vital statistics were not originally designed to provide data for demographic analysis has alerted demographers everywhere to keep their collective eyes open for any data source that might yield important information. For example, an important source of information about immigration to the United States is the compilation of administrative records filled out for each person entering the country from abroad. Of course, we need other means to estimate the number of people who enter without documents and avoid detection by the government. At the local level, a variety of administrative data can be appointed to determine demographic patterns. School enrollment data provide clues to patterns of population growth and migration. 

E. Historical Sources

Our understanding of population processes is shaped not only by our perception of current trends but also by our understanding of historical events. Historical demography requires that we almost literally dig up information about the patterns of mortality, fertility, and migration in past generations. Historical sources of demographic information include censuses and vital statistics, but the general lack of good historical vital statistics is what typically necessitates special detective work to locate birth records in church registers and death records in graveyards. Even in the absence of a census, a complete set of good local records for a small village may allow a researcher to reconstruct the demographic profile of families by matching entries of births, marriages, and deaths in the community over a period of several years. Yet another source of such information is family genealogies, the compilation of which has become increasingly common in recent years. For example, small family units were quite common throughout Europe for several centuries before the Industrial Revolution and may actually have contributed to the process of industrialization by allowing the family more flexibility to meet the needs of the changing economy. In the United States, conversely, extended families may have been more common prior to the nineteenth century than has generally been thought (Ruggles 1994). 

Theory of Suicide by Emile Durkheim

It has been suggested that Durkheim’s study of suicide is the paradigmatic example of how a sociologist should connect theory and research (Merton, 1968). Indeed, Durkheim makes it clear that his study not only to contribute to the understanding of a particular social problem, but also to serve as an example of his new sociological method.

As a sociologist, Durkheim was not concerned with studying why any specific individual committed suicide (Berk, 2006). Instead, he was interested in why one group had a higher rate of suicide than did another. Psychological or biological factors may explain why a particular individual in a group commits suicide, but Durkheim assumed that only social facts could explain why one group had a higher rate of suicide than did another. 

Durkheim proposed two related ways of evaluating suicide rates. 

1.  Compare different societies or other types of collectivists. 
2. Look at the changes in the suicide rate in the same collectivist over time. 

Durkheim began Suicide by testing and rejecting a series of alternative ideas about the causes of suicide. Among these are individual psychopathology, alcoholism, race, heredity, and climate. Not all of Durkheim’s arguments are convincing. However, what is important is his method of empirically dismissing what he considered extraneous factors so that he could get to what he thought of as the most important causal variables.

In addition, Durkheim examined and rejected the imitation theory associated with one of his contemporaries, the French social psychologist Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904). The theory of imitation argues that people commit suicide (and engage in a wide range of other actions) because they are imitating the actions of others. This social-psychological approach was the most important competitor to Durkheim’s focus on social facts. As a result, Durkheim took great cares to discredit it. For example, Durkheim reasoned that if imitation were truly important, we should find that nations that border on a country with a high suicide rate would themselves have high rates, but an examination of the data showed that no such relationship existed. Durkheim admitted that some individual suicides may be the result of imitation, but it is such a minor factor that it has no significant effect on the overall suicide rate. 

Durkheim concluded that the critical factors in differences in suicide rates were to be found in differences at the level of social facts. Different groups have different collective sentiments, which produce different social currents. It is these social currents that affect individual decisions about suicide. In other words, changes in the collective sentiments lead to changes in social currents, which, in turn, lead to changes in suicide rates.

The Four Types of Suicide 

Durkheim’s theory of suicide can be seen more clearly if we examine the relation between the types of suicide and his two underlying social facts—integration and regulation (Pope, 1976). Integration refers to the strength of the attachment that we have to society. Regulation refers to the degree of external constraint on people. For Durkheim, the two social currents are continuous variables, and suicide rates go up when either of these currents is too low or too high. We therefore have four types of suicide. If integration is high, Durkheim calls that type of suicide altruistic. Low integration results in an increase in egoistic suicides. Fatalistic suicide is associated with high regulation, and anomic suicide with low regulation. 

Types of Suicide 

Integration	Low	Egoistic Suicide
	High	Altruistic Suicide
Regulation	Low	Anomic suicide
	High	Fatalistic suicide

A. Egoistic Suicide 

High rates of egoistic suicide are likely to be found in societies or groups in which the individual is not well integrated into the larger social unit. This lack of integration leads to a feeling that the individual is not part of society, but this also means that society is not part of the individual. Durkheim believed that the best parts of a human being—our morality, values, and sense of purpose—come from society. An integrated society provides us with these things, as well as a general feeling of moral support to get us through the daily small indignities and trivial disappointments. Without this, we are liable to commit suicide at the smallest frustration. 

However, Durkheim demonstrated that not all religions provide the same degree of protection from suicide. Protestant religions with their emphasis on individual faith over church community and their lack of communal rituals tend to provide less protection. His principal point is that it is not the particular beliefs of the religion that are important, but the degree of integration. 

Durkheim’s statistics also showed that suicide rates go up for those who are unmarried and therefore less integrated into a family, whereas the rates go down in times of national political crises such as wars and revolutions, when social causes and revolutionary or nationalist fervor give people’s lives greater meaning. He argues that the only thing that these entire have in common is the increased feeling of integration. The case of egoistic suicide indicates that in even the most individualistic, most private of acts, social facts are the key determinant.

B. Altruistic Suicide 

The second type of suicide discussed by Durkheim is altruistic suicide. Whereas egoistic suicide is more likely to occur when social integration is too weak, altruistic suicide is more likely to occur when “social integration is too strong” (Durkheim, 1897). The individual is literally forced into committing suicide. 

One notorious example of altruistic suicide was the mass suicide of the followers of the Reverend Jim Jones in Jones town, Guyana, in 1978. They knowingly took a poisoned drink and in some cases had their children drink it as well. They clearly were committing suicide because they were so tightly integrated into the society of Jones’s fanatical followers. More generally, those who commit altruistic suicide do so because they feel that it is their duty to do so. Durkheim argued that this is particularly likely in the military, where the degree of integration is so strong that an individual will feel that he or she has disgraced the entire group by the most trivial of failures. 

When integration is low, people will commit suicide because they have no greater good to sustain them. When integration is high, they commit suicide in the name of that greater good. 

C. Anomic Suicide 

The third major form of suicide discussed by Durkheim is anomic suicide, which is more likely to occur when the regulative powers of society are disrupted. Such disruptions are likely to leave individuals dissatisfied because there is little control over their passions, which are free to run wild in an insatiable race for gratification. Rates of anomic suicide are likely to rise whether the nature of the disruption is positive (for example, an economic boom) or negative (an economic depression). 

Such changes put people in new situations in which the old norms no longer apply but new ones have yet to develop. This is relatively easy to imagine in the case of an economic depression. The closing of a factory because of a depression may lead to the loss of a job, with the result that the individual is cut a drift from the regulative effect that both the company and the job may have had. Being cut off from these structures or others (for example, family, religion, and state) can leave an individual highly vulnerable to the effects of currents of anomie. 

The increases in rates of anomic suicide during periods of deregulation of social life are consistent with Durkheim’s views on the pernicious effect of individual passions when freed of external constraint. People thus freed will become slaves to their passions and as a result, in Durkheim’s view, commit a wide range of destructive acts, including killing themselves.

D. Fatalistic Suicide 

There is a little mentioned fourth type of suicide—fatalistic—that Durkheim discussed only in a footnote in Suicide (Acevedo, 2005; Besnard, 1993). Whereas anomic suicide is more likely to occur in situations in which regulation is too weak, fatalistic suicide is more likely to occur when regulation is excessive. Durkheim described those who are more likely to commit fatalistic suicide as “persons with futures pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline.” The classic example is the slave who takes his own life because of the hopelessness associated with the oppressive regulation of his every action. Too much regulation—oppression—unleashes currents of melancholy that, in turn, cause a rise in the rate of fatalistic suicide. 

Durkheim argued that social currents cause changes in the rates of suicides. Individual suicides are affected by these underlying currents of egoism, altruism, anomie, and fatalism. This proved, for Durkheim, that these currents are more than just the sum of individuals because they dominate the decisions of individuals. Without this assumption, the stability of the suicide rate for any particular society could not be explained.

Suicide Rates and Social Reform

Durkheim concludes his study of suicide with an examination of what reforms could be undertaken to prevent it. Most attempts to prevent suicide have failed because it has been seen as an individual problem. Durkheim attempts to directly influence individuals not to commit suicide are useless, since its real causes are in society. 

Durkheim says that suicides result from social currents that are good for society. We would not want to stop all economic booms because they lead to anomic suicides, nor would we stop valuing individuality because it leads to egoistic suicide. Similarly, altruistic suicide results from our virtuous tendency to sacrifice ourselves for the community. The pursuit of progress, the belief in the individual, and the spirit of sacrifice all have their place in society, and cannot exist without generating some suicides.

Durkheim admits that some suicide is normal, but he argues that modern society has seen a pathological increase in both egoistic and anomic suicides. Here his position can be traced back to The Division of Labor, where he argued that the anomie of modern culture is due to the abnormal way in which labor is divided so that it leads to isolation rather than interdependence. In particular, social regulation and integration are too low that leads to an abnormal rate of anomic and egoistic suicides. 

Many of the existing institutions for connecting the individual in society have failed and Durkheim sees little hope of their success. The modern state is too distant from the individual to influence his or her life with enough force and continuity. The church cannot exert its integrating effect without at the same time repressing freedom of thought. Even the family, possibly the most integrative institution in modern society, will fail in this task because it is subject to the same destructive conditions that are increasing suicide. At last Durkheim proposes a social solution to a social problem.

References 

Sociological Theory by George Ritzer

Revolution by Aristotle_2

Aristotle’s study of the revolutions, their causes and the ways of their prevention, indicates his marked advancement altogether beyond his teacher who, though willing to sketch a sub-ideal constitution in the Laws, had never moved to the extent of making an earnest attempt to study the therapeutics of the actual and imperfect states. Contradistinction from this, Aristotle now “finally allows Political Science to abandon its ethical connection and permits his respect for things as they are to lead him to study perversion themselves with a view to their preservation.” Book V of the Politics opens with these words of his essential purpose: “Under this head we have to consider the general causes which produce changes in constitutions and to examine their number and nature. We have also to consider the particular way in which each constitution is liable to degenerate, i.e., to explain from what a constitution is liable to change to what. In addition, we have to suggest the policies likely to ensure the stability of constitutions, collectively and individually, and to indicate the means which may best be employed to secure each particular constitution.”

Aristotle uses the term ‘sedition’ for revolution in a very comprehensive sense so much so that even the word ‘destruction’ becomes analogous to what really amounts to a change in the constitutions of the state. Thus, there is a revolution if an attempt to bring about a different kind of government in place of an established political system takes place, Again, there is a revolution when the seditious party comes into power no matter the status quo remains undisturbed. Still again, there may occur a revolution in event of the excess or scarcity of a certain political system. That is, a particular system is made more or less rigid or loose as compared to its past form. 

Finally, there is a revolution in case there is an agitation against a particular class or a section of the community, no matter its aim is concentrate on bringing about a stable change in the form of government or not.”

But the most powerful cause of revolution is inequality. Here Aristotle’s concept of inequality must be understood in terms of the relative political and economic status of the individuals, or in terms of what he calls ‘equality proportionate to desert’. Accordingly, a condition of inequality is created by a situation in which (a) groups that occupy a privileged political status do not enjoy corresponding economic status, or (b) groups that have decisive economic advantages are deprived of corresponding political privileges. The result of this incongruity is a dominant consciousness of the equality, for which a remedy is sought in revolution. According to him, therefore, inequality between different strata of society is not a cause of revolutions; only inequality in the sense of an incongruity of the respective political and economic status with special classes if a factor which promotes political disorders. In its essential features, this all “may be reduced to the proposition that whenever political and economic power are separate, a revolution is likely to occur.’

It signifies that there are varying degrees of a revolution. 

1. Sometimes, it is directed against existing constitution to change its nature-to turn democracy into oligarchy, or oligarchy into democracy; or again to turn democracy and oligarchy into polity and aristocracy, or conversely the latter into the former.
2. Sometimes, however, it is not directed against the existing constitution. The seditious party may follow a more moderate line in one of the three directions:

• It may decide to maintain the system of government as oligarchy, for example or a monarchy as it stands; but also desire to get the administration into the hands of its members.
• A seditious party (while leaving a constitution generally intact) may wish to make it more pronounced or more moderate. It may desire, for example, to make an oligarchy more or less oligarchical. It may wish to make a democracy more or less democratic. It may, similarly, seek to tighten or loosen the string in any of the other forms.
• A seditious party may direct its efforts towards changing a constitution or only some part of the same. It may wish for example, to erect or abolish some particular magistracy.

The causes of a revolution, as discussed by Aristotle, are of three kinds------- general, particular and particular ones applicable to particular forms of stakes.

First of all, we take up the study of the general causes of a sedition which is inequality. It is the passion for equality which is at the root of sedition. Some take the plea that if men are equal in one respect, they may consider themselves equal in all: others adopt the line that if they are superior in one respect, they may claim superiority all round. Acting on such opinions, the democrats proceed to claim an equal share in everything on the ground of their  equality, the oligarchs proceed to press for more on the ground that they are unequal, that is to say more than equal. Yet it must be admitted that democracy is a form of government which is safer and less vexed by sedition than oligarchy. 

Oligarchies are prone to two sorts of sedition- the one within the ranks of the oligarchical party itself and the others between the party and the party of the people. Thus, Aristotle says: “In oligarchies, the ground which the masses take in justification of sedition is that they are unjustly equal. In democracies the ground taken by the notables is the injustice of their having only equal rights although they are actually superior.”

While dealing with the particular causes of a revolution, Aristotle investigates three factors

1. The state of mind,
2. Objects at stake,
3. The occasions that serve to start political disturbance and mutual dissension.

First of  all, he takes up the psychological motive or the state of mind. There are some who stir up sedition as their minds are filled with a passion for equality which arises from their thinking that they have the worst of a bargain in spite of being the equals of those who have got the advantage. There are others who do it because their minds are filled with a passion for inequality (i.e. superiority), which arises from their conviction that they have no advantage over others, though they are really more equal than others. Thus, the inferiors become revolutionaries in order to be equals and equals do the same in order to be superiors.

Then, the objects that are at stake are profit and honor. They have also their opposites as loss and disgrace, for the authors of political sedition may be simply seeking to avert some disgrace, or a fine, from themselves or their friends.

However, the most important part is played by the third factor of occasions which may be thus counted:

1. The occasion of profit and honor (given above) should be considered therein also.
2. Another occasion is insolence. When those who are in office show insolence and seek their personal advantage, the citizens turn seditious; they not only attack the person but also the constitution which entrusts power to such persons. 
3. Another occasion is honor. Men turn seditious when they suffer dishonor themselves and see others being honored.
4. Then, there is the occasion of the presence of some form of superiority. It becomes an occasion for sedition when a person or a body of persons is in a position of strength which is too great for the state and more than a match for the strength of the general body of citizens.
5. Fear is an occasion which leads to sedition among two classes of persons-wrong-doers who are afraid of punishment and persons expecting to suffer wrong who are anxious to anticipate what they expect.
6. Another occasion is contempt. We can see in oligarchies that those who are not in enjoyment of political rights are more numerous and consequently think themselves stronger: we can also see it in democracies when the wealthy despise the disorder and anarchy which they find prevalent.
7. The disproportionate increase of a part of the state affords an occasion which leads to constitutional changes. The analogy of the body is instructive. The body is composed of parts and it must grow proportionately if symmetry is to be maintained.
8. Another occasion is provided by the effects of election intrigues which may lead to constitutional changes even without causing actual sedition.
9. Then, willful negligence may afford an occasion and persons who are not loyal to the constitution may be allowed to find their way into the high offices.
10. Another occasion is the neglect of trifling changes. A great change of whole system of institutions may come about unperceived if small changes are overlooked.
11. Then, there is the occasion of the dissimilarity of elements in the composition of a state. Heterogeneity of stocks may lead to sedition at any rate until they have had time to assimilate. Aastate cannot be constituted from any chance body of persons, or in any chance period of time. Most of the states which have admitted persons of another stock either at the time of their foundation or later have been troubled by sedition.
12. Heterogeneity of territory also causes an occasion for sedition. This happens in states with a territory not naturally adapted to political unity.
13. Constitutions may also be changed in the direction of oligarchy or democracy or polity as a result of the imbalanced growth of reputation or power of one of the magistracies or some other part of the state. Any person or body which adds new power to the state—an individual, a board of magistrate, a tribe, or generally any section or group, whatever it may be—will tend to produce sedition and the sedition will either be started by person who envy the honors of those who have won success or be due to their refusal of the latter to remain on a footing of equality when they feel themselves superior.
14. Revolutions also occur when some section of the state which are usually regarded as antagonists, for example, the rich and the common people are evenly balanced with little or nothing of a middle class to turn the scale, for, where either side has a clear preponderance, the other will be unwilling to risk a struggle with the side which obviously the stronger.
15. Last, sedition may be caused by force and fraud. Force and fraud may be used initially or in different stages. In this way, a change may be made at the moment with general assent, but those who have made it then proceed to keep control of affairs in the teeth of all opposition.

Finally, Aristotle investigates particular causes of revolution in particular forms of government. First be takes up the case of democracy. Here revolution tend to be caused by the policy of the demagogues in attacking the rich individually or collectively. In early times demagogues often made themselves tyrants; they no longer do so; and indeed tyrannies of every sort are becoming rare owing, among other causes, to the increased size of the modern state. Democracy is liable to change from the older and modern forms to a new and extreme type. This is largely due to the courting of the people by the ambitious candidates for high office.

Second, in oligarchies revolutions are due partly to unjust treatment of the masses and partly to the dissension inside the governing class. Such dissensions may arise if a section of that class being to play the  demagogue, if some of its member become impoverished and turn revolutionary and also if an inner ring is formed inside the governing body. Personal disputes may affect the stability of oligarchies and accidental causes as general growth of wealth, increase in the number of persons eligible for office and matters relating to marriages and law suits may insensibly alter this character.

Third, in aristocracies revolutions are due to the policy of narrowing the circle of government. The collapse of aristocracies is generally due to a defective balancing of the different elements combined in the constitution : this may lead either to change in the direction in which the balance is tilted, or to violent reaction towards the opposite extreme. Aristocracies are particularly liable to be the victims of trifling occasions. All constitutions may be affected and undermined by the influence of powerful neighboring states”.

Fourth, allied with this is the case of polities. The actual downfall of polities is chiefly due to some deviation from justice in the constitution itself. The difference between aristocracy and oligarchy lies in this point: constitution where the elements are so mixed that the tendency is more towards oligarchy are called aristocracies; those where the mixture is such that the tendency is more in favor of the masses are called polities. Thus, when the constitution gives more power to the rulers, they are by virtue of their position of superiority apt to fall into arrogance and to covet even more. Thus, if a constitution is not equally balanced and is inclined in one or another direction, it will tend to change in that way. As a result, the favored element will proceed to increase the stock of its advantage: a polity will then change into democracy and aristocracy will change into oligarchy.

Last, there is the case of monarchy and its perverted form tyranny. The distinction between monarchy and tyranny is like this: kinship is allied with aristocracy and its general function is that of impartial guardianship of society, tyranny is directed to personal interest and it combines the more selfish side of oligarchy with the more selfish side of democracy. In monarchies generally revolutions are caused by the resentment to the insults, fears, contempt or a desire for fame; tyrannies are liable to be overthrown by the influence of the neighboring states of an opposite character. In addition, they may also be destroyed by internal factors and the causes which particularly lead to their overthrow are hatred and contempt. Kingships are more durable, but with the general growth of equality they are becoming antiquated and the form of monarchical government now prevalent is tyranny based on force.

The best part of Aristotle’s study of the revolutions that, in a real sense, ‘destroy’ a constitutional system is contained in his enumeration of the various preventive devices may be classified into two parts

• General devices applicable to every political system and 
• Particular devices applicable to particular forms of governments.

The general device may be enumerated as under:

1. The beginning of every change must be strictly watched and the citizens be trained to observe obedience to law.
2. The rules should not rely upon the trick of deceiving the people.
3. The rules should also keep before the people the danger of foreign aggression and, if necessary, should invent possible dangers to keep them alarmed.
4. The rules must by all means protect and preserve their solidarity.
5. The political effect of changes in the distribution of wealth should be carefully watched. No individual or class should be allowed to become too strong; rich and poor should be set to check each other, or power should be given to the middle class.
6. A most careful scrutiny of the public accounts of the magistrates must be maintained.
7. The ruling party should be particularly scrupulous in its behavior towards the ruled and the latter should be given equality in matters of recruitment of all offices leaving the highest.
8. For the highest offices of the state there must be three qualifications-loyalties to the constitution, administrative capacity and integrity of character.
9. There should not be over accumulation of wealth in few hands; no class of the state must be treated with extra-ordinary consideration.
10. It is wiser that instead of giving extra ordinary honors and rewards in a short time, small privileges should be conferred on the deserving people over a long span of time.
11. Not only by law but also by ordinary economic system an effort should be made by which the holders of political authority are kept away from making a commercialized used of their offices.
12. The importance of the middle class must be realized. Middle course is the golden mean.

Apart from these general devices, Aristotle takes into consideration some particular devices to deal with particular forms of political orders. Democracy and oligarchy must not be pushed to extremes, or they will destroy themselves. Men must be trained not to perform the actions in which the oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or a democracy is made possible. Young oligarch must not be brought up in luxury, nor young democrats in the noting that freedom means doing what one wills. Monarchy is preserved by the limitation of its powers. Tyranny may be preserved in the traditional way by humiliating the people, sowing mistrust among them and taking away their power; it may also be preserved if the tyrant appears like the father of the state, the notables, and the hero of the multitude.

In Greek political experience nothing “occupied a more prominent place than revolutions and to this subject Aristotle devotes many parts of the Politics.” The exhaustive study of Aristotle motivated by the prime consideration of the great political experience of the Greek political life, as discussed in the preceding sections, may be divided into two parts. Whereas the first looks like a practical manual of conduct advising the rulers-democrats, aristocrats, oligarchs, monarchs and even the tyrants- as how to keep themselves in power by displaying cool objectivity and a sense of expediency characterizing the prince of Machiavelli, its second part is a treatise on the philosophical basis of a good and stable government. However, the keynote of the entire study of Aristotle in this regard seems to find place in this endeavor to suggest effective means of avoiding the revolutions and not to tell this students about their causes as such. That is, his principal concern is to highlight the preventive device of that baleful event what he calls ‘sedition’ having it’s like meaning in ‘destruction’

Criticism

Aristotle’s theory of revolution, or political change, as it is now called, may be criticized form another angle also.

Those subscribing to the creed of progressive accuse Aristotle of being a defender of the status. He wants nothing else but a stable equilibrium in the state that goes to the benefit of the ruling class- a small section of the state enjoying privileges of citizenship. Thus, like his teacher, Aristotle also detests the idea of political change. His social and political theory ‘regarded change as change as an evil, and emphasized, above all, the virtues of ability and security. It was mainly pre-occupied with arresting social and political change. This, however, dis not preclude some changes from being regarded as good, for, as his theory of final cause postulated, essence was realized in change. Yet it was chiefly in the former direction that Aristotle’s political theory weighed.”

Theory of State by Aristotle

Sharply distinguished from the belief of the Sophists, who regarded state as an historical institution having a conventional origin, Aristotle, like Plato, subscribes to the doctrine of the natural origin of state having an ethical end contained in the principle of ‘good life’. The way he proceeds to trace the biological and economic origins of the state leads to his well-known and profound maxim that man is a social and political animal. This essential character of the state as a natural association and a moral organism has its succinct interpretation in his affirmation that the state and the individuals composing it “form an organic whole, for the state is as natural to man as the family or the clan; it is as natural as water to fish, the medium without which human faculties can never come to their full compass.”
Like Plato, Aristotle advocates the organic theory of state by treating man as essentially a social and political being by nature and necessity. To him, therefore, the source of the origin of state finds place in these natural desires that compel a man to satisfy his economic wants and racial instincts. This very felling drives man toward the family or household whose membership is shared by the free persons, male and female, and the slaves. When efforts are made to lead a better, or still better, life whose wants cannot be satisfied by the family, there comes into being a higher unit called the village. And the state is the name of a bigger unit that is the product of the same process. Hence, state is the collection or assemblage of numerous families and villages whose organization has been effected for the satisfaction of wants and the leading of a civilized life. The state is thus a culmination of man’s achievement and only it membership entails a perfect and fullest satisfaction of his wants and a realization of his aims.
 

The process of state formation thus begins with the individual and through the organization of numerous families and villages finds its culmination in the state. The motivating force behind this process is the set of human desires calling for the satisfaction of economic wants and the realization of ethical purpose-good life. As Aristotle says: “He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them. In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; for example, of male and female, so that the race may continue; and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves… The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas  ‘companions of the cupboard’ and by Epimenides, the Cretan, ‘companions of the manger’. But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, then comes into existence the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony form the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be ‘suckled with the same milk.’ When several villages are united in a single community, perfect and large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life… Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man by nature is a political animal.
 

If the state finds its origin in human nature and not in convention, it is obviously a natural and not an artificial association. Aristotle has used the Greek word ‘Koinonia’ which, though taken to be identical, is much more than anything like friendship, fellowship, participation, community, communism, share-holding, partnership, reciprocity and the like. It is that sort of organization whose spirit cannot be animated even by the Platonic communism. It all implies a common participation not in mere life but in something higher particularly in thought and conversation. The state is not merely an association, it is the supreme association; it embraces all other associations within its fold. It is a perfect organic whole, while other associations are just its integral parts. It is prior to the village, family and even the individual by virtue of nature, not time, though it has come into being quite afterwards. The family is prior to the state in time, but the state is prior to the family in nature. All the remaining association finds their objective only in the state and, as such, it would be a fallacy to say that man created the state as he wanted to satisfy his material needs like an irrational creature of the universe.
 

It implies that, according to Aristotle, the satisfaction of primary needs and a sustained search for the realization of the ethical ideal are the stirrings in man of that immanent end or idea which is expressed in the state. As Aristotle says: 

“Thus, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part:  for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better… The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the dividable, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore, he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god; he is no part of state.”

 According to McIIwain, the whole idea of Aristotle can be made more intelligible by means of acorn-oak simile. He says: “A things end is its nature. This is Aristotle’s formula for the universe- the growth of ideas from potency into actuality; and the formula applies to the state as well as to the productions of art as of the works of physical nature. Thus, the form of the oak is potentially present in the life of the acorn and determines every state of the development between, but the true nature of hat organism at any state can best be seen in its full unfolding, at the end of the process… As the oak is prior to the acorn, so the state is prior to the family.”

According to Aristotle, man is necessarily good and, as such, it is the function of state to encourage and promote his good qualities. Ideal life is the end of every association and, in this way, the state by virtue of being the supreme association has its supreme and, it is also its important duty to include in man the feelings of leading a virtuous life. In this sense, state is a moral association. Aristotle says: “A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest benefactor. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated form law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony.”
 

The whole idea of Aristotle is contained in these words of Barker: “On all that has been said the natural character of the State inevitably follows:

1. It is natural because it is the conclusion of a process of human development, in which each step is necessary and natural, the outcome not human purpose but of human instinct struggling towards its goal, while the whole is marked by unbroken continuity from beginning to end. As the conclusion of such process, the State is still more natural than any preceding step in the process. The end of a process is more particularly ‘by nature’ as the nearest approach to nature herself: what anything is, when the process of its development is ended, is called (not only its end, but) it’s nature, and the state, as the end of man’s process of development and his nearest approximation to Nature herself, is his nature. It is that for which he has been destined by Nature: the State is natural to him, and he is by nature a member of a State.”
2. Again, Nature always works for the best; and one may convert the proposition, and say, that what is best is the product of Nature. The self-sufficiency which man attains in the state is his summum bonum; the State is, therefore, the best form of life to which he can aspire, and because it is best, it is a product of nature.
3.  Finally, “Nature makes nothing in vain. But Nature has endowed men with a faculty of speech which points to social and ultimately to political life. It follows that Nature destined man for the State, and that the State is natural. In these different ways, and from these different points of view, the natural character of the State is fully vindicated. It is natural as the result of the process of development, wrought by the agency of Nature (though with the co-operation of man): it is natural because it is the best possible: it is natural because Nature who works by purpose, and not idly, gave man speech, and there by destined him for political life.”

The state is not merely an association but an organic compound in which the collection of parts does not create a mere aggregate but leads to a new and higher entity. The individuals, families and villages are the parts of state and every union has a particular relationship between the higher and lower levels. The state is an organic collection of parts which are different from of another in every respect and are also subject to each other. In fine, the state covers within itself all the parts of human association and, as a natural whole, it embraces within its fold all as its component parts. The state thus represents an organic compound having the noble end of moralizing the life of its individuals. Aristotle adds “Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always acts in order to obtain that which they think well. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims and in a greater degree than any other, at the highest good.”

Aristotle’s view on the origin, nature and end of state, as contained in Book I, lay down his natural theory based on the maxim that man by nature and necessity is a social and political animal and the state, though a culmination of his achievement is meant for the sake of good life only. In a wider sense, this theory of Aristotle has other aspects also like economic psychological, physiological, physical, historical, ethical, teleological and rational or intellectual. It is not a mere economic theory based on the necessity of wants; nor is it a mere psychological theory based on an inner urge for sociality or gregarious instincts of mankind; nor is it a mere organic theory in which all parts are inseparable elements of the whole which is, in a certain sense, prior to the parts themselves; nor is it a mere physical theory based on nature’s in differentiation of man from other animals by the quality of speech which makes man’s union with man possible; nor is it a mere historical or evolutionary theory tracing the origin and development of state from its earlier beginning through various stages to its perfection; nor is it a mere ethical theory explaining the origin of state not for mere life but for a moral life, good life and common life, a life which is at once happy and virtuous; nor is it a mere teleological theory of man’s existence telling him the final purpose of his life and the methods and mode of realizing it through the agency of state which represents the highest perfection of human nature. Intellect and reason come forward as geode and lead him to ultimate destination. In this sense, it is also something different form a ration or intellectual theory. In brief, it is much more than all because each one of them represents but an analytical standpoint of Aristotle. Synthetically considered, it is a natural theory because it is the result of so many qualities or tendencies living in nature of the human race. The state is therefore, the direct product of the nature of man exists of the final perfection of the nature itself. Once created by nature, it exists to perfect the nature of man who created it. If was its origin, surely this is ultimate end.
 

In this direction, Sir Fredrick Pollock offers a fine explanation. He says that, according to Aristotle, a state “Is a community, and every community exists for the sake of some benefit to its members (for all human action is for the sake of obtaining  some apparent good); the State is that kind of community which has for its object the most comprehensive good. The State does not differ from household, as some imagine, only in the number of its members. We shall see this by examining its elements. To being at this beginning, man cannot exist in solitude; the union of the two sexes is necessary for life being continued at all, and a system of command and obedience for its being led in safety. Thus, the relations of husband and wife, master and servant, determine the household. Households coming together make a village or tribe. The rule of the eldest male of the household is primitive type of monarchy. Then we get the State as the community of a higher order in which the village or tribe is a unity. It is formed to secure life; it continues in order to improve life. Hence, and this is Aristotle’s first great point, the state is not an affair of mere convention. It is the natural and necessary completion of the process in which the family is a step. The family and the village community are not independent or self-sufficient; we look to the State for an assured social existence. The state is a natural institution in s double sense: first, as imposed on man by the general and permanent conditions of his life; then it is the only form of life in which he can do the most he is capable of.”
 

Aristotle’s views on the organic nature of state are markedly different from the Plato. We have already seen that while the latter believes a term of “oneness” and ‘uniformity’, the former thinks in terms of ‘variety’ and ‘diversity’. It is one of the points where the students criticize his teacher in Book II of Politics thus “The error of Socrates (Plato) must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and the state, but in some respects only. For there is a pint at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state, like harmony passing into union, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot,” however, such a view of Aristotle is both like and unlike a modern conception of the unity of state. Barker aptly suggests: “The whole conception of the state as a moral being living the same life as the individual and moving towards the same end, is a conception like and yet unlike modern conceptions of the state. To us, too, the state is a communion of men united to one another, because they have a common interest in the same object: to us, too, that object must ultimately be nothing else than the best object that men can attain. However, men may talk of the defense of life and property as the object of the state they will inevitably act in common for the highest object which they can individually conceive whether consciously or unconsciously. Men cannot limit themselves to acting in group, especially in a group like the state in only one way they must necessarily act there in as many ways as they can act all. On the other hand, while Aristotle expected a political group to be righteous, and to make its members righteous as the condition of its own righteousness, we only expect it to make for righteousness, to the extent to which group action can do so; and that extent seems to us determined by the limits which the need of moral spontaneity sets to the automatism involved in state action.”
 

In fine, Aristotle offers a teleological explanation of the origin, nature and end of state. It is the factor of necessity that creates the family, then the community and, finally the polis (state). We should also examine the purpose behind it. Beyond utility (necessity) lies a  higher end- possibility of good or moral life. A Barker says: “Man as a member of the State is materially self-sufficing; within that association he finds every material want supplied; nor is he dependent on any external person or body of persons for any satisfaction of such wants. But if the State began in life, it exists of serve good life- a life of noble actions: and if it was once only an economic association, it now also a moral community. Necessity taught man to make a state for life’s sake: the State once created, the elements of supererogation- elements not absolutely necessary, but making for the beauty that lies beyond utility-naturally developed… To Aristotle, indeed, the process appears not so much a broadening of human interests, as a supplementing of human defects; but fundamentally his conception is the same-man finds his full self in the State. In the developed city he attains all things- life; society (or common life); morality (or good life). What he particularly finds- and what is the real truth of the state and its essentially a communion of households and villages in a moral life—in a complete and self-sufficing existence.”

It shows that Aristotle’s natural theory of state stands on two premises:

1. The state is natural, because it has grown form associations which are in themselves natural. If household and village are natural, then the state is also natural.
2. The state is natural, because it is self-sufficient. It is an organic whole in which body is prior to its part. The state is final cause, its end is to make good life possible.

However, this theory of Aristotle on the origin, nature and end of state may be subjected to certain lines of attack:

1. This theory heavily relies on the factor of nature and necessity and ignores several other factors like consent, force, religion and the like that have definitely played their part in the evolution of political community, Really speaking, state is the creation of not any one particular factor but of many factors and, for this reason, politics must base itself on the biological and anthropological sequences and its psychology must be broader than the starting point of philosopher like Aristotle, Hobbes and Bentham. No longer, it is possible to erect a theory of state or society in a single tendency like sociability, fear, pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, or an limitation or consciousness of any kind. A simplified and self-contained human nature has broadened into a confluence of tendencies and potentialities going back to animal life on the one hand and touching almost superhuman rights on the other.
2. While Aristotle builds up the state out of its elements like individual, family and the village, he says nothing about the pre-historical phase of human existence. Hence, the natural theory of Aristotle misses the support of historical and anthropological evidence and, for this reason, it lacks prescriptibility. It is also contended that Aristotle’s obsession for dividing the whole into its parts is logical rather than historical in view of the point stressed by Jowett that he (Aristotle) does not investigate the origin of state but only divides gens into species, or a larger whole or forms, into lesser parts or units of which it is made up.” Likewise, Barker criticizes Aristotle for ignoring historical method and instead following genetic method.
3. The organic theory of Aristotle makes the individual nothing but a member of the political community without having any independent existence. His dictum that men ought not to believe that this belongs to themselves, but they all belong to the state of which they are parts, smacks of a pattern of life where the individual is reduced to the position of a mere cog in the machine. It is obvious that, like his teacher, Aristotle forgets that, apart from having the membership of the political community, the individual has a free will and a personality of his own that must receive full expression. Such a view ignores the existence of social tension and contradictions, or what Marx said, the facts of ‘class struggle’. Such an aggirmation of the organic conception, as done by Aristotle, “inexorably leads to regimentation of the society. No wonder the organic theory has generally been invoked by those in power to camouflage the conflict-ridden nature of the society and present their interest as those of the society and present their interest as those of the society at large. Instead of aiming at rationally resolving the interests and conflicts in the society, the organic theory disguises them and distracts attention from them.”
4. Being an ardent advocate of the organic theory, Aristotle makes a wrong distinction between the integral and contributory parts of the state. As we shall see later, while studying his views on slavery and citizenship, we are struck by the fact that, like his teacher, he excludes artisans, traders and all manual laborers form the share of privilege of citizenship, because they have no time to take part in deliberative and judicial functions of the state. Likewise, his idealization of the slavery (whereby treats slave just as an irrational being meant for serving the household of the freemen like a living tool) militates against the very spirit of the organic theory of state. A true organic theory must provide for adequate development and welfare all parts of the whole and must not sacrifices one part for another. Obviously, the position of Aristotle in this regard is incompatible even with his own fundamental doctrine that man is a rational creature and the state exists for the sake of good life only. Thus, the organic conception, in fact, makes the state an exclusive group and reduces other to the level of means, to be exploited by the group forming the state demands self-abnegation from the members, it also makes the state a carrier of collective selfishness and men who renounce their private interests of the sake of the city now fulfill in in an organized way in exploiting the subject population and even reducing others to subjection.
5. Above all, Aristotle gives a metaphysical complexion to a quite simple formulation. It would have been enough, had he said that family is the first and state is the last stage in the evolution of social institutions with village in the middle. However, the real purpose Aristotle seems to be to jump over from this simple formulation to axiomatic that the state is an organic entity and since only the privileged few have the valid title to run its affairs, the unprivileged many are bound to obey the dictates of their rulers. The entire framework is latticed by the mystical cord of ‘good life’. Obviously, the empirical observations Aristotle “are bound by his metaphysical framework.”

It may, however, be added that, while criticizing Plato’s conception of the unity of state, Aristotle draws very close to his teacher in his final affirmations. Like his teacher, he lays down that the nature of state “is moral and man is distinguished form beast by his power of seeing the difference not only between things beneficial and things harmful, but also between just and unjust, right and wrong. Any association of human beings, whether it is large or small, household or city must be of this kind”. Thus, in Aristotle’s view, the State ‘is natural and necessary to man; in the rational order it is even prior to the individual man, since man cannot live a complete or tolerable life apart from the State.”