The role of inequality and material interests in political dissension

Abstract

The group conflict is an essential part of politics. When this conflict becomes so deep that it disrupts the community, we have what the Greeks called ‘stasis’, the political dissension. I examine in this article the cause of this phenomena in Aristotelian terms. I argue that Aristotle sees political life as fundamentally divided between democratic and oligarchic parties. Therefore, stasis results from the radical positions of each faction in the conflict. Next, I use Aristotelian theory to analyze political dissent in modern societies. I present the thesis that modernity hides the democratic-oligarchic conflict on the ground of the distributive success of the market mechanism. I conclude that the reasons for the political dissent, however, remains alive, despite their concealment.