ARISTOTLE AND FOREIGN TRADE 43
even references. This is not to say that commercial agreements were
never entered into. Aristotle (Rhetoric 1360a12-13) included food supply
(trophe) – his choice of words is noteworthy – among the subjects on
which a political leader must be proficient so as to negotiate inter-city
agreements.^6The lack of any interest in the economy is especially clear in the absence of
any measures protecting local production. ‘Just consider the implications of
a universal harbour-tax, levied at the same rate on all import and all exports.
There was no idea of protecting home production, or encouraging essential
imports or looking after the balance of trade.’^7
One finds exactly the same tone in Economic and Social History of AncientGreece:
When one says that Greek cities had an economic policy, what one
means in practice is usually that they had an import policy which aimed
at ensuring the supplying of the city and the citizens with a number of
goods essential for their livelihood, but not an export policy aimed at dis-
posing on favourable terms or even imposing abroad ‘national’ produce in
competition with rival cities. If a Greek city took into account the eco-
nomic interests of its members, it was solely as consumers and not as pro-
ducers. One cannot therefore talk of any ‘commercial policy’ on the part
of the Greek cities except in a deliberately very restricted sense: what
they practised was solely an import not an export policy.^8These statements set the parameters of the debate. Because Aristotle has been
summoned as the main witness by the most distinguished advocates of the
New Orthodoxy, it is Aristotle whose testimony we should examine first.
Theory
Aristotle develops his theoretical ideas about foreign trade mainly in the Politics.
He returns to the subject from a practical point of view in the Rhetoric.^9
In the Politics, as we know, Aristotle’s starting point is that the city, likeevery community, is created with a certain aim in mind. Formed by the coa-
lescence of smaller units (villages, etc.), the city reaches the level of complete
self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια), so to speak. Once formed, the city exists for ‘the
good life’ (τὸ εὖ ζῆν). The goal and the best condition for the state is nothing
other than self-sufficiency (1.1.8: αὐτάρκεια καὶ τέλος καὶ βέλτιστον). Because
self-sufficiency is by definition impossible for a single person – if someone
were to achieve it, he would be an animal or a god (1.1.12), in any case a crea-
ture without a community – autarky is at once the goal and the ideal for the
city. Some other passages in the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics show that
autarky should be understood both in a physical sense (the availability of all
the goods necessary for a worthy life) and in a moral sense (an environment