46 ALAIN BRESSON (TRANSLATED By EDwARD M. HARRIS)
merchants may pose.^20 By the same token, it is perfectly logical that Aristotle
emphasizes that one should be familiar with three key components. These are:- Effort needed for natural production (agriculture).
- Exchange along with commerce (in terms of chartering, transportation, and
sale), loans with interest, hired labor. - The exploitation of wood and the extraction of minerals (this activity is viewed
as intermediary between the first two components).^21
When it comes to foreign commerce, Aristotle takes the community’s needs
into account. This idea, which we have already encountered, is clearly stressed
again in Book VII: ‘it is for its own benefit that a city must engage in trade.’^22
Above all, the main aim is to satisfy the need for trophe, foodstuffs, but it is also
necessary for other basic commodities that are indispensable (wood, metal,
etc.). But despite what M.I. Finley,^23 M.M. Austin, and P. Vidal-Naquet may
claim, this import policy is always linked in Aristotle’s thought to an export
policy. This concept is also inextricably connected with another similar con-
cept: the city should strive to acquire what it lacks and to dispose of its sur-
pluses. Aristotle returns to this issue four different times:- In Politics 1.3.10 in a theoretical analysis of the modes of acquisition (this is the
passage we discussed earlier). - In Politics 7.5.4: ‘The import of all the commodities that one does not find in the
country and the export of a surplus form a part of the necessary conditions.’^24 - In Rhetoric 1.4.11.1360a: the political leader should know what the city produces
and what it lacks and with which communities one should conclude treaties
about imports and exports (this passage as been misunderstood; we will discuss
it later in the chapter). - In Nicomachean Ethics 5.5.13.1133b. Aristotle says: ὅτι δ‘ ἡ χρεία συνέχει ὥσπερ
ἔν τι ὄν, δηλοῖ ὅτι ὅταν μὴ ἐν χρείᾳ ὥσιν ἀλλήλων ἣ ἀμφότεροι ἣ ἄτερος οὐκ
ἀλλάτονται, ὥσπερ ὃταν οὗ ἔχει αὐτὸς δέηται τις οἷον οἴνου, διδόντες σίτου
ἐξαγωγήν. Δεῖ ἄρα τοῦτο ἰσασθῆναι.
The text has appeared difficult because of the part of the sentence: ὥσπερ
ὃταν ... ἐξαγωγήν. Up to this point the meaning is clear. Here is our transla-
tion: ‘That it is need that keeps groups together by providing a common unity
is proven by this fact: if there are no reciprocal needs existing between the two
parties, whether it be on the part of both at the same time or only from one,
they do not trade with each other.’ But what follows appears incomprehensi-
ble. Some, who follow Münscher, choose to insert οὐ before ἔχει. For example,
R. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif translate in this way: ‘Such is the case if someone
needs what one does not have oneself.’^25 Others, such as H. Rackham,^26 think
that the clauses ‘make neither grammar nor sense’ and that there has been
an interpolation; the British translator rejects Münscher’s suggestion ‘as there
seems to be no question here of foreign commerce.’