Plato, Aristotle and the New Metropolitics

• Author: John Goldbach
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297002300112
• Published date: 01 March 1970
• Date: 01 March 1970
• Subject Matter: Articles

PLATO, ARISTOTLE AND THE
NEW METROPOLITICS
JOHN GOLDBACH
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
HE
PARADOX of the &dquo;one&dquo; and the &dquo;many&dquo; more often signifies relation-
~ ships in conflict than interdependence, reaching such dichotomies as &dquo;free-
dom versus order&dquo; or &dquo;parts versus whole.&dquo; Our attention is increasingly
drawn (1) to parts as protesting publics or areal units at urban counterpoles, and
(2) redress in some metropolitan system of government operations. The attention
may be due concomitantly to the complicated matrix of domestic inequalities, the
growing diffusion and self-consciousness of urban populations, the tactics of new
organizations against existing establishments, or it may be due simply to the report-
ing of these events as breakdowns by social scientists more than ever engaged in
community and systems analyses.
CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE
Claims coming from today’s many urban parts are no longer satisfied at com-
munity levels. And concern for a system no longer asks how numbers of people
and claims can be accommodated in cities, but what constitutes a fair interaction
of parts in a metropolitan region.’ While today’s metropolis may be an ecological
whole or even an &dquo;economic solar system&dquo; with all the coordination of goods and
services which is implied, it can hardly claim the political cohesion that idealized
the classic polis, nor even the purposive enterprise that acquitted the booming cen-
ters of production in America’s yesteryears. The classical polity articulates norms
of citizen participation and a public ethics where restraint is as natural as free-
dom ; whereas modern politics endures problems of citizen disaffection and a public
interest from individual goods.2 It is said that cities are administered but not gov-
erned. Most people are indifferent about local government operations partly
because of stronger loyalties to private sectors, the inability of areal units to solve
urban problems, and because there is not one counselable agency to implement a
metropolitan jurisdiction now anyway. But the poleis and the boomtowns were also
NOTE: The comments of Professors Stanley Scott and Edgar Litt are gratefully acknowl-
edged.
1
For examples see, H. S. Churchill, The City Is The People (New York: Norton, 1962) ; E.
C. Banfield and J. Q. Wilson, City Politics (Camridge: Harvard and M.I.T., 1963),
pp. 329-46; H. V. Wiseman, Political Systems (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 107-8;
C. E. Gilbert, Governing the Suburbs (Bloomington: U. of Indiana Press, 1967), pp.
301-15; Hearings before the Subcommittee on Urban Affairs of the Joint Economic
Committee, 90th Congress, Urban America: Goals and Problems (Washington: Sep-
tember 27-October 4, 1967) pp. 74-211.
2
On such classical-modern comparisons see assessments of Robert Dahl in R. Dahl and D.
Neubauer (eds.), Readings in Modern Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-
Hall, 1968) pp. 59-60; Ithiel de Sola Pool in Pool (ed.), Contemporary Political Sci-
ence (Chicago: McGraw-Hill, 1967), pp. 26-41; A. A. Rogow and H. D. Lasswell,
Power, Corruption, and Rectitude (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 5-12;
Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston: Little, Brown,
1967), pp. 97-102.
197

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198
beyond community ideals of consensus and self-sufficiency, and challenged by many
of the same conflicts facing modern cities. The American strain of politics as con-
flict and compromise hardly squares with the classic model. But in dialectical
response to similar challenges, as the number of urban conflicts increases so does
attention to systematic &dquo;plans&dquo; to the point where differences in plans receive more
attention than the differences in ages.3
The plans of Plato and Aristotle represent two ideal-type models for urbanists.
This study compares the two and their exegeses in later commentaries as projections
for a metropolitan system. Then as now, what instigates concern for wholesale
reforms is the failure of established institutions to handle new issues. Pronounce-
ments decrying the evasions of parenthood, religious and racial revivals, the domina-
tion of capitalism and the professionalization of politics were adumbrated then.4
4
Though political fragmentation complicates issues and government action more
now, since there is less agreement or even knowledge of a solution, attention turns
to theoretical overlays for practical formulations. Conditions of unrest that ended
the polis similarly portend the urban breakdown when focused on the citizen parts
and public processes. So it is argued that the socio-political challenges of the six-
ties draw our post-industrial concerns closer to the pre-industrial polls than to the
productive cares of the Great Depression and New Deal. At least there is the
acknowledgement in urban goals programs that areal predispositions and publics’
multidimensionality are forces in contempt of political &dquo;games&dquo; and professional
&dquo;neutrality.&dquo; 5
Decision-making still means power over people. But for the metropolis as with
the polis, the concern of activists goes beyond substantive decisions (critical in the
thirties) to new processes of problem-solving -
the &dquo;imposed rationality&dquo; of better
methods. Issues now susceptible to cost-benefit analyses and regional account sys-
tems mean a devolution of power to standards beyond conventional politics.6 As
3
Institutional breakdowns in Greek and modern cities similarly affected "goals programs."
Like the polis the metropolis has its "ideologists of return" and "utopians of dispersion."
See Scott Greer, The Emerging City (Glencoe: Free Press, 1962), pp. 179-81; E. A.
Gutkind, The Twilight of Cities (New York: Free Press, 1963), pp. 102-24.
4
"Dissatisfaction with things as they were led to literature depicting things as they ought
to be." T. S. Brown (ed.), Ancient Greece (New York : Free Press, 1965), p. 18 ; and
cf. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1951),
192-254; G. Glotz, The Greek City and Its Institutions (New York: Barnes and Noble,
1965), pp. 101-7.
5
For accounts of "non-political," unstructured mechanisms where the political scope is
broadened to include unconventional behavior in defiance of local "rules," see F. E. Katz
and F. V. Piret, "Circuitous Participation in Politics," American Journal of Sociology
69 (July 1963), 367-73; E. F. Cataldo
et
al., "The Urban Poor and Community Action
in Buffalo," unpublished paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political
Science Association (Chicago, Illinois, May 2, 1968) ; J. Q. Wilson, "Why We Are
Having A Wave of Violence," New York Times Magazine (May 19, 1968), p. 23; the
testimony of Daniel Berman on the efficacy of street demonstrations at hearings of Joint
Committee on The Organization of Congress, Organization of Congress (Washington,
June 7-9, 1965), p. 825.
6
For accounts of "supra-political," national mechanisms where urban programs are innovated
outside local units often in contempt of local "fragmentation," see G. Sjoberg, "The
Origin and Evolution of Cities," Scientific American (September 1965), pp. 55-57;
M. Ways. "Creative Federalism and The Great Society," Fortune (January 1966),
p. 222; R. C. Martin, The Cities and the Federal System (New York: Atherton,
1965), pp. 132—35; the testimony of Anthony Downs at hearings of Senate Committee
on Government Operations, Federal Role in Urban Affairs (Washington, April 20-21,
1967), pp. 3474-83.

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199
in Athens, competition between local jurisdictions or private groups used to bar-
gaining for special rewards in being superseded by longer-range reprisals between
&dquo;haves&dquo; and &dquo;have-nots,&dquo; whether these are augured between local jurisdictions, or
publics in one city. The problem then as now concerns uncertain leaders, restless
aggregations, and differing notions of responsibility and compliance. Problem-
solving in the crisis context encourages varieties of normative thinking inciting new
action and techniques -
hence the Republic and advisory commissions as &dquo;R
and D.&dquo;
Plato and Aristotle designed civic systems to counteract &dquo;the slow disintegra-
tion of an inherited conglomerate&dquo; in a &dquo;quick turnover society.&dquo; 7 Similar designs
planned around concepts of integration and functionalism aim at metropolitan
systems today. The systems consider the interdependence of parts, performance
effects, and cost analyses toward a total approach. That the ancients reformulated
politics to such &dquo;wholes&dquo; through the performance of &dquo;parts,&dquo; though they had
different keys to interdependence, is evident from the organizational detail given
to remedy disintegration.
Hostile acts and hardening attitudes divert citizens’ sensitivity and agencies’
competence to issues controverting previous games or structures. City officials
may evade social problems for originating or intensifying beyond the support of
citizens or the reach of local agencies. So political power becomes less a constant
and more relational, and social problems not so much things as issues in a complex
of relations. The relevance of the classical theories to modern issues does not rest
on the normative acceptance of a public philosophy so much as an analysis of how
social outcomes standardize performances paralleling Plato’s functional model or
Aristotle’s integrational onea
CLASSICAL MODELS FOR METROPOLITAN PARTS
Both...