6 - Commercial Society and Civic Friendship

Summary

Friendship across a society includes the mild manners of doux commerce. Aristotle ranks economic exchanges according to increasing levels of friendliness: from cash on the barrel, to giving the partner extra time to repay, to a loan, to a gift with strings attached. Instead of reducing each to self-interest (like modern economists do), he finds commodity exchange has a tincture of the goodness of the next level up (interest-free loans), just as loans retain some of the goodness of outright gifts. Across a chasm of differences, we can still observe similar passions today: affection for customers, pride in one’s economic contribution (“gift”), wanting societal recognition (honor) for it. Adam Smith thought this vanity was the root of morality. Full morality is not required for civic friendship but only middle-class “virtues” (Politics, Books 3-4). Fair markets help maintain liberal civic friendship. When free markets are replaced by rent-seeking (crony capitalism, regulatory capture, lobbying), the game becomes rigged and we leave behind win-win assumptions for zero-sum assumptions, in which anyone else’s gain must be my loss. Our mild manners degenerate into resentment and discord.