Aristotle's treatment of politics and rule begins, not with a discussion of elections and public administration but rather with a treatment of property, and not real (land) or personal (movable) property but rather persons as property, or slaves. Slaves are classified, not according as they do physical labor but according as they belong to (hence are subordinate to) part of a fundamental environment of rational human experience, the management of the household. The treatment of slaves as an aspect of household management is crucial because Aristotle conceptualizes the household in the same manner as he conceptualizes the political environment, as the highest and best expression of human rationality.
Human rationality is a naturally occurring, organic structure, and so are its products. For example, Aristotle refers to the "art of acquiring property" (21) as arising more or less organically, from nature, which implies that it is an aspect of the most fundamental human experience of the world. Similarly, in Chapter 2 (8) and in the preamble to Chapter 5 (15), Aristotle cites the master's intelligence, or rational soul as an instrument of authority and rule over the slave as a part of nature. It is the master, of course, who possesses rational human faculty, while the slave possesses only so much rational capacity as will allow him to understand and carry out the master's orders. In the preamble to Chapter 8 he continues: "Nature intends and provides the requisites for household use [including slaves]; and the acquisition of such requisites is a natural mode of acquisition" (21).
But Aristotle is not really writing a household-hints manual. Instead, he appears to be using man's relationship with property as bridge to explaining the moral structures informing the political environment. Thus Aristotle deplores the focus on money-centered property acquisition, saying that desire for unlimited wealth derives from anxiety about living th...