"free birth, wealth, culture, and nobility of descent" (185). It is this assumption that the possession of wealth--at least over a few generations--makes a person better fit to rule that confuses Aristotle's categories and makes his plans into an unworkable balance between two very different things. Aristotle cannot achieve the kind of balance of interests he wishes to construct for his ideal state and, in order to devise a way of settling disputes, has to resort to the numerical balancing the cumulative property of voters on two sides of a question--weighting votes so that, in essence, the number of votes a person has is equal to the amount of property he has. This allows each man a vote and many men get even more than one.
An ideal state should, however, be based on the assumption that one vote is enough for everyone (including, of course, women and naturalized foreigners--whom Aristotle leaves out). But it should also require the participation of everyone--an idea that Aristotle supported with the suggestion that the poor be paid for public service--which they would otherwise be unable to perform--and the rich be penalized if they failed to take up their duties. This would begin with a tax on the failure to vote which would, however, be applied to everyone. It might be argued that, since a penalty would be worse for the poor, rich men would not be as likely to worry about not voting. But this need not occur since, as Aristotle noticed--but could not quite manage, the interests of the rich are, as a group, different from those of the poor. Thus the poor would vote because they wanted to avoid the penalty while the rich would vote because there were relatively few voters from their 'party.' Other responsibilities of citizenship would include serving in the functions of the state to which one is either assigned or elected.
The rights of citizens would be roughly the same as those provided for by the United States Consti...