Aristotle approached Politics from a more practical standpoint. True to his inductive method, he first collected accounts of all the existing forms of government in the Greek world, more than a hundred in number. Unfortunately, the “Polity of Athens,” recently discovered, is the only surviving example. Then in his great treatise called “The Politics” he attempted to criticise practical statesmanship from a scientific standpoint, and in his turn also constructed something like an ideal state. For him, as for all Greek thinkers, politics was only a branch of ethics. The state came into existence for the sake of enabling men to live; it survives for the purpose of enabling men to live well. The object, therefore, of the statesman is to get the right kind of people at the head of affairs--and that means Aristocracy. Viewing all Greek society from the philosopher’s standpoint, he regarded all those whose economic position required them to be mainly interested in gaining a livelihood as too much preoccupied with sordid cares to possess political virtue or to be fit to govern. His governing class is therefore necessarily the rich class, just as it was with Plato, though neither philosopher would admit wealth as the sole or even the main criterion. Aristotle regards Monarchy as a good form of government also, if you could secure that the monarch should be better than the people he rules, and should rule for their advantage, not his own. There is also a good form of Republic or Free Constitution, in which the whole body of the citizens take their turn in office. But each of these three sound forms of government has its own special danger--Aristocracy degenerates into Oligarchy when the few rule for their own advantage, Monarchy into Tyranny, and the Free Constitution into Democracy.
It is evident in all his writings that he regards the Athenian government as a bad one, but we must remember that he only saw it in its decline. The most valuable part of his teaching is that wherein he defines the state as a partnership, not in all things, but only in those things which concern its _telos_--the good life. Also, it is made up, not of individuals, but of smaller partnerships such as the family. It is on these grounds that he criticises the doctrine of communism. Since the whole object of political life is to secure moral completeness, it is obvious that the citizen does not surrender his whole being to the state. Thus both philosophers are alike in putting aside the claims of the working classes, who, it must not be forgotten, largely