Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/682

662 some attempt to analyze the different functions of the state. The army will be in the hands of wives and mothers who will see that life is not thrown away recklessly and that the hardships of the soldiers are not too great. The women claim some skill in financial administration; as they have managed the household in spite of interference by their husbands, so they will take into their hands the property of all the citizens and use the revenues to supply the needs of all. The administration of justice will be directly in the hands of the executive power, so as to dispense with litigation. Further, it will be unnecessary to punish crime, for the causes of crime are to be removed, while the control of the necessaries of life will make the authority of the new government absolute.

From this account it appears that the essential difference between the family and the state is overlooked, not perhaps by Aristophanes so much as by the philosophers whose conceptions he holds up to ridicule. Financial, judicial, and military activity are recognized as functions of the state, while all three are subordinated to the direct effort to meet the individual economic needs of the citizens. Communism is held up to ridicule and is brought to a speedy end; the recognition of the economic basis of the state, and some crude analysis of the functions of the state represent the condition of political science as understood by the poet.

The scheme of communism, the inauguration and failure of which constitute the plot of the Ecclesiazousæ is interesting from the economic as well as from the political side. Such schemes inevitably come up for discussion when the distribution of wealth in a state theoretically democratic becomes very unequal. Moreover, certain practices at Athens would serve as a natural starting-point for the theory. The gifts of corn to the people, and the practice of bribing the people into good humor ridiculed in the Knights (where the assembly turns first