Aristotle Thought It First

I was reading Aristotle’s “Polis” for another essay when I discovered that what I have been calling a “Social Cooperative” is something that Aristotle talked about thousands of years ago. Consider these selected excerpts from “The Polis”:

• Every State is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good…
• In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely, of male and female, that the race may continue…
• But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village…
• When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.

There truly is nothing new under the sun.