Two Approaches to the Class Divide

Socrates hit on a great truth when he said of political societies:

 "Any city, however small, is in fact divided in two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich: these are at war with each other." 

Marx and Madison agreed on this point, but they disagreed about how to overcome it. 

Marx wanted to take the possessions of all and distribute them equally. 

Madison wanted to create a truly free and classless society where all would be equal before the law and free to pursue their differences at will--as long as they didn't hurt anyone in the process. In Madison's model there would be economic classes but all people would belong to the same political class.

Marx's approach has been attempted many times, and all have failed. In fact, the divide between rich and poor has nearly always increased the gulf between classes. Some say that Marx's ideal has never been fully applied, but this begs the question: if his system is good, why can't any who have attempted it find success? Why is it so impossible to get right?

Where Madison's approach has been attempted, it has sometimes worked and other times failed. No perfect society has yet come from either perspective, but the Madisonian approach in the U.S. Constitution created the most free and prosperous people in all of history.

It turns out there is a drastic difference between the rich vs. poor in non-free societies and the rich vs. poor in truly free nations. 

In a sense, then, Socrates was wrong. Each city may have rich and poor, but when the society is truly free they are not at war with each other. Indeed, where real freedom exists the poor side of the city is always shrinking and the rich side grows. 

Constitutional freedom is clearly not perfect, but it is certainly better than any of the alternatives yet attempted.