‘Money is like muck,” wrote Francis Bacon in 1625. “Not good except it be spread.” No one accuses the father of the scientific method and British empiricism of being a socialist, although doubtless the many Tory critics of inheritance tax will now want to group him with Karl Marx and the liberal elite as dark enemies of aspiration.
They should also add the Greek philosopher Aristotle to their list of leftwing enemies. “Man is by nature a social animal,” he wrote. “Society precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”
