Aristotle linked the economy with politics, defining politics as the active engagement of citizens with public affairs and the economy as their active involvement in household management, which includes the division of labor and decisions regarding what and how to produce, as well as where and how to distribute the produced goods.
The Economic (Books I and II), the Political Works, the Nicomachean Ethics, the Rhetoric, and Rhetoric to Alexander are his economic works that establish him as the father of the concept of property and a series of other fundamental economic and political terms in other sciences.
His economic thoughts start from his view on the creation of the world, with the gods having created the world and mortals making use of the goods (resources) provided by nature or resulting from a productive or transformative process.
Thus, he divides goods into productive means (means of production) and practical means (means of consumption). He is the first to engage in detail and depth with phenomena of Economic Science, formulating the theory of value, distinguishing the value of goods into use value ("οἰκείαν χρῆσιν") and exchange value ("ἀλλαγῇς ἕνεκεν").
Use and utility are fundamental criteria for the valuation of goods, and he formulates the theory of utility and the theory of demand elasticity.
He uses the cost of materials/labor as the main criterion of his analysis, thus becoming the precursor of historical materialism, as expressed by K. Marx.
