5. The Utopian

Nevertheless he is interested in the affairs of men. He sees a social vision too, and dreams of a society in which there shall be no corruption, no poverty, no tyranny, and no war. He is appalled at the bitterness of political faction in Athens, “strife and enmity and hatred and suspicion forever recurring.”¹¹⁸ Like a blue blood, he despises the plutocratic oligarchy, “the men of business . . . pretending never so much as to see those whom they have already ruined, inserting their sting—that is, their money—into anybody else who is not on his guard against them, and recovering the principal sum many times over: this is the way in which they make drones and paupers to abound in the state.”¹¹⁹ “And then democracy comes into being, after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power.”¹²⁰ The democrats turn out to be as bad as the plutocrats: they use the power of their number to vote doles to the people and offices to themselves; they flatter and pamper the multitudes until liberty becomes anarchy, standards are debased by omnipresent vulgarity, and manners are coarsened by unhindered insolence and abuse. As the mad pursuit of wealth destroys the oligarchy, so the excesses of liberty destroy democracy.

Socr. In such a state the anarchy grows and finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them. . . . The father gets accustomed to descend to the level of his sons . . . and the son to be on a level with his father, having no fear of his parents, and no shame. . . . The master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors. . . . Young and old are alike, and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men . . . imitate the young. Nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other. . . . Truly, the horses and asses come to have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen . . . all things are just ready to burst with liberty. . . .

Adeimantus. But what is the next step? . . .

Socr. The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction. . . . The excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into slavery . . . and the most aggravated form of tyranny arises out of the most extreme form of liberty.¹²¹

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near. The rich, afraid that democracy will bleed them, conspire to overthrow it;¹²² or some enterprising individual seizes power, promises everything to the poor, surrounds himself with a personal army, kills first his enemies and then his friends “until he has made a purgation of the state,” and establishes a dictatorship.¹²³ In such a conflict of extremes the philosopher who preaches moderation and mutual understanding is like “a man fallen among wild beasts”; if he is wise he will “retire under the shelter of a wall while the hurrying wind and the storm go by.”¹²⁴

Some students, in such crises, take refuge in the past, and write history; Plato takes refuge in the future, and models a utopia. First, he fancies, we must find a good king who will let us experiment with his people. Then we must send away all the adults except those necessary to maintain order and teach the young, for the ways of their elders would corrupt the young into an image of the past. To all the young, of whatever sex or class, twenty years of education will be given. It will include the teaching of myths—not the immoral myths of the old faith, but new myths that may tame the soul into obedience to parents and the state.* At twenty all are to be given physical, mental, and moral tests. Those that fail will become the economic classes of our state—businessmen, workingmen, farmers; they will have private property, and different degrees of wealth (within limits) according to their ability; but there will be no slaves. The survivors of the first test will receive ten further years of education and training. At thirty they will be tested again. Those that fail will become soldiers; they shall have no private property, and shall not engage in business, but shall live in a military communism. Those that pass the second test will now (and none before) take up for five years the study of “divine philosophy”¹²⁵ in all its branches, from mathematics and logic to politics and law. At thirty-five the survivors, with all their theory on their heads, will be flung into the practical world to earn their living and make themselves a place. At fifty such of them as are still alive shall become, without election, members of the guardian or ruling class.

They shall have all powers, but no possessions. There will be no laws; all cases and issues will be decided by the philosopher-kings according to a wisdom untrammeled by precedent. Lest they abuse these powers, they shall have no property, no money, no families, no permanent individual wives; the people will hold the power of the purse, the soldiers the power of the sword. Communism is not democratic, it is aristocratic; the common soul is incapable of it; only soldiers and philosophers can bear it. As for marriage, it must in all classes be strictly regulated by the guardians as a eugenic sacrament: “The best of either sex should be united with the best as often as possible, and the inferior with the inferior; and they are to rear the offspring of one sort of union, but not of the other; for this is the only way of keeping the flock in prime condition.”¹²⁶ All children are to be brought up by the state, and given equal educational opportunity; classes are not to be hereditary. Girls shall have an equal chance with boys, and no office in the state shall be closed to women because they are women. By this combination of individualism, communism, eugenics, feminism, and aristocracy Plato thinks that a society might be produced in which a philosopher would be glad to live. And he concludes: “Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy . . . cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.”¹²⁷