We don't disagree. Shane Mage wrote: > Plato (you mean the dramatic character Socrates) argued no such thing.
I think that "Socrates" speaks for Plato in the REPUBLIC, while in some of the earlier dialogues, it's more of a matter of Plato's interpretation of what he remembered Socrates saying. (I don't know about other authors' Socratic dialogues, but likely their biases crept in too.) > His Guardians take no vow of poverty--they (as per the "Noble Lie") > have learned that true wealth is inner, not in money, and so live as a > communist, sexually egalitarian, family-less collective (while the "people" > make their own rules in regard to the domestic economy). That's exactly what I meant by my short-hand -- communist. They are poor in financial and real-wealth terms _as individuals_ but collectively powerful. If one of the Guardians breaks with his or her training, accumulating individual financial or real wealth, that's breaking the rules of the Guardians and breaking with the training (and, in the end, breaking Plato's utopia apart). This "communism" is sort of like that of the Jesuits and other Catholic religious orders (that I'm familiar with from working at a Jesuit university): individual poverty combined with the possibility of collective wealth. I would guess that a lot of the priestly, monastic, nunnery, etc. ideals come from Plato via neo-Platonism (which was popular when Christianity started). But that's only a guess. As for the "people" making their own rules in regard to the domestic economy, I think that's very similar to the idea that with the state in the wise hands of the Guardians, something like free markets could prevail. (Though the ruling stratum was seen as organized in a communist way, the society as a whole was not.) I don't remember what Plato said about the slaves, but I'd guess they would be part of the non-state part of the Republic, just as with the Athens of the time. > And Socrates does > not in the least ignore that "power corrupts." On the contrary, he (after > playing with some fanciful mathematics) explains that this "ideal" ruling > community would inevitably degenerate. Yes, he admits that his utopia probably wouldn't work. But as far as I can tell, he stuck with his ideal. Anyway, my point was that his response to "power corrupts" is inadequate (as he admits). So is that of Charles, who asserts that the Soviet ruling class was "honorable." > And the mechanism of that > degeneration would be the guardians getting married and starting families; > the next generation would inherit power; their children would inherit > monetary wealth. exactly. Wasn't that why the rules involved arranged sex without marriage? > Amusingly, this is pretty exactly how Trotsky (in "The > Revolution Betrayed") expected the Stalinist bureaucracy, if permitted to > continue for a historic period, would privatize the Soviet economy! He was one smart dude! -- Jim Devine "All science would be superfluous if the form of appearance of things directly coincided with their essence." -- KM _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
