Plato’s Ideal, Socialist State and Its Many Discontents. Essay 6 of Justice in the State: Comparisons between Plato’s Republic and the West

 

The ideal republic that Plato envisions in the Republic is a monarchy (a non-hereditary, philosopher-king), a timocracy, and a socialist state.  One of the assumptions in Plato’s Republic is that the just society is a society that will require significant social control.  The republic needs to repudiate tyranny, self-interested oligarchy, and democracy.  As a socialist state, like all forms of socialism, requires the ‘just’ republic to (1) enforce its (2) ideal understanding of values and virtues on the population, (3) while maintaining that this action will produce happy citizens.  What Socrates describes as a utopia for justice turns out to be a dystopia of oppression, degraded values and vices, on an inevitably unhappy populace.

Socrates begins by describing how the state needs to enforce certain values regarding property.  He says that guardians must have only the most necessary property.  This would, for example, mean that they should not desire or possess gold.  The attack on possessions is also an attack on individualism.  So, Adeimantus, Socrates’ interlocutor, asks whether guardians would be happy in such a state.  Socrates answers that different people find different kinds of happiness, but if we say that happiness is defined in terms of possessions, leisure, and the like, then we would actually corrupt the hard working farmer, potter, and so forth in their work (4.421).  Poverty and wealth must be avoided (4.421e-422a).  What comes to mind when reading this are the famous, Soviet posters of smiling peasants on collective farms, when, in fact, the communist government murdered or deported tens of thousands of persons owning 8 acres or more of land (kulaks) between 1929 and 1934, confiscated private farms, and caused massive starvation.

Communal unity is another value that requires state control in Socrates’ ideal republic.  This relates to the growth and size of cities, which need to be neither too small nor too large but just the right size to maintain unity (4.423b-c).  Socrates did not envision a classless society, as Communism claims but never achieves.  One can press for equal opportunity, but the natural differences between people inevitably means unequal outcomes, and the enforcement of equal outcomes progresses in a socialist state through much suffering, injustice, and death.  In Socrates’ timocracy, however, where the contribution of people to society is understood in terms of the contribution each can make according to his or her merits, differences remain.  Socrates, for example, does not envision the state without slaves.  Citizens need to be sent up or down according to the class that best fits their ‘natures.’  Such control by the state is needed so that everyone’s work might contribute to the city’s ‘unity’ (4.423c-d).  Communalism should further govern marriages, since wives and the procreation of children should be ‘the proverbial goods of friends that are common’ (4.423e-424a).  The state values of collectivism and communalism oppose marriage and family.

Individualism is also a contrary value to the state.  People need to devote themselves to the collective values determined by the state.  Socrates says, ‘[462c] … “That city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things in the same way.” … [464a] … and by virtue of this communion they will have their pleasures and pains in common.’  The statement is awkward in translation, but it simply says that possessions, pleasures, and pains are all to be collectivised.  Individualism is opposed, except in the reward of heroism in battle, but even here, the reward goes to the one who abandons self-preservation in fighting for the state.  (On this point, more in a further essay.)

Addressing the happiness of a population ruled by socialist forces and ideals, Socrates claims that the elimination of private property will contribute to a far less litigious society:

[464b] … these helpers must not possess houses of their own or [464c] land or any other property, but that they should receive from the other citizens for their support the wage of their guardianship and all spend it in common. … [464d] … “Then will not law-suits and accusations against one another vanish, one may say, from among them, because they have nothing in private possession but their bodies, but all else in common?

We might call Socrates’ republic a ‘nanny state.’  He avers that it will remove so many cares and indignities of life and leave everyone happy:

[465c] …  the pettiest troubles of which they would be rid, the flatterings of the rich, the embarrassments and pains of the poor in the bringing-up of their children and the procuring of money for the necessities of life for their households, the borrowings, the repudiations, all the devices with which they acquire what they deposit with wives and servitors to husband, and all the indignities that they endure in such matters ... [465d] … “From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of the victors at Olympia … [Any happiness of the individual indicated here is not personal but derived from the state, and they] [465e, d] … receive honor from the city while they live and when they die a worthy burial.

Socrates believed that the monarch and the tyrant were most alike.  The difference lay in the former’s desire to produce a just state for the citizens, while the latter desires to use the state for his own gain.  Both exercise power over others; they differ only in their goals for the people.  The philosopher-king is someone who would receive extensive training (merit) to exercise power for the good of the people.  He would not want to rule or gain wealth, unlike the tyrant, but have to be forced to take on the burden of care for the population.

Some Reflections

The evil of socialism lies in large part in its claim to power in order to do good.  Much injustice and wickedness is done once the state gains such power.  Sometimes, some good is done, despite the ineptitude of bureaucracy and incompetence of rulers.  Yet some of socialism’s values are themselves evil, the exact opposite of the good and of justice.  Such, for example, is Socrates’ opposition marriage and the family.  As noted in an earlier essay, he also requires eugenics in the choice breeding of top citizens to produce an improved citizenship and in the death of children that will contribute to the state’s perceived well-being.  His state is, frankly, loveless in his notion of happiness through collective values and of social honour.  In socialist societies, people are more or less slaves of the state, and they are expected to be happy for having no property or parental responsibilities.  Their happiness lies in having all their basic needs met by a state that takes care of them.  Socrates claims that individuals without rights will be happy because they will not have lawsuits over property or bear burdensome responsibilities or have financial difficulties.

As a matter of historical fact, however, socialism proves itself to be a failure time after time.  Idealists, including socialists, are not realists, even if they attempt to solve real social problems.  They are always terrible students of history, since historical facts get in the way of ideals.  In fact, to the extent that they address history, to typically try to rewrite it to favour the outcomes they desire for society in the present. 

Socialist economies do not function well.  The state proves to be ever more oppressive.  Its showcase values appear altruistic, but its communal values undercut the individual, the family, property, freedom, mobility, and so forth.  Socrates must not have been naïve about his socialist vision for the state, since its collectivism and values were to some degree practiced by the Spartans, at war with democratic Athens for much of his lifetime.  As Athens weakened before the armies of Spartan-led forces, Athens’ democracy gave way to tyranny.  Socrates lays the problem of tyranny at the feet of a failed democracy, but he fails to see that his ideal state is very much like the Spartan state that defeated democracy. 

History has shown just how unjust the state becomes the more that power is removed from the citizens as individuals and given to the socialist state that values and enforces communalism and collectivism.  We have Communist Russia, China, Cambodia, and Venezuela as recent examples to offer.  What we need to remember is that the evil society not only excuses the evil it does on the grounds that the communal needs are greater than the individual (claiming to render the greatest good to the greatest number of people), it also sets itself up as the ultimate authority—one under no God but only pursuing a certain vision of virtue, like social justice. 

The genius of Paul in Romans 13.1-7 is not to endorse the state’s authority without qualification—though he does appreciate the state when it acts justly—but in insisting that the state must be under God.  He says, ‘there is no authority except from God’ (v. 1).  He is not saying, as some sometimes maintain, that because God endorses the state, we must accept it as God-given in itself.  Rather, government is under God and therefore has authority insofar as it does what God’s Law upholds.  This view does not endorse one form of government or another, but it does rule out ultimate authority in a state that disregards God and follows its own ideals.

Socrates, for his part, often pays lip service to Greek religion (the Republic begins this way), but his discussion of socialism proceeds from a very human conception of human values, not divine Law.  Even the slight awareness that Socrates shows of religion disappears in socialism.  In communist socialism, religion is regarded as an enemy of the state.  In softer versions of European socialism, the state tolerates a private spirituality, even if the product of a state Church.  Religion is compartmentalized, having no bearing on society, unless it also supports the values and activities of the state. 

This, incidentally, is where the UK is today, in the government’s (including the so-called ‘Conservative’ government’s) fairly successful attempt to remove the Church from any social relevance.  This is also where the Church of England is, happily submitting to a secular society’s values and to the rule of the state as it has, over several decades, rejected orthodox Christian doctrine and ethics.  This is seen in various social issues: sex education in schools, state opposition to pastoral care that entails transformation of sinners with regard to the conversion of sinful passions, interest in some quarters for the state to require the Church of England churches to hold same-sex ‘marriages,’ silencing public evangelism, arresting persons silently praying near abortion chambers, removing Christians from jobs, and so forth.

‘Progressive Evangelicals’ have proven to be a particularly insidious foe to orthodoxy and Reformational Evangelicalism.  Like Socrates, they come with their secularised agenda of ‘social justice’ that only uses Scripture to proof-text their already formed values and activism.  They place activism over theological understanding, and theological values over Biblical interpretation.  The academic disciplines of Biblical scholarship (languages, literature, history) are treated as a colonial power to be rejected so that others might have equal legitimacy in the use of Scripture.  Progressive Evangelicals grab ahold of Biblical values like ‘justice’ and then fill in their meaning from whatever secular society understands—particularly, in our postmodern era, the newly minted values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In addition to the identification and definition of ideals, Progressive Evangelicals so identify with secular society that they think of themselves as a majority, not minority voice.  They are, therefore, much in favour of socialism.  The Church is understood not as a prophetic, righteous community over against the state but as a support for all the good that the state does.  They are, therefore, quite supportive of socialism.  They close their eyes to social issues like abortion.  They advocate for the equal place of persons advocating sexualities opposed to their own historic faith.  They underplay Christian identity that highlights holiness and righteousness.  They like to give more power to the state to make bad people become better and better people to do good things.  Though a minority group that is increasingly attacked by the post-Christian majority, these Progressive Evangelicals somehow imagine that giving more power to a socialist state will advance Christian values.  Claiming to be an intellectual elite, they show an amazing ignorance.  The book of Revelation identified the problems with a powerful state and its persecution of Christians.  Christians need to be suspicious and critical of all government, since it is not the Kingdom of God even when governments do some good.  Socialism, however, is shown to be an insidious ‘beast’ as it grasps power and forces its all too human values on society.