PLATO AND COMMUNISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22986, 15 September 1936, Page 4

PLATO AND COMMUNISM

LECTURE BY PROFESSOR LAWSON , “ Plato and Communism ” was the title of an interesting and scholarly address given by Professor Lawson last night before the Classical Association. The president (Mr W. J. Morrell) occupied the chair, and at the conclusion of the lecture moved a hearty vote of thanks to the speaker. There was a large attendance. Dr Lawson said that Plato presented jhe world with the first Utopia, yet it was by no means a mere Utopia. Plato was a realist in his political philosophy, and he was offering to the Greek world a way of life which was to enter all fields of thought and activity. Christianity later came forward as the new way or the way par excellence. The ancients had not the idea of social progress as people today had it. Indeed it could not be found in the New Testament, for in the conclusion of that set of writings the perfect city descended readyfashioned from heaven. Plato's city, too, was to spring ready-made from the philosopher’s mind, but not as a mere intellectualist creation, but to be copied from the heavenly exemplar, la the republic Plato represented his master Socrates as saying that Kallipolis—the city beautiful—must be fashioned quite new—“ no State can be happy which is not designed by artists who imitate the heavenly pattern. . . , They will begin by rubbing out the State and the manners of men . . . and they will first look at absolute justice, and beauty, and temperance: and will mingle the various elements- of life into the image of a man . , . according to that other image which, when existing among men, Horner calls the form and likeness of God. . . . In heaven there is laid up a pattern of this city, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding may take up his abode there. But whether such a one exists or ever will exist in fact, is no matter, for he will live after the manner of that city.” It had to be remembered, too, that Plato, like Aristotle and other philosophers, had actually drawn up constitutions for various Greek cityStates. These men, then, were no mere dreamers. Plato went to Sicily and risked his life in a Sicilian court in the hope of finding or educating a philosopher king, and Socrates gave his life rather than be false to the heavenly city he had pictured for his hearers. Greece had learned all wisdom except the practical wisdom of political unity, and was destroyed by faction and intercity strife, just as the modern Caucasian world was lorn by fraternal strife. Plato endeavoured to find some stable polity, some perfect form of government which would resist change and which would escape the constant revolutions and disorder inherent in the passage from aristocracy to oligrachy, to democracy, to tyranny, and back again. His problems were: Who should rule? How should he (or they) be discovered and tested? How should marriage, money, and property be controlled. What eugenic measures should be adopted to secure the best stock? What was the form of education which should lead the rulers-to-be up to the fountain of all illumination? As Plato prefigured afar off the apocalyptic seer, so he anticipated the epistle to Timothy, with the dictum that “ the golden dross common among men has been the source of many unholy deeds.” It was noticeable that 1900 years later Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia—a wholly Communistic vision—said: “ Where money bearelh all the stroke it is almost impossible that there the weal public may justly be governed.” It was for this reason that Plato introduced Communism into his Republic. But it was not the Communism of Russia. Plato saw in the individual soul three powers—intelligence, spiritedness. and appetite. It was only where reason held sway that the individual life was wisely regulated. So in the ideal community—there were three classes corresponding to the tripartite division of the soul —at the bottom the general body of seekers of gain devoted to the satisfying of their every-day desires. Above these were the military caste or auxiliaries, who supported the highest class, the guardians or philosophers. The restriction on private ownership was to

apply to the guardians and auxiliaries only. Further, these two ruling classes were not to have wives or families of their own. Although eugenic unions were to be arranged between the best men and the fairest women—all the children were to be regarded as children of the State. The rulers or philosopher class were to be selected by a long process of testing from childhood to maturity. The education of this philosopher class culminated not in dialectic materialism as in modern Communism, but in dialectic intellectualism which would enable the eye of the soul to gaze undazzled upon the Idea of the Good. This Idea enriched the philosopher with the divine wisdom from above, and so they were able to design the city and prepare its laws and its institutions. Thus the philosopher or the philosophers who were to rule, without money or earthly goods or home or wife or family, were to have more restriction imposed upon them than the third class—that of the appetitive men, the money-seekers. The lecturer explained more fully the doctrine of the Idea of the Good and expounded Plato’s scheme for the education of women. Plato was the first man who demanded a wider life for women and an education relatively equal to that of man. Dr Lawson also drew some very interesting parallels and contrasts between the severe but restricted Communism of Plato and that of Russia. Plato had seen the evils of passionate democracy and detested it; hence he would keep it under control of the selected elite backed by their auxiliaries. His class three, i.e., the general body of the citizens, would have no share in the government or in the fighting,—but they would do all the work and have all the goods, though in his later book, “The Laws,” Plato makes some restrictions here, too. The Russian scheme, on the other hand, had Communism for all, and, like the ancient scheme, was the outcome of a kind of philosophy. Plato wanted a dictator or dictators. Russia had this temporarily, but hoped later to be able to dispense with it; but Plato’s scheme was essentially religious, even if inteliectuahst, whereas the Russian scheme was non-religious—and even anti-reli-gious. Plato, while aiming at a totalitarian state and enouncing the abolition of the feud between rich and poor, would have rejected the proletarian rule in Russia, and the military rule in Italy and Germany, as well as the democratic rule in the liberal democracies. In general, no Government, said the lecturer, had ever tried Plato's Communism, with its governing class elected, not in the heal of elections but through lifelong tests, and trained as well for their work—ruling. He considered that injustice arose in a state when men attempted tasks that thev were not fitted for. There was the general truth in this aristocratic principle that the best government could only be given by the best—and. secondly, it was always true that money was a corrupter of the heart. But Plato omitted the training of the mass to the will to be governed—and that was still a problem, even where the philosopher-kings might be forthcoming. Lenin tried to eliminate the profit motive from all the citizens and he followed Plato in believing in force to maintain the new polity, once started. Plato broueht forward a differentiated scheme of education: Lenin tried a general one for all. and failed. Russia was rapidly producing a professional class. Mussolini. Hitler and Lenin aimed at a relationist philosophy: Plato thought he could reach a universal one. and his citv was still where he imagined it—in Heaven. The lecturer believed thev could avoid the extremes of phi’osophers. tvrants and nuacks. for in British countries they had a more reliable populace than that of ane'ent Greece, tbmjvh mot so clever, and they could still keep alive the worth of the individual while not the social inriheations of Christian' 4 '"