I am not going to argue with Shane Mage about the details and meanings of Plato's work. He is clearly a much greater expert than I. It is quite possible that I have been misled by the second professor (Thomas Pangle) who assigned the REPUBLIC to me when I was an undergrad. He was a follower of Leo Strauss who saw the book as basically involving a secret conspiracy of the aristocracy (led by their mentor, Plato). As a Straussian, he saw the conspiracy as a good thing (much to my amazement). I've read most of the REPUBLIC two or three times since then and it fit with what Pangle said. But again, I bow to Shane's superior expertise (with absolutely no irony intended). I also am not implying that we should reject Plato's thought root and branch. His ideas are quite interesting and often valid, though I prefer Aristotle on most points (obviously not on the issues of slavery and the status of women). I think Plato deserves a lot of credit for openly asking the question of how to control society's Guardians (or at least getting published first). (The Straussians took this idea of the conservative conspiracy and tried to put it into action during the Reagan administration. There's a book about this somewhere; I don't know its title.) One comment: I had said: >>while most observers see the Republic as an idealized (cleaned-up) version of Sparta.<< Shane responds: >Perhaps, if by "most observers" you mean tendentious smart-alecks of the I.F.Stone/Bertrand Russell/Karl Popper stripe. No-one in his right mind, least of all a product of the Athenian enlightenment, would ever take post-Leuctra Sparta as a model of anything at all.< "Cleaning up" Sparta among other things involves harkening back to the golden age before Leuctra. It involved trying to set up an image of a perfect aristocratic society, drawing ideas from other places and times and seeking out the "forms" behind the appearances. This should be seen in the context of the various struggles in Athenian society (and in other city-states) between the demos and the aristocracy, etc. that Aristotle described in his POLITICS (and shows up in history books). > Anyone who simply reads the *politeia* (misleadingly translated as "Republic") on its own terms, let alone with a philosophically critical mind and an appreciation of Socratic irony, will quickly realize that its purpose is quite other.< Again, I don't want to argue here. But I must admit that I interpreted Plato's bit about the equality of women (in the Guardian class) as an example of irony or rather a matter of pushing his audience of aristocratic youth to think beyond the usual orthodoxy. It's the kind of thing that teachers do (or are supposed to do). Ken Hanly COMMENTs: >Only the top two classes in Plato's Republic live in a mode that resembles anything like communism. Plato had a disdain for democracy but I am not sure that he had a disdain for the common folk. He thought the ability to rule was restricted to a few people and that common folk would not be able to recognise the people who had this expertise.< I would count a dismissal of the majority's ability to rule to be an example of disdaining them. > What amazes me about Plato's description of democracy is how accurately it often describes present phenomena. For example his myth of the people as a great beast used by democratic politicians to further their own aims. Taking the beast's temperature and measuring its moods so they can they can control it. Shades of contemporary spin doctors and political pollsters. Surely some democratic politicians view the public and treat it in exactly this way.< Of course, capitalist democracies like that in the US almost seem designed to distort the ability of the people to control the state to make it fit this image. There is no system to encourage people to speak and act as communities (such would be anathema to the powers that be) but only as atomized individuals to be polled or manipulated. >The means of production were not socialised in the Republic. Private and productive property were left in the hands of the lowest class. The main control by the rulers was simply to see that people did not become too rich or too poor.< right. It's only the wealth of the Guardians that's socialized. It's kind of like the way the Jesuits (my university's Guardians) have communism. They can be rich collectively but not as individuals. > Within the ruling class the means of reproduction seem to have been socialised and breeding controlled according to the best mathematical models as to when was the optimum time to conceive. Indeed the decline of the state is said to occur when these times are miscalculated. Probably by the Platonic equivalent of a neo-classical welfare economist ;-).Except in Marx's description of primitive communism in the Economic and PHilosophical manuscripts I don't think that communism is understood as socialising reproduction. < there are some utopian novels where reproduction is socialized, e.g., Marge Piercy's WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME. >Certainly not in the Platonic manner with the state organising marriage festivals at which partners are chosen in a lottery in which the state cheats everyone so that the best mate most with the best. As for the lowest class and those past childbearing Plato didn't give a shit what they did. Plato was not even a top-down communist. He just believed in a communal mode of life with no private property for the auxiliaries and rulers i.e. the top two classes. < right, but the top two classes clearly rule the roost. The philosopher-king was clearly in charge of it all. Truth trickles down from above. Plato was communist (for the elite classes) _and_ top-down, rather than advocating some sort of top-down socialism for the whole polis (some kind of archaic Stalinism). in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
