Plato and Communism

I think that corruption is very difficult to overcome in any communist , but an oligarchy of philosophers would probably have the best chance. The only problem is the next generation of philosophers might not understand the need for communism, and then their curiosity and greed would make the system fall apart when they took control. The system is perfect for one generation, but incredibly hard to keep up in the next. Human nature will find a way to destroy society.

We call it capitalism around these here parts.

Communists are not opposed to leadership. This is the primary point of contention between communists and anarchists. For example, see Engels brief essay "On Authority".

Plato argues that the state ought to be based on knowledge, which is the understanding of the Forms rather than that which participates in them and above all the knowledge of the good-itself, or the good-beyond-being. There is always a link between true knowledge and right ethical conduct in Plato's writings. Now he asserts that, given rigourous training and education, philosophers are the best guardians of the state. Whether "communism" would be the guardians' choice or not is a matter of discussion. Plato does not seem to think so, although he does argue that extreme wealth (and perhaps poverty) is detrimental to the individual and to the state, he does not advocate equality of ownership.

Within the class of guardians (the silver people) there is no private property, they live communally, they don't even know which children belong to them, and we can assume that the class of philosopher kings (the gold people) who are drawn from the guardian class would follow the same guidelines. The rest of society, the lowest classes, (the copper people) may have been allowed to organized their sector of society around some system involving private property. That may be the type of organization that best suits their inferior metal. Plato placed the merchants among the copper people.

Herbert Spencer wrote a great deal about the similarities between the aristocratic ethic and the socialist ethic as contrasted with the then still novel bourgeois ethic of social Darwinism and laissez faire capitalism. Spencer favored the bourgeois ethic. Plato's Republic is generally considered to be an aristocracy although the word "aristocracy" tends to be ambiguous both denotatively and connotatively.

That is true, Marx never got close to the level of communism suggested by Plato. Marx denounced private property of means of production alone, while Plato's model for guardians abolishes even personal property and marital exclusivity.

Plato's Republic posits a society which is hardly Communist. If anything, it's awfully close to Hitler's National-Socialist (Nazi) philosophy. Bertrand Russell wrote: "That Plato's Republic should have been dmired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in history." Arthur Koestler adds: "Plato's [Republic] is more terrifying than Orwell's 1984 because Plato desires to happen what Orwell fears might happen."

Thanks for that !

"Communism is the idea that everyone regardless of rank gets the same." What kind of definition of communism is that? Sounds like someone has been reading a lot of capitalist propaganda that totally misrepresents what communism is.

Communism is the ownership of the means of production by the working class. Under communism, the working class determines who gets what and how much. Obviously, many factors will be involved in what each person earns. A person who does a job with ten years of necessary training will certainly get more than a person who does a job that requires no training. A person that produces more for society will certainly get more than a person who produces less. The main feature of a communist society is that the workers themselves determine the flow of production and distribution in their own self interest and there are no capitalists to steal all the profits for themselves.


URL: http://able2know.org/topic/152344-1

This is the very thing that will derail any seriousness in Communism, it will inspire the psycotic, the skitzo, the stupid and retards to demand equallity, when they are not suited. It will lead to nepotism ..encompetence en masse.

right? then it will just be wars after wars lead by defferent classes.

don't be silly

commumism is capitalism just in a different sense

...to rationalize over this issue one ought to distinguish EQUITY from EQUALITY...

I too do not "believe" in communism, but that's only because it hasn't been tried and tested yet. It was retrained by the superior productive capacity of the Capitalist West. The tyrants who labeled themselves communists were the death of Communism. They have tarnished it with the implicit identity of the Coercive Society. But that is also true of Facist state-capitalism. I think we should look at Scandanavian societies for the successes of socialism as it works in rationally regulated mixed economies.

I too do not "believe" in communism, but that's only because it hasn't been tried and tested yet. It was restrained by the superior productive capacity of the Capitalist West. The tyrants who labeled themselves communists were the death of Communism. They have tarnished it with the implicit identity of the Coercive Society. But that is also true of Facist state-capitalism. I think we should look at Scandanavian societies for the successes of socialism as it works in rationally regulated mixed economies.

Very good, JLN. What was called "Communism" in Russia, the former Soviet Union and all other "Iron Curtain" countries was a country mile from what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels meant by the word. The Leninist/Stalinist model consequently gave Communism a bad reputation and the word became synonimous with dictatorship and repression. It was (and in N. Korea and Cuba still is) nothing like what Marx envisioned, either in Das Kapital or The Communist Manifesto. Just for openers, Marx would never have dreamt that a backward semi-feudal country such as Tsarist Russia could become the world's first so-called Communist state. His programs were aimed at the indstrialized countries, e.g. England, France and Germany of his time, where an emerging class of workers with some education were struggling for fair play against repressive 'robber barons.' Marx did not conceive of a revolution by peasants in Russia against a hereditary aristocracy to have anything to do with the conditions obtaining in the factories of industrial Western Europe.

Karl Marx was a dreamer, and his dreams were unrealistic. For example, patriotism trumps ideology. He longed for Germany to be the first socialist state, and the German socialists were the best organized and financed left-wing party in Europe. Then World War One rolled around, and the German socialists left their factories and marched off to war as eagerly as any other group in any of the nations involved.

Furthermore, Marx has an unrealistic expectation of how governments work. When you establish a bureaucracy, whatever you think should motivate them will be secondary to what will actually motivate them, which will be the preservation of their employment and any perquisites they can get. There was not only no reason for the Soviet state to declare the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there was the very compelling reason not to provided by the desire of the nomenklatura to perpetuate their employment and privilege.

Let the record indicate
that I oppose giving communism another chance
on the ground that it was not close enuf to Marx's ideal.

Concomitantly, I also oppose giving nazism another chance,
because of the possibility that Hitler did not get it exactly right
(e.g., that he blew it by declaring war on America b4 he finished off the commies).

The same applies to Mussolini and the Japs. Forget it; enuf is enuf.





David

I suppose.