probably stimulated by observation of contemporary phenomena, especially
in the two leading states of the fifth century. Sparta had long held
the first place, and even the rise of Athens had not utterly destroyed
her ancient prestige. That her military system was effective, seemed
proved by the inviolability of Laconian territory and the successes of
her armies in external wars. That it was supported by the labour of a
Greek population reduced to serfdom, was perhaps a weak point in her
institutions; but that Greek opinion was seriously shocked by the fact
can hardly be maintained. It was now and then convenient to use it as
a passing reproach, but even Athens did not refuse to aid in putting
down Helot rebellions. And this weak point was set off by a strong one.
Whatever the reasons[293] for her policy, she interfered very little
in the internal affairs of her allies and did not tax them. To be
content with the leadership of confederates, and not to convert it into
an empire of subjects, assured to her a certain amount of respectful
sympathy in the jealous Greek world. Thus she afforded an object-lesson
in the advantages of rigid specialization. She provided her own food
in time of peace, and took her opponents’ food in time of war. The
disadvantages of her system were yet to appear. Athens on the other
hand was becoming more and more dependent on imported food. She was the
leader of the maritime states and islands: she had become their imperial
mistress. However easy her yoke might be in practice, it left no room
for independent action on the part of her subject allies: what had been
contributions from members of a league had become virtually imperial
taxation, and to Greek prejudices such taxation appeared tyranny. Nor was
this prejudice allowed to die out. The rival interests of commercial
Corinth saw to it that the enslavement, not of Greeks but of Greek
states, should be continually borne in mind. The contrast between the
two leading powers was striking. But, if many Greek states feared in
Athens a menace to their several independence, on the other hand they
shrank from copying the rigid discipline of Sparta. No wonder that some
of the more imaginative minds had dreams of a system more congenial to
Greek aspirations. But the land-question was a stumbling-block. That a
citizen should take an active personal share in politics was assumed, and
that he should do this tended to make him depute non-political duties to
others. Thus the notion that all citizens should be equal in the eye of
the law and share in government—democracy in short—was not favourable to
personal labour on the land. No distribution of land-lots could convert
the city politician into a real working farmer. Therefore either there
must be a decline in agriculture or an increase of slave-labour, or both.
From these alternatives there was no escape: but ingenious schemers long
strove to find a way. And from those days to these no one has succeeded
in constructing a sound and lasting civilization on a basis of slavery.
XV. PLATO.
An Athenian who died in 347 BC at the age of 80 or 82 years had witnessed
extraordinary changes in the Hellenic world, more particularly in the
position of Athens. With the political changes we are not here directly
concerned. But they were closely connected with economic changes, both as
cause and as effect. The loss of empire[294] entailed loss of revenue.
The amounts available as state-pay being reduced, the poorer citizens
lost a steady source of income: that their imperial pride had departed
did not tend to make them less sensitive to the pinch of poverty. Athens,
thrown back upon her own limited resources, had to produce what she could
in order to buy what she needed, and capital, employing slave-labour,
found its opportunity. In this atmosphere discontent and jealousy grew
fast: conflicting interests of rich and poor were at the back of all
the disputes of political life. Athens it is true avoided the crude
revolutionary methods adopted in some less civilized states. The Demos
did not massacre or banish the wealthy Few, and share out their lands
and other properties among the poor Many. But they consistently regarded
the estates of the rich as the source from which the public outlay
should as far as possible be drawn. They left the capitalist free to
make money in his own way, and squeezed him when he had made it. Whether
he were citizen or metic[295] mattered not from the economic point of
view. Capitalistic industry was really slave-industry. The ‘small man’
had the choice of either competing, perhaps vainly, with the ‘big man’
on the land or in the workshop, or of giving up the struggle and using
his political power to make the ‘big man’ disgorge some of his profits.
Moreover military life no longer offered the prospects of conquest and
gain that had made it attractive. The tendency was to treat the citizen
army as a defensive force, and to employ professional mercenaries (of
whom there was now[296] no lack) on foreign service. To a thoughtful
observer these phenomena suggested uneasy reflexions. Demos in Assembly
was a dispiriting spectacle. Selfish[297] and shortsighted, he cared
more for his own belly and his amusements than for permanent interests
of state. Perhaps this was no new story. But times had changed, and the
wealthy imperial Athens, able to support the burden of her own defects,
had passed away. Bad government in reduced circumstances might well be
productive of fatal results.
It was not Athens alone that had failed. Fifteen years before
Plato’s death the failure of both Sparta and Thebes had left Hellas
exhausted[298] and without a leading state to give some sort of unity
to Greek policy. There was still a common Hellenic feeling, but it was
weak compared with separatist jealousy. Antipathy to the Barbarian
remained: but the Persian power had been called in by Greeks to aid them
against other Greeks, and this was a serious danger to the Greek world.
Things were even worse in the West. How anarchic democracy had paved the
way for military tyranny at Syracuse, how the tyranny had lowered the
standard of Greek civilization in Sicily and Italy, and had been the
ruin of Greek cities, no man of that age knew better than Plato. Plato
was not singular in his distrust of democracy: that attitude was common
enough. Among the companions of Socrates I need only refer to Xenophon
and Critias. Socrates had insisted that government is a difficult art,
for success in which a thorough training is required. Now, whatever
might be the case in respect of tyrannies or oligarchies, democracy
was manifestly an assertion of the principle that all citizens were
alike qualified for a share in the work of government. Yet no craftsman
would dream of submitting the work of his own trade to the direction of
amateurs. Why then should the amateur element, led by amateurs, dominate
in the sphere of politics? It was easy to find instances of the evil
effects of amateurism in public affairs. It is true that this line of
argument contained a fallacy, as arguments from analogy very often
do. But it had a profound influence on Plato, and it underlay all his
political speculations. It was reinforced by an influence that affected
many of his contemporaries, admiration of Sparta on the score of the
permanence[299] of her system of government. That this admiration was
misguided, and the permanence more apparent than real, matters not: to a
Greek thinker it was necessarily attractive, seeking for some possibly
permanent principle of government, and disgusted with the everlasting
flux of Hellenic politics. Nor was there anything strange in imagining an
ideal state in which sound principles might be carried into effect. The
foundation of colonies, in which the settlers made a fresh start as new
communities, was traditionally a Greek custom. Such was the foundation,
logical and apparently consistent with experience, on which Plato
designed to build an Utopia. Avoiding the unscientific _laisser-faire_ of
democratic politics, functions were to be divided on a rational system,
and government placed in the hands of trained specialists.
It is well to note some of the defects of Greek civilization as Plato
saw it, particularly in Athens. The confusion and weakness of democratic
government, largely the fruit of ignorance haste and prejudice, has
been referred to above. In most states the free citizen population
were born and bred at the will of their fathers under no scientific
state-regulation, not sifted out in youth by scientific selection, and
only trained up to the average standard locally approved. Something
better was needed, if more was to be got out of human capacity. But it
seems certain that Plato found the chief and most deep-seated source
of social and political evils in the economic situation. The unequal
distribution of wealth and the ceaseless struggle between rich and
poor lay at the root of that lack of harmonious unity in which he saw
the cause of the weakness and unhappiness of states. To get rid of
the plutocrat and the beggar[300] was a prime object. Confiscation
and redistribution[301] offered no lasting remedy, so long as men
remained what they were. A complete moral change was necessary, and this
could only be effected by an education that should train all citizens
cheerfully and automatically to bear their several parts in promoting
the happiness of all. There must be no more party-strivings after
the advantage of this or that section: the guiding principle must be
diversity of individual functions combined with unity of aim. An ideal
state must be the Happy Land of the Expert, and each specialist must
mind his own business. Thus each will enjoy his own proper happiness:
friction competition and jealousy will pass away. There will be no more
hindrance to the efficiency of craftsmen: we shall not see one tempted
by wealth[302] to neglect his trade, while another is too poor to buy
the appliances needed for turning out good work. The expert governors
or Guardians must be supplied with all necessaries[303] by the classes
engaged in the various forms of production. Thus only can they be removed
from the corruptions that now pervert politicians. To them at least all
private property must be denied. And, in order that they may be as expert
in their own function of government as other craftsmen are in their
several trades, they must be bred selected and educated on a strictly
scientific system the very opposite of the haphazard methods now in vogue.
This brief sketch of the critical and constructive scope of the
_Republic_ must suffice for my purpose. Plato laid his finger on grave
defects, but his remedies seem fantastic in the light of our longer and
more varied experience. Any reform of society had to be carried out
by human agency, and for the difficulty of adapting this no adequate
allowance is made. He recognizes the difficulty of starting an ideal
community on his model. Old prejudices will be hard to overcome. So he
suggests[304] that it will be necessary for the philosophical rulers
to clear the ground by sending all the adult inhabitants out into
the country, keeping in the city only the children of ten years and
under: these they will train up on their system. He implies that with
the younger generation growing up under properly regulated conditions
the problems of establishment will solve themselves by the effect of
time. This grotesque proposal may indicate that Plato did not mean his
constructive design to be taken very seriously. But a more notable
weakness appears in the narrowness of outlook. It was natural that a
Greek should think and write as a Greek for Greeks, and seek lessons in
Greek experience. But the blight of disunion and failure was already
on the little Greek states; and their experience, not likely to recur,
has in fact never really recurred. Hence the practical value of Plato’s
stimulating criticism and construction is small. In the labour-question
we find no advance. Slavery is assumed as usual, but against the
enslavement of Greeks, of which recent warfare supplied many examples,
he makes[305] a vigorous protest. Euripides had gone further than this,
and questionings of slavery had not been lacking. Another very Greek
limitation of view comes out in the contempt[306] for βαναυσία, the
assumed physical and moral inferiority of persons occupied in sedentary
trades. That such men were unfitted for the rough work of war, and
therefore unfitted to take part in ruling an independent Greek state,
was an opinion not peculiar to Plato. But this objection could not well
be raised against the working farmer. Why then does Plato exclude the
farmer-class from a share in the government of his ideal state? I think
we may detect three reasons. First, the husbandman, though necessary
to the state’s existence, has not the special training required for
government, nor the leisure to acquire it. Second, it is his intense
occupation that alone secures to the ruling class the leisure needful for
their responsible duties. Third, the belief[307] that a man cannot be at
the same time a good husbandman and a good soldier. These three may be
regarded as one: the philosopher would get rid of haphazard amateurism
by making the expert specialist dominant in all departments of civil and
military life. The influence of the Spartan system (much idealized), and
the growth of professional soldiering, on his theories is too obvious to
need further comment.
Reading the _Republic_ from the labour-question point of view, one is
struck by the lack of detail as to the condition of the classes whose
labour feeds and clothes the whole community. We must remember that the
dialogue starts with an attempt to define Justice, in the course of which
a wider field of inquiry is opened up by assuming an analogy[308] between
the individual and the state. As the dominance of his nobler element over
his baser elements is the one sure means of ensuring the individual’s
lasting happiness, so the dominance of the nobler element in the state
alone offers a like guarantee. On these lines the argument proceeds,
using an arbitrary psychology, and a fanciful political criticism to
correspond. The construction of a model state is rather incidental than
essential to the discussion. No wonder that, while we have much detail
as to the bodily and mental equipment of the ‘Guardians’ (both the
governing elders and the warrior youths) we get no information as to the
training of husbandmen and craftsmen. Like slaves, they are assumed to
exist: how they become and remain what they are assumed to be, we are
not told. We are driven to guess that at this stage of his speculations
Plato was content to take over these classes just as he found them in
the civilization of his day. But he can hardly have imagined that they
would acquiesce in any system by which they would be excluded from all
political power. The hopeless inferiority of the husbandman is most
clearly marked when contrasted with the young warriors of the ‘Guardian’
class. Duties are so highly specialized that men are differentiated
for life. The γεωργὸς cannot be a good soldier. But if a soldier
shews cowardice he is to be punished[309] by being made a γεωργὸς or
δημιουργός—a degradation in itself, and accompanied by no suggestion of
a special training being required to fit him for his new function. It is
unnecessary to enlarge on such points: constructors of Utopias cannot
avoid some inconsistencies and omissions. The simple fact is that the
arrangements for differentiation of classes in the model state are not
fully worked out in detail.
Plato’s Guardians are to have no private property; for it is private
property[310] that seems to him the cause of sectional and personal
interests which divide and weaken the state and lead to unhappiness. But
the other classes are not so restricted. They can own land and houses
etc; on exactly what tenure, is less clear. Meanwhile, what is it that
the Guardians have in common? It is the sustenance (τροφὴ) provided as
pay (μισθὸς) for their services by the mass of workers over whom they
rule. It is expressly stated[311] that in the model state the Demos will
call the Rulers their Preservers and Protectors, and the Rulers call the
Demos their Paymasters and Sustainers. In existing states other than
democracies their mutual relation is too often expressed as that of
Masters and Slaves. I cannot refrain from noting that, if the pay of the
Guardians consists in their sustenance, this is so far exactly the case
of slaves. That power and honour should be reserved for men maintained
thus, without private emoluments, is remarkable. The Spartiates, however
much an idealizing of their system may have suggested the arrangement,
were maintained by the sulky labour of Helot serfs. Are the husbandmen in
Plato’s scheme really any better than Helots? In describing the origin
of states in general, Plato finds the cause[312] of that development in
the insufficiency of individuals to meet their own needs. But in tracing
the process of the division of labour, and increasing complexity of
civilization, he ignores slavery, though slavery is often referred to
in various parts of the book. Now, if the husbandman has under him no
slaves, and is charged with the food-supply of his rulers, he comes very
near to the economic status of a serf. He works with his own hands, but
not entirely at his own will or for his own profit. And in one respect he
would, to Greek critics, seem inferior to a Spartan[313] Helot: he is, by
the extreme specializing system, denied all share in military service,
and so can hardly be reckoned a citizen at all. How came Plato to imagine
for a single moment that a free Greek would acquiesce in such a position?
I can only guess that the present position of working farmers and
craftsmen in trades seemed to him an intolerable one. If, as I believe
from the indications in Xenophon and other authorities, agriculture
and the various industries of Attica were now steadily passing into
the hands of slaveowning capitalists, and small men going to the wall,
there would be much to set a philosopher thinking and seeking some
way of establishing a wholesomer state of things. On this supposition
speculations, however fantastic and incapable of realization in fact,
might call attention to practical evils and at least prepare men’s minds
for practical remedies. In admitting the difficulty of making a fresh
start, and the certainty that even his model state would in time lose its
purity[314] and pass through successive phases of decay, Plato surely
warns us not to take his constructive scheme seriously. But whether
he really believed that free handworkers could (save in an oligarchy,
which[315] he detests,) be induced to submit to a ruling class, and be
themselves excluded on principle from political interests of any kind, is
more than I can divine.
That the scheme outlined in the _Republic_ was not a practical one was
confessed by Plato in his old age by producing the _Laws_, a work in
which the actual circumstances of Greek life were not so completely
disregarded. The main points that concern us are these. Government is to
be vested in a detailed code of laws, administered by magistrates elected
by the citizens. There is a Council and an Assembly. Pressure is put upon
voters, especially[316] on the wealthier voters, to make them vote. The
influence of the Solonian model is obvious. Provision is made[317] for
getting over the difficulties of the first start, while the people are
still under old traditions which the new educational system will in due
course supersede. But, so far from depending on perfect Guardians with
absolute power, and treating law as a general pattern[318] modifiable in
application by the Guardians at their discretion, we have law supreme and
Guardians dependent on the people’s will. It is a kind of democracy, but
Demos is to be carefully trained, and protected from his own vagaries
by minute regulations. The number of citizens[319] is by law fixed at
5040. Each one has an allotment of land, a sacred κλῆρος that cannot
be sold. This passes by inheritance from father to son as an undivided
whole. Extinction of a family may be prevented by adoptions under strict
rules. Excess of citizen population may be relieved by colonies. Poverty
is excluded[320] by the minimum guaranteed in the inalienable land-lot,
excessive wealth by laws fixing a maximum. It is evident that in this
detailed scheme of the _Laws_ agriculture must have its position more
clearly defined than in the _Republic_.
So indeed it has. In order that all may have a fair share, each
citizen’s land-lot[321] is in two parts, one near the city, the other
near the frontier. Thus we see that all citizens will be interested
in cultivating the land. We see also that this will be absolutely
necessary: for it is intended[322] that the model state shall not be
dependent on imported food (like Athens), but produce its own supply.
Indeed commerce is to be severely restricted. What the country cannot
produce must if necessary be bought, and for this purpose only[323]
will a recognized Greek currency be employed: internal transactions
will be conducted with a local coinage. The evil effects[324] seen to
result from excessive commercial dealings will thus be avoided. When
we turn to the agricultural labour-question, we find that wholesale
employment of slaves[325] or serfs is the foundation of the system. For
Plato, holding fast to the principle of specialization, holds also that
leisure[326] is necessary for the citizens if they are to bear their part
in politics with intelligent judgment. As, in this second-best Utopia,
the citizens are the landowners, and cannot divest themselves of their
civic responsibilities, they must do their cultivating by deputy. And
this practically amounts to building the fabric of civilization on a
basis of slavery—nothing less. In the matter of agriculture, the industry
on which this self-sufficing community really rests, this dependence
on slave-labour is most striking. It even includes a system[327] of
serf-tenants (probably for the borderland farms) who are to be left
to cultivate the land, paying a rent or quota of produce (ἀπαρχὴ) to
the owners. The importance of not having too large a proportion[328]
of the slaves in a gang drawn from any one race is insisted on as a
means of preventing combinations and risings. At the same time careful
management is enjoined, sympathetic[329] but firm: a master should be
kind, but never forget that he is a master: no slave must be allowed to
take liberties. To implant a sound tradition of morality is recognized
as a means of promoting good order in the community, and this influence
should be brought to bear[330] on slaves as well as on freemen. Yet
the intrinsic chattelhood of the slave appears clearly in many ways;
for instance, the damage to a slave is made good by compensating[331]
his owner. The carelessness of ill-qualified practitioners[332] who
treat slaves, contrasted with the zeal of competent doctors in treating
freemen, is another significant touch.
It seems then that Plato, the more he adapts his speculations to
the facts of existing civilization, the more positively he accepts
slave-labour as a necessary basis. The conception of government
as an art is surely the chief cause of this attitude. The extreme
specialization of the _Republic_ is moderated in the _Laws_, but there
is not much less demand for leisure, if the civic artists are to be
unhampered in the practice of their art. Of the dangers[333] of servile
labour on a large scale he was well aware, and he had evidently studied
with attention[334] the awkward features of serfdom, not only in the
old Hellas, but in the Greek colonial states of the East and West.
Nevertheless he would found his economy on the forced labour of human
chattels. A system that had grown up in the course of events, extending
or contracting according to changes of economic circumstance, was thus
presented as the deliberate result of independent thought. But the
only theory at the back of traditional slavery was the law[335] of
superior force—originally the conqueror’s will. Plato was therefore
driven to accept this law as a principle of human society. To accept
it was to bring his speculations more into touch with Greek notions;
for no people have surpassed the Greeks in readiness to devolve upon
others the necessary but monotonous drudgery of life. This attitude of
his involves the conclusion that the Barbarian is to serve the Greek, a
position hardly consistent with his earlier[336] doctrine, that no true
line could be drawn distinguishing Greek and Barbarian. Such a flux of
speculative opinion surely weakens our respect for Plato’s judgment in
these matters. We can hardly say that he offers any effective solution of
the great state-problems of his age. But that these problems were serious
and disquieting his repeated efforts bear witness. And one of the most
serious was certainly that of placing the agricultural interest on a
sound footing. Its importance he saw: but neither of his schemes, neither
passive free farmers nor slave-holding landlords, was likely to produce
the desired result. To say this is not to blame a great man’s failure.
Centuries have passed, and experience has been gained, without a complete
solution being reached: the end is not yet.