However, Plato has no prejudice against moderate wealth. His sermons are directed against excessive commercialism, which puts money before the human interest,[[101]] thereby causing injustice, degenerate luxury, vicious extremes of wealth and poverty, political graft, individual inefficiency, and wars both within and without the state. Though his philosophy leads to asceticism, and his attitude toward wealth seems, on the surface, to breathe this spirit, yet Plato is not an ascetic in his doctrine of wealth, as is often wrongly asserted. He describes the true attitude as that which partakes of both pleasures and pains, not shunning, but mastering them.[[102]] He recognizes an assured competency to be practically a prerequisite for the development of the good life,[[103]] while, on the other hand, he considers poverty to be an evil only second to excessive wealth.[[104]]
To be sure, Plato’s demand for a limitation of private and national wealth, and his general negative attitude are, if interpreted rigidly, unfruitful and economically impossible.[[105]] It is not business that should be curbed, but bad business.[[106]] Individual or nation cannot become too prosperous, provided there is a proper distribution and a wise consumption of wealth, and Plato’s idea that great prosperity is incompatible with this goal can hardly be accepted by modern economists.
Nevertheless, there is much of abiding truth in his doctrine of wealth. Aside from the profound moral value of his main contention, we may state summarily several points in which he remarkably anticipated the thought of the more modern humanitarian economists: (1) in the fact that excessive private wealth is practically impossible without corresponding extremes of poverty, and that such a condition is a most fruitful cause of dissension in any state; (2) in the fact that extremes of wealth or poverty cause industrial inefficiency; (3) in the prevalent belief that no man can gain great wealth by just acquisition, since, even though he may have done no conscious injustice, his excessive accumulation has been due to unjust social conditions; (4) in the growing belief that expenditures of great private fortunes are not likely to be helpful either to individual or to community, but are too liable to be marked by foolish luxury and waste that saps the vitality of the nation; to Plato, such are mere drone consumers of the store (τῶν ἑτοίμων ἀναλωτής, ... κηφήν);[[107]] in this, he was a forerunner of Ruskin, who opposed the old popular fallacy that the expenditures of the wealthy, of whatever nature, benefit the poor;[[108]] (5) in the dominant note in economic thought today, so emphasized by Plato and Ruskin, that the prime goal of the science is human life at its best—as Ruskin states it, “the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures”;[[109]] (6) in the fact that the national demand for unlimited wealth is now recognized, as Plato taught, always to have been the most fruitful cause of international differences; (7) in the fact, which is receiving ever-greater recognition by modern economists and statesmen, that the innate quality of the object for good or harm must be considered in a true definition of economic wealth.[[110]]
PRODUCTION
Plato seems to have had little positive interest in the problems of production. He was too much engrossed with suggesting means for limiting excessive acquisition. He was, however, quite apt in his use of illustrations from industrial life.[[111]] He was also apparently the first to give a real classification of trades,[[112]] as follows: furnishers of raw materials (πρωτογενὲς εἶδος), makers of tools (ὅργανα), makers of vessels for conserving products (ἀγγεῖα), makers of vehicles (ὅχημα), manufacturers of clothing and means of defense (προβλήματα), workers in fine arts (παίγνιον), producers of food (θρέμμα)—a fairly inclusive catalogue for that age; if commerce and the learned professions were included. But some of the classes overlap, since they follow no necessary principle of division. He divided productive arts into co-operative (συναιτίους), which provide tools for manufacture, and principal (ἀιτίας), which produce the objects themselves.[[113]] They were further divided into productive arts (ποιητικαί), which bring something new into existence, and acquisitive (κτητικαί), which merely gain what already exists. In the latter class, he placed all commerce, science, and hunting.[[114]] Plato would thus appear to exclude commerce and the learned professions from the true sphere of production. This, however, is only apparent, in so far as legitimate exchange is concerned. He clearly understood that the merchant and retailer save the time of the other workers,[[115]] and that they perform a real service to the community, in that they make necessary exchange convenient and possible.[[116]] He thus recognized them as producers of a time and place value, and he cannot be accused of the physiocratic error, which denied productivity to all workers except those who produce directly from natural resources.[[117]] His distinction of productive and acquisitive arts can, furthermore, hardly be interpreted as intending to limit production to the material merely, though learning is relegated to the acquisitive class. Such an interpretation would be out of harmony with the whole trend of his thought.[[118]] His further classification of productive agencies as creative (ἕνεκα τοῦ ποιεῖν τι) or preventive (τοῦ μὴ πάσχειν)[[119]] substantiates this, for many of the preventive agencies are intellectual and scientific.
The general attitude of Plato toward economic production may be inferred from his insistence upon the thorough application of the division of labor for the perfection of industry.[[120]] He evidently recognized it as the necessary basis of all higher life. We have seen above, also that one of his chief objections to excessive wealth or poverty was the fact that they caused inefficiency in production.
Agriculture.—Of the three factors that enter into production—land, labor, and capital—the most important in the mind of the Greek thinkers was land. The relative prominence of agriculture was partly the cause of this, but in the case of the philosophers, their ethical passion, their idea of the necessity of leisure for personal development, and their conservative attitude toward industry and commerce were the chief motives that impelled them to urge their contemporaries back to the simple life of the farm.[[121]] The aristocratic feeling, still strong in European countries, that landed property is the most respectable, probably also had some influence, though land was not so distinctively in the hands of the upper classes in Attica.
Though the praise of agriculture was a characteristic feature of Greek literature in all periods, it was not at first a conscious economic theory.[[122]] Later, toward the end of the fifth century, it became a definite ethico-economic doctrine of the philosophers, as a criticism of their times, and as an appeal to what was deemed to be the more healthful life of the earlier days.
Plato does not devote so much attention to this theme as do Xenophon and Aristotle. His standpoint, however, is practically the same, though his tendency toward the physiocratic error is not so marked. In his second state, he orders that agriculture shall be the only means of money-making,[[123]] and he even strikes the modern note of conservation, in his directions for the care of land, waters, springs, and forests.[[124]] On this point, he and the other Greek thinkers accord well with the economy of the past decade with its urgent preachment, “Back to the land,” though the modern watchword has, of course, a more economic emphasis.
Capital.—Though the function of capital, aside from natural resources, was a familiar fact in the Athenian life of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.,[[125]] there is scarcely any consideration of it by the theorists before Aristotle. Plato has no definition of capital, nor indeed scarcely any recognition of the fact of its existence.[[126]] His emphasis on the virtue of economy, however, and his criticism of those who spend the “stored wealth,” imply the idea that wealth should be used not merely for enjoyment, but also for productive purposes.[[127]] His strictures upon interest show that he has but slight appreciation of the productive function of money-capital.[[128]]