Labor and industry.—On the other hand, Plato has considerable insight into the rôle of labor in production. To be sure, he shares with the other philosophers a certain prejudice against manual labor as degrading to freemen.[[129]] The mechanical arts call forth reproach.[[130]] Free citizens should not be burdened with such ignoble occupations,[[131]] and any person who disobeys this rule shall lose his civic rights until he gives up his trade.[[132]] Agriculture alone shall be open to them, and only so much of this as will not cause them to neglect their higher welfare.[[133]] However, this prejudice has been read into some passages in Plato by a forced interpretation. The assertion of Socrates,[[134]] that craftsmen have not temperance (σωφροσύνη), since they do other people’s business, is made merely to draw Critias into the argument. The statement that all arts having for their function provision for the body are slavish,[[135]] does not necessarily imply prejudice against physical labor. Such arts are slavish, to Plato, because they have no definite principle of service as gymnastics has. He is merely illustrating the point that it is an inferior type of statesmanship that works without a definite principle for the highest political welfare. The idea, expressed in the Politics,[[136]] that the masses (πλῆθος) cannot acquire political science is a criticism against unprepared statesmanship rather than against labor. Indeed, Plato asserts the same of the wealthy.[[137]]
Moreover, the following facts should be observed: that the prejudice of Plato against the manual arts is chiefly limited to the Laws; that even there his prejudice is primarily against retail trade rather than against industry;[[138]] that in so far as a real hostility exists, its true source is not in any opposition to labor or industry per se, but rather in the political belief that only as citizens have leisure for politics can prepared statesmen take the place of superficial politicians,[[139]] and in the moral feeling that constant devotion merely to the physical necessities of life causes men to neglect the primary purpose of their existence.[[140]]
Modern scholars have usually been extreme in their interpretation of Plato on this point.[[141]] Such unwarranted generalizations as the following are common: “Il ne découvre dans les professions qui tendent au lucre qu’égoisme, bassesse d’esprit, dégradation des sentiments.” “Platon et Aristote voient dans le commerce et dans l’industrie deux plaies de la société; ils voudraient les extirper à’fond, si cela était possible.”[[142]] One of the worst misinterpretations has been perpetrated by Roscher, in inferring from the Republic (372 ff.) that Plato “das Leben der Gewerbetreibenden als ein Leben thierischen Behaglichkeit schildert, sie wohl mit Schweinen vergleicht.”[[143]] Such absurdities are unfortunately not rare, though they might be avoided by a careful reading, even in a translation.[[144]]
It should not be overlooked either that Plato’s utterances on labor are by no means all negative. Skilled labor is recognized in several of the minor dialogues as fulfilling an actual need in civilization. Laborers are represented as having their part in knowledge and virtue,[[145]] and are admitted to be the necessary foundation of all human well-being.[[146]] A positive interest is also manifested by Plato in labor and the proper development of the arts in both the Republic and the Laws. He constantly harps on the necessity of each doing his fitting work, and doing it well, and in his opinion happiness consists in this rather than in idleness.[[147]] Indeed, that each one perform well the task for which nature has fitted him is the definition of justice itself.[[148]] The indolent rich man is a parasite and a drone, a disease of the state. This is Plato’s favorite figure in both the Republic and the Laws, a figure that is suggestive of Hesiod, the pioneer champion of labor.[[149]] He is even ready to admit that it is, after all, not the kind of labor but the character of the workman that ennobles or degrades any work.[[150]] In fine, his attitude toward the mechanical arts is similar to that of Ruskin, who also thinks that manual labor is degrading.[[151]] But as with Plato, the chief secret of his prejudice lies in the fact that laborers usually do their work mechanically, without thought. He believes that “workmen ought often to be thinking, and thinkers ought often to be working.” He is willing to classify all work as liberal on this basis, the only distinction being the amount of skill required.[[152]] However, in agreement with Plato’s idea, he would set the roughest and least intellectual to the roughest work, and this he thinks to be “the best of charities” to them.[[153]] With Plato, he is also convinced that, under actual conditions of labor, the degradation is very difficult to avoid, and therefore he would emphasize chiefly agricultural labor, where education of head and hand are more fully realized.[[154]]
It is, however, in Plato’s constant insistence upon the principle of the division of labor, as a prerequisite for any success in the mechanical arts or elsewhere, that he reveals insight into, and interest in, productive labor. This is the basal idea in the Republic. It is also one of the chief regulations in the Laws, where its direct application to the artisan is a clear evidence that he appreciates the economic significance of the principle.[[155]] To him, it is the foundation of all human development. Society finds its source in mutual need (ἡ ἡμετέρα χρεία). Man is not self-sufficient (αὐτάρκης). Reciprocity is necessary even in the most primitive state.[[156]] Out of this necessary dependence arises the division of labor, a beneficent law, “since the product is larger, better, and more easily produced, whenever one man gives up all other business, and does one thing fitting to his nature, and at the opportune time.”[[157]]
The basis of this law Plato finds in the fact of the diversity of natures, which fits men for different tasks.[[158]] In this he differs from Adam Smith, who believes that the differences of natural talents in men are much less than is generally supposed. Smith makes the propensity to barter the source of specialization, which, in turn, is based on the interdependence of men. He thus considers the diversities in human nature to be the effect rather than the cause of the division of labor.[[159]] Plato, however, is probably nearer the truth, since the very reason for mutual interdependence is diversity of nature.[[160]]
The advantages of specialization, according to Plato,[[161]] are four, as stated above. It enables one to accomplish more work with greater ease, more skilfully, and at the proper season. The second and fourth of these are not mentioned by Adam Smith, but he notes the resulting increase in opulence for all the people, and the development of inventive genius. He also observes that the division of labor causes the growth of capital, and that this in turn increases specialization.[[162]] Of course Plato could not appreciate the important fact of the influence of the division of labor on the development of inventive genius, since he lived before the age of machinery.
Plato is also a forerunner of Adam Smith in his recognition of the fact that the division of labor depends for its advance upon a great increase in the size and complexity of the state.[[163]] It means a multiplication of trades, a development of industry,[[164]] the entrance of the retail trader (κάπηλος),[[165]] and the invention of money as a means of exchange.[[166]] The necessity of the division of labor between states is also recognized. It is impossible to establish a city where it will not be in need of imports (ἐπεισαγωγίμων). International trade therefore arises, and with it are born the merchant (ἔμπορος) and the sailor class, together with all those who are engaged in the labor of the carrying trade.[[167]] Thus Plato, the idealist, and reputed enemy of trade and industry, develops them directly out of the basal principle of his Republic. He appreciates the necessity of a full-fledged industry and commerce to the existence even of a primitive state, and his hostility to them is actually directed only against what he terms their unnatural use.[[168]] Moreover, in his opinion, one function of the division of labor should be to limit them to the performance of their proper tasks, and keep them from degenerating into mere money-making devices. It should also result in limiting such vocations to the less capable classes since the rulers should be artisans of freedom.[[169]]
It would take us too far afield to discuss the diverse ways in which Plato uses his principle. We may observe in passing, however, that he applies it to war, in his interesting criticism of the citizen-soldier;[[170]] to the finer arts, even when they are quite similar to each other;[[171]] to politics, as noted above; to justice and the moral life in general;[[172]] and to the intellectual life, in his unsparing criticism of the superficial versatility and dilettantism of the contemporary Athenian democracy, which trusts the government to any incompetent, professes to be able to imitate everything, and makes the many-sided Sophist (πολλαπλοῦς) the man of the hour.[[173]] Though he begins with the development of the principle as an economic fact, his primary interest in it is as a moral and intellectual maxim. The fact that the cobbler sticks to his last is only a symbol (εἴδωλον) of justice.[[174]] Nevertheless Plato does appreciate to a remarkable degree the economic bearings of the law, and his discussion of it is notably scientific and complete.[[175]] He sometimes pushes its application to an extreme, though such instances are perhaps meant in a playful Socratic vein.[[176]] At least, like Ruskin, he understands that extreme specialization must produce narrow and one-sided men, and that progress revolts against its too rigid application.[[177]] He is aware too that the division of labor breaks down in the case of the poor unemployed of the state, since they have no special work.[[178]]