[365]. Cf. pp. [59] f. and notes. The modern analogy is not close, yet in each case the aim is to prevent undue gains whereby the public is oppressed.
[367]. Cf. p. [59] and notes. The socialistic tendency to overemphasize the power of law is also strong here as in the Republic. But cf. p. [36], n. 4, and Laws 807B, 746A-B, 747B.
[368]. Time and Tide, IX, 5-9. Modern Painters, V, Pt. 8, chap. i, 6 (Vol. VII, 207). Espinas (Revue des Etudes Grecques, XXVII [1914], 246) calls this Platonic denial of “conflict of interest” in trade “le thème éternel de la chimère socialiste.”
[369]. Laws 626E: τὸ πολεμίους εἶναι πάντας πᾶσιν; cited by Poehlmann, op. cit., I, 557; but he exaggerates the analogy.
[370]. Cf. 742D-E, 743D-E, 729A, and the remarks on retail trade, 918B-919E, 870B; cf. also, above, on wealth.
[371]. As seen above, they are all slaves or strangers. A direct comparison is hardly possible, since in the Republic, the masses are the majority of the citizens, while in the Laws, there are none.
[372]. 744D; cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., IX (1914), 363: “Plato’s object, however, is not socialistic equalization of the ‘good things’ of life, but the enforced disinterestedness of the rulers, and the complete self-realization of every type of man, in limitation to his own proper sphere and task.”
[373]. Cf. pp. [55] and [60], on equality; also note 4, above.
[374]. Francotte (L’Industrie, II, 250) suggests that l’étatisme, “nationalism,” would be a more applicable term for the Laws. He distinguishes this from socialism, as being not so thoroughgoing a limitation of the individual as is the “socialism” of the Republic. Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., IX (1914), 358, on the famous “communistic” passage in Laws 739C: ὄντως ἐστὶ κοινὰ τὰ φίλων, etc. He calls it a “rhetorical exaltation of that ideal unity of civic feeling, which Demosthenes upbraids Aeschines for not sharing.” For further communistic ideas of Plato, cf. his incomplete romantic story of Atlantis in the Critias. The ideal is similar to that of the larger works. Cf. Poehlmann, op. cit., II, 348 ff.