Platonic Commonwealth — only an outline — partially filled up.
If, following the example of Aristotle, we criticise the Platonic Republic as a scheme of political constitution, we find that on most points which other theorists handle at considerable length, Plato is intentionally silent. His project is an outline and nothing more. He delineates fully the brain and heart of the great Leviathan, but leaves the rest in very faint outline. He announces explicitly the purpose of all his arrangements, to obtain happiness for the whole city: by which he means, not happiness for the greatest number of individuals, but for the abstract unity called the City, supposed to be capable of happiness or misery, apart from any individuals, many or few, composing it.[14] Each individual is to do the work for which he is best fitted, contributory to the happiness of the whole — and to do nothing else. Each must be content with such happiness as consists with his own exclusive employment.[15]
[14] Plato, Republic, iv. pp. 420-421. The objection that the Guardians will have no happiness, is put by Plato into the mouth of Adeimantus, but is denied by Sokrates; who, however, says that even if it were true he could not admit it as applicable, since what he wishes is that the entire commonwealth shall be happy. Aristotle (Politic. ii. 5, 1264, 6-15) repeats the objection of Adeimantus, and declares that collective happiness (not enjoyed by some individuals) is impossible.
See the valuable chapter on Ideal Models in Politics (vol. ii. ch. xxii. p. 236 seq.) in Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s Treatise on the methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics. The different ideal models framed by theorists ancient and modern, Plato among the number, are there collected, with judicious remarks in comparing and appreciating them.
[15] Plato, Republic, iv. p. 421 C.
He lays down this minute sub-division and speciality of aptitude in individuals as a fundamental property of human nature. Repub. iii. p. 395 B, καὶ ἔτι γε τούτων φαίνεταί μοι εἰς σμικρότερα κατακεκερματίσθαι ἡ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσις, &c.
Compare Xenophon, Cyropæd. ii. 1, 21, where the same principle is laid down. Another passage in the same treatise (Cyropæd. viii. 2, 5) is also interesting. Xenophon there contrasts the smaller towns, where many trades were combined in the same hand and none of the works well performed, with the larger towns, where there was a minuter subdivision of labour, each man doing one work only, and doing it well.
Absolute rule of a few philosophers — Careful and peculiar training of the Guardians.
The Chiefs or Rulers are assumed to be both specially qualified and specially trained for the business of governing. Their authority is unlimited: they represent that One Infallible Wise Man, whom Plato frequently appeals to (in the Politikus, Kriton, Gorgias, and other dialogues), but never names. They are a very small number, perhaps only one: the persons naturally qualified being very few, and even they requiring the severest preparatory training. The Guardians, all of them educated up to a considerable point, both obey themselves the orders of these few Chiefs, and enforce obedience upon the productive multitude. Of this last-mentioned multitude, constituting numerically almost the whole city, we hear little or nothing: except that the division of labour is strictly kept up among them, and that neither wealth nor poverty is allowed to grow up.[16] How this is to be accomplished, Plato does not point out: nor does he indicate how the mischievous working (i.e., mischievous, in his point of view, and as he declares it) of the proprietary and the family relations is to be obviated. His scheme tacitly assumes that separate property and family are to subsist among the great mass of the community, but not among the Guardians: he proclaims explicitly, that if the proprietary relations or the family relations were permitted among the Guardians, entire corruption of their character would ensue.[17] Among the Demos or multitude, he postulates nothing except unlimited submission to the orders of the Rulers enforced through the Guardians. The regulative powers of the Rulers are assumed to be of omnipotent efficacy against every cause of mischief, subject only to one condition — That the purity of the golden breed, together with the Platonic training and discipline, are to be maintained among them unimpaired.
[16] Plato, Republic, iv. p. 421.