Since the light thrown on the subject[282] by Dr Grundy, no one will dispute the importance of economic considerations in Greek policy, and in particular of the ever-pressing question of the food-supply. The security of the land and crops was to most states a vital need, and necessitated constant readiness to maintain it in arms. Closely connected therewith was the question of distribution. Real property was not only the oldest and most permanent investment. Long before Aristotle[283] declared that ‘the country is a public thing’ (κοινόν), that is an interest of the community, that opinion was commonly held, whether formulated or instinctive. The position of the landless man was traditionally a dubious one. The general rule was that only a citizen could own land in the territory of the state. From this it was no great step to argue that every citizen ought to own a plot of land within the borders. This was doubtless not always possible. In such a state as Corinth or Megara or Miletus commercial growth in a narrow territory had led to extensive colonization from those centres. And the normal procedure in the foundation of Greek colonies was to divide the occupied territory into lots (κλῆροι) and assign them severally to settlers. In course of time the discontents generated by land-monopolizing in old Hellas were liable to reappear beyond the seas, particularly in colonial states of rapid growth: a notorious instance is found in the troubles arising at Syracuse out of the squatter-sovranty created by the original colonists. We meet with plans for confiscation and redistribution of land as a common phenomenon of Greek revolutions. The mischievous moral effects of so unsettling a process on political wellbeing did not escape the notice of thoughtful observers. But on one important point we have practically no evidence. Did the new allottees wish to be, and in fact normally become, working farmers (αὐτουργοί)? Or did they aim at providing for themselves an easy life, supported by the labour of slaves? I wish I could surely and rightly decide between these alternatives. As it is, I can only say that I believe the second to be nearer the truth.
Under such conditions Greek lawgivers and theorists alike seem to have looked to much the same measures for remedying evils that they could not ignore. The citizen as landholder is the human figure with which they are all concerned. To prevent destitution arising from the loss[284] of his land-lot is a prime object. Some therefore would forbid the sale of the lot. To keep land in the same hands it was necessary to regulate numbers of citizen households, and this was attempted[285] in the laws of Pheidon. Families may die out, so rules to provide for perpetuity by adoptions[286] were devised by Philolaus. Again, there is the question of the size of the lots, and this raises the further question of a limit to acquisition. Such a limitation is attributed[287] to certain early lawgivers not named, and with them apparently to Solon. Phaleas would insist on equality of landed estate[288] among his citizens: a proposal which Aristotle treats as unpractical, referring to only one form of wealth, and leaving out of account slaves, tame animals, coin, and the dead-stock tools etc. His exclusive attention to internal civic wellbeing is also blamed, for it is absurd to disregard the relations of a state to other states: there must be a foreign policy, therefore you must provide[289] military force. The fanciful scheme of Hippodamus, a strange doctrinaire genius, seems to have been in many points inconsistent from want of attention to practical detail. From Aristotle’s account he appears not to have troubled himself with the question of equal land-lots, but his fixing the number[290] of citizens (10,000) is evidence that his point of view necessitated a limit. He proceeds on a system of triads. The citizens are grouped in three classes, artisans (τεχνῖται), husbandmen (γεωργοί), and the military, possessors of arms. The land is either sacred (for service of religion, ἱερά), public (δημοσία or κοινή) or the property of the husbandmen (ἰδία). The three classes of land and citizens are to be assumed equal. The military are to be supported by the produce of the public land. But who cultivates it? Aristotle shews that the scheme is not fully thought out. If the soldiers, then the distinction, obviously intended, between soldier and farmer, is lost. If the farmers, then the distinction between the public and private land is meaningless. If neither, a fourth class, not allowed for in the plan, will be required. This last is probably what Hippodamus meant: but to particularize the employment of slaves may have appeared superfluous. Into the purely constitutional details I need not enter, but one criticism is so frankly expressive of Greek ideas that it can hardly be omitted. What, says Aristotle, is the use of political rights to the artisans and husbandmen? they are unarmed, and therefore will practically be slaves of the military class. This was the truth in Greek politics generally, and is one of the most significant facts to be borne in mind when considering the political failure of the Greeks.
A curious difference of economic view is shewn in the position assigned to the artisan[291] or craftsman element by Hippodamus and Phaleas respectively. Phaleas would have them state-slaves (δημόσιοι), Hippodamus makes them citizens, though unarmed. On the former plan the state would no doubt feed them and use their produce, as we do with machinery. Of the latter plan Aristotle remarks that τεχνῖται are indispensable: all states need them, and they can live of the earnings of their crafts, but the γεωργοὶ as a distinct class are superfluous. We may reply that, if the craftsmen live of their earnings and stick to their several crafts, they will need to buy food, and the farmers are surely there to supply it. The reply is so obvious that one feels as if Aristotle’s meaning had been obscured through some mishap to the text. For the present purpose it suffices that the professional craftsmen in these two Utopias are to be either actual slaves or citizens de iure who are de facto as helpless as slaves. In the scheme of Hippodamus the farmer-class also are virtually the slaves of the military. Another notable point, apparently neglected by Hippodamus, is the trust reposed in education[292] or training by both Phaleas and his critic. How to implant in your citizens the qualities needed for making your institutions work well in practice, is the problem. Phaleas would give all the same training, on the same principle as he gives equal land-lots. To Aristotle this seems crude nonsense: the problem to him is the discovery of the appropriate training, whether the same for all or not. This insistence on training as the main thing in citizen-making is, as we shall see, a common feature of Greek political speculation. But in the artistic desire to produce the ‘complete citizen,’ and thereby make possible a model state, the specializing mania outruns the humbler considerations of everyday human society, and agriculture, for all its confessed importance, is apt to be treated with something very like contempt. The tendency to regard farmer and warrior as distinct classes is unmistakeable. The peasant-soldier of Roman tradition is not an ordinary Greek figure. How far the small scale of Greek states may have favoured this differentiation is very hard to say. But Greek admiration for the athlete type had probably something to do with the growth of military professionalism.
The recognition of a land-question and attempts to find a solution were 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.