Two examples spring to mind regarding Plato’s formulations of 2,500 years ago which have in some sense “worked out” in modern times: the “banishment of the poets” and the “parable of the cave.”
First, Poetry. Theodor Adorno wrote in 1949:
“Cultural criticism finds itself today faced with the final state of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.” [“Culture Critique and Society,” Prisms, (a collection of essays published in 1955).]
At the time, few people - not least poets - heard or heeded Adorno. The post-war poets carried on rhyming and free-forming; and the academic custodians of the “cannon” carried on cannonizing in self-satisfied contemplation. But in considering the emergence of new poets in last 40 years it would be hard to think of an English poet who most people can name, let alone quote. A few good poets emerged in the late-1970s and early 1980s like Benjamin Zephania, Linton Kwesi Johnson (who straddled the reggae scene and John Cooper-Clark (the Punk Poet). And of course, human creativity being what is, people will still play with words, make musical sound and paint pictures. But since the 1960s the media, under so-called free-competition, has been increasingly awash with monotonous repetition: especially in the art of what used to be called film. Plato’s Parable of the Cave – with the staged tricks of the light to fool the enslaved “audience” into thinking no other world is possible - is surely the prototype for cinema/television, which is where trained poets and other artists now find employment.
On the other hand, no capitalist would want to live in a Republic like Plato’s. For Plato would exclude from state power all those who pursue wealth at the expense of others; and, to make sure they stay excluded, he would forbid any individual from accumulating great wealth. Plato attaches very little credence to "opinion" - whether private or public. For him truths are universals, as timeless as the soul, and a long and arduous journey of the mind is needed to find them. Therefore, Plato argues, the philosophers dedicated to the ideal Form of the Good should rule the Republic.
Plato sees the philosophical understanding of the soul as essential for running a harmonious, organic society. He divides the soul into three parts: the rational, which desires wisdom; the passionate, which desires power and honour; and the concupiscent, which desires food, comfort and sex. The threefold division corresponds to the hierarchy of classes in the Republic. At the top of the social pyramid are the Philosophers; in the middle are the Guardians - responsible for education and administration - and the Military; and at the base are the Multitude, the artisans, labourers, farmers and merchants (slaves are curiously absent from Plato's formulation, presumably because he presupposed slavery as the economic basis for any society, no matter how Ideal).
The Guardians do not own property and are required to live an ascetic monkish life, provided for by the producers of wealth. Above the Guardians in the hierarchy, the ruling community of philosophers practice communism: owning all things in common and women allowed equal status..Given the top-down communist aspect of Plato’s Republic, it is hardly surprising that with the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, Plato came back to haunt the bourgeoisie. Bertrand Russell wrote of Lenin’s Bolsheviks in 1921:
“The Communist Party corresponds to the guardians; the soldiers have about the same status in both; there is in Russia an attempt to deal with family life more or less as Plato suggested.… the parallel is extraordinarily exact between Plato's Republic and the regime which the better Bolsheviks are endeavouring to create.”
However, soon enough, under Stalinism, any notion of Plato the proto-Bolshevik was abandoned. In Stalinist philosophical circles Plato was denounced as “idealist,” “reactionary,” “elitist,” “religious cultist” and even "proto-fascist." The Communist Party Hellenist, Benjamin Farrington, found the makings of a “materialist”challenger to Platonist-idealism in the Atomist philosopher Epicurus. Because Epicurus challenged the anthropomorphic conception of the gods. Farrington claimed him as the founder of a “popular theology” for the “average man” which was "scientifically true".
In response the Cambridge social democrat, Frances MacDonald Cornford, pointed out that the Atomist method had nothing in common with "scientific" methodology based on empirical observation, and wryly commented:
“An impartial critic (if there was such a person) might wonder how the average man could be expected to feel any religious devotion towards gods who were (like Epicurus himself) egoistic hedonists… indifferent to human concerns…”
George Thomson, another Communist, claimed that Plato, "for the further security of his ruling class, drew up a fantastic system of education designed to poison the minds of the people by dissemination of calculated lies." Certainly, Plato argues that the masses can never be educated.to the point of being able to govern. But if the "ruling class" consists of the better-off seekers of wealth and pleasure whose desires are as uneducated as the hoi polloi's then Plato would exclude them from ruling and feed them moral truths, on trust, and in non-philosophic forms such as fable and myth.
Arguably myth in this sense does is not the same as the “noble lie.” For Plato, myth is just another form of the truth, and can be seen as no more harmful than a parable in the New Testament or a clause about "socialism" in the New Labour party constitution. Mythology promotes national identity (with “imagined communities”) – whether disseminated by a Delphic oracle or a globalised television channel. Hesiod’s myth of the races of Gold, Iron and Silver reinforces Plato’s argument that not all men are born with the same talents and capacities. Plato, however, argues that although superior qualities are usually hereditary, this is not always the case; they may appear in any strata. In any case those fit to govern can be identified through a universal system of education; and those of the privileged classes who are unfit to govern can be weeded out.
In later years Bertrand Russell might have noticed the relevance of Plato’s Nocturnal Council, which appears in the Laws as the Guardians with secret special powers for monitoring the politically incorrect and enforcing Virtue in the mythical city of "Magnesia." The Nocturnal Council could be seen as an ideal prototype of the Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (the Cheka, forerunner of the KGB). In any case the “better Bolsheviks” were soon to be consigned to the Gulag and the firing squads by their upwardly-mobile fellow Guardians.
Another thing that puts some distance between Plato’s Republic and today’s globalised capitalism, is that he conceived of a “strong and stable” society: another myth held out as “change” by today’s extreme war-mongering centrists. In a present-day world of competing blocs for world-domination, the fetish of the commodity has globalised secrecy with dangerous and intrusive techology. As Guy Debord, sensing the drift in 1988, put it in Commentary on the Society of the Spectacle:
“Society's owners indeed want above all to keep a certain 'social relation between people', but they must also maintain continual technological innovation; for that was one of the obligations that came with their inheritance. This law must also thus apply to the services which safeguard domination. When an instrument has been perfected it must be used, and its use will reinforce the very conditions that favour this use. Thus it is that emergency procedures become standard procedures.”
In conclusion it would seem that Plato, though no firm friend of today’s bourgeoisie, might be a most troublesome ally for the Left. In a future article I will discuss Aristotle and Anarchism.
References
Bertrand Russell Theory and Practice of Bolshevism http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/7/3/5/17350/17350.htm]
FM Cornford, ‘The Marxist View of Ancient Philosophy’ in The Unwritten Philosophy p36. Cambridge 1950
Peter Fenves, 'Marx's Doctoral Thesis on Two Greek Atomists and the Post-Kantian Interpretations.' Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1986)
Brian Calvert, 'Slavery in Plato's Republic', The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 37, No. 2 (1987), pp. 367-372
George Thomson, 'Aeschylus and Athens' London 1941