CHAPTER I THE GREEK TRADITION

AT what point a history of socialism should begin is a question which might give occasion to high argument. There are some who hold that we merely becloud our judgment if we allow ourselves to speak of socialism before the middle of the eighteenth century, or perhaps even somewhat later. On this view socialism is essentially a manifestation of the proletarian spirit; or, if socialism is not necessarily proletarian in character and origin, it at least postulates a society which tends to be comprehensive in its membership. Accordingly, it is suggested that a society which assumes for its efficient working the existence of a slave population, denied all rights, may at times speak a language suggestive of socialism, but it can know nothing of socialism as that word has been understood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The existence of a serf or slave population may in certain respects add a complication to life; but in other directions it quite obviously enormously simplifies the social and political problems of existence, as these are presented to that section of the population who are not slaves. On this view, a history of socialism should probably begin among these first ripples and disturbances which presaged the deluge of the French Revolution.

As against this view, which looks on socialism as something which cannot be dissociated from the social and political conditions of the last century and a half, there are some who carry their excavations for the roots of socialism not merely to ancient Greece, but to ancient China and to the early days of the children of Israel, and who accord a place in the socialist temple to Moses, in virtue of certain provisions in the Mosaic Law; and to Isaiah, in virtue of his poetic sensitiveness to the wrongs of this world.

If we are strict, it is probably to the former of these views that we should incline. We shall see presently how futile to our present-day mind is the justice and the equality of a State which attains these elevated aims by building on the slavery and oppression of the overwhelming majority of the population. Yet it does not follow that the history of socialism can exclude all that happened before the eighteenth century. Lycurgus and the polity of Sparta may in fact have little to teach us. The community of life which Minos introduced into Crete may have no point of contact with our modern needs. Plato, to ascend to higher names, may have dreamed a dream which would be but a nightmare to-day, if any attempt were made to realise it. Yet throughout the ages, somewhat surprisingly, the limitations imposed by the assumptions of Sparta and Athens have been overlooked. Plato and Lycurgus, to mention no others, have been permanent influences in moulding communist theory. This is particularly true of Plato, though at times (as in Mably) Lycurgus runs him hard. It would be an unpardonable exaggeration to say that all communism and egalitarianism derive from Plato; but on the more visionary and Utopian side, he is everywhere. Like the fabled tree of the nursery, his evergreen branches have given support and shelter to all manner of strange birds, great and small:

Tous les oiseaux du monde vont y faire leurs nids.

Even if the ‘socialism’ of antiquity has, in its own right, no claim to be considered as an integral element in a history of socialism, its representatives demand attention as inspirers of socialism in others in much later centuries.

This subsequent appeal to Greece, as the presumed holder of the original title-deeds of socialism, has been made on two grounds. On the one hand, Greece, in its highly variegated political life, is presumed to have given examples of the actual functioning of the communistic way of life. Here, of course, it is pre-eminently Sparta that has fascinated later ages; though Crete also enters into the picture—and to a much lesser extent, Lipara. On the other hand, Greece has supplied the theory and the vision of Communism. On this side, needless to say, it is Plato, in The Republic and The Laws, who in himself very largely constitutes the legacy of Greece. Before approaching Plato, the begetter of much socialism which he would have disowned, it may be advisable to glance, even if hastily, at Greek communism in practice.

According to tradition, Sparta was the handiwork of Lycurgus; but what may any one profitably or usefully say regarding this obscure personality, of whom even Plutarch says that there is nothing concerning him that is not the subject of dispute? This original lawgiver, on whose persuasive powers the socialist laws of Sparta rested, is indeed a shadowy figure—a kind of cross between Moses and King Arthur. If we accept Plutarch's account, Lycurgus was oppressed by the glaring contrast between riches and poverty, the vast number of poor and landless on the one hand, and, on the other, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals—almost a Marxian vision. And so—although surely external circumstances must have reinforced his arguments—he persuaded the Spartans to agree to a new distribution of lands on a basis of equality, and by other measures he weaned them from the love of silver and gold, and led them to adopt that harsh simplicity of life which the very name of Sparta has come to connote. Plutarch's description is of interest because, waiving the question of its historical accuracy, it gives a very adequate definition of the ideal communistic state, as ideally imagined by countless later generations. In general, he says,

he trained his fellow-citizens to have neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves; but like bees they were to make themselves always integral parts of the whole community, clustering together about their leader, almost beside themselves with enthusiasm and noble ambition, and to belong wholly to their country.¹

Thus Plutarch, of the influence of a man who is after all but the shadow of a shade, and who, it may be, was more or less imagined in order that his influence might explain what was.

Whether or not Lycurgus succeeded in abolishing ‘all the mass of pride, envy, crime and luxury’ which flowed from the previous state of inequality—indeed, whether or not Lycurgus ever existed—Sparta, with her remarkable system of government and institutions, certainly did exist, and these are in a way something of a portent. The symmetry of her constitution, her clear consciousness of the end for which, in Sparta at least, the State existed, the rigorous discipline imposed on the individual with a view to the realisation of these ends, have, taken together, provoked the eulogies of many simple-minded enthusiasts. The beauty and the stability of Sparta became, to take but one example, something of an obsession with the ineffective Mably. On the other hand, Sir Frederick Pollock has suggested—and one's heart warms to him—that the Spartans were the most odious impostors in the whole history of antiquity. In any event, the Spartan State was probably unique in some respects in the record of political institutions. It is difficult to recall any other State in which the individual was so completely subordinated to the general ends of the community—and such subordination is, of course, of the very essence of socialism in its general sense, as distinguished from that species of socialism generally referred to as communism. From the day of his birth, when he might be not merely subordinated but suppressed for the good of the State, the young Spartan continued to be disposed of in one way or another until death opened up for him a way of escape. The common education, which began at the age of seven, was wholly designed to make good soldiers, to teach men to suffer uncomplainingly the extremes of heat and of cold, of hunger and of pain, and in each was implanted the conviction that he belonged not to himself, but to the State.

With this must be taken another fact no less significant, common indeed to all Greek civilisation, although perhaps specially important in Sparta. When we speak of Sparta, we are not concerned with a homogeneous population. The problem is complicated, as always, by one form of the slave question. The Spartan State could continue to exist only so long as the Helots were kept under. Thus the Spartans had to consider not merely their enemies beyond their frontier: they also lived as a governing class amid enemies, vastly more numerous, always sullen, constantly menacing. This is the ultimate explanation of the socialistic aspect of the Spartan State. Pöhlmann has a pregnant saying, written long before 1914, and therefore free from any suggestion that it springs from the misfortunes of the last two generations, to the effect that ‘state socialism is the inevitable correlate of the war-like type of society.’¹ Mr. Hawtrey, in our own day, has explained how Collectivism ‘emerges as the logical outcome of militarism when pushed to the extreme limit.’² A State that is at war, or that is perpetually organised for war, dare not tolerate individual liberties which may be in conflict with the general interest; and if the crisis becomes acute, so that the very existence of the State is in danger, there always has been, and there always will be, a tendency to sacrifice the individual; and this means one or other of two things, either despotism or State socialism.

This then explains much in Sparta. She was perpetually organised for war; inevitably she was organised to subordinate the individual in the interests of military efficiency. This also, it is probable, discloses the significance of the common meals, so striking a feature of the civil life both of Sparta and of Crete. It has been suggested that these common meals, so familiar in More and Campanella, may here be viewed as the last remnants of an older and more primitive agricultural communism. Clearly, this is largely a matter of speculation; but the argument is that if, far back at the beginning of things, there was a time when men worked together on land held in common, they would naturally eat in common also. Diodorus of Sicily, speaking of Lipara (in Book V), says that the people there ‘enjoyed their estates in common and fed together in societies,’ as if the two were bound together as cause and effect. But indeed no such speculative explanation is necessary. The common meals were merely another consequence of the fact that Sparta was wholly and exclusively organised as a military State, which, even in peacetime and at home, maintained as a symbol and as a discipline the habits of a campaigning army in taking meals together under arms.

In summary, what does the communism of Sparta amount to? There is not, it must be confessed, much to support the moral which it has usually been asked to supply. Despite the original equal division of the soil, differences in material conditions were not excluded; and contact with the larger world in time undermined the more characteristic Spartan virtues, if indeed they were virtues. For the modern communist in search of ensamples there are, on wider grounds, grave stumbling blocks. In the first place, the Spartan State was not so much a State as a military machine. Its sole interest was in training men to suffer and endure, and it pursued this by methods which stand unique in their revolting barbarity. They may have attained equality and community in education, but not much is thereby gained if education is directed to an unholy end. And secondly, to revert to a point which cannot be over-emphasised, if only because the worshippers of Sparta have so frequently forgotten it, there is the horrible obverse of Spartan communism presented by the hunted and harried Helot. It is not merely that communism in Sparta was a communism in use, others having produced. It was a communism of an idle and boastful people, whose government and whose existence demanded an army of Helots, who suffered at their hands a ruthless tyranny without parallel in history. It has too often been forgotten that the Helots also were men. Mably, in his intoxicated enthusiasm for Lycurgus and all his works, does not seem to have thought of this aspect of the question. It would be a fitting Nemesis, if in some reincarnation he were sent to live—as a Helot—in his so greatly adored Sparta.

The case of Crete is not so dissimilar from that of Sparta, despite the efforts of Polybius to show that they had little or nothing in common. The part of Lycurgus is here played by Minos, ‘le plus sage et le meilleur de tous les rois’—if we are to believe the undiscriminating Fénelon. The tradition indeed is that Lycurgus learned his statecraft in visiting and studying Crete. Here also there was the same determination that the young ‘should grow up accustomed to arms and toils, so as to scorn heat, cold, marches over rugged and steep roads, and blows received in gymnasiums or regular battles.’ ¹ Here also was the institution of the common dining-table; but again the communism, such as it was, was a communism bought at a price; it was the communism of an idle aristocracy, attained at the expense of the many, resting on the ‘exploitation of man by man,’ to use nineteenth century phraseology. Probably neither the fact nor the phrase would have impressed the Cretans; nevertheless this consideration, in one form or another, ought to have been sufficiently in the minds of later generations from Fénelon onwards, to have acted as a damper on any yearning to follow too unquestioningly in the footsteps of Minos. It is interesting to recall that in 1793, when Hérault de Séchelles was called upon to produce ‘by Monday’ a draft constitution, his first and instinctive step was to call upon all the available librarians to get for him ‘sur-le-champ’ a copy of the Laws of Minos.² It is a striking example of the abiding influence of the legacy of Greece. Whether in consequence of the insidious influence of the Laws of Minos or by reason of the mysterious workings of original sin, the ancient Cretans seem to have enjoyed a particularly low reputation among their fellows. The Apostle Paul has most successfully made it a matter of universal knowledge that they were accounted liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. Polybius, in less picturesque language, has said that they were ‘the only people in the world in whose eyes no gain is disgraceful’¹—an odd characteristic in those who are usually cited as having made an obeisance to a communistic way of life.

A third example of the practice of communism, that which for a time existed at Lipara, is in itself vastly less important, but it is of interest inasmuch as the account which has been handed down is more explicit as to the motives prompting to a life in common. The chief source of information on this point is to be found in the fifth book of Diodorus of Sicily, which competent authorities consider may be accepted as substantially correct. He tells us how, somewhere in the sixth century B.C., a number of colonists, under the leadership of Pentathlus, left Cnidus and Rhodes and ultimately settled in the island of Lipara, where they ‘received a kindly reception,’ and ‘were prevailed upon to make common cause with the inhabitants of Lipara in forming a single community there.’ The actual description given by Diodorus of what happened is of some importance in disclosing the springs of primitive communism:

At a later time, because they were being harassed by the Tyrrheni, who were carrying on piracy on the sea, they fitted out a fleet, and divided themselves into two bodies, one of which took over the cultivation of the islands which they had made the common property of the community, whereas the other was to fight the pirates; their possessions also they made common property, and living according to the public mess system, they passed their lives in this communistic fashion for some time. At a later time they apportioned among themselves the island of Lipara, where their city also lay, but cultivated the other islands in common. And in the final stage they divided all the islands among themselves for a period of twenty years, and then they cast lots for them again at every expiration of this period.²

The words of Diodorus are particularly interesting, both as explaining the reason for, and the extent of, this communistic experiment. It is clear that communism was not something that the colonists brought with them in their blood, an inheritance from their past life. It was only at a later time, when circumstances compelled them to prepare a fleet for their defence, that the step to communism was taken; and in the course of time this was again departed from. In the first place, the main island was divided into private property; later, all the islands were divided, subject to a redistribution every twenty years. But the important point is that the impulse to communism came from the necessity of constant military readiness against an external enemy. Nowhere is perpetual preparedness so necessary as against an enemy who comes from over the sea, and the explanation of the system of communism in Lipara is very briefly that the inhabitants, in face of this ever-present danger, were driven to a systematic division of the work of the community among the whole population. Some manned the fleet; some tilled the ground. It is merely a further exemplification of the influence of war conditions in moulding the structure of society in a ‘socialistic’ direction.

It is, however, time to turn from these tentative approximations towards communistic practice, in order to consider very briefly certain theories propounded elsewhere in these matters. Here it is, of course, primarily Plato—indeed, almost exclusively Plato—who demands attention. In approaching Plato and the place which he occupies in the development of socialism and as an inspiration of socialism, we are confronted with a very obvious difficulty. There is an immensity of Plato, as there is an immensity of Shakespeare and of Adam Smith, and to seek to detach a fragment of this immensity is probably a course that would be frowned upon by austere scholars. In short, the communism advocated by Plato, such as it was and limited as it may have been, is but a part of his general theory regarding the State, and doubtless it should be discussed in connection with the main body of his political theories. A chapter on the ‘Politics’ of Plato has, however, its proper resting-place in a book with a somewhat different title-page from that which this volume bears. Here, though it may be a difficult and not wholly satisfactory course, we must endeavour to walk gingerly through the Platonic forest, choosing the path which will best disclose his views on the topics which are relevant to our purpose.

But at least the framework may be indicated. The liberalism of Pericles had aimed at the many-sided development of the Athenian citizen. With progressive democratisation, there had emerged an unrestrained individualism. The sophists, on the theoretical side, had represented a disintegrating influence, teaching, among other things, that justice was the interest of the stronger, that it was merely that which was ordained by law, that each man was the measure of all things. All this tended to the subjectivism of philosophical anarchism. Nor were things any better on the side of the practical administration of affairs. As Plato (or Socrates) saw things, the State suffered from two main defects. In the first place, it suffered from disruptive tendencies. There was strife; there was envy; there was division. And secondly, it suffered from the democratic assumption (pushed to its absurd extreme in election by lot) that all men were equal, and that anyone could do anything as well as anyone else.

Such were the maladies from which Plato's world suffered, and his suggested remedies corresponded to the diagnosis. To cure disruption, unity must be implanted at the centre of things; the State (or that part of it which matters) must become One, with all causes of dissension removed. To cure the cult of incompetence, inherent in Democracy, it must be made abundantly clear that government is a matter for the expert; and indeed, not merely in the field of government, but everywhere, people must stick to their job, and not interfere with others. The world and all its affairs must be run by experts. It is primarily with the first of these points—the lack of union and the cure for disunion—that we are here concerned.

Plato's own statement of the overriding importance of the general principle of unity is almost as important as the machinery for its realisation. A short extract from the fifth book of The Republic may be given. Socrates is speaking, Glaucon supplying the responses.

Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond of unity?

There cannot.

And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains—where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow?

No doubt.

Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganised—when you have one half of the world triumphing and the other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the citizens?

Certainly.

Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the use of the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine,” ‘his’ and ‘not his.’

Exactly so.

And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest number of persons apply the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ in the same way to the same thing?

Quite true...

... and I agree with you that in the best-ordered State there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you describe.

Then when any of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the whole State will make his case their own, and will either rejoice or sorrow with him?

Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered State.¹

Such is the programme in its general terms: we must eliminate (in places where it matters) the distinction between ‘meum’ and ‘tuum.’ The first person singular in all its forms—I, me, my and mine—must be excoriated. Property therefore must go; for it is the obvious embodiment of ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’; but no less logically, though more courageously, the home and the family must also go, for in the family are the springs of all individualism. There must be community of possessions and community of wives. No one must know his offspring, just as no one must know his father or his mother. A generation will beget a generation.

This, however, is rather a summary statement, in general terms, of the vision to which Plato tends. To appreciate the motives of Platonic communism and the limitations by which it is hedged, we must go back and assist in the construction of the city, observing at what point and with what objects the condition of communism is imposed. The State, as Socrates unfolds it, springs from the needs of mankind: in the language of a later age, it is based on division of labour. ‘The barest notion of a State must include four or five men’¹; and in its first stages there is a husbandman, a builder, a weaver and a shoemaker. It sounds like an echo of that other fragment of oriental wisdom that the chief thing for life is water and bread and clothing and a house to cover shame. But obviously, beyond this primitive embryo of four essential workers, the State must expand, and it does so with the suggestion of a possible stopping-place where all the natural and simple needs of mankind are satisfied. If we pass beyond this ‘healthy State,’ the addition to the population and the list of occupations will be represented by luxury trades. Also in such a world of clutching States, countries which ‘exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth’² will each covet a slice of their neighbour's land, and wars will become inevitable. Thus, faced with the necessity of defence, we encounter the guardians.

In the Platonic State, the guardians, who are later sub-divided into ‘guardians in the fullest sense’ (the rulers) and ‘auxiliaries’ (the soldiers) occupy a place of very considerable importance. Inevitably, for the discharge of their duties a peculiar combination of qualities is required. The guardian must unite in himself philosophy and spirit, and swiftness and strength: he is to be spirited towards those without and gentle towards those within, and he must be educated and trained with those objects in view. Education indeed is one of the chief instruments for fashioning the right guardian, and accordingly The Republic resolves itself, over long stretches, into a treatise on education. Yet education alone, even if it is shaped on the somewhat peculiar lines laid down by Plato, is not sufficient to produce the perfect guardian. There remains a danger. May not the guardians, being stronger than the citizens, become a menace? May they not become savage tyrants instead of friends and allies? May not the watch-dog worry the sheep instead of the wolf? The solution of this difficulty is found in the institution of communism. That the guardians may not be thus corrupted they must be a class apart, consecrated to high and noble ends; they must be in the world but not of it; they must not be as other men, entangled in secular affairs. Hence not only their education, but their habitations and their whole environment should be such as will not impair their virtue as guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the other citizens. It is so important that Plato should not be misrepresented on this fundamental issue, that the actual words used in instituting communism should be quoted.

Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither should they have a private house or store closed against any one who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the saviours of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotted and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand.¹

This is indeed a strange communism! The guardians, using the phrase in the wider sense to include the auxiliaries, are, in a phrase beloved of the Physiocrats, a classe stipendiée. They are supported by the third estate, and although it is said that they are to receive a fixed rate of pay, it is clear in fact that all they get is sufficient to provide for the common table. Indeed it is perhaps inaccurate to describe this as a system of communism at all; for of possessions, singly or collectively, they have none. It is made clear at the beginning of the next book that ‘they are only fed, and not paid in addition to their food, like other men.’² In short, they are boarded out, and no pocket-money is allowed. This, if it be a type of communism, is a communism of poverty and of asceticism, of abnegation and renunciation. It represents an economic disability, not a privilege—a badge of poverty, imposed as a condition of efficiency. The motive is thus poles asunder from that which inspires communism in any of its modern forms from Thomas More downwards. Others have preached communism, tormented by the frightful inequality of the rich and the poor; they have been haunted by the enormity that, as Rousseau puts it, a handful of people are stuffed with superfluities, while the famished multitude lacks what is necessary. Here then Plato stands completely apart from the main stream of communistic thought; and in its way it is somewhat curious, for the other aspect of the question was not absent from his mind. He realised, in a frequently quoted sentence, the danger that the city might be not one but two, a city of the rich and a city of the poor. Yet in his advocacy of communism, there is no hint of this; communism is instituted solely in order that those to whom it applies may escape the entanglements of this world.

The second point of interest that arises is concerned with the extent to which the system of communism is to be applied throughout the Platonic State. A straightforward perusal of the passage from the close of the third book cited above would certainly leave with any reader, not given to over-ingenious sophistication, the impression that the system of communism is limited to the relatively small class of the guardians and the auxiliaries, and that it is not intended to be applied to the much more numerous third estate, whom for convenience we may call the husbandmen. Certain it is that in The Republic, when once Plato has mentioned the husbandmen, they fade from the picture with an astonishing celerity and completeness: it is the education and the way of life of the two higher ranks that alone have power to engage his attention. Consequently it has been generally assumed that communism is advocated only for the soldiers and officials, and that the workers are left to an unregenerated family life, and to the burden and care of wife and children. This view, however, has not been universally accepted. Thus Mr. Beer, in his Social Struggles in Antiquity, observed:

A superficial reading of the Republic gives the impression—which is, in fact, shared by many writers—that Plato recommends communism solely for these upper sections, and leaves the remaining class of the people in the old conditions. This interpretation, however, is wholly erroneous. From the quotations we have given above it is quite clear that Plato advocated communism for all Hellenes. Otherwise, there would be no point in the entire social criticism which he levels, in both his works, against the economic, political and moral conditions of his country.¹

Aristotle is, of course, one of the more eminent of those superficial readers of The Republic, and he promptly seized on the point that ‘the main body of the State consists not in the guardians but in the mass of other citizens, about whom nothing is determined.’² He complained that Plato had not made it clear whether the system of communism was to extend to husbandmen as well as to guardians. If yes, how would the classes differ? If no, there would in fact be two States within the State. Among our modern authorities on Plato, Sir Ernest Barker, rivalling Aristotle in his superficiality, roundly states that ‘neither the communism in respect of goods, nor that in respect of wives, which are both advocated by Plato, touch the third or economic class. How indeed could a system which means the abnegation of desire touch the class which represents the element of desire?’ ³

The argument that Plato did not in his statement overlook the position of the husbandmen will be found heavily advanced in the course of Pöhlmann's two ponderous volumes.¹ Briefly, it is, in the first place, urged that the fact that Plato makes minute provision for the way of life of the husbandmen in The Laws, which is concerned with the second-best State, clearly proves that he cannot have intended to exclude them from the advantages of the best State. The second-best State cannot in fact be more enlightened than the best State. Secondly, and perhaps more cogently, it is contended that the omission of details as to the precise manner of the application of the fundamental principles to the whole population was deliberate, was indeed forced upon Plato by the scheme of his work, and that he foresaw Aristotle's arguments and met them in advance. In the fourth book, Socrates declines to go into a great many matters of detail on the ground that all these things are, comparatively speaking, ‘trifles,’ and that they will settle themselves, or at least be easily settled if the main thing, the education and the training of the governing class, is secured: ‘If our citizens are well educated and grow into sensible men, they will easily see their way through all these, as well as other matters which I omit.’ Then a little later he enumerates another host of questions, and asks impatiently: ‘But, oh heavens! shall we condescend to legislate on any of these particulars?’ and the echoing Adeimantus dutifully replies: ‘I think that there is no need to impose laws about them on good men; what regulations are necessary they will find out soon enough for themselves.’² Thus the argument is that Plato was concerned with one thing and with one thing only, the training of the guardians and the rulers: it would be for them later to make provision for the regulations governing the population as a whole, by the issue of the appropriate Statutory Rules and Orders within the general framework. Meanwhile, like a discreet junior Government clerk, Plato refrained from expressing any opinion which might later embarrass his Ministers.

When two such eminent authorities as Aristotle and the late Professor of Ancient History in the University of Erlangen are ranged in opposite camps, it behoves the ordinary man to walk warily. Yet if Plato himself be allowed to speak—bearing in mind the legal assumption that words be taken to mean what apparently they do mean—the position as to the extent of this communism should be clear beyond any shadow of a peradventure. The institution is expressly said to be ‘the regulations appointed by us for our guardians’; the guardians are to receive a fixed rate of pay from the citizens, which is clearly a system of life that cannot be universalised; most conclusive of all, if they depart from communism in any respect, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians. Moreover, if the motive of Platonic communism is borne in mind, it will be clear that there would be no justification for extending it to the husbandmen. It is possible to provide that one class shall not be too much spotted by contact with the world; but the whole population cannot be so treated. Indeed, apart from the exercise of academic ingenuity, it might have been thought that Plato had been at pains to make it abundantly clear that his communism was designed as the essential distinguishing mark of the two upper classes, marking them off from the third.

To complete the picture of Platonic communism, as presented in The Republic, a slight further reference should perhaps be made to the community of wives and children which is dealt with in Book V. It is not necessary here to consider the machinery of marriage, the system of lots, together with the ‘considerable dose of falsehood and deceit’ introduced with the highest eugenical ends, and all the rest of what may be called the administrative arrangements. Nor need we concern ourselves unduly with the regulations designed to obliterate in the mother all knowledge as to which of the next generation is in fact the fruit of her body, and the means by which what the mathematicians would call a ‘one-one relationship’ is to be expunged. But it is of some interest to note the object and intention of community of wives (and of husbands) in confirmation of what has already been said. Again the motive may be said to be twofold, blending together. In the first place, there is the (quite mistaken) idea that there will be greater unity if each regards the whole of the next generation as his children, and shares this fatherly feeling with all those of his own. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity; and what greater unity is possible than that prevailing among men of whom it can be said that ‘every one whom they meet will be regarded by them either as a brother or sister, or father or mother, or son or daughter, or as the child or parent of those who are thus connected with him?’¹ This is on the point of becoming complicated, but the meaning is clear. There is much justice in the observation of Aristotle that, in a world where every one has a thousand sons, shared with a correspondingly large number of fathers, ‘the result will be that all parents will be equally neglectful of all the children.’² Proudhon, thinking in terms of universal brotherhood, made the same point more epigrammatically. And mingled with this attainment of unity—or perhaps but another phase of this—is the promotion of greater efficiency: ‘Both the community of property and the community of families, as I am saying, tend to make them more truly guardians; they will not tear the city in pieces by differing about “mine” and “not mine.”’ The very poverty of their communism will make them efficient: ‘As they have nothing but their persons which they can call their own, suits and complaints will have no existence among them; they will be delivered from all those quarrels of which money or children or relations are the occasion.’ The guardians will be efficient as guardians, just because they will have the carefree existence of those who have no cares, who have rid themselves of the meannesses of life: ‘all the pains and pangs which men experience in bringing up a family, and in finding money to buy necessaries for their household... the many evils of so many kinds which people suffer in this way are mean enough and obvious enough, and,’ says the Greek philosopher, ‘not worth speaking of.’ ¹

Enough has perhaps been said to indicate the nature of the communism of The Republic and to show how unfitted it is to respond to many of the appeals directed to it by subsequent ages. In summary, it is a communism of monastic asceticism and renunciation, a communism of withdrawal from the world and the cares of the world. Despite the efforts of the ingenious, it is further a communism confined to a small part of the community. Again Aristotle's comment is amply justified: ‘The necessary consequence is that there will be two States in one and those States mutually hostile.’ ² But indeed this understates the difficulty. The communism established in The Republic is a communism of dependence: ‘their pay was to be their food, which they were to receive from the other citizens, and they were to have no private expenses.’ ³ An age which has been, and is being increasingly, taught the importance of economic power will have little difficulty in deciding which of the two mutually hostile States, in Aristotle's language, will enter the contest with most advantages.

For our present purpose, it may be sufficient to glance at The Laws, for, significant as this Dialogue may be in throwing light on Plato's views on many political questions, it may be doubted whether it adds anything of substance, so far as general principles are concerned. The Laws, as is well known, was written in Plato's old age, and it has been assumed to betray to a certain extent the disillusionment that frequently comes with the years. For, odd as it may appear, there is a tradition that Plato had believed that the vision of The Republic was realisable, and that he had sought, ineffectively, to bring it down to earth. In current jargon, while The Republic is revolutionary, The Laws is reformist. Acknowledging that the ideal State of The Republic was something beyond the reach of frail men, he has now descended to outline the constitution of what is admittedly the second-best State. We are back again in the chill atmosphere of unrelieved monogamy. The constitution and the mode of life which, in some respects, are outlined in astonishing detail, are primarily directed towards preventing the emergence of unhealthy inequality, by limiting the ratio of the possessions of the richest to those of the poorest. What, however, is of interest—and perhaps this alone concerns us—is that the old faith still burns bright, although the architect has been constrained to compromise with the second-best. In a passage, somewhat tinged with the pathos of vanished dreams, Plato says:

The first and highest form of the State and of the government and of the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying, that ‘Friends have all things in common.’ Whether there is anywhere now, or will ever be, this communion of women and children and property, in which the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions, and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost—whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon any other principle, will ever constitute a State which will be truer or better or more exalted in virtue.¹

To complete the picture of Plato's communism, if only by way of contrast, Aristotle should be allowed to testify on the subject. His views on the community of wives and property, expressed at some length, may be found in the second book of The Politics. Aristotle, as is his manner, speaks with the horse-sense which has distinguished men of horse-sense throughout all the ages; in consequence, perhaps, his views may tend to be somewhat familiar, not to say hackneyed and trite, representing, as they do, what plain blunt men have always said. His fundamental criticism is perhaps political rather than economic. It is that Plato misconceives the kind of unity of which a State is capable. A State consists of a number of individuals who are necessarily different in kind. The State possesses an essential plurality; if it becomes a unit in the sense envisaged by Plato, it will cease to be a State at all.²

On the question which more immediately concerns us, that of community of property, Aristotle in one place roundly says that ‘Life appears wholly impossible on such principles.’ Here there is perhaps somewhat too much of the unreasoning instinct of the man of common sense. The arguments on which Aristotle bases this conclusion rest, broadly, on an appeal to common experience. ‘The more numerous the joint owners of anything, the less it is cared for.’ On the principle that what is everybody's business is nobody's business, men neglect their common possessions, relying on ‘the idea that someone else is looking after it.’ Nor, as he argues, is there any virtue in the argument that common ownership eliminates contention. On the contrary, nothing is so difficult as for people to live together and enjoy any worldly goods in common: witness what happens when people travel together and keep a common purse. It is precisely when people try to share that they start to quarrel. Further, Aristotle opens a casement on an unending vista of age-long disputes on the question of stimulus, in conflict with the allurements of sloth: those who think that they consume less and work more (and that, though Aristotle does not say so, is the bulk of humanity) will complain of those who enjoy more and work less. Aristotle, it will be observed, tries to take men as he finds them.¹

Turning from criticism of communism to what is at least a modified defence of property, Aristotle suggests (and it is a profound observation, capable of many applications) that the evil complained of may spring not from the want of community of property, but from defects of human nature. His argument, in general terms, is that property corresponds to something in human nature: ‘there is an unspeakable advantage in the sense of private property.’ And again, ‘the love each individual bears to himself is not purposeless.’ While defending property, because it satisfied a ‘natural’ instinct—if we may use a much abused eighteenth-century word—Aristotle is not, however, an obfuscated defender of things as they are. He prefers the existing system, but it should be ‘embellished by the moral tone of those who live under it, and by a code of wise laws.’ In a rather vague way, he suggests that private ownership should be combined with common use, at least among friends, and cites approvingly the practice in Lacedaemon where, without overmuch ceremony, citizens made use of each other's slaves and horses. As a matter of law, tenure of property should be private, but in practice it should be common; and the task of the legislator should be to produce in the citizen a disposition to adopt this course. It has been a familiar solution from time to time in the world's history: in effect, it accepts private property, but seeks to correct its possible abuses by developing a sense of public responsibility, at times indeed of trusteeship, in the owners of property.²

From Aristotle, supplying the cold douche of individualist criticism, it is time to turn to the reverse side, the ideas of Plato as seen in burlesque parody. For this we are indebted to Aristophanes, who, in the Ecclesiazusae has given us a most excellent skit on women's rights and communistic theories. The Ecclesiazusae is, as a matter of mere chronology, slightly older than The Republic, but conscientious students have elaborated so many similarities in phraseology, so many passages in the Ecclesiazusae which acquire their full meaning only in the light of something in Plato, that it is difficult to believe that the two works are not connected. Mr. Bickley Rogers, than whom it is impossible to appeal to a higher authority, had no doubt on the point. In modern phraseology, Aristophanes had doubtless in some way a pre-view of The Republic.

In the Ecclesiazusae, Praxagora, the heroine, wife of Blepyros, who is very much a music-hall figure of a husband, engineers a coup d'état which places the control of the State in the hands of the women. The motive of the revolution is that men are wayward and changeable, whereas women are conservative, doing everything as of old, not perpetually in a hurry and trying new plans. Yet despite this, Praxagora's first step is to enact a universal state of communism in possessions, in which there will be no marriage, but where all women and men will be common and free.

In a burlesque one does not look for honest criticism: indeed a parody is almost necessarily a libel and a misrepresentation. The communism of Praxagora is therefore in its essence very different from the communism of Plato. Plato's communism is founded on asceticism run mad; even the curious communism of wives rests on a crucifixion of the flesh. Praxagora's communism is a communism of enjoyment, which expresses itself in the promise of magnificent banquets and in the unseemly brawling of rival hags over the abduction of a desirable young man. Yet, waiving the Aristophanic skulduddery, it is curious that the communism of Praxagora is much more akin to the spirit of modern communism. If one may take seriously what was not meant to be taken seriously, her revolution was designed as a protest against the monstrous inequalities of life, the crying shame of the poverty of the poor, placed cheek-by-jowl with the offensive luxury of the rich. Praxagora thus announces her programme to her downtrodden husband:

The rule which I dare to enact and declare,
Is that all shall be equal and equally share
All wealth and enjoyments, nor longer endure
That one should be rich, and another be poor,
That one should have acres, far-stretching and wide,
And another not even enough to provide
Himself with a grave: that this at his call
Should have hundreds of servants, and that none at all.
All this I intend to correct and amend:
Now all of all blessings shall freely partake,
One life and one system for all men I make.¹

The further conversation between Praxagora and her husband runs on familiar, yet diverting, lines. All property is to be brought to the stores; there will be one fund out of which ‘We (the women) will feed and maintain you.’ But suppose, says Blepyros, on this question of surrender of goods:

Suppose
He choose to retain it, and nobody knows; Rank perjury doubtless; but what if it be? 'Twas by that he acquired it at first.

P. I agree.
But now 'twill be useless; he'll need it no more.

B. How mean you?

P. All pressure from want will be o'er.
Now each will have all that a man can desire, Cakes, barley-loaves, chestnuts, abundant attire, Wine, garlands and fish: then why should he wish The wealth he has gotten by fraud to retain?

‘But who will attend to the work of the farm?’ is another question asked by the anxious Blepyros. The answer is that

All labour and toil to the slaves you will leave;
Your business 'twill be, when the shadows of eve
Ten feet on the face of the dial are cast,
To scurry away to your evening repast.

There will be no more law-suits, no more theft—for why should any one steal what is partly his own? Blepyros imagines that he has cornered his wife when he asks how, in the new world, it will be possible to fine anyone who has committed a common assault, ‘when elated with wine’; but Praxagora is ready with her answer, which is not so different from that offered for our acceptance in these latter days:

Why, his victuals and drink
Will be stopped by command for a while; and I guess That he will not again in a hurry transgress, When he pays with his stomach.

It is all vastly entertaining, and there can be little doubt that the house rocked with laughter; yet it is not wholly without its elements of pathos, in that a play well over two thousand years old should be in places so horribly topical. The rest of the play is concerned with the scheme of communism in operation. We see the prudent citizen waiting to see what the others will do in the matter of giving up property, hatching

some crafty shrewd device
To keep my goods, and yet secure a part In all these public banquets like the rest.

We have the very irksome consequences of State interference in the amatory affairs of the population; and at the end the Chorus urges all and sundry to the munificent public banquet, but (believing in the virtue of private enterprise) adds a wise hint to take a plate and an omelet with them if, notwithstanding the overwhelming menu, they wish to be sure of something to eat.

Those who seek in the inquisitive Greek spirit for foreshadowings of every trend of modern thought have little difficulty in finding prototypes of that other subversive tendency which runs through extreme individualism to something approaching anarchism. A liberal in all ages is one who upholds the rights of the individual against the claims of the State and of authority; and an anarchist is merely a liberal who has gone off the deep end, losing all sense of proportion. The various types of communism so far considered, both practical and theoretical, have all been what we should now call national. Even Plato's Republic was, as has been noticed, organised in its most essential features because, things being what they are, it would inevitably go to war with other States and other States would inevitably go to war with it. Anarchism which denies the authority of the State within its frontiers, necessarily denies the authority of all States, and is thus impelled to a vague internationalism, or the far-off dream of a somewhat nebulous world-state. The tendency towards extreme individualism, anarchism and cosmopolitanism may be found in Zeno and the Stoic school generally.

But not there alone. There is a long line of individualism in Greece, and Pericles is its greatest ornament. Indeed Socrates and Plato exist very largely to protest against the liberalism of Pericles, run to degenerate forms. The Cynics, who have points of contact with the Stoics, were also individualists, at times repulsive individualists, with whom the State counted for little. Moreover, the Greeks did not escape that ubiquitous nostalgia after a primitive state of nature which, Hobbes notwithstanding, has usually been regarded as a blissful, though more populated, Garden of Eden. It is almost impossible to yearn after a vanished state of nature without resenting the shackles which now cause us to stumble. Consequently, the devotees of a state of nature tend to hunger after a freedom, ample and unrestrained.

The professed teaching of Zeno was not indeed marked by that ‘churlishness’ and that anti-social tendency which traditionally are associated with the Cynics. It is possible, with care, to select extracts which would present the founder of Stoicism as apparently highly conscious of a man's duties to his fellows. The ‘wise man,’ that ideal figure of the Stoics, ‘will take part in politics, if nothing hinders him’: he will not live in solitude, ‘for he is naturally made for society and action.’ Thus Diogenes Laertius, reporting on the school¹; though it may be suggested that the somewhat conditional statement of a duty to participate in politics rather implies a fear that something in fact may very well hinder the wise man from so behaving. And it need hardly be said that the whole tendency of Stoic doctrine was in the direction of a self-sufficient aloofness. The end, according to Zeno, is ‘life in agreement with Nature’; and the natural life, moreover, is the life according to reason.¹ But throughout the ages, those who have sought to live according to reason have naturally lived according to their own reason; and those who have sought to live in agreement with Nature have been impelled to act on their own interpretation of what is natural. The compulsion of circumstances fades away, and each becomes a law to himself, listening to the voice of his own reason. In Zeno's Republic, of which Diogenes Laertius has preserved for us some of the high-lights, we are in a world where there is no marriage, no temples, no law courts, no places of education, no currency, no compulsion.² This removal of landmarks, placing faith in the guidance of reason, is pure Godwin; and though apparently reached by a different path, it is almost the whole of Godwin.

The injunction to take part in politics, ‘if nothing hinders,’ becomes indeed rather nugatory, if it is realised that something always does hinder. This hindering something is the nature of States as we know them. One Stoic teacher expressly held (and probably all others would have agreed) that a statesman must either displease the gods or displease the people. Along various lines, then, the Stoic is led to reject the State, and the sum total of States known to men. Here we reach the true significance of the Stoics for our purpose, the point on which they introduced something peculiarly their own in the bubbling cauldron of Greek political speculation. Turning away from the pettinesses and the cares in which the State was enmeshed, they claimed to be citizens of the world. For if reason is the distinguishing mark of man, and if all men are endowed with reason, then all men are, or should be, members of one community which has reason for its common law. Thus we have the vision of a world State—nebulous, it may be, with not a little anarchism at its roots—but representing a significant progress beyond the stage when the world was thought of in terms of Greeks and a vast but inferior horde of barbarians outside. In particular, the contrast with Plato is sufficiently marked; for Plato never quite got above the idea that the foreigner represented a dangerous and insidious element which should be kept remote in order to avoid corruption and contamination. In Zeno, then, we have the foreshadowings of anarchism and cosmopolitanism.

One other phase of socialist literature may, without undue straining, be said to have its precursors in Greek literature. Where precisely the literature of Utopia fades into the literature of Baron Munchausen would be an interesting question for discussion elsewhere. As it loses its didactic purpose, as it ceases in intention to contrast the actual and the ideal, a Utopia tends to transform itself into a Wundermärchen, a mere fairy tale. Probably, viewed impartially, the Greek stories of far-off happy countries are nearer the fairy-tale end of this ladder. Most of them are not so much known, as known about by fragments and references in other writers; but this, of course, does not prevent these rather shadowy Utopias from making a brave show in German Encyclopædias of Classical Knowledge. Two which are more available will be found embedded in that rich mass of mixed feeding which constitutes the works of Diodorus Siculus. There is, firstly, in the second book,¹ the strange tale of Iambulus, who in some islands conveniently remote discovered a remarkable race, four cubits high, living to the age of 150 years. Having reached this assigned limit, they put an end to their own existence by lying down on a plant endowed with the peculiar quality that whoever lies down upon it imperceptibly and gently falls asleep and dies. These happy islanders live in complete communism, knowing nothing of marriage, but living on that high plane which mankind occupied ere one to one was cursedly confined. Mothers who are suckling their babies hand them round periodically, until they have quite muddled themselves as to which is which. It seems a less satisfactory and less efficient way than that devised by Plato. As a consequence of this confusion of children, ‘since there is no rivalry among them, they never experience civil disorders and they never cease placing the highest value upon internal harmony.’ It is the familiar story of simple men whose peace is rooted in their simplicity; though it must be added that Nature (after the manner of Utopias) is kind to them and supplies their needs liberally and ungrudgingly. Presumably of no political or social significance, but interesting in illustration of what may be encountered on the other side of the boundary between Utopia and the Wundermärchen is one peculiarity of these excellent people. Nature gave them a tongue cleft for some distance, and by artifice they have divided it further back to the base. They are therefore double-tongued, though in no invidious sense. This oddity, however, enables them to carry on two conversations at the same time: an attainment of dubious value to anyone but a ventriloquist. They have also certain remarkable beasts, of which the most interesting is a roundish animal, which has a mouth and an eye at each end of two diagonal yellow stripes intersecting at right angles. The four mouths unite in a common gullet. Underneath, it is amply supplied with feet enabling it to move in any direction. Mr. Facing-both-ways would have been filled with envy. In the fifth book of Diodorus² there is the less wonderful account of the island of Panchaea, a priest-ridden country, where communism is violated only to the extent of a house and garden: ‘all the products and the revenue are taken over by the priests, who portion out with justice to each man his share; and to the priests, alone is given twofold.’

Not much importance perhaps need be attached to such slight Greek fragments descriptive of communistic, happy and simple peoples. But they serve to show the wealth and variety of Greek speculation in these matters, and in some ways they are rather suggestive of ‘Utopia made easy,’ as disclosed later in parts of Fénelon's Télémaque.