State and Justice in Plato
Plato’s philosophy of the just life in the just state is concerned with economic problems, in so far as economic inequality is a threat for the cohesion of the city (Schefold 1989: 19-55).
The ideal state, which he analyses in the Republic, was not meant as a model for the foundation of an actual state - many such models were conceived and realised through the foundation of the colonies in the Greek world - but it helped to establish the fundamental principles which would have to be modified in a second best or third best state which might be put into practice. As a matter of logic, the best state had to be governed by the best. The art of state craft was analogous to the rule in the household; both are concerned not with their own advantage but with that of the people or the family to be guided; hence the comparison with the good shepherd who is concerned with the well-being of his sheep and does not look forward to eating or selling them. The warriors defending the state have their property in common so that they do not set their individual interests above those of the community. For the producers, the state presupposes the division of labour which Plato motivated not so much by considerations of the quantity to be produced, but by the quality; people divide tasks because they have different talents (Republic 370 A-B). Markets and coins as signs are needed (ibid. 371 B-C). Nothing points here towards a theory of value, but there is a notion of a just price in so far as no one shall charge two different prices for the same commodity - Plato was concerned with the honesty of the trader (Laws 917 B). More specifically, economic considerations come up in Plato’s late dialogue The Laws, where communism in production is rejected as something which is beyond the possibilities of human beings as we know them (Laws 740 A).The communism of the ideal state (which did not mean communist production) should be interpreted as a philosophical expression of the ideal of the complete dedication of full citizens to the tasks of guiding and protecting the city together.
However, as mentioned, the real Athenian citizen was the head of a household, a warrior, and a politician all in one. He had to reconcile the aims associated with the different forms of life. Plato regarded a person without moral principles in such a situation like a mass of people who are lumped together but do not form a state because they have no constitution (Republic 432 B-444 A). The task of philosophy is to provide an orientation that grows with the complexity of the life forms, but the basic requirement remains to be just. This includes the principle of fulfilling one’s own tasks. Large differences of status and riches must be avoided. Wealth generates inertia and discontent, poverty, base thinking and bad work (Laws 919 C). Plato’s descriptions, based on experiences of the possible degenerations of the state, frighten the modern reader by their analogies with fascist take-overs, hence the primary necessity of lawful and constitutional government. Plato mentions in the Statesman that there is a degenerate form to each of the lawful forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Among the ideal states, the monarchic is the best and aristocracy comes second, but among the degenerate states - and the real state tends to be degenerate - the order of preference is reversed (Statesman 302 E-303 B). Then it is best to live in a democracy, even if it is imperfect, while an oligarchy is worse, and the most unpleasant form of life is in the wilfulness of lawless tyranny.Thus an attempt is made to design more practical rules in the Laws, where the principle of avoiding large social discrepancies is to be realised by prescribing redistribution as soon as someone possesses more than four times what another possesses, and the emphasis is on agricultural production; the citizens and their slaves shall abstain from trade and the crafts and leave them to the metoikoi and their slaves (Laws 846 D, 919 D). Plato says, in a typical formulation which anticipates the Aristotelian insistence on the true goal:
Therefore we say that gold and silver ought not to be allowed in the city, nor much of the vulgar sort of trade which is carried on by lending money, or rearing the meaner kinds of live stock; but only the produce of agriculture, and only so much of this as will not compel us, in pursuing it, to neglect that for the sake of which riches exist. (Laws 743 D)
What are the riches for, you may ask, reading this sentence. The natural riches are there to lead a good life, Aristotle will respond. The Socratic philosophers are suspicious of the traders and money lenders, for fear that their professions will prevent them from keeping the main aims of life in view. Plato’s dialogues impress not only through their didactic elegance, but also through irony and wit and, in key passages, through their invocation of deeper truths which transcend the rational argument and are clad in mythology. The ultimate good is not revealed.