Plato and Democracy

Plato and Aristotle
by Raphael
Wikipedia


Plato on Democracy (Jowett trans)

And then democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot. 

Yes, he said, that is the nature of democracy, whether the revolution has been effected by arms, or whether fear has caused the opposite party to withdraw. 

And now what is their manner of life, and what sort of a government have they? for as the government is, such will be the man. 

Clearly, he said. 
In the first place, are they not free; and is not the city full of freedom and frankness --a man may say and do what he likes? 

'Tis said so, he replied. 
And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for himself his own life as he pleases? 

Clearly. 
Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest variety of human natures? 

There will. 
This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States, being an embroidered robe which is spangled with every sort of flower. And just as women and children think a variety of colours to be of all things most charming, so there are many men to whom this State, which is spangled with the manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be the fairest of States. 

Yes. 
Yes, my good Sir, and there will be no better in which to look for a government. 

Why? 
Because of the liberty which reigns there --they have a complete assortment of constitutions; and he who has a mind to establish a State, as we have been doing, must go to a democracy as he would to a bazaar at which they sell them, and pick out the one that suits him; then, when he has made his choice, he may found his State. 

He will be sure to have patterns enough. 
And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed --there being no necessity also, because some law forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you should not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy --is not this a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful 

For the moment, yes. 
And is not their humanity to the condemned in some cases quite charming? Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons, although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk about the world --the gentleman parades like a hero, and nobody sees or cares? 

Yes, he replied, many and many a one. 
See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the 'don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city --as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study --how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and promoting to honour any one who professes to be the people's friend. 

Yes, she is of a noble spirit. 
These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. 

We know her well. 
Consider now, I said, what manner of man the individual is, or rather consider, as in the case of the State, how he comes into being. 

Very good, he said. 
Is not this the way --he is the son of the miserly and oligarchical father who has trained him in his own habits? 

Exactly. 
And, like his father, he keeps under by force the pleasures which are of the spending and not of the getting sort, being those which are called unnecessary? 

Obviously. 
Would you like, for the sake of clearness, to distinguish which are the necessary and which are the unnecessary pleasures? 

I should. 
Are not necessary pleasures those of which we cannot get rid, and of which the satisfaction is a benefit to us? And they are rightly so, because we are framed by nature to desire both what is beneficial and what is necessary, and cannot help it. 

True. 
We are not wrong therefore in calling them necessary? 
We are not. 
And the desires of which a man may get rid, if he takes pains from his youth upwards --of which the presence, moreover, does no good, and in some cases the reverse of good --shall we not be right in saying that all these are unnecessary? 

Yes, certainly. 
Suppose we select an example of either kind, in order that we may have a general notion of them? 

Very good. 
Will not the desire of eating, that is, of simple food and condiments, in so far as they are required for health and strength, be of the necessary class? 

That is what I should suppose. 
The pleasure of eating is necessary in two ways; it does us good and it is essential to the continuance of life? 

Yes. 
But the condiments are only necessary in so far as they are good for health? 

Certainly. 
And the desire which goes beyond this, or more delicate food, or other luxuries, which might generally be got rid of, if controlled and trained in youth, and is hurtful to the body, and hurtful to the soul in the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, may be rightly called unnecessary? 

Very true. 
May we not say that these desires spend, and that the others make money because they conduce to production? 

Certainly. 
And of the pleasures of love, and all other pleasures, the same holds good? 

True. 
And the drone of whom we spoke was he who was surfeited in pleasures and desires of this sort, and was the slave of the unnecessary desires, whereas he who was subject o the necessary only was miserly and oligarchical? 

Very true. 
Again, let us see how the democratical man grows out of the oligarchical: the following, as I suspect, is commonly the process. 

What is the process? 
When a young man who has been brought up as we were just now describing, in a vulgar and miserly way, has tasted drones' honey and has come to associatewith fierce and crafty natures who are able to provide for him all sorts of refinements and varieties of pleasure --then, as you may imagine, the change will begin of the oligarchical principle within him into the democratical? 

Inevitably. 
And as in the city like was helping like, and the change was effected by an alliance from without assisting one division of the citizens, so too the young man is changed by a class of desires coming from without to assist the desires within him, that which is and alike again helping that which is akin and alike? 

Certainly. 
And if there be any ally which aids the oligarchical principle within him, whether the influence of a father or of kindred, advising or rebuking him, then there arises in his soul a faction and an opposite faction, and he goes to war with himself. 

It must be so. 
And there are times when the democratical principle gives way to the oligarchical, and some of his desires die, and others are banished; a spirit of reverence enters into the young man's soul and order is restored. 

Yes, he said, that sometimes happens. 
And then, again, after the old desires have been driven out, fresh ones spring up, which are akin to them, and because he, their father, does not know how to educate them, wax fierce and numerous. 

Yes, he said, that is apt to be the way. 
They draw him to his old associates, and holding secret intercourse with them, breed and multiply in him. 

Very true. 
At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man's soul, which they perceive to be void of all accomplishments and fair pursuits and true words, which make their abode in the minds of men who are dear to the gods, and are their best guardians and sentinels. 

None better. 
False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upwards and take their place. 

They are certain to do so. 
And so the young man returns into the country of the lotus-eaters, and takes up his dwelling there in the face of all men; and if any help be sent by his friends to the oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain conceits shut the gate of the king's fastness; and they will neither allow the embassy itself to enter, private if private advisers offer the fatherly counsel of the aged will they listen to them or receive them. There is a battle and they gain the day, and then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nickname unmanliness, is trampled in the mire and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border. 

Yes, with a will. 
And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries, the next thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy and waste and impudence in bright array having garlands on their heads, and a great company with them, hymning their praises and calling them by sweet names; insolence they term breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage. And so the young man passes out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures. 

Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough. 
After this he lives on, spending his money and labour and time on unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over --supposing that he then re-admits into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not wholly give himself up to their successors --in that case he balances his pleasures and lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the government of himself into the hands of the one which comes first and wins the turn; and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands of another; he despises none of them but encourages them all equally. 

Very true, he said. 
Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of advice; if any one says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use and honour some and chastise and master the others --whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another. 

Yes, he said; that is the way with him. 
Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he-is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on. 

Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality. 
Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the lives of many; --he answers to the State which we described as fair and spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners is contained in him. 

Just so. 
Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the democratic man. 

Let that be his place, he said. 
Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and State alike, tyranny and the tyrant; these we have now to consider. 

Quite true, he said. 
Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? --that it has a democratic origin is evident. 

Clearly. 
And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy --I mean, after a sort? 

How? 
The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth --am I not right? 

Yes. 
And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy? 

True. 
And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution? 

What good? 
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the State --and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell. 

Yes; the saying is in everybody's mouth. 
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny. 

How so? 
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs. 

Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence. 
Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her slaves who hug their chains and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart, whom she praises and honours both in private and public. Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit? 

Certainly not. 
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them. 

How do you mean? 
I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either. 

Yes, he said, that is the way. 
And these are not the only evils, I said --there are several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young. 

Quite true, he said. 
The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser; nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other. 

Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises to our lips? 
That is what I am doing, I replied; and I must add that no one who does not know would believe, how much greater is the liberty which the animals who are under the dominion of man have in a democracy than in any other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen; and they will run at anybody who comes in their way if he does not leave the road clear for them: and all things are just ready to burst with liberty. 

When I take a country walk, he said, I often experience what you describe. You and I have dreamed the same thing. 

And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority and at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them. 

Yes, he said, I know it too well. 
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny. 

Glorious indeed, he said. But what is the next step? 
The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy --the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government. 

True. 
The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. 

Yes, the natural order. 
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty? 

As we might expect. 
That, however, was not, as I believe, your question-you rather desired to know what is that disorder which is generated alike in oligarchy and democracy, and is the ruin of both? 

Just so, he replied. 
Well, I said, I meant to refer to the class of idle spendthrifts, of whom the more courageous are the-leaders and the more timid the followers, the same whom we were comparing to drones, some stingless, and others having stings. 

A very just comparison. 
These two classes are the plagues of every city in which they are generated, being what phlegm and bile are to the body. And the good physician and lawgiver of the State ought, like the wise bee-master, to keep them at a distance and prevent, if possible, their ever coming in; and if they have anyhow found a way in, then he should have them and their cells cut out as speedily as possible. 

Yes, by all means, he said. 
Then, in order that we may see clearly what we are doing, let us imagine democracy to be divided, as indeed it is, into three classes; for in the first place freedom creates rather more drones in the democratic than there were in the oligarchical State. 

That is true. 
And in the democracy they are certainly more intensified. 
How so? 
Because in the oligarchical State they are disqualified and driven from office, and therefore they cannot train or gather strength; whereas in a democracy they are almost the entire ruling power, and while the keener sort speak and act, the rest keep buzzing about the bema and do not suffer a word to be said on the other side; hence in democracies almost everything is managed by the drones. 

Very true, he said. 
Then there is another class which is always being severed from the mass. 

What is that? 
They are the orderly class, which in a nation of traders sure to be the richest. 

Naturally so. 
They are the most squeezable persons and yield the largest amount of honey to the drones. 

Why, he said, there is little to be squeezed out of people who have little. 

And this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed upon them. 
That is pretty much the case, he said. 
The people are a third class, consisting of those who work with their own hands; they are not politicians, and have not much to live upon. This, when assembled, is the largest and most powerful class in a democracy. 

True, he said; but then the multitude is seldom willing to congregate unless they get a little honey. 

And do they not share? I said. Do not their leaders deprive the rich of their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time taking care to reserve the larger part for themselves? 

Why, yes, he said, to that extent the people do share. 
And the persons whose property is taken from them are compelled to defend themselves before the people as they best can? 

What else can they do? 
And then, although they may have no desire of change, the others charge them with plotting against the people and being friends of oligarchy? True. 

And the end is that when they see the people, not of their own accord, but through ignorance, and because they are deceived by informers, seeking to do them wrong, then at last they are forced to become oligarchs in reality; they do not wish to be, but the sting of the drones torments them and breeds revolution in them. 

That is exactly the truth. 
Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another. 
True. 
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. 

Yes, that is their way. 
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector. 

Yes, that is quite clear. 
How then does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus. 

What tale? 
The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single human victim minced up with the entrails of other victims is destined to become a wolf. Did you never hear it? 

Oh, yes. 
And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favourite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow citizen; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf --that is, a tyrant? 

Inevitably. 
This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the rich? 
The same. 
After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown. 

That is clear. 
And if they are unable to expel him, or to get him condemned to death by a public accusation, they conspire to assassinate him. 

Yes, he said, that is their usual way. 
Then comes the famous request for a bodyguard, which is the device of all those who have got thus far in their tyrannical career --'Let not the people's friend,' as they say, 'be lost to them.' 

Exactly. 
The people readily assent; all their fears are for him --they have none for themselves. 

Very true. 
And when a man who is wealthy and is also accused of being an enemy of the people sees this, then, my friend, as the oracle said to Croesus, 

By pebbly Hermus' shore he flees and rests not and is not ashamed to be a coward. 

And quite right too, said he, for if he were, he would never be ashamed again. 

But if he is caught he dies. 
Of course. 
And he, the protector of whom we spoke, is to be seen, not 'larding the plain' with his bulk, but himself the overthrower of many, standing up in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.