Socialism 101 Part 4: The Philosophy of Plato

Plato is the father of collectivism in the West. He is the first thinker to formulate a systematic view of reality, with a collectivist politics as its culmination.

What follows in regard to human action, according to Plato, is a life of self-sacrificial service. When men gather in society, says Plato, the unit of reality, and the standard of value, is the “community as a whole.” Each man therefore must strive, as far as he can, to wipe out his individuality (his personal desires, ambitions, etc.) and merge himself into the community, becoming one with it and living only to serve its welfare.

The function and authority of the state, according to Plato, should be unlimited. The state should indoctrinate the citizens with government-approved ideas in government-run schools, censor all art and literature and philosophy, assign men their vocations as they come of age, regulate their economic—and in certain cases even their sexual—activities, etc.

The blueprint [of the totalitarian ideal] includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite: the philosophers. Their title to absolute power, Plato explains, is their special wisdom, a wisdom which derives from their insight into true reality, and especially into its supreme, governing principle: the so-called “Form of the Good.”

[The Form of the Good] can be grasped, after years of an ascetic preparation, only by an ineffable mystic experience—a kind of sudden, incommunicable revelation or intuition, which is reserved to the philosophical elite. The mass of men, by contrast, are entangled in the personal concerns of this life. They are enslaved to the lower world revealed to them by their senses. They are incapable of achieving mystic contact with a supernatural principle. They are fit only to obey orders.

Source: Ominous Parallels.

If you don’t believe Plato influences the socialists and the Left, there is a magazine/website called “The New Republic.” Plato wrote a book called “The Republic.” That’s where he talks about the Form of the Good. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Yea, I know there is a conservative blog called “The Free Republic.” But it is the Left who always wants to change the structure of society and make the economic system “fair.” At least their definition of “fair.” That’s where you get the “new” in “New Republic.”