Socialism and International Economic Order

CHAPTER X THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF WORLD PLANNING; CONCLUSION TO PART II

As a conclusion to Part II, the fundamental problem of world planning is examined. Our exposition is based on the threefold answer that has been given by socialists to the cardinal question: who is to make the economic decisions for the peoples of the world? It is recalled that the following bodies were envisaged to fulfill this function: (1) international organizations; (2) the authorities of an international federation; and (3) an internationally oriented vanguard party.

THE INTERNATIONALIST APPROACH: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION

Chapter IV expounded that line of socialist thought which saw the League of Nations and its affiliated organizations as the nucleus of future world planning. But the different theories and proposals put forward were rather confused.

We have seen that the raw materials problem and its “just” solution received special attention. It was argued that raw materials are to be “considered as the common property of the whole world.”1 But what is the practical significance of such a statement? Who is to supply the necessary capital for the opening of mines, the provision of transport material, etc.? According to what criterion are the different “needs” for these commodities to be ascertained? Clearly, we are in the midst of the collectivist economic chaos. The granting of certain raw materials to one group or nation will automatically result in other groups or nations receiving less of them. In any case, each individual unit will “need” more than even the wisest and most kindly disposed international organization can ever meet. International solidarity will therefore give way to international dissatisfaction and antagonism.

Then again, there is talk about “regular and ample markets” and “just prices.” What are just prices? If they are to be “fair to producers,” they usually result in restricting demand; if the consumers’ point of view is to prevail, producers may no longer be able to meet their costs and will curtail production. Thus, the best a giant conference in which all interest groups are represented2 could perchance achieve would be to fix raw materials prices at their equilibrium level: but this is exactly what a free market does on its own. In all other cases artificial scarcities or surpluses are bound to arise, calling for the massive, but arbitrary intervention of the international authority.

The same is true for international investment planning. If it is to take place according to “needs,” all one can say with certainty is this: resources will be drawn away from the advanced areas in order to raise productivity in the economically underdeveloped parts of the world. This means, in the most favorable of cases, a renunciation of economic growth in the richer countries from whose citizens, however, the same productive effort is expected to be maintained. But, since “workers as a whole have a right to the accumulations of property and knowledge from the past,”3 there would be “hardly a worker in the ‘advanced’ countries whose real income would not be severely diminished”4 in order to enable his poorer brethren to catch up with his living standard.

We have seen in Chapter IX that the backwardness and poverty of vast territories is not only, and not even mainly, a technical problem, but essentially an educational and cultural one. The sacrifice incurred by the more productive workers would therefore bear no relation to the results achieved in the backward areas. “Mankind as a whole is still desperately poor: the abolition of inequality on a world scale, even if it involves no diminution of world production, would do little to raise the average. But one may well ask whether the workers of the advanced countries would stand it.”5

It is, under these conditions, extremely improbable that total output would remain stable, not to speak of its sustaining its previous rate of growth. On the contrary, it has convincingly been shown by Hayek6 that a certain degree of economic inequality, among individuals as well as among nations, is a powerful and indispensable factor for the expansion of wealth.7 Hence, the time during which the advanced peoples would have to “wait” would cover several generations if not centuries. Robbins therefore rightly asks: “Is not such a system, unless controlled by the most rigid dictatorial methods, continually in danger of dissolution into antagonistic regional units?”8

The inability of the authors of the “internationalist approach” to understand value and the functioning of market mechanisms is also revealed by their monetary theories. Again we find the idea that a currency system should be so constructed that its units may be used by planners as the “universal, reliable, stable, and unchanging measures of length and weight.”9 Or it is implied that the gold standard can give stable value to money only if national monetary authorities deliberately disregard its rules, i.e. pursue a policy of economic nationalism! Finally, Lawley points to the Milhaud plan as a magic formula which makes money altogether unnecessary.

But of course, Milhaud’s clearing system only seemingly avoids the fundamental problem of international monetary adjustment. If his bons d’achat are not to be convertible, we have ordinary bilateralism which works also without this device. If, on the other hand, a country is allowed to use its earned bons for the settlement of its debts in a third country, then the various national bons must either be officially defined in terms of each other, or their price must be left free. In other words, we have a system of stable or fluctuating exchange rates. If, now, some countries continuously buy more from the outside world than they are able to sell to it—because, by definition, these transactions are not allowed to upset their economic equilibrium—the price of their bons d’achat will either depreciate with respect to those of other countries or, beyond a certain point, the creditor countries will be unwilling to accumulate more of these bons which will be comparable to a “soft” currency. Two possibilities are open to these debtor countries: they can bring their house in order by reestablishing a direct link between their national economic policies and the requirements of international equilibrium, or they can abandon convertibility and resort to trade controls and bilateralism. The official devaluation of their bons is no lasting solution if it is not combined with one set of the just-mentioned measures.

Thus, there exists no loophole by which one could escape the fundamental choice between a multilateral economic order on the one hand, resting on the principle of communicating vessels, i.e. free enterprise and coordinating mechanisms based on the private ownership of the means of production, and a system of hermetically closed economic units on the other, between which economic intercourse is subjected to political control. This dilemma could only be circumvented by bringing the whole world under a unified central control. But this would mean the replacement of international order by international domination; the world authority would still be faced with those fundamental economic problems which have formed the main subject of this study.

But let us return to the “internationalist approach.” Besides those already referred to, it has another basic weakness which, in fact, dooms the whole literature on this subject to a theoretical exercise in socialist economics. Since world planning implies the handing over of economic decision-making from the competence of national to that of international bodies, it cannot possibly be achieved as long as the majority of national states is still founded on a liberal economic order, that is, as long as this decision-making is invested in the individual citizen and does not, therefore, belong to the public sphere. Governments can alienate sovereign rights only to the extent to which they really possess them. This was clearly recognized by the authors under review who consistently postulated the collectivization of national economies as a sine qua non for world planning.

THE “EXPLOSIVE EFFECT OF COLLECTIVISM”

Thus, the first step toward a future international socialist community was conceived as the coexistence of collectivist states planning their mutual trade and granting each other “political prices” (Bettelheim). The superiority of the final goal seemed to be so convincing that no tears were shed as to the disintegrating effect which these discriminatory trade policies—and the institution of collectivism itself—were bound to have on the hitherto existing international order. The latter was, anyway, along with capitalism itself, doomed to destruction.

The final goal itself has been described, with minor variations, by all socialists alike. Most authors considered an international federation freely entered into by socialist states as the intermediary stage preceding the eventual fusion of the latter into a unified world system. Does this theory represent a way out of that state of group anarchism which we have found to be typical for a world composed of collectivist states?

Our analysis has shown that this is impossible, at least as far as force is excluded as a factor to attain the desired goal. This is so because of the “explosive effect of collectivism” (Röpke): “On whatever geographical scale the free market economy is being replaced by collectivism and dirigisme, the fusion of economic process and government sovereignty will always set a political and economic barrier between these spheres of command and the rest of the world. This maximum degree of concentration toward the interior will always be at the expense of disintegration towards the exterior, in the precise sense that payments and market community (convertibility and multilateralism) is destroyed which made the once-existing genuine world economy, in spite of everything, appear as a mere geographical extension of the integration which prevailed within the national economies. The sphere in which the compulsory control of the economic process takes place must be identical with the sovereign political unit where authority enforces its economic plan. So much the deeper yawns the cleft which separates this order-cell from the other political monads. In short: since within the sovereign sphere of command, only a single plan and not the competition of different regional plans can be tolerated, the placing of the economy under official control means an extreme ‘concentration of power’—accompanied by the break-up of the next highest communities.”10

This explosive effect becomes already apparent at the lowest scale: “If, within a nation, a collectivist body is organized on a regional level, it must disrupt the national body.”11 In the same way, collectivism is incompatible with federalism and regional or communal self-administration, “since in the case of collectivism from below the lower political bodies (cantons, provinces, states) destroy the central authority and in the case of collectivism from above, the central authority stifles its members.”12

Röpke calls the paradox of national socialism the sharp contrast which exists between “the internationalistic ideology from which socialism has taken its beginning” and “the practice of collectivist foreign economic policy which with compelling rigor must try to keep away from the national planned economy all disturbing effects from outside which escape its grasp and to preserve it in its centrally determined compactness.”13 To it corresponds the paradox of international socialism: since “economic planning, which, by its very nature, implies a radical political direction of the economy, always presupposes a state in which the threads of the planning and directive force meet, it can only extend as far as the sovereign political power extends.”14

Thus, economic integration along collectivist lines means, as we have seen, the handing over of the control over national resources (le droit à la richesse), hitherto exercised by national governments, to a supranational collectivist state. Some members of the different national “new classes” will perhaps rise to power positions in the central organs of the enlarged state; but the great majority of them will be degraded to mere order-receivers and transmitters from above, just as the hitherto sovereign country will sink to a mere province whose economic welfare will depend exclusively upon the judgments of a distant government, centralized to the utmost. The task of this government will be to equalize living standards and to plan the economic process according to the requirements of “international social justice.” We have already seen the disastrous consequences of this policy. It can therefore be concluded that for once, the interests of the governing circles and the citizens of each country15 will be identical in firmly resisting the abandonment of national economic power to a collectivist superstate.

The wider the difference between the levels of economic development attained by the various “integrating” countries, the stronger will be their resistance against fusion. Hence, the demand for the creation of a collectivist world state on federal lines must be regarded as Utopian.

WHO WHOM?

Orthodox Marxists will at once concede that nothing can indeed be expected either from international organizations (with “bourgeois” majorities), or from “nationalistic,” even though collectivist, governments. The one elementary force which will be the decisive factor in accomplishing the task set to it by history is the international working class, united and led to the final goal by its “conscious expression,” the Communist Party.

In the days prior to World War I, there in fact seemed to exist a unified international proletariat, symbolized by the Second International. Its leaders periodically met to discuss and elaborate a uniform line of policy for “Social Democracy.” And one of the burning problems was the national question, that is, the role of sovereign states and the fate of national minorities in a future socialist order.

Three possible ways were open to a socialist policy of nationalities and all three were embodied in a different “theory.” There was, first, the Polish position, represented by Rosa Luxemburg, which reduced states and nationalities alike to cultural and language units and wished to hand over both economic and political power (the latter was asserted to lose its significance under socialism!) directly to a world agency.16 Secondly, the Austrian O. Bauer came out for the effective realization of the right of self-determination in that he was prepared to grant cultural as well as economic-political autonomy to whatever people or local group desired to form an independent state. Finally, Lenin, faithful to Marxist doctrine, considered national states, such as they actually existed, as the historically given and therefore “necessary” political units, the fundament on which the proletariat was to build its power.

But as soon as this last-mentioned development is admitted—and this is, as will be recalled, the essence of Marxism—one can no longer speak of “Social Democracy” as representing the world proletariat. Instead, there are national parties representing national working classes. “Socialist internationalism” only exists to the extent that the leaders of these national movements succeed in reaching agreement on a unified international policy. This is exactly what was attempted within the Second International; the fundamental antinomy between the national interests of socialist parties and the international solidarity of all workers did not appear until shortly before the outbreak of World War I. The German Socialists’ voting for the war credits in the Reichstag brought an end to the illusion of international socialism in the sense of an overriding community of interests shared by the world’s working classes.

The establishment in Russia of “the first stable Socialist Republic in the World” marked the decisive turn in the development of socialism from wishful thinking to political reality. This Republic was not created by the unanimous vote or even a majority of the Russian population, nor, at that, by the Russian proletariat itself. It was introduced by the Vanguard Party claiming to speak for this proletariat even though the latter had not yet awakened “to conscious life and struggle” (Lenin). To bring this about was one of the very tasks of this party. It drew its justification from historical materialism.

With this political event, “the international obligations of the working class of Russia” were “coming to the forefront with particular force.”17 They found their embodiment in the Communist International set up in Moscow in 1919. Its aim was the overthrow of capitalism all over the world and its replacement by the dictatorship of the proletariat.18 Such are the principles on which the actions of this body were to be based:

The experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are unable to think . . . that absolute centralization and the strictest discipline of the proletariat are one of the fundamental conditions for victory over the bourgeoisie.19

And: the Communist Party “alone is capable of leading the proletariat in the most ruthless, decisive, and final struggle against all the forces of capitalism.”20

But, since each state has its own, separate communist organization, the question arises: which of these parties is to lead the movement, which is to be at the top of the centralized pyramid and is to issue, therefrom, its directives to “the proletariat”? Or, to put it differently: who is to command and who is to obey? Lenin stresses the decisive importance of “the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard . . . the correctness of its political strategy and tactics” and thereby decides this question. Which leadership could be more “correct” and experienced than the one which had already fought out a victorious revolution and had established the first Socialist Republic?

Thus, it is clear: it is the Russian proletariat, or rather the Russian Communist Party, which is to assume the unquestioned leadership of the world proletariat. International socialism is revived again, but no longer on the basis of equality among the different national parties, as manifested in democratic votes. The Third International was “uncompromisingly hostile to the social-chauvinist traitors and to the vacillators of the ‘Centre’.”21 What was to replace democratic equality was the principle of subordination to the absolute leadership of a national Communist Party.22 But since the same party had identified itself with the Soviet Russian government, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between those policies which were to promote the international class struggle and those which were to serve the specific national interests of the U.S.S.R.

After World War II, the development of socialism as a political reality entered into a new phase. It was characterized by the establishment of communist regimes in numerous Eastern European and later also Asian countries. Consequently, “the question of the relationships between socialist countries, between workers parties, between democratic movements . . . has imposed itself with all its force.”23 This problem could, for political as well as psychological reasons, no longer be solved in the ruthless manner in which Stalin had attended to the question of national minorities within the Soviet Union itself. In this new situation, Leninist doctrine provided only two rather vague statements which were to guide the relations between the Soviet Union and the newly created socialist states: on the one hand, “the real interest of a people cannot be . . . , under socialism, in contradiction to the interest of the other peoples”;24 on the other, there was to be a “close military and economic alliance” between them, made imperative by the common enemy: capitalism.

The way in which these formulas were applied in practice was disclosed in a pamphlet from the pen of M. Djilas (then still a prominent leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party), published as an official document of the Yugoslav government after Stalin’s break with this country in 1948. Djilas wrote:

It goes without saying that Lenin could not foresee, in all its details, the concrete forms which would be assumed by the relationships between Socialist States. . . . Still less could he foresee that the first country where the proletariat would seize power would also be the one which wanted to impose on the new socialist States relationships based on inequality. . . . How, for example, could Lenin have imagined that the U.S.S.R., through the expedient of mixed societies and numerous other means, would extort super-profits from Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, etc., and would exploit weak and retarded socialist countries, noisily referring to all this as “assistance?”25

The Soviet leaders, Djilas continues, refuse to admit differences in the way to build socialism in each country. Instead,

the government of the U.S.S.R. has passed from the position of internationalism to that of nationalism. It was the first to introduce into the relationships between socialist States the principles of capitalistic trade (the dollar as a basis of exchanges among socialist States, and as a principle: sell your worst merchandise as dearly as possible, and buy, what is best, as cheaply as possible), a principle which inevitably, by the very force of economic laws, results in the realization of super-profits and in the exploitation of those who are weak and little advanced by those who are strong and advanced. Such economic relationships serve also as a model for political relationships; in socialist States, those regimes must be supported which, for the sake of ‘international,’ “higher ideals, agree to the inequality of rights and to the exploitation of their country. In this way, docile and vassal governments and countries are created instead of free and equal socialist countries. . . . The methods of imperialist exploitation did not fail to engender imperialistic political methods which are well known to us (calumny, espionage, border provocations, assassination, and arrests of innocent persons who did not approve of such a “policy” and of such methods: the control of all State activities of the socialist countries by the intelligence service of the U.S.S.R., the creation of secret factions in the various communist parties in order to control the line which they follow, the assemblies which they hold, and their leaders; black propaganda aimed at the conditions and difficulties of the various countries and going so far as threatening occupation, the utilization of the international struggle for peace to intimidate the various socialist countries and workers parties . . .). It is on this basis that the hypocritical relationships between the communists of the U.S.S.R. and the communists of the other parties and even between communists within a same party were formed.26

CONCLUSIONS

This passage, quoted from a then leading Marxist ideologist speaking for a small socialist country, both proves and illustrates what has been said in the last paragraph and, in fact, what necessarily follows from this whole analysis. These consequences do not arise from a particular “maliciousness,” to use Marxist terminology, of the leaders of a dominating power; they assert themselves because the principle of subordination, politically as well as economically, is the necessary concomitant of the collectivist system.

In the meantime, socialist reality has entered a fourth phase with the rise of Continental China to a second dominant power. Two “solar systems” are emerging within the socialist camp. But at the same time, some smaller socialist states make use of this new constellation by increasing their freedom of action. They can do so by “autonomously” extending their economic (and political) relations with capitalist countries. The final outcome of these developments as well as of the great contest between the two fundamental conceptions of economic and political order must as yet be awaited.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

27See p. 73.

28See p. 74.

29See p. 77.

30Robbins, L., Economic Planning and International Order. London, Macmillan, 1937, p. 214.

31Ibid.

32Hayek, F. A., “Grundtatsachen des Fortschritts.” ORDO, IX (1957), pp. 19-42.

33“If today some nations can rise in a few decades to a standard of material comfort which the West needed hundreds, even thousands of years to attain, is it not evident that their way, far from being made more difficult, was facilitated by the fact that the West was not compelled to share its material successes with the rest; that it was not retained, but able to progress far ahead? The countries of the West are not only wealthier because they have advanced technical knowledge, but they also have greater advanced technical knowledge because they are wealthier. And the gratuitous gift of knowledge, for which the leaders paid dearly, enables the successors to reach the same level with far fewer sacrifices.” Ibid., pp. 32-33.

34Robbins, L., op. cit., p. 218.

35See p. 78.

36Röpke, W., International Order and Economic Integration, p. 98, italics original.

37Ibid.

38Ibid., p. 99.

39Ibid., p. 100.

40Ibid., p. 105.

41This applies even to the most backward countries, which, according to socialist doctrine, would only gain by a fusion. No nationalist development planner, as we have seen, would agree of his own accord to renounce an autonomous economic policy and to place “world welfare” above national welfare.

42In its essence, Rosa Luxemburg’s doctrine is thus identical with that of the Saint-Simonian school.

43Lenin, V. I., The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (1917). In Selected Works, Vol. X, p. 3.

44Cf. Lenin, V. I., The Third International and Its Place in History (1919). Ibid., p. 31.

45Lenin, V. I., One of the Fundamental Conditions for the Success of the Bolsheviks. Ibid., pp. 60-61.

46Lenin, V. I., Theses of the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International (1920). Ibid., p. 165.

47Lenin, V. I., The Third International and Its Place in History. Ibid., p. 13.

48This resulted in a split, in most countries, between socialists (“communists”) who were prepared to accept this absolute leadership from Moscow and those who were not (“constitutional socialists”).

49Djilas, M., Lénine et les rapports entre états socialistes. Le Livre Yougoslave, 1949, p. 10.

50Ibid., p. 24.

51Ibid., p. 18.

52Ibid., pp. 74-76.

• 1.“Socialism, then, will flourish in proportion as the consciousness grows that there is something vitally wrong in the industrial organization of society.” Guthrie, W. B., Socialism Before the French Revolution. New York, Macmillan, 1907, p. 68. As Robert Owen expresses it: “Until society can be made to understand the impracticability of improving its conditions under the existing circumstances and can be induced to change these circumstances in toto, no real advantages can be obtained for mankind.” Lectures on an Entire New State of Society. London, 1820, p. 138.
• 2.Cf. Karl Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach. In Borkenau, F. (ed.), Karl Marx. Frankfurt/M., Fischer, 1956, p. 42.
• 3.The term “liberal” is used here in its original European sense. “Liberalism is a belief in the value of human personality, and a conviction that the source of all progress lies in free exercise of individual energy; . . . it therefore involves a readiness to use the power of the state for the purposes of creating the conditions within which individual energy can thrive, of preventing all abuses of power, of affording to every citizen the means of acquiring mastery of his own capacities and of estabhshing a real equality of opportunity. . . .” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XIII, 1959, p. 999d.
• 4“It follows from what has been said that the system here established, if it is to be realized, should be adopted or rejected in entirety.” Fichte, J. G., op. cit., p. 103.
• 5Freyer, H., op. cit., p. 26.
• 6Heuss, A., “Hellas. Die archaische Zeit.” Propyläen Weltgeschichte, ed., G. Mann and A. Heuss, Berlin, Propyläen Verlag, 1962, III, p. 373.
• 7Ibid.
• 8“They will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. . . . 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 saviors of the State.” Quoted from Republic, Book I, in Gray, A., The Socialist Tradition. Moses to Lenin. London, Longmans, 1946, p. 19.
• 9Plato, Laws. With an English translation by R. G. Bury, London, Heinemann, 1926, Vol. I, Book I, p. 9.
• 10Ibid., Vol. II, Book XII, p. 477.
• 11Ibid., Book VII, p. 135.
• 12Ibid., p. 149.
• 13Ibid., Book XII, p. 547.
• 14Ibid., p. 537.
• 15Ibid., p. 521.
• 16Ibid., Book VII, p. 185.
• 17Ibid., Book XI, p. 413.
• 18Ibid., Book VIII, p. 171.
• 19Ibid., Vol. I, Book IV, pp. 257-59, italics added.
• 20Ibid., Vol. II, Book VIII, p. 185.
• 21Ibid.
• 22Ibid., p. 187.
• 23Ibid., Book XII, p. 503.
• 24Ibid. Plato lays down the following rules: “First, no man under forty years old shall be permitted to go abroad to any place whatsoever; next, no man shall be permitted to go abroad in private capacity, but in a public capacity permission shall be granted to heralds, embassies, and certain commissions of inspection. . . . These men, when they return home, will teach the youth that the political institutions of other countries are inferior to their own.” Ibid., p. 505.
• 25Ibid., p. 507.
• 26Ibid.
• 27SOCIALISTS HAVE CONCLUDED that something is fundamentally wrong with the “society” in which they live. Consequently, they feel compelled to change it.
• 28SOCIALISTS HAVE CONCLUDED that something is fundamentally wrong with the “society” in which they live. Consequently, they feel compelled to change it.
• 29The main target of socialist criticism, therefore, is the liberals’ stress on individual freedom and utility. Such freedom and utility, it is argued, lead to particularism and chaos. Since the profit motive is founded on considerations of individual as distinct from collective welfare, it is, in the opinion of socialists, totally unsuitable as a means of regulating the economy. Unlike the liberals, therefore, the socialists are primarily preoccupied with the exaltation of the community, and the subordination of the individual to it.
• 30Freyer compares the inner organizational structure of an ideal commonwealth with the “cosmos of the Greek philosophers: finite, round and numerically ordered so that it can simply and clearly be governed by static laws.” To this self-inclusive system all forces not rooted in its laws, and which therefore threaten to interfere with its proper functioning, must appear hostile and dangerous. The only choice a Utopian author leaves his reader is an uncompromising take it or leave it. Hence, a utopia must be strictly isolated from the rest of the world; “all factors and forces which by their nature transgress borderlines and join countries, must at the outset be viewed suspiciously in utopias.”
• 31Freyer compares the inner organizational structure of an ideal commonwealth with the “cosmos of the Greek philosophers: finite, round and numerically ordered so that it can simply and clearly be governed by static laws.” To this self-inclusive system all forces not rooted in its laws, and which therefore threaten to interfere with its proper functioning, must appear hostile and dangerous. The only choice a Utopian author leaves his reader is an uncompromising take it or leave it. Hence, a utopia must be strictly isolated from the rest of the world; “all factors and forces which by their nature transgress borderlines and join countries, must at the outset be viewed suspiciously in utopias.”
• 32Mankind will always be indebted to Plato for the prototype of the ideal commonwealth. This author lived at a time when democracy, the long cherished political order of Athens, had degenerated into a “bustle of rancour and baseness.” In this period of political disintegration and liberated individualism, Socrates had been sentenced to death and executed by the Athenian authorities. The rising philosophical school of the Sophists relativized all moral institutions as being solely dependent on human will in general, and that of the strong in particular.
• 33Against this philosophical anarchism Plato set his theory of the objective existence of absolute principles, the highest of which was justice. Justice may be recognized by an intelligible act and thus refuses to tolerate any authority besides itself, not even that of laws. “What is just can only be discerned for each individual case with respect to the Idea and by the one who possesses the necessary capability; that is, by the philosopher. . . . The just in the highest sense, hence the one who discerns, is therefore himself the law and thus above the rigid letter.”
• 34Human domination is thus openly admitted, but it must be domination by the chosen few endowed by nature, as an old Greek legend has it, with golden hearts. Plato’s goal is to found a state which would personify the moral Idea. The first prerequisite for such a state is unity of purpose, directed at the attainment of absolute justice. The second step is to devise a way of life for the “lovers of wisdom” which would bring them into closest communication with the Idea and its dictates. To achieve this end, Plato established severe rules for the philosophers, forbidding them to have families and private possessions and forcing them into a life of military discipline. Here, for the first time, the ideal of asceticism was linked with the denunciation of gold and silver which was identified with wealth and was regarded as the last cause of human greed and egoism.
• 35Plato, well aware that his Politeia was not realizable on this earth, designed, in his “Nomoi,” a second-best State in which the rulers were less enlightened and therefore, as the title indicates, in need of a coherent framework of guiding laws. Plato retains the military structure in the interior, he even defines “the well-constituted State” as one which “ought to be organized in such a way as to be victorious in war over all other States.” Elsewhere he writes:
• 36The main principle is this: that nobody, male or female, should ever be left without control, nor should anyone, whether at work or in play, grow habituated in mind to acting alone and on his own initiative, but he should live always, both in war and peace, with his eyes fixed constantly on his commander and following his lead.
• 37For this purpose, it is necessary to liberate the citizens from their “lust for wealth which allows a man no leisure time for attention to anything else save his own private property.” And the author continues: “That the laws previously ordained serve to repress the majority of desires, is not surprising.” This is so because “all our laws must always aim at one single object which, as we agreed, is quite rightly named ‘Virtue.’” The State and its citizens are identical in that they both require “the salvation of laws;” therefore, “everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy.”
• 38For this purpose, it is necessary to liberate the citizens from their “lust for wealth which allows a man no leisure time for attention to anything else save his own private property.” And the author continues: “That the laws previously ordained serve to repress the majority of desires, is not surprising.” This is so because “all our laws must always aim at one single object which, as we agreed, is quite rightly named ‘Virtue.’” The State and its citizens are identical in that they both require “the salvation of laws;” therefore, “everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy.”
• 39For this purpose, it is necessary to liberate the citizens from their “lust for wealth which allows a man no leisure time for attention to anything else save his own private property.” And the author continues: “That the laws previously ordained serve to repress the majority of desires, is not surprising.” This is so because “all our laws must always aim at one single object which, as we agreed, is quite rightly named ‘Virtue.’” The State and its citizens are identical in that they both require “the salvation of laws;” therefore, “everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy.”
• 40For this purpose, it is necessary to liberate the citizens from their “lust for wealth which allows a man no leisure time for attention to anything else save his own private property.” And the author continues: “That the laws previously ordained serve to repress the majority of desires, is not surprising.” This is so because “all our laws must always aim at one single object which, as we agreed, is quite rightly named ‘Virtue.’” The State and its citizens are identical in that they both require “the salvation of laws;” therefore, “everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy.”
• 41For this purpose, it is necessary to liberate the citizens from their “lust for wealth which allows a man no leisure time for attention to anything else save his own private property.” And the author continues: “That the laws previously ordained serve to repress the majority of desires, is not surprising.” This is so because “all our laws must always aim at one single object which, as we agreed, is quite rightly named ‘Virtue.’” The State and its citizens are identical in that they both require “the salvation of laws;” therefore, “everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy.”
• 42Internal economic life is strictly regimented. Thus, “each several craftsman in the State shall have one single craft and gain from it his living.” Or again:
• 43The Law-wardens must meet in consultation with experts in every branch of retail trade, and at their meetings they must consider what standard of profits and expenses produces a moderate gain for the trader, and the standard of profits and expenses thus arrived at they must prescribe in writing; and this they must insist on—the market stewards, the city stewards and the rural stewards, each in their own sphere.
• 44Most of the Greeks arrange for their food to be derived from both land and sea, but our people will derive it only from the land. This makes the lawgiver’s task easier.
• 45For if the State was to be on the sea-coast, and to have fine harbors, and to be deficient in many products, instead of productive of everything—in that case it would need a mighty savior and divine lawgivers, if, with such a character, it was to avoid having a variety of luxurious and depraved habits. As things are, however, there is consolation in the fact of that eighty stades. Still, it lies unduly near the sea, and the more so because, as you say, its harbors are good; that, however, we must make the best of. . . . Our State has compensation in the fact that it is all-productive; and since it is hilly, it cannot be highly productive as well as all-productive; if it were, and supplied many exports, it would be flooded in return with gold and silver money—the one condition of all, perhaps, that is most fatal, in a State, to the acquisition of noble and just habits of life.
• 46What remains of foreign trade is severely guarded by the State. It is true that “no toll shall be paid in the State by anyone either on exported goods or on imports,” but this is practically meaningless since
• 47Frankincense and all such foreign spices for use in religious rites, and purple and all dyes not produced in the country, and all pertaining to any other craft requiring foreign imported materials for a use that is not necessary, no one shall import; nor, on the other hand, shall he export any of the stuff which would of necessity remain in the country. . . .
• 48In regard to arms and all instruments of war, if there is need to import any craft or plant or metal or rope or animal for military purposes, the hipparchs and generals shall have control of both imports and exports, when the State both gives and takes, and the Law-wardens shall enact suitable and adequate laws therefor; but no trading for the sake of gain, either in this matter or in any other, shall be carried on anywhere within the boundaries of our State and country.
• 49the intermixture of States with States naturally results in a blending of characters of every kind, as strangers import among strangers novel customs: and this result would cause immense damage to peoples who enjoy a good polity under right laws.
• 50reputation in the eyes of others, whether for goodness or the reverse, is a thing that should never be lightly esteemed.
• 51The State may send out “inspectors,” i.e. men over fifty years of age and of great merit, “who desire to survey the doings of the outside world in a leisurely way.” But they must be “incorruptible, so as to confirm thereby such of his native laws as are rightly enacted, and to amend any that are deficient.” On their return, the inspectors will report to a “mixed body of young men and old” on “anything important they may have learnt elsewhere.”
• 52The State may send out “inspectors,” i.e. men over fifty years of age and of great merit, “who desire to survey the doings of the outside world in a leisurely way.” But they must be “incorruptible, so as to confirm thereby such of his native laws as are rightly enacted, and to amend any that are deficient.” On their return, the inspectors will report to a “mixed body of young men and old” on “anything important they may have learnt elsewhere.”