Explain Plato’s communism and compare it with modern communism. (2003)
Plato’s “communism”, set out in Books III (416d–417b) and V (457c–466d) of the Republic, abolishes private property and the private family for the guardian class alone. The word is borrowed from the nineteenth century: Plato’s scheme is an ethical discipline for rulers, while modern communism, from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels onward, is a theory of production and class. The resemblance lies more in vocabulary than in structure.
Plato’s Communism Explained
- Communism of property. Rulers and auxiliaries may own no land, house or money, and live in common barracks and dine at common tables, maintained by the producers as a wage for guarding.
- Communism of family. Permanent marriage is replaced by temporary unions arranged by the rulers at festivals; children are reared in common nurseries and parentage concealed, so each guardian treats every elder as parent and every contemporary as sibling.
- Rationale. The greatest evil for a city is what divides it (462a–b). Property and family create private interests that pull rulers from the public good; nepotism is the more insidious because it wears the mask of love. A ruler who cannot own cannot be bought, and a city that shares pleasure and pain in common is most like one person.
- Scope. Producers keep families and property. The scheme is political, ascetic and aristocratic: a burden of office, not a redistribution.
Comparison with Modern Communism
| Criterion | Plato | Modern (Marxian) communism |
|---|---|---|
| Philosophical basis | Idealist; Forms and the soul | Historical materialism |
| Who is covered | Guardians only | The whole society |
| What is common | Consumption and possession | Means of production |
| Classes | Retained, graded by aptitude | Abolished |
| The state | Supreme and educative | To wither away |
| Method | Legislated by philosopher-rulers | Class struggle and revolution |
| Spirit | Renunciation by the few | Abundance for all |
- Aim. Plato seeks an incorruptible ruling class; the Communist Manifesto (1848) sums up its theory as abolition of private property in order to end exploitation and alienation.
- Distribution. Marx’s higher phase promises from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs (Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875); Plato’s guardians receive only what their function requires.
- Family. The Manifesto expects the bourgeois family to vanish with capital but proposes no state-arranged breeding; Plato’s eugenic unions have no Marxian counterpart.
- Resemblances. Both see private property as corrupting, rank community above private interest and have been dismissed as utopian.
- Hence the familiar contrast: Plato offers an economic remedy for a political ill, Marx a political remedy for an economic ill.
Critiques and the Indian Echo
- Aristotle (Politics II) objected that common property is nobody’s care and common children dilute affection. Soviet collectivisation later showed how coercive Marx’s version became once state power replaced the withering state.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi‘s trusteeship and aparigraha (non-possession) are nearer Plato: voluntary renunciation by those holding power. The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, requiring public servants to declare assets, pursues the same aim of keeping wealth and office apart.
Conclusion
Plato’s communism is moral hygiene for rulers; Marx’s is emancipation for producers. The first separates power from wealth, the second abolishes the classes that wealth creates. Modern constitutionalism keeps Plato’s insight in disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules while rejecting both total designs.