[lbo-talk] Re: Know your enemy

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 12:59 PM -0400 4/19/03, Shane Mage wrote:
>Its sole purpose is as Sokrates's ironic answer to the question why 
>the Guardians (by which Plato referred to the "rational" and 
>"emotional" parts of the *psyche*) should accept what to most Greeks 
>was a grossly *inferior* socvial position--why, for instance, they 
>should be deprived of monetary wealth (not to mention every other 
>form of private property or family life).  They should not seek gold 
>and silver because they already possessed them in their very being.

Isn't the disdain for gold and silver -- monetary wealth -- Plato's 
cheap shot at the democratic faction of merchants, allied with 
artisans, peasants, and left-wing intellectuals (= sophists)?  After 
all, Plato's ideology represented landed wealth, his ideal society 
resembling Sparta, where land and slaves were owned by the state (= 
the executive committee of aristocrats).

Cf. "Ideologies of Ancient Greece: Two Codes," 
<http://www.wsu.edu/~tcook/doc/AristocraticVsDemocraticCodes.htm>; 
and "Sparta," <http://plato-dialogues.org/tools/loc/sparta.htm>.
-- 
Yoshie

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