CHAPTER V
Plato Looks at British Democracy
HAVING seen something of the world in
which Plato lived and wrote, and of the plan which he put forward for its
salvation, we are now faced with the infinitely more difficult task of
transferring the Platonic plan to a modern setting and assessing its value
there. At first sight it seems futile to
ask what Plato would have thought of the nation-state or western democracy or
the USSR [the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: name formerly applying to
Russia and many other Russian-controlled states in Eastern Europe and Asia - editor's
note.]. The whole scale of politics has
been enlarged so vastly by our newly won control of nature that suggestions for
the reorganization of the city-state must appear valueless to modern thinkers. There is a measure of truth in this. We cannot apply conclusions drawn from the
study of one epoch to the problems of another, nor can we rely on words which
we have borrowed from the Greek to mean what their originals meant in Plato's
day. We cannot argue that, because Plato
disliked democracy and advocated something approaching dictatorship, he would
therefore approve of Stalin or of Mussolini and condemn representative
democracy as a form of government. For,
on the one hand, Greek democracy bore no resemblance to modern representative
government; on the other, Plato denounced certain forms of dictatorship as
tyranny. We must therefore carry our
analysis far deeper than these verbal resemblances if we wish to discover what
position Plato would have adopted when faced with modern problems.
To do this is
not to indulge in idle speculation.
Plato was not simply a Greek who lived in the fourth century BC. He was also (for good or ill) the inspiration
of much modern political thought and action.
The Republic has become a part of Western European tradition: it
has moulded our ways of thinking, and more than once a new interpretation of it
has contributed to a great revolution which closed one epoch and inaugurated a
new one. Just because the influence of
Plato and Platonism has been so great, it is vital for us today to discover who
the real Plato was and who he now is, to see him both in the Greek and in the
modern world, and to appreciate him as a man speaking to us and demanding our
approval or our refutation. Whether we
call ourselves historians or philosophers or practical men, we must treat his
philosophy not merely as an historical document, but as a challenge to us, an
assertion of values which we must either accept or reject. We must attempt both to recreate the
historical past and to evaluate the significance of Platonism today: and if it
is objected that this must be largely a work of imagination, it can be answered
that no real historian or philosopher has ever lacked that quality.
I have decided
to begin this reinterpretation with a study of democracy: it is indeed the
obvious place to begin, since our modern democracy and its philosophies are
rooted in Greek ideas and Greek practice.
The English tradition of Locke, and even more, the
French tradition of Rousseau, were consciously based on Greek models:
and among practical politicians - at least before World War I - there were few
who did not claim to derive their inspiration from Pericles.
This Greek
tradition of popular government is still alive today. Men still speak with veneration of the will
of the people and still claim that democracy is based upon its
sovereignty. The democratic slogans are
still in large part Greek slogans and it is high time that we considered what
relevance they have to our practice - whether they are mere slogans or express
ideals which we are trying to realize.
These are precisely the questions which Plato would ask, and he would
ask them in all seriousness, looking at our modern institutions, because he
would see in them hardly a trace of the Greek originals which we still claim to
imitate.
Let us suppose
that Plato were to meet a city councillor, an ardent democrat who
conscientiously occupied every leisure hour in the affairs of his borough, and
was prepared to risk his life to make the world safe for democracy. Plato would be impressed by the man's
sincerity and would ask him what this system was for the sake of which he was
willing to sacrifice so much. The
councillor would probably reply that English democracy is based on the ideal of
individual freedom: it is a form of government which gives to all freedom of
conscience and a part in the control of the affairs of State. The Englishman detests bureaucracy and
officialdom. He wishes to be ruled by
plain men like himself who can interpret his wishes and make Whitehall see
sense. And so we have built up our
representative institutions and our political parties as instruments through
which the wishes of the plain man can still be sovereign, although the
executive power is largely in the hands of officials and experts. It is in this tradition of popular control
that we differ from the Germans [Crossman is here alluding to Nazi Germany
under Hitler - editor's note], who like being bossed and therefore accept
militarism, and from the Russians [an allusion to Soviet Russia under Stalin -
editor's note], who are really not quite civilized and so put up with the
autocracy and cruelty of the Bolshevik regime.
We in England would not stand either of these tyrannies because we are
individuals and free men who like to have a hand in running the affairs of
State. We would rather muddle through in
our common-sense way than surrender to theorists and cranks who claim that they
know the secret of happiness and really want to impose their own ideas on
everyone else.
Plato would
listen politely to this speech, but he would confess at the end that he did not
fully understand the references to freedom and popular control. In what sense, he would ask, are Englishmen
free, and how do they control the State?
He would probably be told that through elections to Parliament they
choose representatives to control the bureaucracy and to decide the lines of
public policy and particularly the ways in which public monies should be
spent. This answer would not satisfy
him. He would point out that
self-government should mean governing yourself; taking part in a general
election can hardly be called that, when the actual work of government is done
by a committee of members of one party in the Commons. What part, he would ask, has the people in
choosing the Cabinet? It is selected by
the Prime Minister from the majority party in the House, which often does not
even represent the majority of the voters.
So the Government may, in fact, be composed of politicians whose
programme has been approved by only a minority of the nation. Plato, I fancy, would ask why we call by the
name of democracy a system of government in which the people as a whole has no
part, but a section of them can vote a party into power, members of which
compose the actual Government. He would
suggest that this scheme might well be described as 'alternative party
government', but he would be puzzled at the notion of called it a government
based on the will of the people.
His bewilderment
would be increased when he found that in local affairs the same system is
used. Here, too, the people do not
govern themselves. Instead, some 30 or
40 per cent vote once a year in municipal elections. There is little speech-making, 'election
addresses' are circulated, and a certain amount of canvassing is done. On the day of the election a few cars (mostly
belonging to one party) can be seen, and possibly a few posters. No-one seems unduly excited, and few could
recognize the candidates. After this
annual ceremonial the affairs of the locality are carried on very much as
before.
Plato's first
reaction to this discovery would be to congratulate the city councillor on the
excellence of the propaganda which he and his friends employ to make the people
believe that they are governing themselves when they are in fact doing nothing
of the sort. His second would be one of
horror when he began to realize that the councillor and others like him
themselves believe that they are members of a democracy. He would conclude that they had most unmerited
good fortune in having been presented by heaven with a 'noble lie' accepted by
rulers and ruled alike which leaves power in the hands of the former and
satisfies the vague ambitions of the latter, and he would, if he were
well-disposed to us, pray that we should continue happily and for ever in our
fool's paradise.
But supposing
that the councillor grew irritable and said, 'My dear
sir, you laugh at our system: but tell me of any other in which the people
really rule.' Plato would reply, 'That
is not difficult. I will show you what
your borough would look like if it were a Greek democracy. We in Greece meant by democracy the rule of
the people, and we meant it literally. A
Greek city of your size with, say, 100,000 inhabitants, was independent,
possessed its own army and navy, and waged war upon its neighbours. I myself found such a city far too large and
suggested once that 5,040 male citizens was the ideal number for a city-state. But that is by the way; if you want to
introduce self-government you must first of all restrict the size of your State
to at most 100,000, and it is obvious that your first requirement will be a
place where all the men of the city can meet together to take all important
decisions. In Athens, where the climate
is dependable, we could meet out of doors, but here in England you will need a
covered hall which will hold 20,000 men.
For your citizen assembly will consist of all the male citizens over
seventeen years of age, and it will meet at least once a month. I have suggested that you need have room for
20,000 only because I do not imagine all the 25,000 will ever come on the same
day.
'This assembly
will indeed be sovereign. Those citizens
who trouble to attend will vote the budget after detailed discussion: will appoint
by lot committees for special business, ambassadors to represent you in other
towns, and generals to command your army.
They will have the power to double the rates one month and to halve them
the next, and they can impeach and condemn to death any
unsatisfactory official. You will
perhaps suggest that such an assembly is totally unmanageable. I am inclined to agree with you, but we had
politicians in our best days who could command its ear
for years on end, and really control city policy. They were not leaders of parties in your
sense of the word, and they had no official positions. They ruled by force of personality and by the
loudness of their voices, depending every day on their powers of persuasion to
retain control. For the people were sovereign,
and these were just ordinary citizens whom the people for the moment trusted;
so that the decisions of policy were not theirs, but the people's, and they
were in no sense responsible to the people, but only advisers of the people.
Naturally, they gained a body of support on which they could rely, and
they organized political clubs and factions, but they could never gain a firm
position as rulers because at any moment they could be voted down by the
assembly. I assure you it demanded more
qualities to be a politician in a city-state.
'But an assembly
of 20,000 will not get through much business unless it is well prepared
beforehand. So in Athens we had a
preparatory council of 500 which worked out the minutes of the assembly and
drafted proposed legislation. The
council also had executive powers in the intervals between meetings of the
assembly, and I know you are going to interrupt me and say that in that case
the people were not sovereign after all: it was the council of 500 who really
held control. In this you would be
wrong: for we were democrats and took care to prevent this council every
becoming a caucus, by making membership of it depend on the chance of the
lot. It was composed of citizens of
thirty years of age and over, who sat on the council for one year, and their
names were picked as you pick the names for the jury lists in England. Anyone might become a member and, as no-one
could be a councillor more than twice, every citizen found himself at some
point in his life a member of it. And so
we prevented it from ever becoming a ruling caucus since it changed from year
to year and could not be packed with supporters of any politician or party.
'We believed
that a democracy must be politically educated and we regarded membership of the
council as the proper training for any intelligent citizen. The council also had its executive committee,
membership of which went by rotation, and the chairman of the executive changed
every day, so that the majority of citizens were prime minister for one day of
their lives at least. My master,
Socrates, once found himself on the executive on a very nasty occasion. It was after the battle of Arginusae, in 406, when we had staved off final defeat by a
brilliant naval victory. The people were
nervous and excitable, and when news came through that after the victory many
of our boats had sunk in the storm and no efforts had been made to save the
crews, a motion was introduced in the assembly to impeach all six generals and
try them en bloc. That, of course,
was illegal: each man should have had a separate trial and the chairman of the
executive told the people so. But the
people wanted blood and threatened to impeach him too if he threw out the
motion. The executive was nervous, but
Socrates said it must obey the law and face the people. He held out for a long time, but the chairman
and most of the members would not risk it: so the executive gave way by a
majority vote, and the generals were tried and executed en bloc.
'I think that
will show how much power belonged to the council, how much to the people. The people, believing in democracy, would
tolerate nothing which prevented the exercise of the general will. We could have no proper civil service because
it was feared that it would gain undue control: we could not even have a
non-political judiciary, for the law-courts were also democratic, and nearly
all cases were tried by popular juries with 500 or 1,000 members. The only important officials who were elected
instead of being chosen by lot were the generals, and they could be dismissed
at a moment's notice.
'You will tell
me this system of government could not work.
I can only reply that it continued for a very long time and that it was
democratic
'I do not
imagine you are ever likely to introduce true democracy in England. For one thing your people are, as far as I
can judge, profoundly unpolitical. They do not seem really interested in the
conduct of affairs and are content if someone does that for them. They have not our feeling for collective
action and collective life. If I were
not your guest, I should call them unpatriotic and mercenary. They only seem to get excited about politics
when their pockets are affected, and they do not really believe in themselves
or their civic responsibilities. Of
course, I see that no-one who believes in democracy could take part in your
national politics because the nation is far too big a unit to have any
collective will, and the problems of national politics are too remote and
difficult for the ordinary man. But if
they were democratic, they would be far more active in local affairs, and they
would never allow you city councillors to dictate to them in the way you
do. I gather that local politics in
England is chiefly concerned with "keeping down the rates", but
surely that is a very bad policy for a democracy. If your workmen were proud of your city and
if they had any sense, they would see that public spending is fine, and that
the poorer people can get far more benefit by it than by keeping down the
rates. Instead of each trying to make
his own house look well, they would build great public baths and libraries and
gymnasia and gardens which everyone could enjoy: and they would see to it that
a rich man who did not make large voluntary contributions as well as paying
taxes was thoroughly unpopular. The
fact of the matter is that you all, rich and poor, in England behave as though
you were rich. Our rich men, of
course, were anti-democratic and tried to keep the taxes down: they disliked
collective life and saw that genuine culture and education is only possible for
gentlemen of breeding and education. But
your poor people seem to believe this as much as the rich, and to be content
that they should work, while a leisured class enjoys the fruits of their
labours, provided they are given enough to eat and to drink and to gamble. I regard this natural submissiveness of the
English poor as the fundamental reason for the stability of your form of
government: second only to that I should put the fact that, by a free use of
the wealth which your empire and your mineral resources have provided you have
been able to tame the natural leaders of democracy and to give them bribes
enough to take the sting out of their speeches and the revolutionary spirit out
of their grumbles and their discontent.
'Your country is,
in fact, a lucky blend of aristocracy and oligarchy, whose social structure is
rendered stable by the "noble lie" of self-government and individual
freedom. By retaining the loyal services
of a gentry schooled to political responsibility, you have avoided the open
class-war which plutocracy inevitably brings.
By allowing your industrialists and merchants to grow fabulously rich,
you have made them contented and patriotic citizens, and have then skilfully
removed their sons from their mercenary influence and trained them in boarding
schools and universities in the ideals of your aristocracy. Thus their highest wish is not to be rich
only, but to gain a title as well, and their desire for aristocratic status
softens the acquisitive instinct and moulds it into the service of the
community.
'I myself have
little respect for this British ideal of titled wealth, but I must
confess that, once the end is admitted, the means you have taken to achieve it
are wholly correct; and since you and your countrymen have no feeling for
philosophy or metaphysics, I shall assume in talking to you that your ideals
are sound. Of course they are not, but
they are less vicious than those of most nations which I have visited.
'Admitting then
for the moment the correctness of the end, I regard your form of government as
very skilfully adapted to achieve it.
Your social system has remained rooted in status, not in
equality, and you have therefore achieved in England something not unlike the
class-divisions which I tried to work out in my Republic. Each "civilian" tries to retain his
position as craftsman or doctor or lawyer or shopkeeper: he is content with
that because he regards the established order as ordained by God, and therefore
limits his ambitions to securing his place within that order. The few who are naturally ambitious may wish
to climb a step higher on the social ladder, but they do not wish to knock the
ladder down, and for this reason the ambitious are, more than all others,
upholders of the inequality which is the essence of that order. They believe in my idea of justice "that
each man should do his own proper business, and that only the best should
rule".
'I am especially
interested to see how this notion of status has captured the workmen among whom
I should have expected the ideas of democracy to thrive. Instead of uniting to overthrow the rich,
they have set up combinations and unions to defend their status, and these
unions compete with one another as much as they struggle against the
employers. Craft is matched against
craft, skilled against unskilled, and finally the employed feel themselves
bound together against those social outcasts, the unemployed. For the unemployed have lost status and are
therefore the care of no union or combination of workmen at all. Then, again, I notice among the workmen that
division of ruler and subject which I was at such pains to impose on the
city-state. There, too, you find a
hierarchy with officials and politicians at the top, and below, the subject
masses, who even in union and party matters do not wish to rule themselves but
are content to leave that task to others whom they trust and who, because of
their high rank, are well content to leave the world as it is, instead of
turning it upside down.
'In assessing
the goodness and badness of any social system or state, you will agree that the
details of political organization are relatively unimportant and are always
secondary to social habits and tradition.
Your tradition is, if I understand it, an aristocratic tradition which
has maintained itself through unprecedented economic changes. Your aristocrats have conformed themselves to
the dominance of large-scale manufacture more skilfully than ours faced the
growth of trade and commerce. Without
serious disturbance they have habituated the new industrial leaders to their
old traditions, so that the whole population retains its old loyalties and
status in a new setting. They prefer
good government to self-government, and they have only demanded the extension
of privilege where it could be granted without any danger. Whenever a section has pressed its claims too
far, the people has rallied to the Government, assuming that justice is always
on the side of law and order, and that any claim of justice is unreasonable if
it involves any risk for those who are pretty well content with their lot.
'I have been
told of the General Strike which occurred in 1926, and I have been deeply
impressed by the movement of public opinion on that occasion. To begin with it was favourable to the
miners, but immediately the situation threatened to upset the wages and
salaries of the "civilians", not only the public, who were unaffected
by the immediate issue, but the workmen's leaders and many of the workmen
themselves became hesitant in their pressure and the strike collapsed, with the
result that the miners were worse off than before. Again, I am told that the English people had
the cause of the unemployed at heart but in 1931 it voted into power (and I
believe many of the unemployed were in agreement) a Government resolved to
reduce the payments made to them. These
two examples demonstrate to my mind a social tradition of unheard of strength,
which is able to stifle the cries of the suffering and outcast by the mere
suggestion that if they are listened to and if their woes are remedied, the
status of the other "civilians" will be in serious danger of attack.
'It is therefore
clear that you have the good fortune to be possessed of a temper which shrinks
before all thought of poverty, and therefore condemns all changes which may
endanger the national income, and which prefers the preservation of status to
the amelioration of suffering or the claims of justice. And I fancy that the political system which
you call representative government is the expression of this temper. First of all, in the monarchy and in the
House of Lords, you have preserved institutions whose only purpose is to delay
changes and prevent hurried legislation.
Secondly, in your House of Commons, with its first, second, and third
readings and all its other ceremonial of discussion and debate, you have
evolved a legislature which must listen to every minority and vested interest
and make concessions to them. By this
means all violent legislation is robbed of its sting and rendered relatively
impotent. For an
injured minority is always more vociferous and persuasive than the great mass
of the people who will be benefited by reform. Thus in the interest of the landowner and the
speculator your legislature has resolutely refused to protect the countryside
from chaotic and ugly building, or your new roads from being rendered useless
by the erection of houses along their whole length. I believe that your legislature, since its
ideal is not justice or beauty but titled wealth, has been wise in its decision
to sacrifice beauty and the health of the people on this issue. For once property is challenged,
a spirit is aroused in the masses most difficult to control. I could quote you many other examples of the
same wisdom. You have wisely resisted
the demand that the government should control your farms and industries because
you well realize that a docile people and chaotic industry are preferable to
that ugly greed and self-assertiveness which always grow up when the people begin
to speak with one mind against the claims of salary and status. You are, in fact, convinced that the
maintenance of an ancestral social tradition is worth the suffering of many,
and that that suffering would be increased were their claims to be heard.
'It is an
especial virtue, however, of your political organization that the criticisms
and wishes of the people are not entirely disregarded but caught up and
satisfied in the "noble lie" of representative institutions. By your system of changing governments you do
- it is true - concede some slight influence to the popular will. In so doing you run the very greatest of
perils. But how ingeniously you canalize
it into the mere choice between two or three political parties, so that the
people shall not choose their representatives but only choose between the
candidates dictated to them by those who control the party machines: how
skilfully you prevent any but these traditional parties from growing up and any
but a tiny minority of wealthy persons or lawyers or trade-union officials from
standing for Parliament! Thus the people
are never represented by men or women like themselves but by professional
politicians well versed in the rules of the game, and prepared to defend it
against all change. And if by any chance
some simple man or crazy idealist is elected, how soon he is charmed and
beguiled by the ceremonial and, far off from the miseries he is resolved to
cure, how rapidly he ceases to be the spokesman of the people, and becomes a
Member of Parliament proud of his status and stalwart for its traditions.
'And so you have
taught the people to talk in an educated tone through their representatives,
and persuaded them to prefer the parliamentary tradition to true
democracy. You have taken that great
monster the popular will and divided it into a myriad parts, each speaking for
itself, and each interested only in its own salvation, and you have given them
spokesmen who will attune their demands to the maintenance of the established
order.
'You should
indeed be well satisfied. And yet I am
told that there are among you malcontents and agitators who look with longing
at our Athenian system and wish to increase the influence of the people on your
affairs. Be well advised and suppress
such people at once. Their hearts are
better than their heads; and good intentions in politics are more dangerous
than cool villainy. Consider the little
that the people do now. Do they do it
well? Can they correct the expert's
opinion? They cannot, because they do
not know the facts and have not been trained to give judgement upon them. For this reason, when dealing with questions
remote from their daily life, they will take decisions flowing out of sentiment
instead of based firmly on cool thought, and will surrender, in a watery
feeling of unselfishness, interests and power which they can ill afford to
lose. The truth is that the people need
good government, but that cannot mean popular government in either sense of the
word "popular". For popular
government must mean weak government and short-sighted government: weak because
it does not risk the anger of the people even for its own good;
short-sighted, because the people cannot see beyond the ends of their noses.
'But there is a
second danger in popular control which is even more serious. If you look at politics you will find that
most people's interest is in their own pockets.
The rich want the Government to protect the wealth they have amassed;
the poor want the Government, by taxation and social services, to redistribute
the wealth of the rich. What will happen
then if you allow the democratic control of the machine of government? Obviously the rich will want to use it to
favour their business, and to protect their property: they will only use the
social services as a sop to keep the masses quiet. But the poor will want to use it for
squeezing all they can out of the rich and distributing the benefits among
themselves. And so popular control of
government must degenerate into anarchy: polite party politics will disappear:
class-war will take its place. The
freedom which the democrat claims will be a freedom of the two nations,
the rich and the poor, to fight it out between themselves who shall have the
larger slice of the cake. And what will
happen to the politician? He will not be
able to rule for the good of the nation, because if he tries to do that he will
never get to power. Only a man willing
to defend the interests of either the rich or the poor will be a success. Anyone who is fair-minded and really wants
justice will be shoved aside by the two great factions: and so your politician
will merely become a skilled orator, whose job it is to put his clients' case
without any regard for justice or principles.
'But everyone
will talk about justice and right and honour and integrity and so on. The words and phrases will go on being used
by both sides in order to win the support of the masses. For both sides need propaganda, and the best
propaganda for a bad cause is high-sounding moral principles. But in spite of the speeches of the
politicians, a really democratic nation, in which there are great inequalities
of wealth, must be a nation divided against itself: an
uneasy equilibrium of contending forces which may at any moment turn into the
dictatorship of the rich or the dictatorship of the poor. Only so long as there is money enough to
satisfy the demands of the poor can it survive.
When wealth runs short one or other of the two gangs will seize control,
for real democracy means anarchy and class-war.
You should thank the Providence which has protected you from it and made
you content to dilute authority with freedom.
The seeds of conflict between rich and poor are there today. They will grow monstrously if you water them
with real popular control.
'That you should
do anything of the sort, my dear sir, is in the highest degree improbable; and
I recognize that warnings of this kind are totally unnecessary in England. For the safest defence against real democracy
is the "noble lie" of Representative Government such as you possess. With us
democracy was a revolutionary and subversive force: with you it is the greatest
single influence on the side of law and order.
By adopting it your rich men have preserved their riches, your gentry
their professions, and your working classes have persuaded themselves that they
too are rich. You are the most
complacent and therefore the most conservative country in the world. Unless by some mischance you lose all your
empire, or by some divine intervention become philosophical, nothing can shake
your self-content.'
I have imagined
Plato discussing England with a moderately intelligent supporter of the status
quo who believed that he was a democrat.
The reader may feel that he has not grappled with the problem seriously,
and I believe that in fact he would refuse to do so unless his opponent were
willing to dip below the surface, to forget legal fictions and constitutional
forms and discover the real basis of our social system. This the ordinary democrat refuses to do: he
talks cheerfully of the sovereignty of the people, the power of public opinion,
individual freedom, and civil liberty, and he preaches that these are the real
values of our English system which we must be prepared to defend against
all-comers. Plato would attempt to show
him that these are only trimmings: the real basis of our social tradition is
totally different. What we need today is
not more popular control or more education, but a clear understanding between the
two party oligarchies of their responsibilities and of the dangers which face
the country, and to this end he would probably propose that we should consider
the problem of education next.