Criticism-7
Other objections are economic rather than psychological.
Plato's republic, it is argued, denounces the division of every city into two cities, and then offers us a city divided into three.
The answer is that the division in the first case is by economic conflict;
in Plato's state the guardian and auxiliary classes are specifically excluded from participation in this competition for gold and goods.
But then the guardians would have power without responsibility;
and would not this lead to tyranny?
Not at all;
they have political power and direction, but no economic power or wealth;
the economic class, if dissatisfied with the guardians' mode of rule, could hold up the food supply, as Parliaments control executives by holding up the budget.
Well, then, if the guardians have political but not economic power, how can they maintain their rule?
Have not Harrington and Marx and many others shown that political power is a reflex of economic power, and becomes precarious as soon as economic power passes to a politically subject group—as to the middle classes in the eighteenth century?
This is a very fundamental objection, and perhaps a fatal one.
The answer might be made that the power of the Roman Catholic Church, which brought even kings to kneel at Canossa, was based, in its earlier centuries of rule, rather on the inculcation of dogmas than on the strategy of wealth.
But it may be that the long dominion of the Church was due to the agricultural condition of Europe:
an agricultural population is inclined to supernatural belief by its helpless dependence on the caprice of the elements, and by that inability to control nature which always leads to fear and thence to worship;
when industry and commerce developed, a new type of mind and man arose, more realistic and terrestrial, and the power of the Church began to crumble as soon as it came into conflict with this new economic fact.
Political power must repeatedly readjust itself to the changing balance of economic forces.
The economic dependence of Plato's guardians on the economic class would very soon reduce them to the controlled political executives of that class;
even the manipulation of military power would not long forestall this inevitable issue—any more than the military forces of revolutionary Russia could prevent the development of a proprietary individualism among the peasants who controlled the growth of food, and therefore the fate of the nation.
Only this would remain to Plato:
that even though political policies must be determined by the economically dominant group, it is better that those policies should be administered by officials specifically prepared for the purpose, than by men who stumble out of commerce or manufacturing into political office without any training in the arts of statesmanship.
[ 00’45” ] it is argued (正如所谈论的那样)
[ 06’16” ] Canossa (卡诺萨，意大利北部古城堡。go to Canossa 屈服，被迫认罪；含垢忍辱地让步。中世纪时，日耳曼皇帝亨利四世开罪教皇格里高雷七世，被开除教籍，不容于诸侯。1077年，亨利四世赴格里高雷驻地卡诺萨，赤足立于雪中，表示忏悔，才获赦免。)
[ 06’36” ] inculcation (灌输)
[ 07’51” ] dominion (domination，支配权；统治权)
[ 08’23” ] caprice (变化无常)
[ 09’07” ] terrestrial (领土感)
[ 09’21” ] crumble (瓦解)
[ 11’02” ] manipulation (操控力)
[ 11’11” ] forestall (解决)
[ 13’11” ] stumble out of... into (跌跌撞撞地闯入)
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