Plato's Reckoning
Plato's Reckoning
Grappling with the politics of the preeminent philosopher of the Western tradition
Though political landscapes are ever-changing, the human species (or Western civilization, anyway) nonetheless keeps revisiting the political philosophy of one of history’s most influential thinkers: Aristocles of Athens—AKA, “Plato”—the ancient Greek philosopher whose ideas on politics continue to influence modern thought. Known for his profound insights into the nature of justice, governance, and the human soul, Plato’s ideas have shaped Western thought for millennia.
But what can his theories teach us in our modern society? In our efforts to understand how ancient wisdom might still illuminate the path forward in our complex world, it would surely do us well to explore his vision of the ideal state, the role of the philosopher-king, the nature of justice, and the relevance of each in today’s political climate. Can Plato’s theories offer us guidance in an era of liberal democracy, global challenges, and social change?
As you’ll probably guess if you read last month’s dispatch, we don’t take these questions lightly. After examining the connections between the politics and economics of Ancient Rome and today’s issues in modern capitalist republics—particularly in the U.S.—we argued that the proto-liberalism rooted in Rome’s oligarchic republican system led to economic practices focused on private property rights and imperialist expansion, leading to the immiseration of the plebian class, while divergent interests among ruling elites ultimately contributed to the Republic’s collapse and the rise of the Empire. Accordingly we discussed the need for modern economic reforms inspired by Ancient Rome, such as debt-relief measures to ensure economic stability, as potential solutions to modern challenges. By critiquing modern financial practices and comparing them to Ancient Rome’s debt markets, we advocated for systemic reforms to prevent economic collapse, using the lessons of Ancient Rome to provide valuable insights into modern governance and the pursuit of a more equitable society.
But despite acknowledging the profound influence of the Roman Republic on modern governance through its concepts of checks and balances, separation of powers, and civic duty, which have become to greater or lesser extents foundational in contemporary democracies—in ideology, if nothing else—that dispatch offered less investigation into political philosophies than it did into economic policies as potential remedies for today’s social instability. Therefore, in the interest of offering a menu with the most wholesome diet we can scrape together, it will behoove us to take another look at political philosophy in the ancient world as embodied in Plato’s The Republic.
Because maybe—just maybe—ancient wisdom might still illuminate the path forward in our complex world. You think so? Let’s find out!
Of course, we’re not the first to investigate how we’d estimate Plato’s politics in the modern day, or his political alignment. In May, Michael Millerman—whom we noted in June as one of our principal sources on Alexander Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory—offered “Was Plato a Communist or Fascist?” to explore various comparisons between Plato’s political philosophy and modern ideologies.
Millerman begins by introducing the contrasting modern interpretations of Plato’s works, particularly The Republic, as being either proto-communist or proto-fascist. As the basis for these interpretations, he highlights (at ~0:56) the ideas of women and property being held in common, of no private family, and of the extension of equality as proto-communist, before presenting (at ~1:24) the idea of a philosopher-king, a hierarchical political community, the denigration of individual rights and liberties, and Plato’s emphasis on virtue and excellence over equality as proto-fascist.
That said, Millerman emphasizes (at ~2:34) the need to understand Plato’s true intentions beyond the ideological lenses of communism, fascism, or liberalism. Instead, he suggests that Plato’s ideas, such as the community of wives and children, are meant to explore the tension between the common good and individual interests, as well as the limits of justice in a political community. Millerman goes on to discuss (at ~6:00) further perspectives on the philosopher-king, and describes how some see it as advocating a form of technocracy, or rule by experts. Still, he contrasts the more holistic virtues of the philosopher-king against modern technocrats, who claim expertise in limited domains but seek to rule over all aspects of society.
While he acknowledges the cause that some readers have for viewing Plato as a proto-communist, a proto-fascist, or a proto-technocrat, Millerman exhorts us again to abandon our natural inclinations to interpret Plato’s works through the lens of modern ideologies, and instead focus on understanding his true intentions. Instead we ought to study Plato’s works to gain insights into political life, human nature, the limits of a political community, the tension between the common good and individual interests, the pursuit of justice and virtue, and the limitations of specific domains of knowledge when they seek to universalize themselves.
Millerman seems understanding about why some among us might trace the ancestry of multiple modern ideologies back to Plato, much as he hastens to caution us against staging any of them as The Republic’s truest heir. Indeed, the relationship between our contemporary ideologies and that ancient masterpiece of Western philosophy are hardly direct—but I’ll tell you one thing: Peter Coffin sure don’t think Plato was no communist.
In his Plato Is a Bitch (2024), Coffin offers a scathing critique that mixes humor and biting commentary. After beginning his documentary with reference to Plato’s famous allegory of the cave—in which prisoners take shadows on a cave wall for reality until a philosopher-king escapes outside into the intelligible realm, illustrating how people are trapped in limited perceptions and remain unaware of a broader reality—Coffin’s analysis quickly shifts to a more critical tone, labeling Plato as an elitist who advocated for a society where only those who belong to the select class of the philosopher-kings should rule, based on their supposed wisdom and understanding of higher realities, with the masses deemed too ignorant to participate in governance.
Coffin accordingly argues that Plato’s vision is not only out-of-touch but also dangerously elitist, promoting a rigid hierarchy where power and wisdom are reserved for a select few. Drawing parallels between Plato’s ideas and modern society, he suggests that, with their efforts to control information and decision-making while the masses remain in the dark, the current ruling elites resemble Plato’s philosopher-kings—at least in their own minds, and in the prevailing ideologies promoted to justify the status quo. He also criticizes (at ~24:05) Plato’s support for eugenics and population control as methods to maintain social order, and connects (at ~25:08) these ideas to darker aspects of history, such as Nazism.
Interestingly, Coffin’s reference here to Plato’s support for eugenics builds on criticisms that the documentarian previously aired in Less Sucks: Overpopulation, Eugenics, and Degrowth (2022), wherein he traces (at ~6:39–9:50 in that work) Thomas Malthus’ 18th-century concerns about overpopulation back to Plato’s own views on population control and governance, even when Earth’s population was much smaller, and to his belief that unchecked growth would lead to resource scarcity and war. Coffin mocks these beliefs as unrealistic and self-serving, with the philosopher-kings—supposedly the only ones who know what’s truly good—ruling and imposing strict population controls to maintain societal balance while being themselves exempt from such restrictions. In the same work, Coffin returns (at ~58:58–1:06:33) again to Plato, criticizing Plato’s proposal in The Republic for philosopher-kings to regulate reproduction as an ancestor to the ideas of Francis Galton and modern eugenics. These ideas influenced oppressive policies in the U.S. during the early 20th century, where forced sterilization targeted those deemed inferior, and these practices in turn inspired Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies. Therefore, Plato’s self-aggrandizing idea of the philosopher-king launched a historic cycle of elitism and oppression wherein the ruling classes justify their dominance—which those ruling classes must protect against the threat of growing “inferior” populations, leading to dangerous ideologies that devalue human life and culminating in practices like eugenics and genocide.
Throughout his 2024 film, too, Coffin similarly dismisses Plato’s philosophy for its self-serving theorizing with which a ruling class justifies its political power, while highlighting further its disconnection from real-world struggles. For that reason, he therefore contrasts it against Marxism, which he views as more grounded in material reality and social change.
Having outlined the tension and opposition between Plato’s political philosophy and communism, Coffin’s documentary turns then to an exploration of how debates around artificial intelligence, creativity, and plagiarism relate to capitalist property relations, class divides, the consolidation of power, and justification ideologies that focus blame on individuals rather than systemic factors. Importantly for our purposes here, Coffin connects (at ~31:43) Plato’s concept of justice from The Republic—which involves everyone fulfilling their role without interfering in anyone else’s business, thereby forming a harmonious whole—to modern issues of originality in creative work. Though many independent digital content creators view those who copy original ideas as disrupting the natural order of creativity, threatening authenticity and the meaningful expression of original thought, Coffin argues instead that calls from modern creators to respect these supposed boundaries of originality only echo Plato’s advocacy for everyone to “know their place” and stay in their own lane. The corresponding notion of “real” creators versus “imposters” represents for him an ideology that reinforces this undemocratic dynamic. Accordingly, he challenges the idea of absolute originality, suggesting that, because it involves remixing and building upon existing ideas and works, all creativity is inherently derivative.
From here, Coffin goes on to argue that intellectual property laws in capitalist republics constrain creative work to protect the interests of the owning class rather than to safeguard creativity, thereby funneling value created by labor to those owning the final (intellectual) property, and suggests that the legal system is designed to maintain existing power structures and perpetuate the concentration of wealth and control over creative works in the hands of large corporations and platform owners. Contrasting AI’s remixing of finite data sets versus the open-ended experiential stream informing human creativity over time, he argues that AI is simply a tool which can aid production, but which can’t replicate the contextual shaping involved in human creative choices. In Coffin’s appraisal, AI has the potential to democratize the creative process, and its detractors among established creators only criticize it because they view it as a threat to their authenticity and originality: in other words, a threat to their status as the would-be philosopher-kings of digital content, and to the traditional notions of creativity and ownership on which they stake their claims to said status. Accordingly, the contemporary debate around AI plagiarism obscures examination of power, class interests, and how property relations function as a determining factor in the directional transfer of economic value, distracting those who participate in it away from meaningful change.
That, in Coffin’s view, amounts to a modern variation of the many arguments (and absurd implications thereof) found in The Republic to justify rule by supposed meritocratic elites, while the contemporary predilection to focus on the ethical debate of an individual’s actions only perpetuates status quo power structures. As an alternative, he champions a more collective and democratic approach to creativity, under which the focus shifts from individual ownership and gatekeeping to recognizing creativity as a shared human legacy. In this manner, Coffin calls for a critical examination of the control-mechanisms that restrict creative freedom, and for a reevaluation of the ethical and economic frameworks surrounding intellectual property. Creativity has always been collective, he argues persuasively, but capitalist frameworks have constrained it: therefore, rather than engaging in reactionary debates over “real” creators, Coffin advocates for structural changes in intellectual property law (and the cultural traditions surrounding it) in order to liberate human creative potentials from the yoke of its contemporary mode of economic production.
If Coffin is any indication, then it looks like the communists would push back against allegations of Plato having been their predecessor. Indeed, they seem much more likely to identify him as a proto-fascist.
So, with that in mind, what do you suppose fascists might think about Plato?
Hard for me to say really: I don’t follow any self-identified fascists. Regarding what they might think of Plato or The Republic, I can only at this moment assemble vague ideas like researching what ______ thought about it. (Current leading candidates for filling that blank include Julius Evola and Georges Sorel, both of whom I estimate as predecessors to the discourse now circling in the traditionalist-reactionary sphere.)
But here at Radio Free Pizza, we’re not so much in the market right now for further schools of thought to incorporate into our trademark synthesis. Especially not when we can turn to some we’ve covered before, having already discussed earlier this year the association in popular culture between fascism and Friedrich Nietzsche. On the whole, we found that despite common misconceptions linking his philosophy to fascist ideologies, Nietzsche rejects key aspects of fascism—such as nationalism, antisemitism, racism, and the idolization of the state—and criticizes the authoritarianism and political oppression inherent in fascism, with the state’s expansion of power stifling individual and cultural development, while merging of state and corporate power limits human potential.
Nonetheless, the misinterpretation and appropriation of Nietzsche’s ideas by fascists make the popular association a difficult one to shake. But if Plato was indeed a proto-fascist, then Nietzsche’s feelings about Plato would likely diminish his association in popular culture with that ideological descendant.
Or anyway, that’s my understanding from Keegan Kjeldsen of The Nietzsche Podcast. In his own overview of The Republic from 2022, he examines the key themes of the text—including, of course, the aforementioned concept of justice (which Plato staged as a virtue that manifests in one’s character and actions, akin to morality), along with the vision of an ideal state governed by philosopher-kings ruling over a hierarchical caste system. For that reason, Kjeldsen emphasizes that The Republic is not just a political text but is primarily framed as a moral text—one exploring the nature of justice and whether a just person is happier than an unjust one—that we must understand in terms of its own political context, since, in it, Plato implicitly assesses the cycles of revolution and the failures of various forms of government throughout Ancient Greece.
Kjeldsen of course describes early on how Plato presents his mentor Socrates as defining “justice” not just as giving people their due, but as putting things in their proper place: as focusing attention on proper tasks based on social function. In contrast, then, “injustice” for Socrates means that the distinct parts of an individual or society have trespassed into each other’s roles. That stands in stark contrast to the view of Thrasymachus, whom Plato presents as challenging Socrates by arguing that the unjust person is happier and that justice serves the interests of the powerful. In this way, Thrasymachus represents a cynical view of politics as the exercise of power for self-interest.
As Kjeldsen tells us, Socrates responds by proposing an analogy of the ideal city as a way to understand justice on a larger scale—as well as why it’s the most rewarding—to set the stage for The Republic’s central arguments. With this analogy, Socrates introduces the tripartite model of the soul with intellect, spirit and base urges. Kjeldsen explains how this model corresponds to the three classes of society in Plato’s ideal state: the philosopher-kings (reason), the auxiliaries or soldiers (spirit), and the productive class (desires). From this, it follows for Socrates that the just society is one in which each class fulfills its proper function, with reason governing the whole—and (for some reason) one in which there is no private property, with tight control of art and education to instill proper habits and principles.
Kjeldsen goes on to discuss how Plato’s emphasis on education and the censorship of art and poetry to shape the minds of the ruling class and ensuring the preservation of the ideal state. Examining Plato’s arguments for allowing only certain forms of art that promote virtue and reason, while censoring works that incite harmful emotions or challenge the state’s principles, Kjeldsen introduces (at ~1:22:59) the concept of the “noble lie”—perhaps better translated as “magnificent myth”—as a way to foster social unity through myth and shared beliefs. Although it involves rulers consciously fostering falsehoods, Plato suggests (through Socrates) that such myths are necessary to create social unity and give citizens a shared identity. This concept, though contentious, reflects a compromise between the demand for reason and the recognition that society often relies on shared beliefs, even if they are not literally true. Drawing on ancient religious themes to illustrate this, The Republic suggests that people must believe they are born of the earth and are therefore obligated to protect their land and fellow citizens—underscoring the importance of equitable distribution of landholdings, as we discussed last month in the context of Ancient Rome.
Here, we learn also that (Plato’s staging of) Socrates’ critique of art in a political context is central to his philosophy, seeing art's emotional and irrational nature as detrimental to the ideal society. Meanwhile, Kjeldsen notes that Nietzsche (misappropriated here as our stand-in fascist) recognized this hostility as a key aspect of Socrates’ character, while identifying the apparent paradox in Socrates’ suggestion that only a philosopher-king who is properly educated from a young age could rule justly—though such a philosopher-king could only be raised within a system already governed by philosopher-kings, naturally making the concept impractical.
In this way, Kjeldsen describes how Plato’s political theory emphasizes the importance of education in shaping the minds of those who would rule, believing that the character of rulers is more crucial than specific policies. Accordingly, Plato advocates for molding individuals to fit into the societal roles necessary for the unity of society, even if it requires manipulation of intellectual development—a notion that may seem problematic to modern sensibilities, despite the acknowledged importance of instilling values in younger generations.
That leads the host to discuss (at ~1:30:47) Plato’s aforementioned allegory of the cave, demonstrating how only reason and not the senses can apprehend truth and gain knowledge of enduring patterns or eternal “forms.” We learn how this allegory serves as a metaphor for Plato’s epistemology and his belief in the superiority of reason over the senses, with the philosopher-king—represented by the prisoner who escapes the cave—being the only one capable of perceiving the true, intelligible realm of forms, including the “Form of the Good.” The allegory thus highlights Plato’s elevation of abstract reason as both the highest virtue and the path to true knowledge.
The same, however, provides the philosopher slandered here as a fascist with the grounds for his critique of Plato. While acknowledging how Nietzsche would celebrate Plato’s recognition of the connection between the state and the cultivation of genius, Kjeldsen explains how the former finds the latter’s work steeped in moral prejudices—particularly his elevation of the ideal over the real and his condemnation of the sensory world in favor of the abstract realm of forms, which Nietzsche viewed as distorting reality to serve Plato’s own aims—and diagnoses his entire project as a symptom of Ancient Greece’s declining cultural vitality, and, in the final analysis, as a rejection of life itself. Accordingly, Nietzsche sees Plato as a precursor to the Christianity he so often criticized, and as a contributor to the devaluation of life in favor of abstract ideals, devaluing and slandering actual life while proffering an unrealizable vision that Nietzsche finds both impractical and—in light of his own concept of “the will to power”—ultimately undesirable.
So far we’ve seen that Marxists like Coffin critique the supposedly proto-communist Plato for how his concept of philosopher-kings—elite rulers deemed uniquely wise—promotes a rigid, hierarchical society in which power and wisdom are reserved for a select few and the masses are excluded from governance. That idea, and the associated governance policies which The Republic proposes those philosopher-kings should adopt, connect to the origins of eugenics and the oppressive policies that followed (including those in Nazi Germany) suggesting that Plato’s vision laid the groundwork for dangerous ideologies that devalue human life: not such a good thing for a guy who would stage himself as one of the only guys who knows what’s good!
But meanwhile, even those like Nietzsche, whose own ideas are (wrongly) cited as inspirations for Nazi ideology, critique Plato’s elevation of abstract ideals over sensory experience as a distortion of reality that devalues the living world. Those metaphysics undergird a hierarchical caste system that prioritizes reason and intellectual development over individual freedoms, and from the top of which philosopher-kings deploy one or another “noble lie” that, in deceit, persuades each class to simply fulfill its designated role in the interest of maintaining social unity. That in mind, it seems like our stand-in fascist might agree that, yes, Plato was a proto-fascist. (Thus demonstrating, I suppose, how much we’ve mischaracterized him here.) But knowing how often people superficially trace the ancestry of Nazism to Nietzsche, we can’t just take his assessment as confirmation: after all, maybe he’s the real fascist!
Besides, we still need to ask whether it might be most accurate to call Plato a proto-technocrat. If you think it is, then I’d say that you and Jay Dyer are on the same page.
Dyer—whom we previously featured in our February dispatch on the coronavirus pandemic—first introduces the topic of technocracy, its history, and how it relates to transhumanism, before tracing (at ~3:04) its origins back to Plato’s Republic and its proposal for a society structured like a pyramid, with philosopher-kings at the top controlling and engineering the lower classes through myths. As Dyer tells us (at ~6:00), Plato’s ideas generated the ideologies and visions for a technocratic society of 20th century British elites like Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, Aldous and Julian Huxley, and Lord Birkenhead, who together planned global technocratic dictatorships based on eugenics and social engineering with a genetically modified and tightly controlled population.
Importantly for our discussion here, Dyer indicates (at ~9:22–15:18) his assessment of Plato as a proto-communist, with the philosopher inspiring the aforementioned elite of the British Empire in their efforts to control society through centralized, rational governance. In his analysis, socialism and communism shares with The Republic a utopian idea of eliminating private property to eradicate greed, which Dyer dismisses as naive because it ignores human nature. Instead, he argues that these ideologies are test tubes for elites to experiment with social engineering and central control, ultimately leading to a global technocratic dictatorship. (In fact, Dyer notes [at ~12:58] how Julian Huxley coined the term “transhumanism,” which the analyst considers the guiding philosophy of the globalist elite throughout the 20th century.) This agenda, according to Dyer, is masked by rebranding strategies (such as renaming eugenics as “family planning”) and receives the support of Western elites who favor a synthesis of imperialist monopoly capitalism and authoritarian “socialism” to maintain power—though around here, we just call that fascism.
Interestingly, he points (at ~7:57 and again at ~15:22) to the Vietnam War as an early R&D test-bed for modern technocratic surveillance and control techniques that were later expanded globally. (Specific examples of such techniques include studying and manipulating populations through ethnography, perfecting drone warfare, experimenting with chemical spraying like Agent Orange, integrated tracking systems, and relocating populations into strategic hamlets.)
For Dyer, this provides another example of how elites use war as a tool for social engineering and advancing technocratic agendas. He describes (at ~10:56) how, throughout World War I and World War II, these British elites focused on “figuring out ways to bring America back under the aegis of that British Malthusian attitude”—referring to the same Thomas Malthus whom the aforementioned Coffin linked to Plato in his Less Sucks (2022), as discussed above—which “explains why the Western elite have always supported both the fascists and the Marxists [slash] communists across the world: even though there was a kind of a Cold War play going on of opposition between east and west […] at the top, the people who are running things, they’re looking toward that synthesis which they call ‘the Third Way’”—or so Carroll Quigley called it, anyway, as a name for the same ideology guiding the aims of central bankers, as we covered in May.
Usefully for us, Dyer also offers his full lecture series on Plato’s Republic for further investigation, much of which the analyst offers for free. In the first of those (free) lectures, he unpacks (at ~19:25) The Republic’s Book 1 dialogue between Socrates and the sophist Thrasymachus, who represents the relativistic and nihilistic view that justice is merely the interest of the stronger party. Socrates refutes this position, arguing that true rulers must act in the interest of their subjects and that justice is a virtue rooted in wisdom. An understanding of this, Dyer informs us (at ~11:34), is what differentiates the philosopher-king: the ability of whom to perceive the true forms or essences of reality beneath its has appearances has endowed the philosopher-king with wisdom and virtue, making him the best suited to govern the ideal society—which Dyer contrasts against the flaws of democracy, which Plato sees as catering to the baser desires of the masses.
In his (free) lecture on Book 4, Dyer delves (at ~4:15) into the concept of eugenics, its origins in Greek thought, and its evolution through thinkers like the aforementioned Thomas Malthus and Francis Galton in the British Empire, before discussing the potential for abuse by the state in controlling breeding and population, and drawing parallels to dystopian fiction like Brave New World and Logan’s Run. His (free) lecture on Book 5 details some harms that result from such state controls, discussing (at ~1:12) the abolition of private property and family for the auxiliary guardian class for which Plato advocates, and (at ~10:06) the philosopher’s proposed system of selective breeding and population control overseen by the rulers. The best men and women would be paired together to produce superior offspring—with the philosopher-kings using festivals and lotteries to arrange marriages secretly, even as the betrothed believe they’ve naturally fallen in love—while inferior offspring would be discarded or hidden away.
Dyer’s (free) lecture on Book 4 discusses the qualities of philosophers that Plato identifies as those suitable for rulers, as they alone possess the “true knowledge” that renders them supremely virtuous and wise, and which makes them the best candidates to govern, especially in times of crisis—so long, of course, as these true philosophers have been properly nurtured and trained. But among these philosopher-kings surely don’t number any of the sophists against whom we learn (at ~5:48) The Republic contrasts Socrates as more concerned with popularity and money than ascertaining eternal, objective truths. The relativism of the sophists, and their implied interest in base pleasures and material possessions, underscores for Plato the importance of a good upbringing and education for nurturing philosophical natures. His (free) lecture on Book 7 further details (at ~25:11) the rigorous philosophical training provided to the philosopher-kings across various disciplines such as mathematics, military service, rhetoric, and dialectics, and finally culminating in the study of practical political philosophy.
In Dyer’s (free) lecture on Book 8, we learn (at ~3:52) about Socrates’ description of the four types of government and individuals, which represent the stages of degeneration from the ideal state of the philosopher-kings: the timocracy, ruled by the spirited class and likened to the Homeric tradition of warrior heroes; such declines into oligarchy, ruled by the wealthy class and driven by the pursuit of money; this devolves next to democracy, characterized by the rule of passions and the pandering to the masses; and finally it degenerates into tyranny and anarchy, as the lack of reason and order allows the most persuasive demagogue to seize power. Intriguingly, Dyer draws (at ~6:33) his own parallels between Plato’s critique of democracy and Nietzsche’s ideas in his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), as if seeking to complement the analysis from Kjeldsen that we covered above. Dyer suggests here that Nietzsche’s distinction between the elite class and the common people aligns with Plato’s view of the timocracy, and argues that both philosophers saw democracy as a system that caters to the passions and desires of the masses, rather than one guided by reason and virtue.
(After touching on Nietzsche’s idea of the origin of morality stemming from the distinction between the elite and the common, Dyer leaves us here at Radio Free Pizza feeling suspicious that any philosopher-kings would be quite so virtuous as Plato would have us believe—at least by anyone else’s standards.)
Dyer concludes his (free) lecture series with a recapitulation of his analysis culminating (at ~5:18) in a detailed reading of Book 10’s Myth of Er, which discusses the afterlife, reincarnation, and the cosmic order. He draws parallels here between this myth and other religious and philosophical traditions, such as the Biblical creation account. Considered alongside the views presented in The Republic on the role of poetry and mythology in society—particularly the belief that the poets should be censored due to their potential to manipulate emotions and incite revolution—these parallels lead us to important considerations about Plato’s position as the master of both logos and mythos, combining philosophy and mythology in his works. These in mind, we might therefore ask: are the instincts to justify one’s own rule with appeals to cosmic order, and the prescription of persuasive myths to explain that order, fundamental features of the technocrats?
Reviewing the potential influence of The Republic on the modern political ideologies of communism, fascism, and technocracy, we’ve seen how Marxists like Coffin criticize Plato’s concept of philosopher-kings, arguing that it promotes a hierarchical society where power is reserved for an elite few, which connects to the origins of eugenics and oppressive policies like those in Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, though he’s often wrongly associated with Nazism, we’ve seen too how Nietzsche critiques Plato’s emphasis on abstract ideals over sensory experience, arguing in essence that this diminishes the quality of human life.
Dyer, on the other hand, argues that Plato’s ideas, particularly the hierarchical structure of society in The Republic, laid the groundwork for technocracy: a system where a technocratic elite controls society through centralized governance and social engineering. He locates its influence in 20th-century British elites who envisioned global technocratic dictatorships based on eugenics and social control—while linking these ideas to transhumanism and modern technocratic agendas—and suggests that, because of its emphasis on control of the population through myths and social engineering, Plato’s vision aligns well with these ideologies, for which Dyer argues that both communism and fascism served as intermediary stages of development.
Eagle-eyed readers will have surely noted the slightly dismissive treatment we afforded the connection that Dyer draws (in the embedded video above) between Plato’s ideal state and communism. With due respect to the much admired analyst, it seems to us that he’s employing the dialect of the traditionalist-reactionary sphere. That said, it’s interesting therefore to note that another proposal from The Republic offers a generous treatment on feminism, an ideological issue so important to the professional-managerial sphere. Dyer notes in his (free) lecture on Book 5 how Plato advocates for women to receive the same education as men and to serve as guardians alongside men.
For more on this topic, it seems appropriate to turn instead to the late Dr. Michael Sugrue—the distinguished academic known for his expertise in history, philosophy, and the humanities—who is often celebrated for his engaging lectures, focused on making complex philosophical ideas accessible to students and the general public, many of which thankfully still remain available for our analysis. Today we’ll look at his “Plato, Socrates and the Dialogues” lectures from The Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition.
Through these three lectures, Sugrue discusses in depth the major themes, characters, and arguments presented in this seminal book. In the first, he analyses the symbolism of Socrates “going down” to the Piraeus, the democratic centre of Athens, and how this foreshadows the theme of the philosopher descending among the people. This discussion eventually brings Sugrue (at ~27:00) to Thrasymachus’ challenge in Book 1 for Socrates to define justice, claiming himself that justice is the interest of the stronger—a cynical view of political power untethered from ethics. Socrates proceeds to dismantle this argument through examples of other arts or techniques, showing that each seeks the good of its object or domain, not the personal interest of the practitioner. But while Socrates has reduced Thrasymachus to silence, Sugrue points out that his argument has not been fully refuted, as Socrates intends to provoke a deeper discussion with Glaucon and Adeimantus.
In his second lecture, Sugrue starts off explaining how Glaucon and Adeimantus delivered that deeper discussion in Book 2, challenging Socrates to prove that justice is intrinsically good, rather than just beneficial for its consequences. Glaucon presents the myth of the Ring of Gyges, which grants invisibility, to argue that no one would choose to be just if they could get away with injustice. He therefore demands that Socrates show justice is desirable in itself, even if the just person suffers while the unjust person prospers.
To address Glaucon’s challenge, Sugrue tells us (at ~13:39), Socrates proposes constructing a “city in speech” as a model to examine justice on a larger scale. They begin by envisioning a minimal “city of necessity” based on the division of labor, with each person performing a single craft. However, Glaucon objects that this is too austere, leading to the conception of a “feverish city” with luxuries, which necessitates the introduction of a guardian class to maintain order. As Sugrue tells it (at ~19:24–20:28), the attributes of that guardian class express Plato’s antagonism toward change and difference:
Plato, throughout this book, is going to be fighting a running battle against history. He says, “Stop the world. Stop historical development. I want this to be frozen in time.” Once Plato gets a good city, a good political order, well, then any change is deterioration. So that means that once you get it right, if we manage to find out what the ideal good city is, then we have to completely arrest all changes.
One of the most important mechanisms for the arresting of change is to create a warrior elite that is antagonistic to all innovation. Remember that in the ancient world, to call someone an innovator is generally speaking a put-down: it’s an accusation […] So what Plato wants to do is eliminate all innovation. He’s going to get the job right the first time, figure out what the good society is—and that’s capital-T ‘The Good Society’—and then once we do that, freeze all change.
From here we learn (at ~20:45) how Socrates outlines the education required for that guardian class, consisting of music (arts and literature) to cultivate the soul, and gymnastics to train the body. He advocates censoring poets like Homer whose works promote immoral behavior, and instead promoting new poets who uphold virtuous ideals. The guardians will be inculcated with the “noble lie” that they are born with different metals (gold, silver, bronze) in their souls, which determine their place in the tripartite class system that prevents social mobility. Sugrue tells us (at ~36:11) how Socrates maps these three classes of the ideal city (golden philosophers, silver guardians, bronze workers) onto the three parts of the human soul (reason, spirit, appetite). Justice is defined as the harmonious interaction of the corresponding virtues—wisdom (philosophers), courage (guardians), moderation (workers)—to become itself the overarching fourth virtue governing the proper relationship between the three classes of the city as well as the three parts of the soul.
Finally, Sugrue proceeds (at ~39:02) to discuss Socrates’ three radical proposals, which he identifies as follows:
Feminism: women should receive the same education and perform the same societal roles as men, except for physically demanding tasks.
Communism: the abolition of the family and private property for the guardian class, to be replaced by a system of eugenics and communal living.
The Philosopher-King: the idea that only philosophers who have attained knowledge of the Form of the Good should rule the ideal city.
In other words, Socrates introduces what we called above “an ideological issue so important to the professional-managerial sphere” (feminism) alongside not only the principal ideological target of the traditionalist-reactionary sphere (communism), but the clearest analogy in The Republic to modern-day technocracy (the philosopher-king).
Sugrue’s third lecture covers Books 6–10, providing an in-depth analysis of Plato’s analogy of the divided line—from which the philosopher derives reality’s division into four levels: images (shadows, reflections, and art), objects of sense perception, mathematical objects, and the forms—with the philosopher-king privileged as the ideal ruler who has attained knowledge of the forms (particularly the Form of the Good) through dialectic. These ontological and epistemological doctrines, then, provide the foundation for Plato’s philosophy. However, as we learn from Sugrue’s discussion (at ~23:51) of the allegory of the cave, the philosopher who discovers the true reality of the forms outside the cave are met with skepticism and resistance upon their return inside.
Hearing of Plato’s staging here of those trapped in the realm of images as, it seems to me, simply too unenlightened to accept the cosmically justified authority of the all-perceiving philosopher-king, I see the potential now for further complications arising in The Republic’s presentation of how the ideal state degenerates, as Dyer’s (free) lecture on Book 8 discussed above, and which Sugrue discusses (at ~31:09) here. Specifically, if Socrates’ five types of regimes—the ideal city (philosopher-king), timocracy (honor-loving), oligarchy (wealth-loving), democracy (pleasure-loving), and tyranny (desire-driven)—demonstrate for him the importance of education and censorship of poetry for maintaining a just society, wouldn’t that prohibition itself prevent the returned philosopher-king from communicating with those base workers who know reality only through images?
Not, it seems, if the philosopher-king takes command of the mythos: after all, Sugrue tells us (at ~41:11) while discussing the philosopher as educator, Socrates presents the Myth of Er as a poetic device, thereby illustrating how such can convey philosophical arguments to those who can’t grasp them directly—though without permitting those base workers who populate the “city of necessity” to contribute their own perspectives to this controlled dialectic. But perhaps we should measure their virtue according to their willingness to pursue truth outside of it.
Those, of course, are only my spare thoughts and half-conceived objections to the rationale that Plato presents through Socrates. Naturally, Sugrue’s lectures offer a deeper analysis of The Republic’s themes beyond those of justice, the role of the guardian class, and the education required for them that we’ve emphasized here. Certainly we could say more about his treatment on feminism and the abolition of family and private property, especially in connection to Plato’s dubious fortune of providing modern eugenics with its classical ancestry. Still, what seems to deserve our more immediate attention would be the epistemological and ontological doctrines according to which Plato arrives at his understanding of the forms—particularly the Form of the Good, upon which the philosopher-king would supposedly base his regime.
But maybe it’s worth asking if that ambition even has any merit. If, as Dyer proposes above, The Republic laid the foundation for a society in which a technocratic elite controls society through centralized governance, social engineering, and eugenics—according to the vision of 20th-century British elites expressed as an ideology from which descends that known today as transhumanism—then we here at Radio Free Pizza might land in the same territory as Nietzsche, finding sensory experience so much more valuable than Plato’s abstract ideals, or (otherwise) grounded in the same concrete reality in which Marx discovered his political economy.
I imagine it does have merit: after all, as we noted at the start, one could hardly point to a philosopher more influential than Plato or to a text more impactful than The Republic. That said, our rejection of their emphasis on controlling myths and education raises questions about how our own ideal (civilization-) state would overcome the challenge of communicating the “Form of the Good” or any other.
On this subject, Coffin’s analysis of Plato covered earlier offers us some useful considerations. Though the philosopher would surely have it that AI-generated art represents an amalgamation of the content belonging to (as Sugrue indicates in his third lecture above) reality’s lowest realm—that of images—the critique we’re innovating here would aim to empower our “base workers” to engage in the dialectic through which one eventually discovers the Form of the Good. With that aim in mind, it seems to us that we ought to reconsider the “justice” of intellectual property law, and attempt reforming it to prevent the concentration of control over creative works—the power to dictate censorship, in other words—within the hands of our contemporary capitalist republic’s oligarchic ruling class. Indeed, it seems to us that any systemic critique of controls that restrict creative freedom (rather than engaging in reactionary debates about individual authenticity or originality that serve merely to reward the existing reward structures that prioritize ownership over labor) will do quite a lot more to help uplift humanity—both in terms of the art we enjoy, and in terms of the virtue we realize—than those who demand the control and curation of AI systems instead of simply recognizing creativity as a shared human legacy held in common.
In doing so, we could even hope to do something to address the symptom of contemporary decline that we’ve been calling “cultural austerity”—or even (one would hope) to eliminate any hint or trace of the kakistocracy that we discussed in July. Regardless, however, it seems to us that “the ideal state’s” emphasis ought to land not on censorship for the sake of shaping the minds of its ruling class, but for enlightening that of its base. The injunction that all persons should realize as best they can their individual potential to arrive at a magnificent truth seems to us a more unifying doctrine than any “noble lie”—and it seems likely to do our species well, with new poets who uphold virtuous ideals surely appearing if society enjoins its members to seek such truths.
That’s at least a good start toward counteracting the authoritarian and hierarchical systems that might trace their lineage through Plato. While we here might bristle when an analyst like Dyer refers to “communism” as understood in the traditionalist-reactionary sphere—since we prefer to call the contemporary political tendencies under imperialist monopoly capitalism something more like “international corporatism” or “fascist globalism”—still, that shouldn’t dissuade us from studying The Laws of Plato, as Dyer suggests (at ~22:10) in the final installment of his (free) lecture series that we’ve covered today.
In revisiting Plato’s The Republic, we uncover timeless insights that resonate with today’s political challenges. While his vision of an ideal state, governed by philosopher-kings, may seem distant from our modern liberal democracies, the underlying principles of justice, the role of wisdom in leadership, and the importance of a well-ordered society continue to offer valuable guidance. As we navigate global crises and social change, Plato’s theories remind us of the enduring need for thoughtful governance and the pursuit of a just society—though they do so without withholding the avenues through which we might most insightfully interrogate them. In exploring these ancient ideas, we find not just historical curiosity but potential blueprints for addressing the complexities of our present and future: in other words, just what we’re looking for.