Two thousand five hundred years ago it would’ve been hard to imagine a future as dynamic and complex as it is today, yet Plato’s philosophy still applies to modern-day society as it connects with the most fundamental structure of society and the relationship it has with an individual. Over the course of history, something went wrong and in a way, it can be said that Plato had predicted it. A society that honors power, fame, freedom, and money emerged and the more important principles to live by such as real happiness and excellence were taken out of the equation or as David Schweickart says it, “people became increasingly discontent” (Schweickart, After Capitalism, 10). Although there are various reasons why this has happened, one of the most important to contribute to this in modern times is a byproduct of Capitalism, massive economic inequality.
David Schweickart in After Capitalism describes how we live in a capitalistic society, the problems it creates, and the alternative to it, “economic democracy”. It can be closely associated with how Plato describes oligarchy or the rule by the rich (Plato, The Republic, 208) and how it transitions into a democracy because of its “insatiable greed for what is established as the good: to get as rich as possible” (Plato, The Republic, 213). While it is not pretty evident at first sight that the rich rule in today’s world, they possess and control most of the wealth or money and play a major role in business and politics. In a study by Oxfam (as of Jan. 2016), it was found that the wealthiest 62 individuals were worth more than the bottom 3.5 billion and in another study by Issues in Society it was found that the GDP of the poorest 48 countries combined is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest humans. United Nations predicts that nearly 40 percent of the world population doesn’t “have access even to a simple latrine”. There is something sad about this truth and it concerns not just economic inequality but also global poverty, unnecessary overwork, demoralizing unemployment, environmental degradation, and a lack of real democracy (Schweickart, After Capitalism, 18).
Before diving into Schweickart’s arguments, it might be helpful to understand what Plato says. Plato rejects the ideas of oligarchy and democracy. He thinks that in an oligarchy, the idea of excellence is no longer honored, and instead, there is deeper progress into honoring moneymaking (Plato, The Republic, 208). Whatever is honored is practiced and therefore in such a society, individuals limit and enslave their rational and spirited parts by calculating how to make more money and admiring and honoring whatever contributes to it (Plato, The Republic, 211). The desiring part satisfies only the necessary desires and refuses to spend on anything else (Plato, The Republic, 212). The reality of this is: it forces uncommon people into poverty, makes people lazy due to the lack of good education, neglects temperance and people lose a sense of self-respect and all this leads to a civil war in the society because “it’s like a sick body” (Plato, The Republic, 215). This transits into what we call democracy, in which the desires no longer just stay necessary but also turn unnecessary in the name of ‘freedom’. And an excess in anything such as freedom “tends to produce a violent change to the opposite” (Plato, The Republic, 222). By now the idea of excellence is totally under jargon and a society soon dominated by beggars, criminals, and ignorant people will prevail. According to Socrates, the disease that grows in a democracy will eventually turn into tyranny.
Keeping all this in mind, every individual, every organization, and government should revolve around the idea that they are passing on a legacy of not only the truth but moreover the responsibility to strive for the greater good. In the eyes of Socrates, such a society would lead to the “greatest possible happiness” for everyone within it, rather than the happiness of one particular member or a class of people (Plato, The Republic, 87). This slows down the process of accumulation of disorder (entropy) over time and the eventual destruction of humanity. Socrates’s solution to this is aristocracy which is the “rule by the best” or by philosophers (Plato, The Republic, 203) with a heavy emphasis on philosophical education where nurture is primary and vital to the cultivation of a just society.
When an individual does great work and gets rich, he will soon become “lazy and careless” compared to what he was and would not be as good at the craft. His children too will lead a luxurious life and they will not receive a good education. The opposite, where the individual gets poor due to incompetency will make him lead a life in poverty preventing him from acquiring necessary tools and in turn, he will not be able to produce good work, nor will he be able to inspire his children. Socrates allows this to be the premise to explain why excessive wealth creates lazy and careless people while excessive poverty causes “slavishness, crime, and bad work” (Plato, The Republic, 89) and why both wealth and poverty create discontent and encourage innovation and revolution. Schweickart also talks about it when he says that poverty can “destroy the spirit as well as the body” (Schweickart, After Capitalism, 100) eventually getting to a point where it is unbearable and the individual loses self-respect.
David Schweickart through his alternative to capitalism, “economic democracy” agrees with Plato in how an excess of wealth/money on either end is corrupting and will undermine the unity of the society but he says that there is a deeper aspect to this which is the nature of the inequality (capitalistic) itself (Schweickart, After Capitalism, 93). He says that it is not the lavish lifestyle that the upper class live in but with the way they earn that money and what they do when they don’t consume. In capitalistic societies, wealthy people take advantage of the system by making more money with existing money instead of by doing work and therefore, making no contribution to production. Again, it is not about the amount of wealth that the capitalists maintain but it is that they have violated a kind of social contract, where they have sacrificed the livelihood of people and other organizations so that they could protect their own interests. This is why rule by the rich is so unattractive. It becomes more unattractive when the devastating consequences start to appear on a larger scale (as discussed above).
The relationship between wealth and justice can be found in the definition of justice itself (that Socrates' defines). Justice is the same as each of the parts of the soul (rational, spirit, desire) tending to their own business with the rational part ruling. When an individual is just, it corresponds to the city as well (Plato, The Republic, 99). In a society where desire (desire for wealth in this case) rules over the three parts, justice is no longer honored and therefore the foundations of the society weaken and corruption and injustice will start to evade.
Some of the characteristics of Schweickart’s alternative, “economic democracy”, to the current system of capitalism are: there is a market economy (worker cooperatives) that has workplace self-management, there is no free trade but ‘fair’ trade, management of capital by a form of public investment, profit is shared by the workers and fair tax (according to the amount of revenue generated) that the company pays is paid to the public banks who fund expansion, innovation and growth of companies (Schweickart, After Capitalism, 45-82). He says that this will create a genuinely true democracy with full employment and ecological sustainment of the society without overwork or poverty (Schweickart, After Capitalism, 134). Although there will still be inequality in such a system, it would not be as massive, people will not be able to make money with money and at the same time, there would be competition.
Although Schweickart would need some of the principles from Plato to really get his model to effectively run, such as having people heading banks as “philosophers”, both of them are quite similar in a way that they denounce the current form of government and corporate structure. This is because it can be seen quite clearly that in today’s world, there is a total lack of good leadership. Schweickart diverts from what Plato says by considering the solution to be a way to achieve economic equality through his “economic democracy” alternative while Plato considers why it is not equality that has to be gone after but the way the world functions by itself and with leaders being philosophers who have understood the “good”. Schweickart’s solution is better than the existing capitalistic society, in Socrates' view it would still sort of look like a quantitative (money-oriented) solution rather than a qualitative solution (‘greater good’ oriented). On the other hand, Schweickart’s view of Plato’s idealism would not allow for the supreme development through innovation and revolution that we as a civilization have achieved. This relationship is slightly similar to the African Proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together”. Plato’s concept of philosophical leaders and education is really important because it not only sets the direction of the future (Plato, The Republic, 92) but it also teaches people that leadership is a choice and that being a leader is not to achieve fame, power, and numbers, but to be able to sacrifice them to strive for the ‘greater good’. Personally, I think a solution could be a mix of the two, a society where there is “economic democracy” and an educational system that revolves around the concepts described in Plato’s philosophical education. Leaders in such societies will be byproducts of the educational system that Socrates talks about. This is similar to an aristocracy but it still allows for the democratic ‘freedom’ we currently have. In such a society, there could be both innovation and revolution but also a society that is filled with happier people who can make better, informed decisions on what manages to help the ‘greater good’ and what is just.