2. Loins of Brass

CHAPTER 2 LOINS OF BRASS A method or procedure implies first a logical body of thought and then some means of making it work. To begin with, socialists had neither. It has been shown that socialist ideas were not foreign to Christianity in its infancy. And it has been noted. that the idea of sharing wealth was a familiar one to the Essenes, which sect predated the birth Qf Christ by an estimated thousand years. We could, in fact, return to H'ammurabi and discover that his first written code of law (cirea3,OOO B.C.) 34 - THIS BREAD IS MINE was aimed in part at controlling the wealthy and compelling largesse to the poor. Socialism a Fantasy Socialism, in all probability, is one. of those persistent myth fonns which crop up among nearly every people in their primitive days. It is a dream, a childish vision that imagines the world to be other than it is. The same minds that image a socialist society have dreamed of fairies, goblins, dragons and other fantasies.

The dream, so long as it remains but a dream, is harm less. Or, as the early Christians practiced it, without duress and voluntarily though it is contrary to the laws of nature, it is .not too great a burden. It remained for someone to organize the dream of social ism and to present it in logical and cogent form. The man who first and most successfully performed this·.task predates the Christ by sottle ·400 years. It is doubtful if Jesus ever heard of him. .

LOINS OF BRASS - 35 He was born in Egina of aristocratic parents about the year 427 B.C. His name was Aristocles, but because he was a fine soldier and a prize-winning athlete with broad shoulders, he was called Plato. It is to Plato we must look for the first and most profound delineation of the collectivist dream. Of all the Greek writers, only Plato and Xenophon have been transmitted to posterity in toto. All other ancient Greeks are fragmentations. So Plato is complete and his arguments in context. It is from Plato that we learn most of Socrates. Plato was a student at the feet of the greatest of the Sophists. At the age of 28 he attended Socrates when he drank the poisoned hemlock administered to him by democratic verdict. The in justice of the sentence inflicted upon the harmless wizard of philosophy so touched the youth that he put away his athletic proclivities and dedicated his life to the destruction of democracy. Having tasted the heady. wine of Socratic de bate with the master of interrogation, all other pursuits seemed to him dull by comparison. Plato became the world's fore most philoSopher.

36 - THIS BREAD IS MINE His dialogues are a treasure of amusing egg-headedness. But his "Republic," the very core of his aim and purpose in life, sums up the man. Of this work Will Durant in his "Story of Philosophy" says, "Here we shall find his metaphysics, his theology, his ethics, his psychology, his pedagogy, his politics, his theory of art. Here we shall find problems reeking with modernity and contemporary savor: communism and social ism, feminism and birth-control and eugenics, Nietzschean problems of morality and aristocracy, Rousseauian problems of return to nature and libertarian education, Bergsonian elan vital and Freudian psychoanalysis - everything is here." Emerson, in his essay on Plato, gives the warmest praise. "Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato." He even borrows the words ofOmar in praise of the Koran and says of Plato's "Republic," "Burn the libraries, for their value is in this book."

Nor is this gush of sentiment respecting the "Republic," and its author, undeserved. Even in translation, the "Republic" sparkles with much wit and wisdom,· as it craftily and subtly lays the groundwork for at least two dozen centuries of error.

LOINS OF BRASS - 37 Plato had seen democracy at work in Athens. He despised it. Long and valiantly he argued that it would produce the worst of societies, the cruelest and the least just of governments. He considers the doctrine of universal suffrage as an invitation to fools to rule their betters. He reminds us that when we are ill, we seek a skilled physician, not a democratic prescription written by a mob. And he compares the illness of the person to the illness of a state. If the state is sick, he suggests, how foolish to entrust its cure to the ignorance and vainglory of the populace at large. What do they know as a collective? The problem is to select, not the most popular, the finest orator, the most unscrupulous mendicant to applause, but the most skillful ruler. How do we go about finding such a paragon? Ah. This is the burden of the "Republic." Platonic Metals Plato weaves a giant tapestry of political and psychologi cal theory. He divides all of humanity into three classes - the gold, the silver and the brass. The brass are those who are 38 - THIS BREAD IS MINE motivated by desire. And desire, says the Greek sage, is seated in the loins. Men of brass are those who seek to satisfy them selves with money and with manufacture. These are the least useful personages in society, he declares, and thereby sets the stage of Shi Huang-ti in far Cathay who built the Chinese wall with conscript labor, most of which was recruited violent ly from the marts of trade and commerce. Men of brass are given over to their lusts and to vain display. He does not hate them. He simply wishes to relegate them to the lowest rung.

Men of silver, Plato says, are motivated not so much by lust and desire as by emotion. Their center is in the heart, their medium is blood. These men care not what they fight for, because what they want is victory. They are unburdened with scruples. They make the finest· soldiers. The warrior class is far above the merchant class in Plato's book. And here he sets the stage for all recorded history thus far which in the main has been a recitation of wars and conquests, with moral certainty awarded to the strongest troops. And then the men of gold. These are rare, says Plato, and all the more valuable because of scarcity. These are the LOINS OF BRASS - 39 intellects, the men of n'lind and genius; in short, these are the philosophers. Perhaps his love of philosopherS can be forgiven. It is a strange perversion when a self-chosen field is considered less than the very best by its own chooser. What we must have is the king who is also a philosopher. Or, if you will, the philosopher must be made the king.

How can this be brought about? Plato has the answer for this question, too. Not by elections, but by education. Children must be separated from their parents and trained by the state. Otherwise, the follies of the elders will surround and color the impressionable minds. He gives a long and carefully delineated series of steps with periodic testings which are calculated to cause the metals each to seek its Platonic level. The schooling and the testing occupy the first years of each individual's life. The brass is drained out first so life goes on. Though Plato does~'t give credit to his men of brass, life for the others rests on their production. The silver falls through the sieve by the age of 30. But the true philosopher 40 - THIS BREAD IS MINE undergoes additional training and testing until he reaches the ripe old age of 50. Only then is he considered fit to rule. A government by aristocrats is what Plato wants. And this, he says, is the true republic. Alexander Hamilton thought so, too, at the founding of this nation. But though all the American founding fathers were not convinced of these phi losophic claims to political ascendency, it is doubtless true that most of them were convinced, as was this great Greek, that democracy is a snare and a delusion.

We see in Plato the emergence of the socialist super-state, albeit run by gentle and kindly men of wisdom. And if we consider the Russian pattern, modeled after Marx, we marvel how much Marx borrowed from the Greek. In Russia, children are taken from their mothers at the age of six months, and . the state provides the education. State education is the tenth plank in the Communist Manifesto. Even Hitler saw the wisdom of building a state by controlling young minds. And Christianity has long held that the child before the age of seven must be drilled in the necessary beliefs if he is to be secure in Christ.

LOINS OF BRASS - 41 But let us make no mistake about the Platonic theory. Here is the beginning of the political syllogism. Mark how it ties in to the economic line of reasoning. This, too,.is Plato: "In the first place none of them should have any property beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither should they have a private house, with bars and bolts, closed against anyone who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; their agreement is to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year, and no more; and they will have common meals and live together, like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of that earthly dross which passes under the name of gold, and ought not to pollute the divine by earthly admixture, for that commoner metal has been the course of many unholy deeds; but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof 42 - THIS BREAD IS MINE with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation and the salvation of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians; enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass thru life in much greater terror of in ternal than of external enemies; and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand."

Will the wives of these men of silver be content without ornamentation and the finer things of life? Plato has the answer for that, too. The guardians will have no wives. but will have a socialism in wives as. well as in goods. They will share even these delicacies in common. But not indiscrimi nately, please. The state will supervise each amorous em brace. And all of the guardian mothers will give birth to all of the guardian children, and all are property of the state and must be trained and tested by the state to take their rightful places in society at the proper time.

LOINS OF BRASS - 43 Marx was to paraphrase this when he urged the abandon ment of family and family ties, a matter which will be dis cussed in greater detail in a later chapter. The Super State So, this is Plato, a great mind, a flowering plant of bright crimson petals. With him, the state was everything. Individ uals below the status of Ph.D.'s were so many units to be controlled and regimented. Only the philosopher was to be free, to sit in company with other philosopers and to dream even greater dreams of truth. This is the classic pyramid structure of all government. There will be a ·broad base of artisans and workers who will own property privately but will be taxed to see that no excess of wealth or property accrues. There will be a nar rower class of warriors sitting on top of the cornmon herd, impecunious and paid by the state, but producing nothing. And at the top of the pyramid, a small select group of wise men who will govern and control all other men.

44 - THIS BREAD IS MINE Here is the socialist dream put into a model that sup posedly would work. All it needs is the political disregard of human rights by some bold and powerful warlord who would begin with little children. It might be of value here to refer to a speech by Professor Arnold J. Toynbee, at the philosophical society of Edinburgh University as reported in Time Magazine, November 12, 1952. According to this magazine report, Toynbee predicted that within half a century, the planet will be united politically through concentration of irresistible military power. The A merican Empire of 2002, like the Roman Empire of Augustus, will make use of "constitutional fictions." ... "democracy will have receded in the current western use of the term, as mean ing self-government. It may have advanced in the current Russian usage, as meaning social equality in contrast to hierarchy of classes. The loss of freedom on the material plane will have been the price of abolition of violence and injustice on the material plane. 'Government is the penalty for ori ginal sin.' Given the imperfection of human nature, the only LOINS OF BRASS - 45 way to abolish strife and injustice on the material plane is to restrict freedom there. In a powerful, healthy, over-popu lated world, even the proletarian's freedom to beget children will no longer be his private affair, but will be regulated by the state." Plato's idea of a totally controlled and regimented population dies hard.

In sum, though Plato wrote 2,000 years ago, his carefully drawn symposium of thought has been acted upon only rarely. But the influence of this man's ideas has been enormous and persevering. Christianity itself, which began with oriental mysticism and symbolism, was in the first three centuries after Christ reworked by the Greek mind, largely influenced by the Platonic school. Durant says, "Much of the politics of Catholicism was derived from Plato's 'royal lies' or influenced by them: the ideas of heaven, purgatory, and hell, in their medieval form, are traceable to the last book of the 'Republic' ... even the educational 'quadrivium' (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) was modeled on the curriculum outlined by Plato."

46 - THIS BREAD IS MINE Plato, the father of philosophy, had carried forward the socialist dream. But the dreamers between the time of Plato and the time of Lenin were not content merely to dream, although they did a great deal of dreaming. We will touch upon only two more dreams put into organized fonn which fall far short of filling up this gap in time. Like Plato, these more current dreamers wanted the socialist absolute. Unlike him, they were not bold enough, or clever enough to figure out a way to cross the chasm between the fantasy of universal sharing, and the grim reality of life.