GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OF COMMUNISM 7OI
human wants as broadly constant, Mane attribute! the
differences between forms of society not to differences
between human wants, but to differences between the
ways in which human beings satisfy what remain pre-
the same wants* If wants remain fundament*
dominantly
ally uniform, they cannot, it is obvious, be the factor
which determines differences between societies. Neverthe-
less, there may be great differences between the way in
which raw materials are treated and between the relative
efficiences of different treatments, between, in other
words, "the means and capacities of production".
Thus, while for Plato the ultimate factor in society is
human wants, for Marx it is the mode of supplying human
wants. It is characteristic of his outlook that the only
wants which Marx considers in this connection should
be wants for material things, for food and warmth, shelter
and clothing, while the wants upon which Plato lays stress
as primary are only partly material. Marx thinks of
the satisfaction of bodily needs, Plato of the satisfaction
of what he calls the soul.
The fact that Plato's ideal State is frequently invoked
in support of modern Communisms-no less frequently
than it is declared to lend countenance to Fascism 1
justifies us in taking the comparison a little further.
Communism is, at any rate in the present stage of its
development, an authoritarian creed and inevitably,
certain features in common with
therefore, it presents
Plato's political philosophy. Indeed, it shares with Fascism
the merit, if merit it be, of embracing within the limits
of a single theory ethical doctrines as to the end and
nature of man in society and political doctrines as to
the end and nature of the State, thus bringing together
two branches of an enquiry which, as I have tried to
show, have since classical times been for the most part
separately pursued. It is inevitable, then, that Communism
no less than Fascism should* provoke comparison with
Greek thought.
4
'See Chapter XVI, pp. 660, 661.