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

7O2 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
Common Features of PlHtonism and Cominux
Among the most important of the features common both
to Platonism and Communism may be mentioned the
following.
(1) Both doctrines are authoritarian. The doctrine of
Communism asserts that the growing intensity of the class
war will bring Western civilization to an end, unless the
dictatorship of the proletariat
is established. Under the
dictatorship of the proletariat the government will govern
in the interests of the workers and in their interests only. It
follows that government must be in the hands of those
who accept the principles of Communism and are animated
by the will to carry them into effect, while the people
as a whole must, at any rate during the revolutionary
period, be subjected to their dictation. The people, then,
are to be dictated to in the interests of a philosophy which
is seen by those who dictate to be true. It was precisely
on this ground that Plato justified the domination of the
his Guardians.
State by
(2) Political and ethical truth is known, or at any rate
the Guardians
is knowable. In Plato's State it is known by
and is embodied by them in the laws which they frame
for the regulation of the city. Modern Communism maintains
that the philosophy of Marx as developed by Lenin
is true, and that it is in accordance with the principles
of this philosophy that society should be organized. The
truth of Marxism is recognized by communist philosophers
who are in this respect in the position of Plato's Guardians.
To Plato it seemed, and to Communism it seems right
that all philosophies other than the true philosophy
should be persecuted, and all conceptions of the State
other than that which the true philosophy sanctions
denounced.
(3) Both in Plato's State and in the communist State
it is the philosophers, that is to say, those who know in
regard to the truths revealed respectively by Plato and
Marx both that they are true, and why they are true, who
are entrusted with power. They use their power to frame