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

704 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
(5) Communism also provides, as Plato provided, for
the special training of a second class to protect the State,
and to safeguard it against propaganda designed to undermine
it This second class in Plato's State was the class of
Warriors; in the communist State it consists of the members
of the Communist Party who .are expected to show a special
loyalty to the State. Trained to spread its doctrines and to
die for its ideals, they may be likened to the watchdogs of
Plato's Republic, who stand sentinel over the institutions
and opinions of their society, to protect the former from dis-
ruption and the latter from contamination.
The Degeneration of Plato's Ideal State, The differences
between Plato's philosophy and that of Communism
are not less marked than the likenesses, and so far as
ultimate ends are concerned, they are more profound* In
respect of his attitude to ultimate ends, Plato is, indeed,
in some respects nearer to Fascism than he is to Com*
munism. In the eighth and ninth books of the Republic,
Plato describes the degeneration of the ideal State. Various
types and degrees of departure from the political and social
perfection he has sought to define are enumerated. Among
these degenerate States arc those that chiefly value honour
and those that chiefly value money, corresponding respec-
tively to die second or warrior class in the ideal State,
and the third or producing class, and to the scales of
valuation appropriate to each class. The State that values
honour, is that in which the warrior claw is dominant, the
goods which this class values being the goods which the
State as a whole values; while the State which values
money is dominated by the third class and values the goods
which appeal to that class. Now Fascism, as I have tried
to show, honours power as the chief good and considers
military efficiency to be the highest glory of the State. The
power lauded by Nietzsche awl pursued by Fascist States,
is, admittedly, not the same as Plato's "honour", which is
a quality more akin to the virtue of the chivalrous knight
of Christendom. But Plato would, I imagine, regard the