To paraphrase Marx several centuries later, this can most easily be summed up as "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs," or, for Plato, "if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, and does it at the opportune moment" (48). Here, Plato is acknowledging that not every individual is equal, nor has the same abilities as everyone else. This, in the long-term, will bring about the best society possible, because each person is really actualizing -- called the "healthy city." To ensure that this happens, education must be healthy and must ensures that the right education be given to the right person. He focuses on the guardians of the city, and then turns to who should rule -- deciding that personal freedom is not really valued, but the ruler should uphold the good of the state. Social classes are quite rigid, and "natural" in that this is how a person's fate is decided so they may be the best at whatever it is helps society prosper.
In many ways, particularly the longer section on what is required to become a proper guardian, Plato also speaks of love -- not erotic love, but a higher form of love. However, what is odd is that this form...
There is no upward mobility, no deciding upon one's future based on expressed gifts -- if one were musically inclined but born to a shepherd, one would like be, stay, and generations hence, remain a shepherd. But then, I wondered, this idea of personal freedom is really a modern notion, and had one not grown up with it, would it seem just as natural to place more emphasis on the good of society (as a body) than the good of the individual. Too, who in their right mind would want to rule in Plato's Republic? The ruler has no private wealth, can never do things that might make them happy, or even really actualize except in the sense of continuing society? And, ironically, the good of society means doing something that profits society -- so at times, the shepherd or farmer may be quite a bit more valuable to society than the poet or philosopher; for we cannot eat words.
SOURCE:
Plato, trans. C.D. Reeve. (2004). The Republic. Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publications.
