Plato’s well-known translators Benjamin Jowett says that The Republic is communist.
Maybe it is complicated.
I haven’t read OSaiE, but I have read the Republic. I don’t recall anything about “everyone ” being selectively bred. Maybe the Guardians. The Guardians are also the ones who have no private property, hence the communism...but noone else is forbdiden private property.
I don’t think Popper is an accurate guide to Plato.
Maybe Popper isn’t accurate. Their is this thing Popper does where he criticises Plato very heavily, but takes pains to make it clear he is not criticising Socrates, which comes across as really weird because (from what I understand) our modern knowledge of Socrates largely comes from Plato—so splitting hairs between which of the two said what with any precision is not really possible. So that is a flag that something fishy is going on.
I may be mistaken that almost everyone is selectively bred in Plato’s ideal city. Wikipeida’s summary seems to suggest that it was everyone: “The rulers assemble couples for reproduction, based on breeding criteria.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato) , but I have only done a low-effort search on this.
The wider narrative of Popper’s book is that Fascism and Communism are both enemies of what he calls “The open society” (read: liberal, democratic, pluralist), and in that sense are similar to one another. The “communist” interpretation of Plato’s republic makes a lot of sense. Popper’s interpretation of it as fascist makes some sense as well though. It was apparently partly modelled of of ancient Sparta (the archetypical fascist state) - which also banned its citizens from owning personal property (especially gold), [the state provided a home, goods and slaves to every citizen], they also had a eugenics thing going on (babies inspected at birth for defects), and to some extent did the Plato thing where all children were raised collectively and not by their parents. (Maybe only males were raised collectively, not sure).
Plato’s well-known translators Benjamin Jowett says that The Republic is communist.
Maybe it is complicated.
I haven’t read OSaiE, but I have read the Republic. I don’t recall anything about “everyone ” being selectively bred. Maybe the Guardians. The Guardians are also the ones who have no private property, hence the communism...but noone else is forbdiden private property.
I don’t think Popper is an accurate guide to Plato.
Maybe Popper isn’t accurate. Their is this thing Popper does where he criticises Plato very heavily, but takes pains to make it clear he is not criticising Socrates, which comes across as really weird because (from what I understand) our modern knowledge of Socrates largely comes from Plato—so splitting hairs between which of the two said what with any precision is not really possible. So that is a flag that something fishy is going on.
I may be mistaken that almost everyone is selectively bred in Plato’s ideal city. Wikipeida’s summary seems to suggest that it was everyone: “The rulers assemble couples for reproduction, based on breeding criteria.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato) , but I have only done a low-effort search on this.
The wider narrative of Popper’s book is that Fascism and Communism are both enemies of what he calls “The open society” (read: liberal, democratic, pluralist), and in that sense are similar to one another. The “communist” interpretation of Plato’s republic makes a lot of sense. Popper’s interpretation of it as fascist makes some sense as well though. It was apparently partly modelled of of ancient Sparta (the archetypical fascist state) - which also banned its citizens from owning personal property (especially gold), [the state provided a home, goods and slaves to every citizen], they also had a eugenics thing going on (babies inspected at birth for defects), and to some extent did the Plato thing where all children were raised collectively and not by their parents. (Maybe only males were raised collectively, not sure).