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Was Plato a socialist or communist theorist? Was he the author of a socialist or communist utopian ideal? Was ancient Sparta a socialist or communist society? What is or was the relationship between the actual regimeof ancient Sparta and the attempts by Plato to envision an ideal polis? These questions are the focus of this chapter.
The organization of our forces is a thing calling in its nature for much advice and the framing of many rules, but the principal [first] is this—that no man, and no woman, be ever suffered to live without an officer set over them, and no soul of man to learn the trick of doing one single thing of its own sole motion, in play or in earnest, but, in peace as in war, ever to live with the commander in sight, to follow his leading and take its motions from him to the last detail… in a word, to teach one’s soul the habit of never so much as thinking to do one single act apart from one’s fellows, of making life, to the very uttermost, an unbroken consort, society, and community of all with all.
—Plato,Laws, 942a-c
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David Reisman
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Bostaph, S. (1994). Communism, Sparta, and Plato. In: Reisman, D. (eds) Economic Thought and Political Theory. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 37. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1380-9_1
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