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Plato vs Democracy (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Hover-over text of ExistentialComics' comic:

Some people have called Plato the first totalitarian thinker, but if you look at what Democracy is producing these days it's hard to not think he had a bit of a point...

And text beneath comic:

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As for Plato, he criticized democracy heavily, claiming that it gave people too much freedom, and if anyone could be elected by the ignorant masses, it would be too possible for selfish people who only wanted power and wealth to get into power. Democracy, ironically, would inevitably lead to tyranny and demagogues. He thought a better system would be for the wisest, most virtuous, and most selfless people to govern society, which of course would be philosophers like himself. How this system was immune to corruption is a little unclear to me, but given what's going on with democracies lately you can probably at least say he has some good points.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Greece had democracy too, and it ran into the exact same basket of problems we experience today.

Candidates would smear each other through rumor campaigns, foreigners would be scapegoated for domestic problems, religious organizations would lobby for special privileges by promising their constituents' support during election season, wealthy men would bribe whomever won to guarantee them favorable treatment, and large portions of the population were disenfranchised in order to maintain a patriarchal nationalist system built on the back of slave labor.

Consequentially, people lost faith in democracy as a mechanism for selecting popular rulers and became increasingly enamored with the military as a source of domestic income, social advancement, and national pride. The Greek system ultimately failed in the face of oligarchy during the Peloponnesian Wars, reemerged in a reformed state for almost a century, and then collapsed entirely following the conquest of the Macedonians.

Plato's idealism not withstanding, his criticism is worth reading because it demonstrates a repeated pattern of human behaviors that modern political groups can learn from and respond to.