Politics   

These are only some of the disadvantages which attend the community of
property; the present arrangement, if improved as it might be by good
customs and laws, would be far better, and would have the advantages
of both systems. Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as
a general rule, private; for, when everyone has a distinct interest,
men will not complain of one another, and they will make more
progress, because every one will be attending to his own business. And
yet by reason of goodness, and in respect of use, 'Friends,' as the
proverb says, 'will have all things common.' Even now there are traces
of such a principle, showing that it is not impracticable, but, in
well-ordered states, exists already to a certain extent and may be
carried further. For, although every man has his own property, some
things he will place at the disposal of his friends, while of others
he shares the use with them. The Lacedaemonians, for example, use one
another's slaves, and horses, and dogs, as if they were their own; and
when they lack provisions on a journey, they appropriate what they
find in the fields throughout the country. It is clearly better that
property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special
business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent
disposition. Again, how immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a
man feels a thing to be his own; for surely the love of self is a
feeling implanted by nature and not given in vain, although
selfishness is rightly censured; this, however, is not the mere love
of self, but the love of self in excess, like the miser's love of
money; for all, or almost all, men love money and other such objects
in a measure. And further, there is the greatest pleasure in doing a
kindness or service to friends or guests or companions, which can only
be rendered when a man has private property. These advantages are lost
by excessive unification of the state. The exhibition of two virtues,
besides, is visibly annihilated in such a state: first, temperance
towards women (for it is an honorable action to abstain from another's
wife for temperance' sake); secondly, liberality in the matter of
property. No one, when men have all things in common, will any longer
set an example of liberality or do any liberal action; for liberality
consists in the use which is made of property.
Such legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence; men
readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in some
wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially
when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states,
suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men
and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private
property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause- the
wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there is much more
quarrelling among those who have all things in common, though there
are not many of them when compared with the vast numbers who have
private property.
Again, we ought to reckon, not only the evils from which the citizens
will be saved, but also the advantages which they will lose. The life
which they are to lead appears to be quite impracticable. The error of
Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he
starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state,
but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may
attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which,
without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state,
like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to
a single foot. The state, as I was saying, is a plurality which should
be united and made into a community by education; and it is strange
that the author of a system of education which he thinks will make the
state virtuous, should expect to improve his citizens by regulations
of this sort, and not by philosophy or by customs and laws, like those
which prevail at Sparta and Crete respecting common meals, whereby the
legislator has made property common. Let us remember that we should
not disregard the experience of ages; in the multitude of years these
things, if they were good, would certainly not have been unknown; for