Plato and Ideology
The most significant lesson that I draw from The Republic is that so long as there is luxury–i.e. class rule–there will be deception and tyranny. The ‘city of pigs’ that Plato rejects is the crucial point in the story for me. I read Plato’s utopian writing as more of an exercise in following ideas to their conclusions than as manual for statesmen. What Plato does in this work is he attempts to rationalize privilege and he fails at it. The book demonstrates the fact that privilege cannot be justified without using mass deception combined with censorship and the state sanctioned indoctrination of children. The friends assembled to discuss justice do not reject the ‘city of pigs’ because it cannot be the just city, but because they (being from the privileged class in Greek society) were accustomed to a standard of living that involved luxury goods. If they are privileged and they are the only ones in their society who have access to luxury goods, then to say that the city must have luxury goods is as much as to say that the city must have privilege.
Well burrowed, old mole! 