IV Dishonest Democracy

LET us get back to the circumference and approach this same point by another route.

I grant you, says Plato, that to have rulers at all is very disagreeable. And indeed we should not need to have them were it not for a regrettable but real porcine element in us. My own Utopia is not an aristocracy nor a democracy, nor any kind of an ’ocracy; it is what some of you would call an anarchist communism. I have described it very clearly in the second book of my Republic, but nobody cares to notice it, except to repeat my brother’s gibe about it.¹ But instead of this Utopia of mine being a “City of Pigs,” it is just because we are pigs that I had to give up painting this picture and turn to describing “not only a state, but a luxurious state.” I am still “of opinion that the true state, which may be said to be a healthy constitution, is the one which I have described,” and not the “inflamed constitution” to which I devoted the rest of my book, and which in my opinion is much more a “City of Pigs” than the other. It is because people want “to lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and have dainties and dessert in the modern fashion, ... and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and cakes, and gold, and ivory, ... hunters and actors, ... musicians, players, dancers, ... tutors, ... servants ... nurses wet and dry, ... barbers, confectioners and cooks, ... and hosts of animals (if people are to eat animals), ... and physicians; ... then a slice of neighbor’s land ... and then war,”²—in short, it is because people are pigs that you must have soldiers and rulers and laws.

But if you must have them, why not train your best men for the work, just as you train some to be doctors, and others to be lawyers, and others to be engineers? Think of taking a man’s pills just because he can show a count of noses in his favor! Think of letting a man build the world’s greatest bridge because he is popular! You accuse me of plagiarizing from Pythagoras, but in truth, you who believe in democracy are the Pythagoreans of politics,—you believe in number as your god. Your equality is the equality of the unequal, and is all a matter of words and never of reality; your liberty is anarchy, it is the congenital sickness wherein your democracy was conceived and delivered, and whereof it inevitably dies; your freedom of speech is a license to lie; your elections are a contest in flattery and prevarication. Your democracy is a theatrocracy; and woe to the genius who falls into your hands. Perhaps you like democracy because you are like democracy: all your desires are on a level; that you should respect some of them and discipline others is an idea that never enters your heads. It has never occurred to you that it takes more time and training to make a statesman than it does to make a bootblack. But statesmanship is something that can never be conferred by plebiscite; it must be pursued through the years, and must find the privilege of office without submitting to a vote. Wisdom is too subtle a thing to be felt by the coarsened senses of the mob. Your industry is wonderful because it is shot through with specialization and training; but because you reject specialization and training in filling the offices of your government the word politics has become dishonored in your mouths. And just because you will let any one be your leader no real man ever submits himself to your choice.