,” I went on, “there’s no compulsion either to exercise authority if you are capable of it, or to submit to authority if you don’t want to; you needn’t fight if there’s a war, or you can wage a private war in peacetime if you don’t like peace; and if there’s any law that debars you from political or judicial office, you will none the less take either if they come your way. It’s a wonderfully pleasant way if carrying on in the short run, isn’t it?”(The Republic).In “An Introduction to Plato’s Republic” by Julia Annas, she argues “Plato presents democracy as defined by tolerant pluralism, but Athens was a populist democracy, with a clearly defined way of life separating those with power from those without, and about as tolerant of openly expressed nonconformity as McCarthyite America!” Here, Annus is using the comparison of democracy to “tolerant pluralism,” as a way of saying that within Plato’s view of this type of political system there exists many different realities, and seems to question if law exists at all. She compares his so-called “democracy” as what is commonly referred to as “anarchy.”Plato believes there are three social classes in democracy: the drones (unemployed), the rich, and the working masses. He says there will eventually be a period of unrest between the people and the government, and the working class “will put forward a single popular leader, whom they nurse to greatness,” and it is this leader who is “the root from which tyranny invariably springs”(The Republic). Here I would like to point out that Plato’s leader who rises through a period of unrest from the working masses could be compared to Germany’s Adolph Hitler. He too rose to greatness from a Democratic system, and what soon followed was the inevitable…Plato referred to thi...
