'Socrates returns to the concept of justice. He neatly illustrates justice as each man's right to his own property and injustice as taking or depriving a man of his property. Socrates points out that this is the ground on which lawsuits are decided in court. ... Plato's Republic can be seen as an exposition of an unjust social order, one that uses plunder, ostensibly to benefit the people.<blockquote>
'Much later in the dialogue Socrates defines justice with the question, "Are suits decided on any other ground but that a man may neither take what is another's, nor be deprived of what is his own?" [<a href="[mises.org];] Clearly Socrates believes seizing land is unjust. In the previous polis we saw where justice originates. Now we see where injustice originates: people like Glaucon believe we should war against our neighbors for gain.
Socrates has switched from exploring a polis based on acquiring wealth through the economic means to one acquiring it via political means. To illustrate justice and injustice, Socrates proceeds to expand on the luxurious polis. The radical ideas on politics are the logical implications of the idea that the polis is to be based on plunder. Logically, Plato is saying politics is essentially plunder — an idea associated more with Bastiat and Voltaire and classical-liberal class analysis than with ancient Greeks.
...
Conclusion
In The Republic
, Socrates uses the polis to illustrate justice. His healthy polis is rejected by Glaucon, who wants luxuries. Socrates creates a new, feverish polis to illustrate justice and injustice. This new polis depends on theft of neighbors' land for prosperity — an action defined by Socrates as injustice.
But Glaucon accepts this policy of theft, caring more for luxury than justice, and failing to see how prosperity might flow from justice. Socrates then shows Glaucon the logical implications of his ideas by illustrating how a polis that benefits the citizens at the expense of others would work. These many ideas are radical and shocking to his Greek audience.
Many of the unorthodox measures, such as communism, that Socrates suggests are required to prevent class conflict, wherein one class of citizens in the polis would directly exploit the others. Ironically, the state is not very luxurious for the elite forced to live under communism.
The decline of the polis through various stages down to tyranny is discussed. When Socrates has finished exposing the logical consequences of his audience's ideas, Socrates returns to the concept of justice. He neatly illustrates justice as each man's right to his own property and injustice as taking or depriving a man of his property. Socrates points out that this is the ground on which lawsuits are decided in court. Socrates' conversation illustrates the logic of the politics of plunder and injustice in the polis. Socrates is able to do this because of his audience's lack of a definition of justice. Some may find it hard to believe that Socrates would spend so much time on an imaginary city that he condemns, but the Socratic method depends upon demonstrating ideas by walking the student through the steps and allowing bad ideas to reach their logical illogical
conclusions.
The audience is unable to reject ideas that Greeks and many other people found to be shocking and radical. Socrates can be seen as piling injustice on top of injustice till his audience opens its eyes to what they believe. While sections of The Republic
may imply that Socrates' hypothetical polis with Guardians was a blueprint for Plato's ideal society, The Republic
contains statements to the contrary that condemn the feverish and luxurious polis. Plato's Republic
can be seen as an exposition of an unjust social order, one that uses plunder, ostensibly to benefit the people. Politics in Plato is a politics of plunder.'
- Anders Mikkelsen,
The Politics of Plunder in Plato's Republic, March 31, 2010</blockquote>