Origins of Socialist Thought
There can be no question of the fact that when we find primitive men wandering about the face of the earth,
that these early men had no ideas relating to private ownership of property.
Primitive peoples lived in a state that could be called, accurately, a state of tribal communism.
They were practicing socialists, even though they didn't understand it.
This is a perfectly natural thing to do until such time as the property idea has been developed.
Then it will follow that people will simply share and share alike, and when this happens,
the strong man will inevitably get the largest amount.
This has unfortunately even been true up to today.
It wasn't until many, many years after human beings first appeared on the planet that ideas
relating to private ownership of property began to manifest.
And certainly it is true that today the ideas of socialist thought in the main dominate the
human race.
That's true.
In this country as well as in every other country, the social whole is the idea that
simply fascinates people and continues their plodding along in this same idea, serving
a kind of super spook which is supposedly a consciousness of the social whole which
in point of fact doesn't even exist.
However, when we look at the origins of socialist thought, we have to go back to some of the
early philosophers who first appeared in Greece. And although there may have been others who
preceded him, the one that looms very large on the horizon as the actual originator of
a reasonable and well-organized presentation of socialism is no less a figure than the
and the great Greek philosopher Plato. Plato, it was, who became imbued with the idea that
democratic governments could be wrong. According to the evidence that we have, which is largely
his own writing of the matter, and it's pretty hard to have a cross-checking in some of the
What appears to have occurred was this. Socrates, an old man at the time Plato was a young boy, got into difficulties with the government. The government found him guilty of corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth, and Socrates was condemned to death by a jury of several hundred persons.
They really believed in democracy at that time. And yet in Plato's mind, Socrates had done no wrong.
And this caused him to become very concerned, and he decided at this point to become a philosopher.
And one of the things that he didn't want was democracy. In fact, I think his first,
or certainly one of his first essays, was related to the democratic idea. He said in
If you have a friend and you love him and he becomes ill, who would you get to help him?
Would you seek a skillful physician or would you go out and ask for a prescription written
by a mob? Obviously, if you love your friend, you'll get the best doctor you can find.
Well shouldn't it be that way with your country? Suppose the nation is in trouble. Who will
you get to resolve the difficulty? Will you seek a skillful statesman or will you go out
and ask for an opinion from the mob. Obviously, the skillful statesman will be a more reliable
source of decision-making than the great, uninformed public. This is what Plato tried to set forth.
He wrote so devastatingly well. In fact, Plato's writing has come down to us today, and it is still
Sintillating and modern in its expression, even in translation, this early writing against democracy,
which was against the Athenian government as it then existed, caused such consternation among
his friends that they came to him and said, in effect, Plato, you've created an intellectual
vacuum. You have destroyed the justification for the kind of government we have in Athens.
If that's so wrong, what's right? Why don't you tell us the kind of a government we ought to have?
So Plato wrote his most popular work called The Republic, and in his work The Republic,
Plato sets down the idea that if you are to have an ideal community, it must be one that is
dominated by a philosopher king who will make all the decisions and place everybody directly
Plato sets forth, in very careful terms, the ideal of state socialism.
There will be some who admire Plato, who will perhaps bridle a little at these remarks,
and contend, as I have had it contended with me in class, that actually Plato was writing
here tongue-in-cheek, and he didn't really mean this, and that a more important work
by Plato should be relied upon, namely, his laws, which are fundamentally more important.
Let me accept that as a point of departure and turn to Plato's laws to give you a direct
quotation of what Plato actually said in this work, thereby to my satisfaction, demonstrating
that he was not writing the Republic tongue-in-cheek, but that he meant what he said.
I quote from Plato.
This is from his Laws, Roman numeral 12.
The organization of our forces is a thing calling in its nature for much advice and
the framing of many rules, but the principle is this, that no man and no woman be he ever
suffered to live without an officer set over him, and no soul of man to learn the trick
of doing one single thing of its own soul motion, in play or in earnest, but in peace
Use as in war, ever to live with the commander in sight, to follow his leading, and take
its motions from him to the least detail, to halt or advance, to drill, to bathe, to
dine, to keep wakeful hours of nights as sentry or dispatch carrier, all at his bidding,
in the stricken field itself, neither to pursue nor to retire without the captain's signal.
In a word, to teach one's soul the habit of never so much as thinking, to do one single
Now, that's Plato's laws. And this, of course, this is the same spirit that pervades his
republic. What he called for was the creation of a perfect social unit that would be dominated
by a philosopher king, there would be a place for everyone, and everyone would be in his
in this place, there would be no such thing as freedom. In fact, Plato equated freedom
with anarchy. If anybody is free to make a decision on his own, well, that's just pure
anarchy. You can't let that happen. The only person to make any decision is the commander,
and everything that he does not command is automatically forbidden by virtue of the fact
that it wasn't commanded. Now, that is the Platonic position.
Curiously, while Plato was an old man, there was a baby born in Athens who was to found
a contrary doctrine of thought.
I don't even know if the two men ever met, but there was a young man named Zeno who grew
up as the Platonic doctrine was gaining ascendancy, and he too became a philosopher.
And when he decided that he wanted to teach, he discovered that the Plato was so prominent,
that his Platonic teachings were so prominent and so prestigious, that he could not even
get a place in which to instruct.
Plato's school was called the Academy, and we continue to call our educational institution
the Academy, and this comes from the Platonic influence.
Plato's influence is still profound today all over the world. Anyway, young Zeno found
that there was no place for him because he didn't believe in Plato, and finally he ended
up teaching on the porch, and he is known as the Philosopher of the Porch or the Stoa.
The word S-T-O-A, Stoa in Greek, is a word that means a portico or a porch, and he became
The Stoic Philosopher
of what Zeno said, and apparently this is his thought. He said, in effect, that he could not
dispute the logic of Plato or Plato's Republic if, in point of fact, the aim of human life
is to create a perfect society. If that's it, then Plato's model will serve as well as any.
But, said Zeno, that he challenged the premise. To him, it seemed, that the purpose of life was to permit each individual to master himself and to become as fine a person as was possible.
That is, what he was looking for was not the perfectibility, but the constant striving toward perfection on the part of each individual.
and that is inculcated into the Stoic doctrine. The interesting thing is that for a number of years
after Stoicism was enunciated by Zeno and his followers, both doctrines became popular.
The Platonic doctrine swept the world, and scholars tell us that everywhere that it went,
strong and powerful governments began to make their appearance, because the Platonic doctrine
leads to the idea of strong centralized control over human beings. However, curiously, wherever
the Stoic philosophy went, there emerged great men. And so you find this dichotomy welling
up philosophically speaking from the early Greeks—this dates to the 4th century B.C.—and
Coming right down to modern times. Actually, in a sense, there is a point of break-off
with the Stoic philosophy. It lasts in a more or less prominent way up to the rule of Marcus
Aurelius in Rome. Following Marcus Aurelius, Stoicism passes under a cloud. We hear very
little about it from that time forward for a long time. Here and there, through the centuries,
An individual would stand up having somehow gotten hold of some of the philosophic ideas
of the Stoics, and he would begin enunciating them. But he would have few, if any, followers,
and we only know about him as a rare sort of isolated tree growing on a treeless plain.
Meanwhile, the doctrines of Plato gathered strength and became, in essence, the major
to the Fascinating Second Half of the Eighteenth Century.
And then, conversely, the idea that the social whole is the important thing, and you must have a strong man, preferably a philosopher king, who is going to make the decisions for everybody else, because everybody else is just too stupid to make his own decisions.
So here you have these two very much opposed doctrines coming to the fore in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, and may I suggest to you that right now the same thing
is happening again. Once more, these two doctrines are in a daily confrontation in the lives
and the minds of men. This is perhaps as exciting a century to live in as the latter half of
of the Eighteenth.
In fact, there may be even a further advancement, possibly of both doctrines, but the two positions
are definitely in conflict and carrying on today.
Now, of course, there is no question.
But what ideas of socialism have infiltrated all government bodies, the government is the
natural tool of every socialist, it's the thing that he cannot do without.
But there is also no question that at least in this country there are many ideas relating
to individualism that are being expressed, and they can fundamentally be traced to a
stoic document of our own, namely the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence is a stoic doctrine. It sets forth the concept of the
equal rights of men. It presumes that men are capable of making their own decisions.
And then we have what is essentially a Platonic document to wit the Communist Manifesto, which
of course, I might say that Plato of course influenced Marx very profoundly. I might point
out that Marx was fundamentally influenced by Hegel, and Hegel was a Platonist, and so
you find the Platonic view being brought into the doctrines of world socialism, which Marx
Communism, The Communist Manifesto, Platonic Origin, The Minds of Men are Circulating and
there is still this conflict.
Now, of course, today you will find both individualism and socialism expressed in our government,
and you will find it expressed in our churches, and certainly you will find both on every
college campus. There are little knots of trained, doctrinaire people in both camps.
There are individualists who are, in essence, fighting the American Revolution, and there
are socialists who are fighting the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or
The Chinese Revolution, and we have these two embattled forces all over the country, all over the world.
But there's a very interesting thing that we ought to emphasize at the moment.
And that is, if you're really looking for the origin of socialist ideas today, you might begin looking at the face of the person that you see when you look into the mirror.
Because most of us are actually practicing socialists a good deal of the time, even though quite a few of us don't or say we don't like socialism.
We nonetheless tend to practice it. The expression of socialist ideas and the carrying forth of these doctrines really often begins in the home and it begins in the relationship of parents to their own children.
Now, I'm very unhappy to have to tell you that, but that is the case.
It begins sort of, I suppose, like this.
You take a young couple, they're married, and in the course of a year or so, here is
their firstborn.
And it is a very thrilling experience and a wonderful thing.
Here is a new little flame of life, and it's entrusted to them.
They begin, of course, taking care of it, because if they don't, it will die.
The child is born helpless and has to be looked after, so they look after it.
And to begin with, naturally, they're just concentrating on his physical well-being.
But after a matter of a year or so, they are aware that this creature has a brain.
It is learning to think.
And therefore, they better do something about that, too.
You can't wait until it goes to the government school, because, of course, in the government
In schools now you don't have, you don't learn reading, you learn remedial reading
because you've missed it.
So you probably like to begin to teach your child to read before he gets to school so
that he'll at least be able to understand what they're talking about.
So most parents will end up going down to a bookstore that features children's books
and they'll buy some books to bring home and then they'll begin reading them to the
little boy or the little girl, it's usually one or the other.
And the books that they will begin often will start here. For instance, there's a dandy
little item that I cut my first reading teeth on, and possibly you did, or possibly you
have assisted your children in starting here. This is a cute little story about Goldilocks
and the three bears. Well, what's that about? Well, that's about a little blonde who goes
goes into the woods and gets lost. I might point out that this becomes a more recurrent
theme in adult literature, but we started here. This little blonde goes out into the
woods and she gets lost, wanders around and is naturally frightened. Finally she comes
to a house. She knocks on the door, but no one is home. So what does she do? Well, she
commits an act of breaking and entry. She goes in and performs petty vandalism on other
people's property, ends up consuming property that isn't hers, and finally gets into a
The Owners Come Home Incidentally, you will find this true not
only in juvenile literature but in most adult literature.
The owners of anything are cast in the role of villains.
In this case, the owners are three bears.
They come in and start grousing, saying, our house got broken into, there must be a thief
around.
Look at their property and yes it's been damaged and consumed and they say gee look what the
thief did here and here and then they walk into the bedroom and there she is.
They catch her right there, she awakes, screams and makes good her escape.
And of course the moral of the story is that if you're cute and blonde and in difficulties
you can break into anybody's house and you can end up the heroine, doesn't make any difference
because this is all right.
Hansel-und-Gretel Hansel-und-Gretel
eating the pieces, whereupon the owner of the house comes out and says, Hey, kids, what
are you doing in my house?
Well, that's a fair question.
And they say, Well, we're hungry, so we're eating your house.
Well, the owner says, That's not the way to behave.
If you were hungry, why didn't you knock and tell me so?
Come inside and I'll fix a meal for you.
Well, now that's a pretty high-type thing.
But now the author tells us, they tip us off, the children in the story don't know about
it, but you and I know it as the reader.
The owner in this case isn't a bear. It's a witch. And this witch is not really fixing
a meal to feed to the children. She's just getting the oven warm. She's going to eat
the kids herself. And what happens? You see, the children don't know she's a witch, but
nonetheless they watch their chance. And when this lady, who apparently is fixing breakfast
for them, bends over the oven, they grab her from the rear, shove her in, slam the door,
and Fire Up. Shades of Buchenwald. How much conditioning do you want to give to your children?
And this goes on. Cinderella and the Glass Slipper has these same overtones in which
the only lick of work done in the story is griped about and moaned about. The work happens
to be cleaning out a fireplace. You'd think it was a work as a galley slave. And Cinderella
moans and groans about this until magic occurs. Her fairy godmother arrives, commiserates
In the end, in other words, what we start doing with the child, we create in the mind
of the child the idea that somehow the world owes him a living, that there is a social
good and everybody's really looking after his interests, and somebody somewhere likes
him, loves him, in fact, why?
There is no discernible reason.
Can the child do anything?
That isn't mentioned.
Does the child have any ability or talent, any dedication to accomplishment? Not necessarily.
The child is just there, and consequently we all, society, owe him something. And this is the kind
of thing we do in our literature, beginning with the children, and of course the same thing appears
right on down the line. Here and there, only occasionally, do you find a work of literature,
There is a certain arrogance that I have detected in so much of the socialist writing, a kind
of arrogance that presumes to say that anybody with money is just automatically unhappy.
They just don't like to be rich, so for their own good, we're going to take their money
away from them.
And this is the kind of thing that you run into.
In examining what I've seen, I don't think that this fellow Anasas is particularly unhappy.
He seems to get along, and I have happened to have had the pleasure of knowing a number
of people who are millionaires, and I think they're just about as happy as a lot of other
people who aren't millionaires.
I don't think money makes you either happy or unhappy.
just provides a means that you can use and you can use it wisely or foolishly as you
please.
In any case, you have this tendency to create socialist ideas and socialist dependency right
in the home and it manifests from the very beginning.
So there's no wonder that we have a great deal of socialist thinking in the country
today.
But now here is an interesting thing.
brings us right up to the present time. Today, the French Revolution and all of the extrapolations
coming from it, including the Russian, the Chinese, and that portion of the American
scene that is in a state of unrest, have begun to realize a certain thing, and that is that
This is why today what we call the left in this country is moving more and more into
the realm of metaphysics and mystery. They are becoming increasingly involved with things
that are anti-intellectual, and deliberately so. They want to set aside the age of reason.
They want to introduce an age of emotion. They think that the way you feel is more important
than the way that you think. That is characteristic today because, in point of fact, the socialists
have already lost the intellectual argument. That is true. In a sense, it is almost a shame
because in many ways some of the things that the socialists say are valuable. There is
There is an element of love here, an element of compassion, an element of understanding
that I think individualists have been very prone to neglect.
And while I would have to contend that the intellectual position of the individualist
is correct and scientifically sound and provable, nonetheless there is a side to life that has
to develop the other side of the person. We are not, as human beings, simply cold, detached,
objective mentalities. We are vibrant, vital human beings. And this is something that perhaps
we owe the socialists. When they laid stress in this area, they did us an important service,
And we should keep it in mind. In actual point of fact, there is a way wherein we can combine
the concept of good feeling and the recognition of the merit of the individual as an emotional
unit within the intellectual context and the scientific footing of the individualistic
theory. That can be done. It will take effort, but it seems to me that if we move in the
In that direction, the very first lesson that we have to understand is that we are going
to have to move the government out of the position of making decisions for us.
Whether the government is making decisions that tend to support individualism or tend
to support socialism, the fact that it makes the decision deprives us as individuals of
both our opportunity to think and to feel.
And it is important for the development of man that we emerge as full-fledged adult
human beings capable of thinking and feeling.
And this can be done.