Note 374 — Chapter III · PLATO

Francotte (L’Industrie, II, 250) suggests that l’étatisme, “nationalism,” would be a more applicable term for the Laws. He distinguishes this from socialism, as being not so thoroughgoing a limitation of the individual as is the “socialism” of the Republic. Cf. Shorey, Class. Phil., IX (1914), 358, on the famous “communistic” passage in Laws 739C: ὄντως ἐστὶ κοινὰ τὰ φίλων, etc. He calls it a “rhetorical exaltation of that ideal unity of civic feeling, which Demosthenes upbraids Aeschines for not sharing.” For further communistic ideas of Plato, cf. his incomplete romantic story of Atlantis in the Critias. The ideal is similar to that of the larger works. Cf. Poehlmann, op. cit., II, 348 ff.