And since we take for our special consideration the study of the form of political community that is the best of all the forms for a people able to pursue the most ideal mode of life, we must also examine the other constitutions actually employed by certain of the states said to be well governed, as well as any others propounded by certain thinkers and reputed to be of merit, in order that we may discern what there is in them that is right and expedient, and also in order that it may not be thought that to seek for something different from them springs entirely from a desire to display ingenuity, but that we may be thought to enter upon this inquiry because these forms of constitution that already exist are not satisfactory.

We must first adopt as a starting-point that which is the natural point of departure for this inquiry. There are three possible systems of property: either all the citizens must own everything in common, or they must own nothing in common, or some things must be common property and others not. To have nothing in common is clearly impossible for the state is essentially a form of community, and to begin with there is bound to be a common locality: a single city occupies a single site, and the single city belongs to its citizens in common.

1261aBut is it better for a city that is to be well ordered to have community in everything which can possibly be made common property, or is it better to have some things in common and others not? For example, it is possible for the citizens to have children, wives and possessions in common with each other, as in Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates says that there must be community of children, women and possessions. Well then, which is preferable, the system that now obtains, or one conforming with the regulation described in the Republic ¹?

Now for all the citizens to have their wives in common involves a variety of difficulties; in particular,² (1) the object which Socrates advances as the reason why this enactment should be made clearly does not follow from his arguments; also (2) as a means to the end which he asserts should be the fundamental object of the city, the scheme as actually set forth in the dialogue is not practicable; yet (3) how it is to be further worked out has been nowhere definitely stated. I refer to the ideal of the fullest possible unity of the entire state, which Socrates takes as his fundamental principle.

Yet it is clear that if the process of unification advances beyond a certain point, the city will not be a city at all for a state essentially consists of a multitude of persons, and if its unification is carried beyond a certain point, city will be reduced to family and family to individual,for we should pronounce the family to be a more complete unity than the city, and the single person than the family; so that even if any lawgiver were able to unify the state, he must not do so, for he will destroy it in the process. And not only does a city consist of a multitude of human beings, it consists of human beings differing in kind. A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state. For a city is not the same thing as a league; a league is of value by its quantity, even though it is art the same in kind (since the essential object of the league is military strength), just as a weight would be worth more if it weighed more, whereas³ components which are to make up a unity must differ in kind (and it is by this characteristic that a city will also surpass a tribe of which the population is not scattered among villages but organized like the Arcadians). Hence reciprocal equality⁴ is the preservative of states, as has been said before in the Ethics. For even among the free and equal this principle must necessarily obtain, since all cannot govern at once: they must hold office for a year at a time or by some other arrangement or period; and in this manner it does actually come about that all govern, just as all shoemakers would be also carpenters if the shoemakers and the carpenters kept on changing trades instead of the same persons being shoemakers and carpenters always. But since such permanence of function is better for the political community also, it is clear that it is better for the same persons to govern always, if possible; and among peoples where it is impossible because all the citizens are equal in their nature,

1261byet at the same time it is only just, whether governing is a good thing or a bad, that all should partake in it, and for equals thus to submit to authority in turn imitates their being originally dissimilar⁵; for some govern and others are governed by turn, as though becoming other persons; and also similarly when they hold office the holders of different offices are different persons. It is clear then from these considerations that it is not an outcome of nature for the state to be a unity in the manner in which certain persons say that it is, and that what has been said to be the greatest good in states really destroys states; yet surely a thing’s particular good acts as its preservative.—Another line of consideration also shows that to seek to unify the state excessively is not beneficial. In point of self-sufficiency the individual is surpassed by the family and the family by the state, and in principle a state is fully realized only when it comes to pass that the community of numbers is self-sufficing; if therefore the more self-sufficing a community is, the more desirable is its condition, then a less degree of unity is more desirable than a greater.

Again, even granting that it is best for the community to be as complete a unity as possible, complete unity does not seem to be proved by the formula “if all the citizens say “Mine” and “Not mine” at the same time,” which Socrates⁶ thinks to be a sign of thecity’s being completely one. “All” is an ambiguous term. If it means “each severally,” very likely this would more fully realize the state of things which Socrates wishes to produce (for in that case every citizen will call the same boy his son and also the same woman his wife, and will speak in the same way of property and indeed of each of the accessories of life) but ex hypothesi the citizens, having community of women and children, will not call them “theirs” in this sense, but will mean theirs collectively and not severally, and similarly they will call property “theirs” meaning the property of them all, not of each of them severally. We see then that the phrase “all say” is equivocal (in fact the words “all,” “both,” “odd,” “even,” owing to their ambiguity, occasion argumentative quibbling even in philosophical discussions); hence really for all to say the same thing is in one sense admirable, although impracticable, but in another sense is not at all a sign of concord. And furthermore, the proposal has another disadvantage. Property that is common to the greatest number of owners receives the least attention; men care most for their private possessions, and for what they own in common less, or only so far as it falls to their own individual share for in addition to the other reasons, they think less of it on the ground that someone else is thinking about it, just as in household service a large number of domestics sometimes give worse attendance than a smaller number. And it results in each citizen’s having a thousand sons, and these do not belong to them as individuals but any child is equally the son of anyone,

1262a so that all alike will regard them with indifference.

Again, each speaks of one of his fellow-citizens who is prospering or getting on badly as “my son” only in the sense of the fractional part which he forms of the whole number—that is, he says “my son” or “so-and-so’s son,” specifying as the father any individual of the thousand citizens or whatever the number be of which the state consists, and even this dubiously, for it is uncertain who has chanced to have had a son born to him and when born safely reared. Yet which is the better way to use the word “mine”—this way, each of two thousand or ten thousand people applying it to the same thing, or rather the way in which they say “mine” in the actual states now? for the same person is called “my son” by one man and “my brother” by another, and another calls him “nephew,” or by some other relationship, whether of blood or by affinity and marriage, the speaker’s own in the first place, or that of his relations; and in addition someone else calls him “fellow-clansman” or “fellow-tribesman.” For it is better for a boy to be one’s own private nephew than one’s son in the way described. Moreover it would also be impossible to avoid men’s supposing certain persons to be their real brothers and sons and fathers and mothers; for they would be bound to form their belief about each other by the resemblances which occur between children and parents. This indeed is said by some of those who write of travels round the world⁷ actually to occur;they say that some of the people of Upper Libya have their wives in common, yet the children born are divided among them according to their personal resemblances. And there are some females both of the human race and of the other animals, for instance horses and cattle, who have a strong natural tendency to produce off-spring resembling the male parents, as was the case with the mare at Pharsalus named Honest Lady.⁸

Moreover it is not easy for those who institute this communism to guard against such objectionable occurrences as outrage, involuntary and in some cases voluntary homicide, fights, abusive language; all of which are violations of piety when committed against fathers, mothers and near relatives as if they were not relatives; but these are bound to occur more frequently when people do not know their relations than when they do, and also, when they do occur, if the offenders know their relationship it is possible for them to have the customary expiations performed, but for those who do not no expiation is possible. Also it is curious that a theorist who makes the sons common property only debars lovers from intercourse and does not prohibit love, nor the other familiarities, which between father and son or brother and brother are most unseemly, since even the fact of love between them is unseemly. And it is also strange that he deprives them of intercourse for no other reason except because the pleasure is too violent; and that he thinks it makes no difference that the parties are in the one case father or son and in the other case brothers of one another. And it seems that this community of wives and sons is more serviceable for the Farmer class than for the Guardians;