One step closer to a dictatorship? Was Plato right? [View all]

[defacto7]

The Classical Greek philosopher Plato discusses five types of regimes(Republic, Book VIII). They are:

Aristocracy
Timocracy
Oligarchy
Democracy
and Tyranny

... These five regimes progressively degenerate starting with Aristocracy at the top and Tyranny at the bottom.

Taken from Wikipedia

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Below is from Facultyfiles.frostburg.edu


(Enter Plato's Ship analogy, then continue)

Democratic self-government does not work, according to Plato, because ordinary people have not learned how to run the ship of state. They are not familiar enough with such things as economics, military strategy, conditions in other countries, or the confusing intricacies of law and ethics.

....they are guided by unreliable emotions more than by careful analysis, and they are lured into adventurous wars and victimized by costly defeats that could have been entirely avoided.

The democratic election of a leader who plans to replace a capitalist democracy with a fascist warfare state, for example, is a case in point. Hitler, it is worth remembering, was elected by a democratic vote, and it is surely not irrelevant to ask whether those who voted for him did not suffer from an unacceptable degree of ignorance and lack of political education.

(Enter his Cave analogy)

The challenge that Plato's critique of democracy still poses is the question whether the citizens of today's democracies are interested and informed enough to participate meaningfully in the democratic process. Are today's self-proclaimed democracies in fact societies where people are "their own governors”-- where they are well enough informed to be effectively in control of their commonwealth and their lives? Do the citizens of these societies really understand why wars are declared, resources committed, debts incurred, relations denied, and so forth? Could it be that a majority of citizens live in a cognitive haze that reduces them to voting on the basis of uninformed convictions, catchy slogans, and altogether vague hunches and feelings?
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My comment: Although Plato's position holds a great deal of intuitive weight and points to great truths about the nature of humanity, I hope ultimately that he is wrong in his conclusion.