---my tendentious paraphrase of a remark of Socrates at his trial (as depicted in Plato's "Apology").....
It's not the business of a just man to harm anyone.....(Republic. Book I)
I'm in the middle of reading Naomi Reshotko's "Socratic virtue" and it has struck me how very different is Socrates' point of view about matters social. Socrates (as depicted in Plato's "early" dialogues) isn't the political thinker we know from Plato of the "Republic". Yet, consider the following:
1. In modern political thought there is a defense of the state which says that free-riders have to be punished, so we need the coercive mechanism of the state. aka, the problem of "public goods"
2. public goods also have the property that when I have one, it doesn't diminish your ability to have it. --Alternatively, if I pay for one and you don't, it can be hard to keep you from enjoying it.
3. Recall too the leftist criticism of capitalist economics: it just cannot deal with social costs or with negative externalities...
1s: Contrast with 1 the Socratic notion that if someone has done something bad they need education, not punishment--found, e.g., in the "Apology" . ( a notion persisting in Plato's ridicule of the vulgar people who fear punishment and chains more than what or who they will become--in the "Theaetetus")
2s: Contrast the idea (combining 1 and 2 above) that we need to threaten people with punishment to make them contribute to a common good (because we can't stop them from enjoying the good they didn't pay for) with the Socratic notion that my goodness or happiness doesn't take away from your goodness or happiness, and, indeed, my happiness can't be purchased at the price of your misery. It just can't be done.
And, I hasten to add, there's the further Socratic point that you can't make someone just by threatening them with punishment.....
And recall the familiar point that capitalist economic systems (as in the EU or the USA) have a form of prosperity which depends upon the misery of others. But note that the EU and the USA do not have thereby anything like happiness---as is attested by the frequent observation that wealthier countries are not immediately for that reason happier....
(with respect to 3 above, it seems to me that Socrates couldn't support capitalism.... because it betrays certain basic principles about justice, happiness, and virtue.....If correct, this is a funny thing for me to discover, since just the other day I was thinking that the evils of capitalism could not have been known to Socrates since he lived in a pre-industrial age. yet the very plausible principles of justice and virtue which he espoused are precisely at odds with capitalism's disregard for the consequences of our actions....)
Yes, it's true; there's much to learn from Socrates . . . and his ideas are of a different sort altogether....one might even say radical and revolutionary....
references
Robin Hahnel, The ABC's of Political Economy, Pluto Books: London, 2002, Chapter 4 objects to capitalism that it can't deal with externalities or social goods.
(Chomsky frequently mentions the problem of externalities in his writings and lectures; so I feel justified in referring to it as the "leftist" or even "familiar leftist" critique.)
another useful discussion of externalities is: Daniel Hausman's "When Jack and Jill Make a Deal", Social Philosophy and Policy,9, 1992, 95-113.; available at Hausman's homepage
Naomi Reshotko, Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither Good-Nor-Bad, Cambridge UP, 2006. Another former student of Terry Penner who follows his interpretation of Socrates on key points.
Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, and Liberty, Cambridge 1982, mentions the defense of the state on the grounds of preventing "free riders". (Taylor himself rejects that defense.)
Economic systems which rely upon creating misery? Here one might see Richard Miller's recent book, "Globalizing Justice".
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