both unjust acquisition (κτῆσις) and unjust expenditure (ἀναλώματα),95 produce degeneration in individual and nation,96 and are the direct cause of war97 and civic strife.98 Were it feasible, he would prefer to go back to the simpler life of earlier times, before luxury and the inordinate desire for riches had so dominated all society.99 Of course he realizes that such a return is impossible, but he has little hope of any other escape from the evils. He is thus led to express the belief that the fewer wants the better, a doctrine common also to Ruskin, Carlyle, and Thoreau.100
However, Plato has no prejudice against moderate wealth. His sermons are directed against excessive commercialism, which puts money before the human interest,101 thereby causing injustice, degenerate luxury, vicious extremes of wealth and poverty, political graft, individual inefficiency, and wars both within and without the state.
Though his philosophy leads to asceticism, and his attitude toward wealth seems, on the surface, to breathe this spirit, yet Plato is not an ascetic in his doctrine of wealth, as is often wrongly asserted. He describes the true attitude as that which partakes of both pleasures and pains, not shunning, but mastering them.102
He recognizes an assured competency to be practically a prerequisite for the development of the good life,103 while, on the other hand, he considers poverty to be an evil only second to excessive wealth.104
To be sure, Plato’s demand for a limitation of private and national wealth, and his general negative attitude are, if interpreted rigidly, unfruitful and economically impossible.105
It is not business that should be curbed, but bad business.106
Individual or nation cannot become too prosperous, provided there is a proper distribution and a wise consumption of wealth, and Plato’s idea that great prosperity is incompatible with this goal can hardly be accepted by modern economists.