CHAPTER III PLATO

It should not be overlooked either that Plato’s utterances on labor are by no means all negative. Skilled labor is recognized in several of the minor dialogues as fulfilling an actual need in civilization. Laborers are represented as having their part in knowledge and virtue,¹⁴⁵ and are admitted to be the necessary foundation of all human well-being.¹⁴⁶ A positive interest is also manifested by Plato in labor and the proper development of the arts in both the Republic and the Laws. He constantly harps on the necessity of each doing his fitting work, and doing it well, and in his opinion happiness consists in this rather than in idleness.¹⁴⁷ Indeed, that each one perform well the task for which nature has fitted him is the definition of justice itself.¹⁴⁸ The indolent rich man is a parasite and a drone, a disease of the state. This is Plato’s favorite figure in both the Republic and the Laws, a figure that is suggestive of Hesiod, the pioneer champion of labor.¹⁴⁹ He is even ready to admit that it is, after all, not the kind of labor but the character of the workman that ennobles or degrades any work.¹⁵⁰ In fine, his attitude toward the mechanical arts is similar to that of Ruskin, who also thinks that manual labor is degrading.¹⁵¹ But as with Plato, the chief secret of his prejudice lies in the fact that laborers usually do their work mechanically, without thought. He believes that “workmen ought often to be thinking, and thinkers ought often to be working.” He is willing to classify all work as liberal on this basis, the only distinction being the amount of skill required.¹⁵² However, in agreement with Plato’s idea, he would set the roughest and least intellectual to the roughest work, and this he thinks to be “the best of charities” to them.¹⁵³ With Plato, he is also convinced that, under actual conditions of labor, the degradation is very difficult to avoid, and therefore he would emphasize chiefly agricultural labor, where education of head and hand are more fully realized.¹⁵⁴