legislation, too, as above outlined, strikes a modern as naïve and visionary.237 No man, however, is more aware of this than Plato himself. He should be judged, not in a spirit of rigid literalism, but with a sympathetic criticism which tries to understand the psychological reasons for his attitude. His suggestions are not offered as a proposed scheme for actual legislation,238 but rather in the spirit of the moralist, who, observing that almost inevitable evils accompany retail trade and commercialism, with human nature as it is, and that commerce, the servant of man, has become his master, sees almost the only hope of escape in its limitation to what is barely necessary. The age-long problem of a greedy commercialism, which is blind to the appeal of all other goods when profits are at stake, Plato certainly saw clearly, and outlined with the hand of a master. The problem faces us still, in a form even more acute, but the protests of Plato, Ruskin, and Carlyle are bearing positive fruit today, in a political economy that takes as its supreme goal human life at its best.
But aside from these generalities, a sympathetic study of Plato’s thought on exchange reveals an insight into certain specific points, of interest to modern economics, which are commonly overlooked.
His protest against the former axiom of economics, that the prime purpose of trade is profit, and that the mere fact that goods change hands, necessarily increases the wealth of a country, is substantially correct.239
Commerce for commerce’ sake is a clear case of mistaking the means for the end, and is contrary to sound economics as well as ethics. The objections of Plato and Ruskin240 against the principle too generally accepted by business and economy of the past, at least tacitly, that “it is the buyer’s function to cheapen and the seller’s to cheat,” are being recognized today as worthy of consideration.