In Book V, Socrates was about to develop his theories of injustice by arguing examples of injustice, when Polemarchus and Adeimantus asked him to continue his conversation about the Guardians. Now (in Book VIII) Socrates returns to his examples of unjust societies and unjust men.
Socrates argues that there are four main types of unjust states: timocracy, oligarchy (plutocracy), democracy, and tyranny (despotism). Socrates says that timocracy is the closest to the Ideal State that we have thus far experienced; the others descend in value as they are listed.
We have already in the conversation discovered a just man and a just state; we shall now determine four types of unjust men corresponding to four unjust states. By determining these types, we shall be able to determine why it is better to be just than unjust.
We are to imagine that our ideal (just) state is slowly decaying and falling into ruin, and that it proceeds from good to bad, worsening as it falls to the worst form of government, despotism. We may begin by examining timocracy and the timocratic man.
Socrates descries government by timocracy (from timé, honor) in Sparta and in Crete, where the military was in power (kratos) and honor and ambition were highly valued.
A given state seems always to fall into ruin because people in power disagree, quarrel among themselves, and come to violence. Theoretically, this situation might come about because a ruler could have made mistaken “marriage matches” at a state-marriage festival, thus producing inferior children with the wrong “mix” of metals flowing through their veins (see the Myth of Metals, discussed in Book III). Some of these children, although inferior, might eventually come to power as rulers, but they would lack the character aptitudes for good rule. These rulers will lack wisdom; they will become ambitious and desirous of money and property; they will prefer the comforts of private lives to the welfare of the state. Their level of intellect will decline; they will value honor and ambition over wisdom. For them, reason will no longer prevail; no matter if they be courageous, they will possess only the intellectual attributes of auxiliaries. Such rulers will be unable to secure justice for the state and its citizenry.
The timocratic man will value physical exploits, and he will be courageous and ambitious. When young, he might not care for money, but as he ages, he will become avaricious, and he will be unable to maintain his spiritual balance. He will become unreasonable and no longer in control of himself.
Oligarchy is a society in which the rich are in control; the wealthy are extremely wealthy and the poor quite poverty-stricken. The rich will not be able to sate their desire for more and more wealth; for them the love of money will overtake their desire for honor. The erstwhile timocracy thus declines to oligarchy.
In this oligarchy, the rulers will be chosen for their wealth alone. Money in and of itself does not ensure a good political atmosphere; in fact, in such a state, the gap between the rich and the poor will be so wide that the two classes (rich and poor) will be actively antagonistic to one another. Eventually, the rich will become profligate, simply getting and spending money, in no way of any service to the state; the poor will likely become beggars or criminals, an impediment to the state. Thus we perceive the second kind of unjust state.
We may imagine, Socrates says, a timocratic man, say a great general, who suffers major defeats in battle, so that when he comes home from the war he is deprived of his rights and property and is perhaps driven into exile. His son, the oligarchic man, will see what has happened to the father; the son will live in fear of the same thing happening to himself, and his great fear will be that of being penniless. He will have lost his inheritance, so he will have to work arduously for his sustenance, and money will come to dominate him. His existence will probably become miserly; he will not commit impulsive acts, and he may appear to be a reasonable person, but his respectability is predicated upon his fear of becoming impoverished. Such a man is not controlled by his reason or his spirit. The love of money drives him.
Socrates now further rehearses the decline of the ideal state by showing how an oligarchy might degenerate into a democracy. The enormously wealthy people in a declining oligarchy will probably lend out money to the poor at exorbitant rates of interest. The debtors will spend and spend; they will be encouraged to borrow and borrow. They will become bankrupt and will see the rich as their mortal enemies, and they will accomplish the violent overthrow of the government and enlist the aid of their impoverished fellows. Thus is an ancient democracy accomplished.
In such a democratic state, everyone is more or less equally free of any responsibility to anyone else, including service to the state. No one is obliged to give orders; no one is obliged to take orders; no justice can be respected or meted out. Rulers will serve at the behest of what Socrates has called the “great beast”; political platforms will become popularity contests. A kind of mob-rule becomes the order of the day.
Although the oligarchic man is able to control himself to the degree that he can maintain an aura of respectability, he is still driven by money, and he will be unable to raise his son, the democratic man, well, instilling in him the proper moral values. Although the son may not even respect money, he will probably not respect anything else; he will become shiftless, kind of a reed in the wind, unable to control his desires, which will probably fluctuate wildly. Lacking any ability to discern differences in appetite, he will probably live solely for the moment, and he will be rudderless. His will be a life without order.
If oligarchy is greedy for money, so is democracy greedy for absolute freedom; it recognizes no authority whatever, neither familial nor militaristic nor academic. How does a tyranny come about? The erstwhile democrats in power will continue to placate the great beast of the populace, and they will, as is their wont, rob all the rich folk. The rich will complain in the Assembly; the democrats will charge them with being oligarchs and reactionaries. Then the great beast will elect a popular and violent leader to do something, and he will start killing people, and he will become feared and extremely powerful. And he will become fearful, require bodyguards, build a private army, and tax the citizenry to fund his standing army. He will trust no one, certainly not men of reason or compassion. He will surround himself with criminals, and he will finally do criminal acts against the very democrats who elected him. The tyrant will despotically rule his unhappy and fearful state.
The democrat is desirous of all things and treats all, good and bad, equally; if his son, the tyrannical man, falls into bad company—and he will—then he will be governed entirely by the bad and the desire for the bad. He will be driven by lust, and his lust will drive him completely out of control. He will eventually become something like a wild beast, his lust will become bestial, and he will do terrible things to get what he wants. No longer able to discern right from wrong, good from bad, he will turn against every man and will earn and deserve every man’s hatred and scorn. His life will be miserable.
