Popper takes pains to shatter the idealized and very popular vision of Plato as a deeply moral and fundamentally righteous crusader against the excesses of a democracy run wild. He does this by examining Plato's own social context, his place within the intellectual movements that go unnamed in his dialogs but had to be in the mind of so educated and politically engaged an author. Moreover, he turns Plato's own words against him, citing familiar passages and delivering plainspoken critiques that cut past Plato's clever tricks.
Plato's subtle but seductive war on the notions of egalitarianism, democracy, and openness that had exploded during Athens' golden age, his betrayal of Socratic notions of Justice, and his own sordid political and pedagogical experiments leave little room for doubt about his intentions. His work, particularly the Republic and the Laws where his political program is most explicitly revealed represent an unabashed embrace of social control and collectivism. The search for the "best state" is shown to reflect a tribalistic and totalitarian impulse to establish the unchallenged rule of the master race by eliminating all vestiges of openness and freedom from the society.
That Plato's program purports to answer the very basic human needs for happiness and justice is little consolation when these terms are defined as "knowing and staying in one's place" and "that which is in the interest of the state."
Here are some choice quotes from Karl Popper's book:
... Of much greater merit, although it too is inspired by hatred is Plato's description of tyranny and especially of the transition to it. He insists that he describes things which he has seen himself; no doubt the allusion is to his experience at the court of the older Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. The transition from a democracy to tyranny, Plato says is most easily brought about by a popular leader who knows how to exploit the class antagonism between the rich and the poor within the democratic state, and who succeeds in building up a bodyguard or a private army of his own. The people who have hailed him first as the champion of freedom are soon enslaved; and then they must fight for him, in "one war after another which he must stir up...because he must make the people feel the need of a general." With tyranny, the most abject state is reached.
...[Plato] insists that only internal sedition within the ruling class itself can weaken [the state] so much that its rule can be overthrown.
...Most people in civilized countries nowadays [1944] admit racial superiority to be a myth; but even if it were an established fact, it should not create special political rights, though it might create special moral responsibilities for the superior persons. Analogous demands should be made of those who are intellectually and morally and educationally superior; and I cannot help feeling that the opposite claims of certain intellectualists and moralists only show how little successful their education has been, since it failed to make them aware of their own limitations, and of their Pharisaism.
...All theories of soveriegnty are paradoxical...We may distinguish two main types of government. The first type consists of governments of which we can get rid without bloodshed - for example by way of general elections; that is to say, the social institutions provide a means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled, and the social traditions ensure that these institutions will not easily be destroyed by those who are in power. The second type consists of governments which the ruled cannot get rid of except by way of a successful revolution - that is to say, in most cases, not at all. I suggest the term 'democracy' as a short hand label for a government of the first type, and the term 'tyranny' or 'dictatorship' for the second. This, I believe, corresponds closely to the traditional usage. But I wish to make it clear that no part of my argument depends on these labels; and should anybody reverse this usage (as is frequently done nowadays), then I should simply say that I am in favor of what he calls "tyranny" and object to what he calls "democracy;" and I should reject as irrelevant to any attempt to discover what "democracy" "really" or "essentially" means, for example by translating the term into "the rule of the people." (For although 'the people' may influence the actions of their rulers by the threat of dismissal, they never rule themselves in any concrete, practical sense)...He who accepts the principle of democracy in this sense is therefore not bound to look upon the result of a democratic vote as an authoritative expression of what is right. Although he will accept a decision of the majority, for the sake of making the democratic institutions work, he will feel free to combat it by democratic means, and to work for its revision. And should he live to see the day when the majority vote destroys the democratic institutions, then this sad experience will tell him only that there does not exist a foolproof method of avoiding tyranny. But it need not weaken his decision to fight tyranny, nor will it expose his theory as inconsistent.
...Democracy (using his label in the sense suggested above) provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason.
...The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. I we turn back, then we must go the whole way - we must return to the beasts. . . We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.
