Biscocho, Isabelle Ann P. 2-AB Political Science POS 60- B Mr. Rene Raymond R.

Raneses A Sense of Balance

(The Nature, Effects, and Significance of Property and Property Relations to Politics)
Dating from the early days of the Homo sapiens, the art of proprietorship, ownership, trade and market has already been evidently practiced. Hereafter, the practice of amassing property has already been widespread. Property and its accumulation has already been a part of the lives of many of the individuals of the society, and as of now, even the state could not manage or choose not to manage without this property build-up. More so, from these accumulations of property, were born the different theories and ideologies in the political system of the world. Ironically, these are the same theories and ideologies that aim to control, regulate or encourage the act of property build-up. So, what does this say about the relationship between property and politics? In this expository paper, the researcher aims to expose the nature, effects and significance of property and property relations in politics in the context of: Property and politics having direct effects and significance to each other, as related to property giving rise to different political theories and ideologies that practically run the political systems of Ancient Greece, and these said political ideologies and theories having some sort of managing and controlling power over these properties and property relations. This paper would focus on three main points: one, the historical background of property and politics, how they come into this somewhat interfering relationship evident in different political systems of the Ancient Greek Polis; two, the statements of Plato about property, on how private property affects the state and its workings, and how property could be one of the biggest workers behind the degradation of the state from an aristocracy to a tyranny with a focus on the nature of property, namely the private and the public; and three, a collective statement on how the historical context of the ancient Greek polis affected the writings seen in the Republic and how a perfect balance in the context of property is practically essential to make the regimes (literary based or historical) work properly. Property and Politics: The Rise and The Fall in Greek Political History It has been thousands of years ever since the first political system has been born. Focusing on Greek Society and its timeline of Political Regimes, the first ever recorded type of regime was a state led by only one man, or the rule of one man. It was followed by an aristocratic oligarchy, a subsequent state of tyranny before eventually blooming into the state of Athenian Democracy. The chronology of the regimes was technically arranged in this manner, contrary to the slowly degrading sequence stated in the Republic. the man who loves victory and honor, fixed in relation to the Laconian Regime; and then in turn, an oligarchic and democratic man, and the tyrannic man (545a) The Republic arranged the systems without respect to Greek Chronology, but with respect to the levels of degradation it experienced, going from the just state to the unjust. In this part of the paper, we focus more on the chronological system of politics that was found in ancient Greece, and how property and its accumulation led to the birth/ downfall of these regimes.

The Rule of One Man, the System of the Kingdome (Imperialism)

The first political system ever used (historically) in the Greek State would be imperialism, also known as Monarchy or the rule of one man. According to William Scott Fergusons Greek Imperialism, the empire is a state formed by the rule of one state over the other states. In this state of governance, power may be exercised by a monarchy, an oligarchy or a ruling majority. There are two types of empires stated in his book: one, the empire that gives power to the state itself, meaning to a certain number of people, and that these few or minorities handle all the executive, legislative and judiciary functions of the state. Two, the empire that gives the power to not the people or the state, but the individual, and this individual shall serve or stand as the state itself. (Ferguson 1963, 3) In Greek Imperialism it is said that the empire in the ancient Greek Polis is that of the second kind of imperialism, which is power given to an individual. The individual is now called an emperor, and his family a dynasty. This emperor is not appointed by parliaments and meetings or by the decision of his constituents but by the so-called grace of God alone. This leads to the issue of divine right, where it is said that it is God and God alone who defines who it is that will rule over his people. The emperor is the king of kings, the king of the city and his divine origin was incontestably established (Glotz 1929, 39-46). The king embodied all the puissance of a god. But as time went by, the imperial city was bound to fall into another regime. This was the aristocracy. How did it come to happen? At first, there was only one person bestowed upon with the divine right to rule. He was the king of the city, the undisputed leader, and dubbed as king for ever by his council and his constituents. He was the one in power, yes, but all around him were people or kings who also derived their power from their genos. The King was not contested of his power, yes, but he was definitely at the mercy of the multitude of kings, some of which were probably smarter, more innovative and more suited to rule than him. (Glotz 1929, 58) Here enters the issue of property that started the fall of the empire and the rise of the aristocracy. It first fumed from the house of the Kings and then flared in the Kings council and his men. There were bitter disputes between royal families, especially between their eldest male children. There were quarrels over the hands-in-marriage of widowed queens and princesses. These were practically disputes over a technical kind of property, for genes and a dynastical genealogy are almost as good as treasured belongings. Brothers were in terrible squabbles for the inheritance of power, most of which led to murderous happenings. Suitors filled castles and palaces for weeks and months in their trials of courtship, and these events led to mass genocides and massacres, leaving the castle floors crimson with the blood of these ambitious men. All of these events were depicted perfectly in Homers epics, specifically the Iliad and Odyssey, both of which served as a foreshadowing to the reality of the fall of the imperial dynasties of Greece. The brothers in dispute were pictured in the quarrels of Agamemnon and Menelaus after the fall of Troy. The mass genocide that arose from the suitors and their courtship rituals were depicted in the return of Ulysses to Greece, where he practically shot all his wifes suitors with that never-missing arrow. It was the Greek history inculcated in literature; where the writings are scarily closer to fact than any history book could ever record. (Glotz1929, 58-60) But those family disputes were only the start. Both accounts may have ended in some sort of bloody murder, and Ulysses, after the mass murder of the suitorsand after a bilateral covenant to bind the kings and the people at Sparta and among the Molossians, was again reinstated in power. But behind the scenes, apparently, the Council of the King has already decided that the power lost from the monarch has now been bestowed upon all of them. And their wanton greed for amassing and accumulating property was far worse than those of the Royal Families. At least their cases were partially reasonable, for it was understandable before that greed for power through gene accumulation could lead to the taking of extreme measures, as with Agamemnon and Menelaus and the suitors of Penelope. In the case of the Council came the mildly insatiable hunger for material property. There were cases of assassination of royals by generals and army-men, only for a suspicion that the king wouldnt give them their share of the

booty. A rebellion was beginning to ensue, and it was already blooming in the area of the councilmen. The kings were losing their power. The empire was starting to fall. And with its descent came the ascent of the Aristocratic regimeOr more of the Oligarchic Aristocratic regime.

The Time of the Aristocratic Oligarchs, or Oligarchic Aristocrats

With the issue of property and property accumulation causing such a ruckus within the council and the royal estates came the rise of a more materialistic kind of regime, the Oligarchy. In the times of the Greeks, though, it was more of an oligarchic aristocracy or an aristocratic oligarchy. It was an aristocratic oligarchy for it was said that it was sufficient to only have noble genealogy to be able to partake in the ruling systems of the state. But, it was also an oligarchic aristocracy, because: one, nobility already dictated a mans richness and wealth, justifying the class-division through rich and poor in the typical oligarchic state; and two, these noble men only ruled or allowed themselves to rule for the fringe benefits of the job, namely riches, revenues, and lands won from the point of the sword by numerous generations. (Glotz 1929, 64) The Oligarchy was the longest running regime in Ancient Greece, probably because the kingly power of the empire was replaced by governance by the military. These military rulers were dependent on the use of the disciplined horse, which couldnt be made possible without large sums of fortune, and eventually, this ideology was the one that sustained the Greek Oligarchy. A few centuries after that, specifically in the 7th Century, there was the economic revolution that led to the awakening of the money-making tendencies of the aristocrats. Here, we could connect a passage from Platos the Republic that says: They say that for the rich, there are many consolations. (329e) From this passage we could say that in the oligarchic society, money and property became the sustaining factor of the ruling body. Those consolations mean only one thing in the oligarchic system: Power. The rich and the noble, the ones with immense numbers and amounts of money and property are the ones given this divine right to rule, compared to the genetic line that the rulers had to have in the imperial regime. If the divine right in the imperial regimes came from the gods and the gods alone, the divine right in the aristocratic-oligarchic regimes came from both the noble genealogy of the individual, and the persons wealth. Property and Wealth now became the god in the oligarchic regime. It was just an innocent ploy at first, where people with wealth could become rulers, but after a while, it evolved into something more gruesome, something centered solely on materialism and the accumulation of property alone. From here on, we could now see the effects of property in completely abolishing and burying the imperialistic ideals underground and making the oligarchic society bloom and flourish. So, they had monetary systems now, right? The history goes that once this monetary system was implemented, those with prior property (i.e. lands, wealth, jewels, royalties) benefited much from this new system. They gained more wealth, more property and more money. The great landholders started accumulating more land, and they then possessed fields and forests, vine-yards and olive plantations, mines and quarries; they built ships and went to foreign lands, bringing home with them wealth to further enlarge their treasuries. The knights started to exploit rich copper mines and gain profit from the labor of the many. The breeders then got the wool they collected from their pasture and made it into clothing, which they would sell for a large sum of money to the common people, the proceeds of which they use to buy corn and fish from warehouses. Charaxus, a Lesbian of high birth, started exporting cargoes of wine to Egypt and used the money on countless of beautiful Naucratic courtesans. Solon, who ironically was one of the main brains behind democracy, equally supported these oligarchic ways of life by going on a multitude of prosperous voyages that led to the restoration of his dwindling patrimony. Now, it wasnt only about genes or wealth from land, but also about money.(Glotz1929, 65-67) This predecessor of the capitalist system of today did not stop on the royals and nobilities. It extended unto the artisans and traders, or the demiourgoi, who had the capability of arming themselves and

become threats to the noble class. They used their strength and artistry to gain profit and eventually, they flaunted their newly found richness. People like them are now recognized as the nouveaux riche. Members of these classes could now advance as nobility, seeing that the nobility emeritus who lack resources are willing to take them in as sons-in-law. It gave rise to a hybrid aristocracy, where money and property thoroughly removed the purity of genealogy that transcended from the imperialistic regime. Money and property opened paths for mixing and mingling blood. These nouveaux riche already have the chance to rule as part of the noble class, but without a flaunty show of riches which was terribly looked down on by the traditionalists of Greece. With that show of wealth, these men are now regarded with honor, and money and wealth have been the basis of all sorts of judgment on honor and valor. (Glotz 1929, 67) From an aristocracy of the nobility, followed by an oligarchy of the wealthy and noble, the Ancient Greek political system has now fallen into a state of plutocracy, a government state ruled only by the wealthy and the wealthy alone. It could be distinguished as an extreme form of oligarchy that only focuses on the wealthy, where every ruling right a person would have depends on the amount of property he has acquired over the centuries. This extreme oligarchy led to the formation of a schism between two social classes, namely the rich (composed of the nobility and the wealthy) and the poor (composed of the working class and the impoverished). The rich were the only ones who had the right to rule, and the poor practically had no voice in the workings of the government, for it has been established that a persons citizenship depends solely on his property. So because the rich possess innumerable amounts of property, they also possess an innumerable amount of power over the state and a full citizenship in it. And because the poor possess little or absolutely no amount of property, they also possess little or absolutely no amount of power in the state, and their citizenship is deemed incomplete. Theyre practically considered bare lives in the society, the poor people without any voice in the ruling of the city. (Glotz 1929, 69) And this gave rise to the tyrannical system that came after the oligarchic regime. Well, before that, the plutocratic oligarchy first gave way to the epitome of the capitalist society, where everything, even until the basic needs has to be sold for a profit (Wood, 2002-2). From an agrarian society whose resources only depended on agriculture and stock breeding, the Greeks began to look for other sources of income. Here we see the direct effects of property to the political system of the polis where the people who rule werent necessarily smart or leader-material, as long as they were rich. And because of this, the city started focusing only on those material goods, only on wealth and the acquisition of innumerable amounts of profit. The nobles started neglecting the pleas of the lower masses, the proletariats, and instead focused on their own personal gain. They exploited mines, dragged artisans to work for them in warehouses, and instead of giving these workers proper living wages, they kept excess profit into their treasuries. In turn arose the main problem of capitalism: The rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. And from the cultivation of this aggravation arose the tyrannical system of the Greeks.

The Subsequent Tyranny

It was in the sixth century BC when the tyrannical rulings emerged. With the full blown capitalist system thoroughly swallowing the whole Greek continent, the plebeians and the lower classes decided that it was time for them to fight, time for the discontent to stop being contented to groan and invoke the gods and time to stand up and fight for whatever rights they think they should have. The armies were ready and they have chosen the bourgeoisie (the ones fit to rule but never had the chance because they didnt have the sufficient amount of property needed) to lead their revolt. The conflict of the two classes, the war between the rich and the poor, the nobles and the plebeians had now begun. (Glotz 1929, 104) The battle was long and bitter, with the citizens from the small cities ferociously battling the ones in the majorities. When they had succeeded in their fight, they started to install written laws, contrary to the unwritten and bendable laws evident in the imperialistic societies. The traditional aristocrats put up a fight to this, and wanted to keep to the ancient and bendable traditions of unwritten laws. But the plebeians and the poor societies refused to give way; they had enough of these unwritten laws that could be bent so it could benefit the aristocrats, they want the written, permanent and unbendable laws already.

Except, there was still that evident contamination of the want and greed to accumulate more and more property when they were making the laws. These men have become too used to the system of accumulation and aristocracy that they still clung to those values while writing their rules and laws. Despite this, the writing down of laws gave way to a sense of justice, for the family system was shattered in the government, replaced by a closer and unbarred relationship between the people and the state. So, the aristocracy has already been overthrown and the plebeians and the poor had already gotten what they wanted from the state. Shouldnt they go to a state of peace? Well, in the Ancient Greek Society, that wasnt the case. Once the revolt was successful, they have been pressed for a leader, and as of that moment, they had none. Technically, they had a choice to go back to the aristocratic leaders, and let all their efforts for a revolution go to waste. So, they handed their political rulings to the leader of their insurrection, the tyrantthe one brought into power not because of legal or absolute decision, but because of force, illegal means or insurrections. Why the tyrant? Why did the people choose the tyrant, aside from the fact that he was their leader in the insurrections and was the one who paved their way to their freedom from the choke-hold of the aristocrats? Why did they choose someone who was practically put into power through illegal means and by force, not by legal ways and an absolute decision? The answer is simple: according to Thucydides, the increase of wealth and property lead to this decision and to tyranny itself. (Glotz 1929, 109-110)`First, with wealth and property accumulation arose aristocracy and oligarchy, and with its extreme forms it gave rise to an absolute capitalism that flared up the peoples desires to revolt. That revolution resulted to tyranny, an abnormal government system that has everything abnormal about a state inculcated into it. One: their leader is practically a fugitive from the lower half of the Greek classes. Two: as far as history is concerned, it looked as though the tyrannical state went back to aristocracy (which was centered on a rule alongside wealth and property), and the only difference is instead of being the rule of the best it became the rule of the worst, something that corresponds to the typical tyrant presented in the Republic: . The man who turns out to be the worst (576b), individual private men (578d) They ruled also for their personal gain, and made laws that would benefit them and the lower classes (at least). They practically ruled in their comfort zones, leaving the main parts of executive, legislative and judicial order to the council. They become too engrossed in their private lives, their private properties that they forget that they are for the public and were put into position by the public. Also, due to their lack of property during their lives under the oligarchs and aristocrats, they have been transformed into bitter individuals, paying attention to divine right due to their lack of human right because of property. (Glotz1929, 112). But this sense of bitterness against property wasnt entirely bad. With it came the power of the tyrants and an opening to Athenian democracy. The tyrants kept private, yes, but there were times when they would go out and try and ameliorate the conditions of the lower peoples. Land was redistributed and the people kept quiet and stayed with their work (Glotz1929, 113-114). Periander, the tyrant during those times, controlled the essence of slavery to keep the city in a state of peace. They made little white lies in order to alleviate the situation of their peoples, and make them forget about their lost liberty. They inspired civic pride alongside work, and asked the gods for their favor. And when they saw the good results of these works, they decided to come out of their private zones and lead a court life. Thus the opening to democracy. From a sense of bitterness against property leading to one of the regimes that survived the test of time and exists until today: Democracy.

The Bloom of the Athenian Democratic States

The transition from tyranny to democracy was practically a very swift job. Tyranny was actually a very non-enduring regime, despite its strength that depended on the people. But the thing is the people practically abandoned the tyrannical rule once it has done its part in eradicating the aristocratic populace.

Ironically, once tyranny gave life to democracy, it died and passed away swiftly. With its disappearance, the aristocrats were back on their feet, ready to reclaim the throne they thought was truly theirs. But they were disillusioned, almost instantly, by Cleisthenes, forever known as the one who set the stepping stone up for democracy to truly flourish. He followed the teachings of Solon and completed the work outlined by the teacher and paved the way for democracy to flourish in Greece. He promoted equality, social justice, political equality, the freedom of speech and social unity. (Glotz 1929, 122) After his reign followed Pericles, a general who opened a way to the Golden Age of Athens. So how does property connect into the age of Athenian Democracy? Simple. In this time, Solon (another spearhead of Athenian Democracy) had decreed that rights and obligations were proportionate to wealth and property. It was only a short time though when he realized that it was aristocratic and made it that when rights became equal, obligations remained unequal whilst it is proportionate to the property census. In democracy, property was controlled, distributed to the masses and allotted between individuals with careful calculation and assessment. Democrats believed that property should be made public in the state, so that political equality could be achieved. They also believed that liberty without the minimum amount of property is just an abstract state. Practically impossible. So, to give rise to equality, property was distributed accordingly to need, and property was controlled even in trade. Everyone should have a fairshare of everything; no one should and would be left out. Democracy was liberty alongside property, where property was both free for all and controlled, for profit and for the common good. Capitalism was still present in the state, though the abuse of it wasnt as pronounced as the ones relating to aristocracy and oligarchy. There was capital, there was labour, but it was distributed properly among the citizens of the state, leading to equality among everyone. Though there were still the rich and the poor, both had voices in the government rulings and both were equally cared for by the state. It was just the right mix of liberty and control, of equality and inequality, of accumulation and non-accumulation of property. What is for the state is given to the people, and what is for the individual is for the individual alone. Property was both private and public, there were property allotted for the masses and property kept with an individual. It revolved on a contradiction, a constant one, that practically balanced each other out until both sides were equal. That is the secret to why democracy stood as one of the longest regimes in Greece and Athens, and it is going on today. (Wood 2008, 41-42) The Private and The Public: Plato and the Nature of Property From the discussions of the different regimes of the ancient Greek Polis, it has been opened that there are two natures of property namely: the private and the public. Each regime has its own method of inculcating these natures: the imperialists focused on privatization of property and power, coming from exclusive genes and lineage. The aristocrats, oligarchs and plutocrats focused on private property alone, their own accumulation is only for them and never for others. The tyrants focused on the privatization of the self, but the public distribution of property to the lower classes. The democrats focused on the public self and the public distribution of property to all the classes according to need. But what does Plato say about these natures? First of all, it was heavily evident, especially in his literary works that he supported the communism of property (Nettleship, 1901). He supported the idea that property should be made public for everyone, and that private property should be avoided. He justifies it using lines from the Republic saying that: they must be provided with houses and other property (416d) No one will possess private property except for whats really necessary (416e) It is not lawful to touch gold or silver (417a) Further on, though, especially in the start of book three, we could also say that Plato wants what we call moderation in between the private and the public. That no one would have private property, unless there

is a drive that he or she would share it to the other people, and that not everything would be common property, but nonetheless everything would be shared in between individuals. (Barker1959, 416-417) Wont our youngsters need moderation? (389d) precise training from childhood throughout life (403 d) In Book IV of the Republic, there was also talk about putting guard against both wealth and property. It is because to raise this spirit of commonality that Plato wants to achieve in the city, it is needed that no one be considered poor nor rich. This distinction between classes is the start of the oligarchy, which is the third worst kind of regime according to Plato. He is saying that if everyone is guarded against wealth in his city, the possibility of the degradation of the city becomes lower. Everyone, especially the guardians, would have everything in common, for friends also have all things in common. Along with harboring the essence of friendship in his city, he also harbors the essence of friendship and communality, and focuses that everyone be equal. talk to the other craftsmen whether these things would make them bad [wealth and poverty] (421d) friends have all things in common (424a) the things of friends will be in common (449c) With this, as Plato postulates in The Republic, we would prevent the decline of the city. But as he also said in the book, it was natural that everything goes into a state of decline. But that state of decline, he says, was partly because of the accumulation of private property and the lack of communism in the city. It was said in book two that the city must arise because of need (369b), and with the privatization of property, it was possible that the city fall into a state of just desire and just want, which is practically the essence that makes tyranny run its ground. Thus, we could theorize that Plato is saying in the republic that these natures of property, especially its privatization and the lack of public distinction is the main reason of the decline of the just city into its four worse forms, which would be discussed in the next section of this paper. The Consequence of the Private and the Decline of the State of the City With our discussion over the public and private natures of property, we could now open to the topic of the decline of the state of the city. From the aristocracy where everything is just, we will see how the privatization and the public display of property lead to the distortion of this justice and the very essence of it, and how it gave rise to these regimes mentioned subtly in book five of the Republic (there are four forms of badness [449a]). We start with the aristocracy, the awfully just city, in which Plato took about six books to discuss its significance and nature. We have seen that in an aristocracy everyone is necessarily equal. It is deemed to be the city with the most justice, where everyone is friends which is other, and all property is common to everyone. This aristocratic city has been brought about due to the lack of self-sufficiency of the people that therefore lead to their needs (369b) and that there is a certain sense of accountability found in the society, proven by the passage: when one man takes on another for one need and another for another need, and, since many things are needed, many men gather in one settlement as partners and helpers (369c) Aside from accountability, there is this sense of community, especially with property for every member of the city has a need, and everyone is willing to help the other achieve the fulfillment of that need. An essence of sharing between brothers is developed, and that sharing leads to the main communal point of the aristocratic society of Plato. Property is for everyone, and property is distributed equally for everyone, minus all the relishes and luxuries found only in the oligarchic society. The men in the aristocratic city will always have their feast without relishes (372c)

But with the passage of time, it was unavoidable that the city falls into a certain sense of decline. Here comes the love for private property, and the conversion of need of property to the want of property. Let us start with the mildest of the evils from the four regimes: Timocracy. Timocracy came about with the love for honor and personal distinction (548c) mixed with a want of wealth that is private and skills that are not for him (549a). It is the middle ground between aristocracy and oligarchy (547c), with a man that thrives for honor and the education of the soul (except its with things and skills that are not made for his soul) and seeks and wants money and wealth. When this want for money, wealth and the accumulation of property goes to certain extremes, the timocracy transforms to an oligarchy, the regime founded on property assessment (550d). It is when the people already stop believing in the claims of Socrates that luxuries would bring an evil to the soul (372e) and they get this desire to put their hands on all the luxuries one may find in the world. Oligarchy is the regime centered on the keep and want of property and wealth, and it is when the appetite already goes around fulfilling its necessary desires. And because of this disregard for the other parts of the soul, the being is lead into a state of extremities, where the rich and wealthy go on and accumulate more, while the poor go around practically without property. And because oligarchy is a regime centered on wealth, it was expected that the ones with the most property (the rich) would go on ruling the ones with less or absolutely no property (the poor). In this happening the oligarchy destroys the essence of singularity, for it created the start of the social classes, a division between the rich and the poor. This state is not far from the reality in the Ancient Greek Polis, where class dictated ruling, the rich ruled and the poor were ruled over. Property instigated this, as Oligarchy centered and revolved around the essence of it. At least the needs that Oligarchy revolved on were necessary, unlike the ones portrayed in the next regime, which is democracy. If Oligarchy rotated on desires which were necessary for the body to live, democracy took the luxuries to the extremes and focused on the desires that were practically unnecessary. The democrats lacked education (518 b and 518d), and this lead to them taking all kinds of luxuries as necessary, and not only as a useless want that would make him happy for only a fleeting moment. Well, that is the ideology that democracy lives on anyway, a fleeting and non-permanent moment of happiness or pain. With their lack of learning and training likened to the guardians, they could be going onto pointless paths that would bring them most likely, a certain amount of pain. And because the spirit of democracy revolved around freedom of almost everything, people who werent fit to rule were aptly seated in power, and people who were fit to rule refused the power that was supposed to be bestowed upon them. And in this regime, property could be regarded as a drug of some sorts, something that could make one high and ecstatic when he gets what he wants out of something. He develops this insatiable appetite for unnecessary property, and when he gets a temporal answer to that gluttonous want, he becomes happy. Democracy was a regime that revolved on fleeting moments, on temporal pain and happiness, especially on a temporal sense of agony. But once this temporal sense of agony becomes permanent, it marks the start of the worst of the worst, the regime of the tyrant. When the insatiable want to acquire all sorts of desires, especially the unnecessary ones, become uncontrolled and comes into frenzy, the democracy falls unto a state of tyranny. The fleeting moments cease to be only temporal moments of emotion and start becoming these prolonged states of pain and agony, mostly agony. The gluttony to acquire all sorts of property, especially those that are deemed to be unlawful and evil leads the men to commit all sorts of evil and unlawful acts. They mastered the art of stealing (332c and 334a) at the thought of it being just, and use it to get what they want once their resources fall short. They disregard all sorts of laws and penalties (347a), and with it comes their consciences decline and eventual unhappiness, contrary to Thracymacus postulation that the tyrant is happiest (the one who does injustice is most happy [344a]). They think they will be happy and fulfilled with this endless accumulation of property that is deemed unlawful already but no. Property and the want to acquire every one of it got him into a frenzy that he starts stepping on other people and even meddling with their lives just to get what he wants. He is the anti-thesis of the just man, whose parts of the soul are in perfect harmony(439d, 439e, 441 d), while his are in utmost frenzy. His desires practically enslave him, making him do all sorts of injustices to his people and to himself. He lacks the essence of the Philosopher king (471c) whose desire is

always in check and he practically lost the idea of Honor and Moderation (468a) in himself. And as a result, instead of living in a community of pleasure and pain (462a) that the just man is living in, he lives in a community that revolves on pain and pain alone. Adding to that pain is fear, for the tyrannical man lives in a constant state where he fears for his life as a result of making so many enemiesArent such a city and a man necessarily always full of fear? (578a). Property frenzied him to the point that he becomes the unhappiest man, and the most wretched one at that. He is the unjust man who is the worst and most wretched and the one most tyrannic (580b). He is the worst product of the greed for property, the one unhappiest, the one with no friends, and the one most controlled by the object. He has chosen that pattern of life (618a), the life dotted with all sorts of suffering and remorse. He is the dangerous almost philosopher mentioned in book six (490e), the most corrupt form of the real Philosopher (496d) who doesnt have any of his supposed virtues straight (484c). The slave of the property, the tyrant. The Historical, the Literary and the Balance From what had been said in the historical context and the republic allegories, we could now postulate that Plato did have a certain hatred or a certain something that he held against property. First off, let us look at the Republic and how the regimes were presented. As we could see, it didnt follow the historical order on how the regimes were placed. Historically, the regimes were arranged in this way: the Kingdom or the Empire, followed by the Aristocracy, a subsequent Oligarchy that transformed into a Plutocracy, followed by a short state of Tyranny that dissipated into a state of Democracy and suddenly transformed into a state of aristocratic democracy. In the Republic, the decline of the society didnt go on in that way. It first was in a state of Aristocracy, followed by a regime of Timocracy, and with the interference of wealth came the regime of Oligarchy, and after a while it digressed into a state of Democracy and in the end further plunged into a state of absolute tyranny. The chronology was off in the accounts of the Republic, but as we could see, it wasnt really supposed to be chronological. The focus of the Republic was not to narrate the apparent history of politics in the Ancient Greek Polis, but to shock the people on the negative effects of wealth, honor and the lack of balance within the soul. The shock was made to let the people rethink their ways, their systems and maybe be brought into the apparent realization that there was something wrong in the workings of their government. Plato lived to almost all of these regimes in the Ancient Greek Polis, and he may have thought that there was something wrong in these regimes, so he felt compelled to write something in the nature of opposition to it. He rooted his anger for the privatization of property from the historical oligarchic and plutocratic regimes of the Ancient Greek Polis. Why? Because he felt that all sorts of private property led to a certain glaring sense of inequality, and that sense of inequality he did not like. Plato believed in a more social kind of society, and he postulates that private property ruins the very essence of equality itself. But in the latter parts of the Republic, we could see more of Platos insights on the matter. Mentioned in Book Eight was a sense of balance with the property, and we could now see what Plato is theorizing. He believes in the perfect balance of things, the balance of private and the public and all aspects of property. He had always been saying that there was a need for the perfect harmony of the three divisions of the soul namely the head (wisdom), the heart (spirit) and the genitals (appetite) (434d). Plato could also be saying that this harmony within the soul be used during the accumulation of property. He could be saying that a person would need a perfect balance of logic (wisdom), his emotions (spirit) and his desire (appetite). This sense of balance is the one that hones the sense of justice within the men and also within the accumulation of property. And because property has a direct effect to the rise and fall of the regimes, the regime that possesses the perfect balance in property accumulation could be called the most just city. The Aristocracy in the Republic, with the balance of the knowledge and wisdom in what property is to be set as private and public (Barker1959, 416), leading to it being the most just city in Platos thoughts. The real Athenian Democracy cultivated by Solon and Cleisthenes also harnessed that sense of balance within the property; the rulers had the proper will and knowledge of what to put as private and public, of what to put as communal and for the individual, and what to be distributed and kept for themselves. It was the secret of the Golden Age that bloomed in the democracy (Glotz1929, 122).

The sense of balance of property accumulation was lost in the other regimes, both literary and historical. Historically, the Aristocratic society focused only on the wisdom, and with the belief of the best, partnered with the insatiable desire to get property that made the aristocracy plunge into an Oligarchy. The insatiable desire to get more property partnered with the emotion of fear that was inculcated in the plebeian lead to the creation of the Tyrant. In the Republic, the sole focus on the spirit of courage and victory in amassing property, and the fact that the man used it just to stand out from the rest is the main cause of the Timocracy. The regime that only focused on the necessary and unnecessary desires connected to property led to the citys decline to oligarchy and democracy respectively. Lastly, the regime that gave way to the insatiable desires for unlawfulness bore the tyrannical rulings, both based on desire for lawlessness and fear. With this summary, we could now postulate two things: one, property does have this direct effect on politics and vice versa, what with the rise and fall of the regimes and the measures done to control property, especially in the democratic state; and two: it may be property that bore those regimes, but it would be the balance and the harmony of the soul that is found during its accumulation that will make it stay. It is not only about an absolute communism in the state, no, that is not what Plato wants. He wants a perfect balance between all the natures, a balance between what is to be made private and what is to be made public. Its not only about the extreme public, nor was it about the extreme private. It was about the in between, the perfect balance that Plato wants the regimes to achieve.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Baker, Sir Ernest. The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle. 1st ed. New York: Dover, 1959. Ferguson, William Scott. Greek Imperialism. 1st ed. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1963. Glotz, Gustave. The Greek City and its Institutions. 1st ed. London: Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1929. Nettleship, Richard Lewis. Lectures on the Republic of Plato. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1901. Wood,Ellen Meiskins. Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. 1st ed. London: Verso, 2008. Wood, Ellen Meiskins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. 2nd ed. London: Verso, 2002.