We'll all be free and easy by sharing everyone's wealth and it will work because of . . . slave labor.

Utopian thinking has been with us since the beginning of Western Civilization.  The tension between Plato's theoretical philosopher kings and Aristotle's pragmatic knowledge acquisition is well laid out in The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization by Arthur Herman.

But the Ancient Greek plays have a lot of content of interest as well.  I only sample them on occasion but always find something of interest.

There is for example, Women in Parliament by Aristophanes.  Written in 390 BC, it perfectly anticipates the naive utopianism of the Social Justice Woke.  Particularly their studied disengagement from practical realities.  

Praxagora:

In that case, I don’t want anyone to argue with me or to interrupt me until she has listened to the whole speech and has a full understanding of my whole plan.

Pause as she waits for a response

Good. Now, I suggest that all things be owned by everyone in common and everyone should be able to draw a pay and have an equal standard of living. They should all draw pay from the same funds. Let’s have no more of this rich man-poor man stuff. None of this, one man farming huge paddocks and the other owning less land than what he needs for his grave. None of this one man owning a crowd of slaves and another not even a single servant. My law says, one law for everyone, one standard for all.

[snip]

Praxagora:

No, Blepyrus, but you’ve interrupted me. I was about to explain that very thing.  The first thing I’ll do is to place all the land into common ownership.   The same with the money and with every other thing which is, at the moment, owned by individuals. And it is this common wealth that we women will harvest with prudent saving and a caring intelligence.

601

Neighbour:

What about those of us who possess no land but who have loads of silver and gold coins, like the Persian Darics for example?

Praxagora:

Well, they’ll just have to deposit it to the central fund.

Blepyrus:

And if they don’t deposit it, they’ll have to lie and commit perjury… which is the way they’ve got it in the first place!  Hahaha!

Praxagora:

In any case, what use will it be to them?  None!

Blepyrus:

Why not?

605

Praxagora:

Because there will be no one forced to work through poverty!   None of us will be lacking in anything.  We’ll have bread, salt, fish fillets, cloaks to wear, wine to drink, garlands, chick peas, the lot.  So what’s the  point in not depositing their coins? Let me know if you can’t see that.

Blepyrus:

But those men who have all this stuff do so because they’re the biggest thieves around!

Praxagora:

That’s right, darling!  That’s all due to the laws we have now -under this current system- but when this new system of ours is established and everything has deposited his stuff into a common fund, everyone would be living from it, so how would it possibly profit anyone by not depositing his stuff into that common fund?

[snip]

Blepyrus:

Decree or no decree, he’d still be sorry if he kissed me… but… who’ll be doing the farming, Praxagora?

Praxagora:

The farming will be done by the slaves.  Your only concern will be to get all dressed up and oiled up around ten in the evening and go off to your dinner party.

There you have it.  The Social Justice Woke mind in critical-thinking overdrive.  We'll all be free and easy by sharing everyone's wealth and it will work because of . . . slave labor.  

I really need to see a live production of Women in Parliament.  Reads like a hoot.

The Cliff Notes version is.

Click to enlarge.