Pathway to Japanese Literature

Plato

Why was Plato considered a communist?
He divided the human mind into three aspects: the vegetative, the animalistic, and the spiritual.
The vegetative aspect governed nutrition, the animalistic aspect governed emotion, and the spiritual aspect governed wisdom.
He also divided society into three classes—laborers, defenders, and thinkers—in parallel with this framework.
Laborers consisted of farmers, artisans, and merchants.
Guardians (φύλακες) were soldiers; they constituted military personnel.
Thinkers were philosophers who simultaneously served as politicians.
For these upper thinkers and middle defenders, he sought to prohibit private ownership of money and women.
He thereby demanded communism for these two upper and middle classes.

In ancient times, even in China, when a chancellor died without funds for a funeral, it was considered praiseworthy.
It was also deemed improper for soldiers to cherish money.
Those in high positions had a duty to avoid indulgence in sensual pleasures.
In India as well, monks and nuns remained celibate, while mendicants observed pure conduct.
The celibates (coelebs) and mendicants (mendicans) of Christianity bore resemblance to these practices.
Plato institutionalized this system for society's upper and middle classes, liberating them from familial and material attachments so they might devote their full energies to the state.

What did it mean to devote oneself to the state? It meant causing the people to attain justice (δικαιοσύνη)—nothing other than making those endowed with differing innate qualities reach their proper positions according to aptitude. The happiness of the state arose from this. That was the policy of enriching the nation and strengthening its military.

And the lower class of farmers, artisans, and merchants were all placed outside consideration.
This constituted the people in the narrow sense (demos), and Plato unhesitatingly declared his hostility toward them.
But that was not all.
Beneath them, he had also established slaves as a necessary group.

The fact that capitalists and laborers—now opposing each other—were united as one within this lower class appeared ironic.
Those who toiled diligently competing for trifling gains to become capitalists, and those who remained laborers while envying them, were all equally vulgar laborers (βάναυσος) in Plato’s eyes.
Herein lay the negation of individualism and democracy.

Plato’s ideal state was organized through communism for the upper and middle classes and through non-individualism and non-democracy for the lower class.
In summary, Plato emerges as an aristocratic thinker—a systematic negator of equality.

Aristotle

Plato sought life's happiness through wholehearted devotion to the state while utterly disregarding personal interests.
In contrast, Aristotle's political theory posited that life's happiness could only be realized when there existed possessions one could call one's own.
He was purely altruistic.
This constituted altruism built upon preexisting self-interest.
Here lay Aristotle's individualism opposing Plato's state collectivism.

When self-interest exists, from where does altruism emerge?
Aristotle located its source in humanity's innate benevolence (φιλία).
Benevolence functions as a social emotion.
This emotion does not require human equality to manifest.
It can emerge even between fundamentally different individuals.
Through this mechanism, self-interest becomes regulated.
By making such regulation systemic purpose, there arises an organic state entity.

Plato’s state sought to make the upper two classes completely abandon self-interest.
Such a mechanical state could not be established.
Even if it had been established, it would still have been undesirable.
For this reason: where there was no self-interest, people’s endeavors lacked diligence.
There was no tension.
Without tension, there could be no development.
Culture perished.

The state had to recognize private property and marriage to foster this diligence and tension.
Herein lay communism's denial.

When private property and marriage were recognized, disparities in wealth and happiness arose.
The state’s institutions needed to regulate this gap to prevent excessive growth.
(Politics VII.) Herein lay Aristotle’s social policy.

Plato’s ideal state could not stand unless every member of the upper two classes became gentlemen.
Aristotle’s state was a community of ordinary people.
Yet it sought to make ordinary people distance themselves from base individuals and approach gentlemen.
This motive for elevation was precisely benevolence.
Benevolence became nature’s means—suppressing individual preservation (self-interest) while elevating humanity’s preservation (altruism).
Since the state belonged to ordinary people, it had to let them participate in governance.
At this juncture, those ordinary people nearer to gentlemen benefited governance, while those still close to petty individuals hindered it.
This remained unavoidable.
The state could neither grant privileges to few gentlemen (aristocrats) nor allow their arbitrariness, while laboring to stop petty majorities from growing tyrannical.
By blending rare elements (gentlemen) with common ones (petty individuals), governance’s recipe could indeed be formulated.
(Politik III.)

Aristotle sought to have political fairness run concurrently with economic fairness.
The state must ensure that the majority possesses moderate wealth.
(Politics VII.) The state must suppress hoarding that exceeds individual needs and should prohibit profit-seeking that treats material gain as life’s most precious possession.
(Politics I.)

Stoics

The Stoics also took as the starting point of their worldview the human desire to preserve oneself—the heart of self-interest.
Self-interest was humanity’s primary motivation (πρώτη ὁρμή).
(Seneca.) That Nature endowed humanity with this impulse to ensure the survival of their species was her cunning stratagem.
(Aulus Gellius) Therefore, Nature also gave humans the impetus for communal life to regulate this.
The interests of the species were primary, and those of individuals were secondary.
(Cicero) Humans set out from self-interest and could not help but arrive at altruism.

This worldview was connected to this school’s pantheism. The single rational principle governing all things had permeated every individual. The sage did not seclude himself for self-interest but still associated with the multitude. That petty individuals could not embrace altruism and persisted solely in self-interest represented the height of depravity. (Cicero)

Aristotle’s benevolence was greatly developed by this school. To this they added warmth, transforming it into love (Panaetius), thereby laying Christianity’s foundation. Furthermore, breadth was incorporated, enabling it to encompass the world.

In the past, in the eyes of the Greeks, there existed only Greeks.
Just as the Indians regarded only Indians as people (ârja).
Just as the Chinese regarded people outside their territory as barbarians.
However, after Alexander the Great’s expeditions, eastern foreign peoples began flowing into Greece.
And they demonstrated exceptional talent in scholarship and the arts.
The founder of the Stoic school, Zeno, was a man of obscure origins but in any case came from the East.
The Greeks for the first time realized that non-Greeks were also people.
And he declared that when appraising individuals, one must not measure their worth by ethnicity but by virtue (Eratothenes).
Benevolence transformed into love for the world, and therein internationalism took root.

However, this school—which upheld spiritual aristocrats (Seneca) as the only true nobility and regarded the majority of humans as differing from beasts only in form (Kleanthes)—did not advance toward democracy.
Not only that.
The ideal philosopher’s state they envisioned, like Plato’s, was one that did not permit the private ownership of property and women.
A state that did not even mint currency.
This state had no enemies.
This was because ethnic boundaries had been abolished, resulting in a universal brotherhood across all seas.
(Diogenes Laertius) Therein Plato’s higher communism was recreated.
And therein, the concept of human rights (jus generis humani) newly emerged.

Between the internationalism of universal love and the spiritual aristocracy of the philosopher’s state lay an eternally unbridgeable chasm.

Epicurus

Epicurus's self-interest consisted in taking one's own comfort as life's sole purpose. However, since communal life necessitated reliance on others, they did not discard altruism. This altruism was neither an act born of love for humanity nor a deed arising from desire for humanity's preservation; it remained ultimately a calculation to secure their own comfort. State law constituted a contract to enable each citizen's attainment of comfort—likewise a calculation. Therefore, Epicurus's society proved none other than a utilitarian society.

After this period, in Greece, the philosophical examination of society fell into neglect, and Plotinus even declared that discussing governance was not scholars' duty.

Greek and Roman Era

Viewed from a societal perspective, that the Greek era was a period in which laborers were suppressed through force was proven by the existence of slaves.
Only in thought did philosophical communism exist.

Viewed from the perspective of democratic governance, by contrast, Greece had Aristotle’s theory of ordinary politics expounded in thought and, alongside this, actually existing democratic states.

The first democratic governance was established by farmers and herdsmen.
Constitutionally, it resembled what was then Switzerland’s democratic governance.
This system, needless to say, excluded slaves.
The democratic governance of Athens could be divided into three periods.
In the first period, political rights were granted to those born legitimately to male and female citizens.
However, in practice, those with financial means exercised this right.
In the second period, all non-slaves became rights holders.
That those with means exercised this right remained consistent with earlier patterns.
The first period spanned from Solon (594 BC) to Cleisthenes (508), and the second from Cleisthenes to Aristides (462).
During this interval, the Persian Wars occurred.
Agriculture declined.
Commerce and industry flourished.
Laborers—excluding slaves—gained citizenship.
When democratic governance entered its third period, Pericles began providing stipends to assembly attendees.
(403 BC) Whereas assembly resolutions had previously constituted legislation, they now took immediate administrative effect.
This trajectory resembled despotism.
Aristotle evaluated this as constitutional collapse.
The Politikoi emerged, courting public favor as sycophants once flattered tyrants.
(Politik V.)

Even after entering the Roman era, slaves still existed in society, and coercive suppression was imposed upon them.
However, the slaves were no longer content with this.
The Sicilian slave revolt (142 BC) spread from Greece and Macedonia to Asia Minor.
Rome expended its full strength on suppression and executed twenty thousand by crucifixion.
(132 BC) Subsequently, Aristonikos rose up in Pergamon and advocated for the abolition of all classes.
Rome resorted to poisoning wells in its haste to crush this rebellion.
Their method was more cruel than poison gas.
Subsequently, the Sicilian revolt plotted a resurgence, and internal strife lasted five years.
(101 BC) Subsequently, a gladiator revolt erupted in mainland Italy.
The source of the revolt lay in a martial arts training school in Padua that had been cultivating gladiators from among slaves for entertainment purposes, and they came to have the shrewd Spartacus as their leader.
When Rome suppressed this revolt, they reportedly counted six hundred crucifixion stakes along the main highway from Rome to Padua alone.
(71 BC)

In the Roman era, there was no democratic governance in practice.
The so-called Roman Republic was merely a name imposed from one perspective (Polybius); in reality, it was an aristocracy and a monarchy.
(Niese)

Essenes

A Greek faction called Essenes or Essenoi existed in Judea.
The origin of this name remains unclear.
If we suppose it derives from Hebrew, then it must be etymologically traced to Châisdìm believers.
If we suppose it derives from Chaldean, then it would have to be etymologically traced to asâ (to heal) and âsayâ (physician).

Those who entered the party's register contributed all their private property to its treasury.
They abhorred war and refused to manufacture weapons.
They did not live in cities because these were hotbeds of vice.
They did not engage in commerce because it was the root of greed.
Since they believed people should not be subjugated by others, they had no leader.
They regarded slavery as contrary to humanity.
They considered labor life's obligation.
This was why they chose aprons and ladles as symbols.
In modern terms, this group constituted a type of producers' cooperative.
To take another analogous example, what Tenka Nishida Shikume advocated closely resembled this in various respects.

Therefore, the Essaioi were communists.
However, just as the communism of Greek philosophy had been merely a moral means to achieve goodness (kalokagathia), this faction's communism was nothing more than a religious means to serve God.
While the Greeks had only preached communism with their words, this faction practiced it through their deeds.
Both differed fundamentally from present-day communism that treats it as life's ultimate purpose.

The origins of Essaioi's ideology remain unknown.
Some claim it arose from a revival of Pythagoras's ancient Greek teachings in Greece itself.
"Friends share all things" (κοινῶν φίλων), Pythagoras had declared.
Others trace it to the communism of the Stoics' cosmopolitan state.
Still others attribute its roots to Buddhism.
If we accept this Buddhist derivation, it would follow that Mr. Nishida's philosophy shares common ancestry with theirs.

The Essaioi spread from Jerusalem to the shores of the Dead Sea, extended into Syria, permeated all of Palestine, and numbered over five thousand people.
Emerging around 150 BC, their traces did not vanish even after Christ’s birth.
That Christ was influenced not only by Greek philosophy but also by the ideology of this faction (Essenismus) admits of no doubt.

Judeo-Greek Ancient Land System

The disparity between rich and poor among ancient peoples arose primarily because powerful magnates annexed farmland.

In the land of Judea, small local warlords who had initially occupied it by force became entrenched.
During this period, people’s livelihoods gradually shifted from pastoralism to agriculture, and grapes and olives were cultivated.
Weaving, blacksmithing, carpentry, pottery, and the like only served to meet household needs.
Commerce had already been introduced from Kenaan, and the powerful nobles engaged in it, amassing wealth.
Thus gold and silver filled the land (Old Testament Isaiah 2:7), and the wealthy trampled upon the poor.
(Ibid. Amos 4:1.)

The farmers fell into debt. First they handed over their harvest to others, next mortgaged their farmland, and then relinquished it. Large landowners emerged. (Ibid. Isaiah V:8.) Bribes corrupted the courts. (Ibid. Amos VI:12; 2 Kings IV:1; Amos II:6; Isaiah I:21, V:7, X:1.)

The cry of the poor was issued through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah. The voices awaiting a holy king moved young King Josiah to enact the Deuteronomic Code. The seventh-day rest became a regulation resembling modern workers’ demands. The harvest of the third year was entirely given to the poor. In the seventh year, farmland was returned to its original owners, and slaves were liberated. The courts could not seize items essential for livelihood. (621 BC) The law was truly beautiful. However, implementing this proved difficult. Consequently, the seventh-year return of farmland to original owners and emancipation of slaves were later revised to occur every fiftieth year. This became the so-called Jobel system (from the Hebrew word *Jobel*, meaning “ram’s horn”).

Greece was a country that developed early, where farmland had been privately owned since antiquity. And due to the custom of parents dividing land among their children, the area of individually owned plots tended to gradually diminish. Furthermore, as a result of overpopulation (8th-7th century BC), they came to establish colonies along the Mediterranean coast.
(6th century BC)

The development of maritime trade was aimed at importing grain.
Wealthy individuals rose to prominence and annexed farmland.
Farmers fell into debt and were enslaved.
The fluctuations in the gold market were volatile, and the interest rate stood at eighteen percent.
The small farmers who lost their fields and became tenant farmers bore the name *hektēmoroi*—meaning "sixth-part farmers."
Five-sixths of the harvest went to the landlords.

At this time, Attike (Athens), where monarchy had first been implemented, transformed into an aristocracy, with real power lying in the hands of large landowners.
The people demanded land redistribution (the Land Redistribution System).
Draco’s laws forced significant concessions from the wealthy.
(623 BC) Solon was called a mediator (diallaktēs), though this mediation—positioned between arbitration and labor-management negotiation—referred specifically to mediating class struggle.
He liberated slaves.
He debased the currency.
He banned exports.
(Oil was exempt from this prohibition.) These measures constituted social policy.
(594 BC) Athens subsequently entered the initial, middle, and final phases of its democratic governance.
The initial phase lasted until Kleisthenes (508 BC), the middle phase until Aristeides (462 BC), and the final phase until Pericles.
(403 BC)

Mediator Solon represented the misfortune of mediators across all eras and regions.
The upper class resented having the mortgage stones from their annexed fields removed.
The lower class resented failing to obtain the land redistribution they demanded.
The middle class resented how the new system let the lower class encroach upon their interests.
And there remained not a soul who would acknowledge that this system had prevented a blood-soaked revolution.
Solon departed into exile, shrouded in despondency.

Athens after Solon’s departure fell into the hands of scheming politicians who seized opportunities for self-aggrandizement. At that time, people called the upper class plainsmen (πεδιακοί). They consisted mainly of large landowners. They called the middle class coastal dwellers (πάραλοι). They derived from commerce and industry. They called the lower class mountain dwellers (διάκριοι). They came from agriculture. By inciting this lower class, Peisistratos rose to power. While ostensibly proclaiming himself an ally of the poor and enemy of the rich—preserving Solon’s legal framework—he established autocratic rule. (560 BC) After this man’s death, Kleisthenes expanded voting rights to advance democratic principles. (Limits of the Early-Middle Period) When Perikles later emerged in the final period, democratic principles attained their zenith.

Plato’s ideal state was the dream of an intellectual class wearied under democratic principles.

Sixty-five years after Perikles, Athens was defeated in the Battle of Chaironeia (338 BC). Sixteen years later, under Antipater, voting qualifications were set based on property value, stipends for council members were abolished, and democratic principles perished here.

China’s Land Redistribution System predates Judea’s seven-year return system by over five hundred years (twelfth century BC or earlier).
(*Rites of Zhou*, *Mencius*) However, the claim that land redistribution was implemented in those days—such as He Xiu’s *Commentary on the Gongyang Zhuan* describing a “three-year cycle of changing owners and residences”—is a theory proposed by later scholars.
Land redistribution was demanded in Greece (7th century BC), but was not implemented.
It was Japan more than 1,200 years after this that implemented it.
(Taika 2 [646 CE], Sixth-Year Land Redistribution System)

Christ

Christ was not an ally of the wealthy class.
For example, consider these teachings:
"If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions to give to the poor; then you shall have treasure in heaven—come and follow me."
"Truly I tell you: it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven
than for a camel to pass through a needle's eye."
(New Testament, Matthew 10:23-25) There is also this passage:
"Blessed are the poor—for theirs is the Kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now—for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now—for you shall laugh."
(Luke 6:20-21.)

Poverty fosters the Way; wealth obstructs the Way.
Christ spoke of the need to renounce wealth.
However, he did not say that wealth should be abolished.
And he comforted the poor with compensation in the afterlife.

Christ was born into a world where the rich abused the poor.
And he saw that the Jews' entrenched belief in being God's chosen people was constricted, while regarding Greek and Roman parochial nationalism as similarly confined.
This became why Christ founded his religion upon a vision of universal equality.

That Christ occupies an important position in the history of social thought is evident.
However, this resistance against wealth was a means, not an end.
Moreover, not a single piece of evidence exists that Christ preached communism.

Apostles and Church Fathers

There are two passages about communism in the Acts of the Apostles, as everyone knows.
The first one is as follows.
“All believers gathered together and held all things in common; as many as sold their possessions and goods, they distributed to each according to their need.”
(II 44, 45.) The believers were Israelites under Petrus’s assembly.
The second one is as follows.
“The multitude of believers were of one heart and mind; there were none who claimed private ownership of possessions, and they held all things in common.”
The Apostles with great power bore witness to the resurrection of Lord Jesus; all received abundant grace.
Among them there was no one in need, for those who had fields or houses sold them, brought the money, placed it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each according to their need.
There was a Levite man, born in Cyprus, named Joses.
The apostles called him Barnabas, which translates to Son of Encouragement.
“He sold a field, took the money, and placed it at the apostles’ feet.”
(IV 32–37) Levi-tribe: Levites; Kypros: Cyprus; Joses: Joses; Barnabas: Barnabas.

The communist religious sect led by John Humphrey Noyes, which settled on the banks of North America’s Oneida River in the previous century, sought to put this passage into practice.

When moving from the Apostles down to the Church Fathers (patres ecclesiae), the vehemence of discourse grew considerably. Hieronymus said: “Excess property constitutes stolen goods from society. If present owners did not steal it themselves, their ancestors did.”

Clemens said.
“If the world were just, there would be no private property.”
“It would belong to all people.”
“Private property is the root of inequality.”

Basilius said.
“The rich are thieves.”

Chrysostomus said, “The rich are thieves. There seems to be a method to achieve some degree of asset equality by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. That communism constitutes the optimal system goes without argument.” Gregor of Nyssa said, “We are brothers bound by bloodline and innate gifts; therefore, were we able to equalize assets, it would prove better and more just than the current state.”

Ambrosius said, “What nature ordains is communism. Private property is plunder.”

The records were as described above, but there was no corroborating evidence in the text of the Acts of the Apostles.
Even if communist groups did exist, were they not limited in scope and short-lived?
The arguments of the Church Fathers revealed through their tone that they consisted solely of assertions.

The claim by the Renan school that Christ and the apostles were propagandists and practitioners of communism lacks historical grounding.

Karpokrates

Among the Christian Church Fathers, there was an eccentric figure. This was Karpokrates, a man born in Alexandria who resided at a temple on Kephallenia during the first half of the second century.

He belonged to the Gnostic school that sought to explain religion through reason, but through logical reasoning, he came to assert, “Christ is human; in the future world, there may arise someone greater than Christ.” He also stated, “The soul unites with the body in order to obtain pleasure.”

Proceeding from such tendencies in thought, Karpokrates ultimately advocated for the common ownership of property and women.
Generally, the Church Fathers had regarded communal ownership of property as desirable while rejecting Plato—who advocated communal ownership of women—as an immoral example.
Yet now, abolishing marriage and private property were being proclaimed from the mouths of these same Church Fathers.

Karpokrates did not stop at merely preaching this orally; seeking to implement it in the real world, he founded a secret society. Later, his son Epiphanes became its leader. To join the society, members had to share not only their property but also their wives. There exists a record (Clemens Alexandrinus III.2) stating that male and female believers held gatherings at night with their lamps extinguished, though its authenticity remains unverified.

Karpokrates stood as virtually the sole unequivocal communist within Christendom, his ideology best understood as anarcho-communism. Yet this man, while espousing such doctrines, simultaneously overstepped Christian boundaries, becoming what the Church deemed an irredeemable transgressor of sacred laws.

From this point onward, the Christian nations of Europe long remained subservient under the conception of the “Kingdom of God.” Roman imperialism perished, and the Jewish theocracy (Theokratie) revived within Christianity. “The Kingdom of God” being an ideal realm while the real world had been the devil’s creation from the beginning meant there remained no room for philosophy concerning society between them.

Augustine

The medieval idea of the Kingdom of God could be represented by Aurelius Augustinus’s work *De civitate Dei* (libri XXII), which emerged between the fourth and fifth centuries.

The secular state (civitas terrenna) in which humans dwelled was established upon the self-interest of human desires.
That is to say, it was a product of sin.
(Later figures like Pope Gregory VII went a step further, declaring it to be the creation of the devil.) Those who held prestige within it were people of “glittering sin” (worldly virtue).
Such a state was inevitably doomed to perish.

Social problems arise when both capitalists and workers assert their self-interests.
It should be viewed as a common phenomenon of the secular state.
In short, all these are futile conflicts.

Transcending the secular state, the Kingdom of God—*civitas Dei*—existed.
This state was founded upon divine love.
Did this mean the Kingdom of God had no interaction whatsoever with the secular state? That was not the case.
The benevolent heart of humanity desired to approach the Kingdom of God.
Augustine did not consider this futile.
Humanity approached the Kingdom of God through generational development (excursus).
This acknowledged human evolution and came to be noted in modern times as the budding of historical philosophy.

Charlemagne

The idea of the Kingdom of God became established in practical terms through the authority of the Roman Church.
The Pope’s “Christ Republic” (*republica christiana*) was viewed as manifesting the Kingdom of God before one’s very eyes.
And the current state merely had its existence accepted.
It existed because it must exist.
It would have been better had it never existed at all.
From Rome’s perspective, the state resembled a prison established to restrain evildoers.

What arose in rebellion against this was Karl the Great’s world kingdom.
The king was every bit a priest.
(Coronation at St. Peter’s Basilica) The people’s religious acts were incorporated into statutory law.
This was an attempt to subjugate religious power under royal authority.

The small group of religious communists had been isolated in North Africa during the fourth century but declined with the establishment of the Catholic Church (Donatismus).

The idea that the “Millennial Kingdom of God” would be realized in the future—Chiliasmus—had long been upheld by certain small groups. Then the religious communists turned away and devoted themselves to this cause. Yet the Church declared that this so-called “Millennial Kingdom of God” had already been realized through Christ’s biblical resurrection. (Gospel of John XX) They had shifted the future into the past. These small groups too gradually declined.