What did K. Popper mean when he claimed that " Plato is the first politus. the ideologue who [ … ] invented the "concentration camps"?

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  1. Popper's main point is that Plato's political model, described in The State and the Laws, is a theoretical justification for the totalitarian state.�

    Indeed, for all Plato's insight into politics, and for all his quite fair reference in The State to the problems of existing political regimes in which we are doomed to live (Plato's ideas in this regard, by the way, are quite relevant and can be used in understanding modern politics), the cure for “vicious forms of government” offered by Plato seems to be in many ways worse than the disease itself.

    First of all, Plato's political ideal undoubtedly tends towards a totalitarian model in which the individual is subordinated to the State in all respects. Plato himself makes this clear in the seventh book of the State:

    “…The law does not aim at the welfare of a single segment of the population, but at the welfare of the entire State. Sometimes by persuasion, sometimes by force, he ensures the cohesion of all citizens, making them mutually useful to each other to the extent that they can be useful to the whole society at all. He includes outstanding people in the state not in order to give them the opportunity to evade wherever they want, but in order to use them himself to strengthen the state.”

    As for the “concentration camps”, the closest analogue of such a policy, it seems to me, can be seen in the fifth book of the Laws, where Plato writes about the need to” purge ” the state of unreliable people, and not only from criminals, but also, for example, from potential rebels.

    “With regard to the purifications of the state, the situation is as follows: there are many complete purifications; some of them are easier, others are more painful. Only he who is both a tyrant and a lawgiver can determine the most painful and the best. The legislator, deprived of tyrannical power, should be content with the mildest methods of purification when establishing a new state system and laws. The best way is just as painful as it is when you take this kind of medicine. In this method, justice entails just retribution; retribution ends in death or exile. This is usually the way to get rid of the greatest and most incurable criminals, who are extremely harmful to the state. A milder method of purification is this: if the poor, following their leaders, show a tendency to oppose the haves because of lack of education, it will become a disease that has crept into the state. So they should be sent away, but in a very friendly way, and their removal should be mitigated by the name of ” relocation.” One way or another, every legislator should do it right away.”

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