¹ The debate over the possibility of rational economic calculation within socialism is a late entry into what was once a vigorous contest. Mises and Hayek deny economic rationality to socialism, and Oskar Lange defends it by suggesting that the socialist economy can simulate market structures, and so derive for the planners information equivalent to that which market prices afford. Note the extreme defensiveness of Lange's position: socialist economies achieve rationality only to the extent to which they succeed in replicating a feature intrinsic to capitalism. Although the socialist planning debate still surfaces in the literature, it is the ring around the bathtub, indicating the former presence of a live body. See Ludwig von Mises, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” and Hayek, F.A., “The Nature and History of the Problem,” ed. Hayek, , Collectivist Economic Planning (London: Routledge and Sons, 1935)Google Scholar; and Lange's 1938 response, “On the Economic Theory of Socialism,” ed. Lippincott, Benjamin F., On the Economic Theory of Socialism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).Google Scholar

² And with appropriate academic credentials: Marx's doctoral dissertation was on The Difference the Between the Democritean and the Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.)

³ These are thinkers who deliberately set themselves in opposition to the claims of an extreme rationalism in politics. For that reason, it is anachronistic to place Aristotle in their company.

⁴ The influence of Maimonides and Al Farabi within Christian Europe is considerable too, although it was not always politic to acknowledge that influence.

⁵ It also is the version more successful in practice. Philosopher-kings are few and far between, but from Aristotle to Henry Kissinger, students of statesmanship have taken it upon themselves to instruct present and aspirant officeholders.

⁶ That Moses receives the Law on Mt. Sinai and that Jesus's most involved sermon is delivered from a mountain are nice realizations of the top-down metaphor. Nor does it seem likely that the geography is purely coincidental.

⁷ This receives further discussion in Section III, below.

⁸ The philosophical counterpart to an Achilles is a Socrates who will not be dissuaded by threats of death from the life he takes to be highest and best.

⁹ In Kant's Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 112.Google Scholar

¹⁰ IV.ii.9, p. 456, in the Glasgow Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).

¹¹ In other respects, of course, the framers self-consciously saw themselves as heirs of a classical republicanism. Nor are they the only creators of modern liberalism with a foot in the camp of the ancients. The argument of this section is that modernity displays a decisive break with the classical political tradition, not that classical themes are entirely and in every respect spurned by all successors of Hobbes.

¹² The Rousseauian bringer of the constitution bears striking resemblance to the philosopher-king, and also to Greece's legendary law-givers.

¹³ At least not in explicit fashion. One juncture at which the usually voluble Marx is strangely reticent concerns his own role in the unfolding of the historical drama. Would events have transpired toward the same end if he, himself, had fallen under the wheels of a runaway carriage? The logic of the doctrine suggests the affirmative, but Marx surely does not press the point. Indeed, the vigor with which he advances his own claims to be the proper expounder of socialist writ suggests rather the opposite.

¹⁴ Habermas, Jurgen, Toward a Rational Society, trans. Shapiro, J.J. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 59.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The German Ideology, in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. Easton, Lloyd D. and Guddat, Kurt H. (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 424–25Google Scholar.

¹⁶ If preceding arguments are correct, one need not cite such passages to demonstrate that Marx conceives of socialism as entailing radical human transformation. The overcoming of ideology and alienation from one's real being is itself a momentous transformation, and these are not themes restricted to writings of the young Marx.

¹⁷ Literature and Revolution (New York: Russell & Russell, 1957), p. 256.