Mr Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old elected mayor of New York, who has described the police as ‘racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety’, says that his top policy priority is implementing free universal childcare, taxing the wealthy, freezing rents, running buses for free and heaven knows what else. How very Marxist! The Greek comic writer Aristophanes (d. c. 386 bc) would have loved it. It was he who invented communism, after all, and had his audience in hysterics.
His comedy Ecclesiazusae (‘Women Running the Assembly’) was produced in Athens in 391 bc. The women of Athens decide to seize power for themselves. They disguise themselves as men, enter the Assembly and, outnumbering the men, succeed in winning the vote and legislating as follows: all money and property will be communally owned (so there will be no lawsuits) and will be used to feed and clothe the whole citizen body, under female management; women can have sex with any man and bear children, ugly men and women being given first dibs at anyone they choose (they all start arguing about who is uglier and older); children will regard all men as their fathers; slaves will do all the farming, and such like.
Mr Mamdani will obviously find much of this to his liking and will be thrilled to find that Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, puts this system at the heart of his famous ‘republic’ (‘constitution’ would be better). The state would be run by carefully selected male and female ‘Guardians’, on equal terms, who would have no private property; marriage would not exist and women would be held in common among men; there would be no private houses, little litigation, communal dining, respect between young and old because no one could be quite certain who their parents or children were, and all supported by slave labour. Socrates agreed that this all might sound like a good laugh (after all, it was: he actually references the play); but he was deadly serious, as Marx was.
All good, solid sixth-form debating stuff, of the sort that will also appeal to Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party. Comedians! Doncha luv’em?
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