Kitap 2
1261b
Again, even granting that it is best for the community to be as complete a unity as possible, complete unity does not seem to be proved by the formula if all the citizens say Mine and Not mine at the same time, which SocratesThe reference is to Plat. Rep. 462c. Unity is secured when everyone thinks that everything belongs equally to him and to everybody else, i.e. everything is common property. thinks to be a sign of thecity’s being completely one. All is an ambiguous term. If it means each severally, very likely this would more fully realize the state of things which Socrates wishes to produce (for in that case every citizen will call the same boy his son and also the same woman his wife, and will speak in the same way of property and indeed of each of the accessories of life) but ex hypothesi the citizens, having community of women and children, will not call them theirs in this sense, but will mean theirs collectively and not severally, and similarly they will call property theirs meaning the property of them all, not of each of them severally. We see then that the phrase all say is equivocal (in fact the words all, both, odd, even, owing to their ambiguity, occasion argumentative quibbling even in philosophical discussions); hence really for all to say the same thing is in one sense admirable, although impracticable, but in another sense is not at all a sign of concord. And furthermore, the proposal has another disadvantage. Property that is common to the greatest number of owners receives the least attention; men care most for their private possessions, and for what they own in common less, or only so far as it falls to their own individual share for in addition to the other reasons, they think less of it on the ground that someone else is thinking about it, just as in household service a large number of domestics sometimes give worse attendance than a smaller number. And it results in each citizen’s having a thousand sons, and these do not belong to them as individuals but any child is equally the son of anyone,
