It was natural that the enthusiasts for the socialized states, of the different periods, should appeal for a practical test of the doctrines which they had embraced. It was impossible at any time to convert a civic state into a society of socialists, therefore, it was left for those who had faith in the common life, to themselves establish, by voluntary association, a project to carry out their ideals. There were not lacking the courage and conscience to do this. The result was the foundation of different communities whose object was to develop to a practical test the doctrines of socialism in their different degrees of intensity. They all originated in altruistic motives, and had, therefore, for their purpose the elevation and happiness of their followers.
Before entering into the history of these modern attempts at applied socialism, it will be of great value and interest in connection with their consideration to present the story of Sparta—the prototype of the socialized state. Here, more than twenty-five hundred years before their time, we find many of the proposals of modern reformers put into practice. Eugenics, freedom of the sex relation, control of the "implements of production," abolition of private and personal property, and the distribution of wealth were all tried out in Sparta.
Plutarch in his Lives of eminent Greeks and Romans, which he wrote at the close of the first century after Christ, gives us a picture of life in this ideal commonwealth as it once existed. He does this in a biography of Lycurgus, the law-giver of Sparta, in which he describes the morals, laws and institutions of that Grecian state. Plutarch honestly Opens his narrative with the frank statement that there is much in the life of Lycurgus that is uncertain and controverted, but his authority for the description of Sparta is built from the fairly reliable accounts of contemporary historians, and his account of the state of Sparta may be accepted as a fairly reliable history. It was the capital of the territory of Laconia, and had, according to Plutarch, about nine thousand inhabitants. Its origin is clouded in antiquity and the method by which Lycurgus became its law-giver is uncertain and nebulous. The ancient writers when they failed to be able to account certainly for an object had recourse to the oracle, or the voices of the gods, and we are informed that the establishment of Sparta was in response to the orders of the oracle at Delphi. In its beginning we find the origin of the law of referendum which has been adopted by the American people as a new and progressive step towards individual democracy. The referendum, according to Plutarch, was ordered by Apollo through the oracle at Delphi, in this verse:
"Ye sons of Sparta, who at Phoebus' shrine
Your humble vows prefer, attentive hear
The god's decision. O'er your beauteous lands
Two guardian kings, a senate, and the voice
Of the concurring people, lasting laws
Shall with joint power establish."
Thus was the referendum established by Lycurgus, and it may be stated in passing that the government of the crowd degenerated, as it always does, into an oligarchy of the crowd, and that it exercised its power with wantonness and violence. After Lycurgus' death the referendum became such an agency of terror and tyranny that it was overthrown and the authority of the Ephori, which was a representative legislative body, was substituted.
As the first socialistic state, formed through the idealism of a just, but theoretical legislator, a brief recital of its government will give an idea of the first and most ancient failure of applied socialism.
When Lycurgus assumed control at Sparta he found a prodigious inequality among its people, the city was overcharged with many indigent persons, who owned no land, and the wealth was centered in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, says Plutarch, to root out the evils of insolence, avarice and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate and fatal, meaning poverty and riches, he persuaded them all to cancel the former divisions of land, and to make new ones in such manner that there might be perfect equality in their possessions and way of living. His proposal was adopted and put into practice. He made nine thousand lots for the territory of Sparta, which he distributed among so many citizens, and thirty thousand for the inhabitants of the rest of Laconia. By his first step, therefore, the equal distribution of land, he accomplished the ideal and aspiration of the modern Bolsheviki. His next step was to divide personal property, and to take away all appearance of inequality. This he found was more difficult, as those who had goods strenuously resisted having them taken from them. To abolish the avaricious desire to accumulate money and personal property he destroyed money as a medium of exchange, and stopped the currency of gold and silver coins, and ordered that they should make use of iron money only. He further provided legislation so as to make it necessary that a great quantity and weight of this iron money should have but small value. For instance, if one had to lay up ten minae, which in bur modern money would be $240.00, a whole room was required, and it took a yoke of oxen to remove it. With this, states our biographer, many kinds of injustice ceased in Sparta, for, says he, "who would steal or take a bribe, who would defraud or rob when he could not conceal the booty; when he could neither be dignified by the possession of it, nor if cut in pieces be served by its use?" For Lycurgus in his shrewdness provided when this iron money was made the coins were quenched in vinegar, so as to make them brittle and unmalleable, and consequently unfit for any other service. It had no value outside of Sparta, and it was ridiculed and despised by the rest of Greece. In this way he destroyed all foreign trade, and the merchant ships of other peoples never entered their harbors. They had no "get rich quick" methods of making money, because the money was valueless and people did not want it. Consequently we are told that there was not in all Sparta "a wandering fortune teller, a keeper of an infamous house, or dealer in gold and silver trinkets, nor of any object of luxury, nor was there any way of obtaining, nor did the people care about obtaining, the money at all."
Lycurgus, having provided for the ownership of property in common and having abolished the "root of all evil," next devoted himself to adjusting his people to a life of simplicity and poverty. He insisted that men, if they were to be strong and healthy, should live the simple life, and he therefore banned luxurious living and compelled the citizens of Sparta to dine at public tables, where all were to eat in common of the same meat, and such kinds of it as were appointed by law. They were forbidden to maintain a table at home; to have expensive couches and tables, or to call in the assistance of butchers and cooks. He did this on the ground that if men were allowed to eat as they pleased, their manners would become corrupted, their bodies disordered, and they would abandon themselves to sensuality and dissoluteness, and would require long sleep, warm baths and the same indulgence as in perpetual sickness. We can see the propriety of all this when we remember that Lycurgus was creating a state in which the individual was to live for it alone and to which he was to be absolutely subordinated for peace and war, consequently this ascetic method of living. The law provided that these public tables should seat about fifteen persons. Each was to contribute the food necessary for maintenance—for instance, each was obliged to bring in monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two and one-half pounds of figs, and a little money to buy flesh and fish. These articles for the table were produced outside the city of Sparta by the Helots or slaves. The children were allowed to attend this public table, where they heard discourses concerning government, and were instructed in the most liberal breeding.
The basis of the state being the family, and the object of the family being the reproduction of the species. Lycurgus legislated most minutely on this subject. The state had absolute control of the very conception and birth of its citizens. It had strict rules regulating marriage. There was no free love, but there was no exclusive consorting of husband and wife. Inasmuch as Sparta was a military state, and dependent, therefore, upon the quantity and quality of her manhood, it was essential that as many children be produced as possible, and the law required that only those should be raised who were healthy and had a prospect of a future vigorous manhood. This question of the relation of the sexes was dealt with down to the minutest details. The boys were prepared by a long series of physical education to be able to make valiant and heroic fighters. The virgins were also put through a course of training in running, wrestling, throwing quoits and darts, so that their bodies being strong and vigorous the children afterwards produced from them might be the same, and that thus fortified by exercise they might better support the pangs of childbirth and be delivered with safety. In order to take away their excessive tenderness and delicacy, consequent upon a recluse life, the law required the virgins occasionally to be seen naked, as well as the young men, and thus to dance and sing in each other's presence on certain festivals. This exhibition was done before the king and senate, as well as the populace of the city. On this matter Plutarch writes, "As for the virgins appearing naked, there was nothing disgraceful in it, because everything was conducted with modesty, and without one indecent word or action." The fact is the women of Sparta were treated with the most profound respect, because upon them rested the prowess and progress of the state; they were the breeders of the state. When a woman of another state of Greece said to Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, "You of Sparta are the only women in the world that rule the men," she answered, "We are the only women that bring forth men." Plato, in passing on this matter of the young people dancing and parading naked, struck the basis of the law when he said that it drew them almost as necessarily to marriage as the geometrical conclusion follows from the premises.
The production of children Lycurgus made one of the most important industries of Sparta, and he placed marks of infamy upon continued bachelors. They were not permitted to see the exercises of the naked virgins, but, on the other hand, they were compelled themselves, in the midst of winter, to march naked around the market place and to sing a song composed against themselves.
Their marriages were entirely different from the conception we have of that institution. It consisted of the bridegroom carrying off the bride by violence. A man saw a woman that he liked, and he simply adopted the cave methods and took her. Then the women had the direction of the wedding, cut the bride's hair close to the skin, dressed her in men's clothes, laid her upon a mattress and left her in the dark. The bridegroom then went to her and the marriage was consummated. But it was not a monogamous marriage. While there was no such thing as free love, women were expected to keep up the process of reproduction either by their husbands or some one else. When the men were off at the wars, and Sparta was fighting most of the time, it was common and reputable and legal for the women to produce children by handsome and honest young men. Lycurgus laughed at those who revenge with wars and bloodshed the communication of a married woman's favors, and allowed, that if a man in years should have a young wife he might introduce her to a younger and more physically developed young man, whom he most approved of, and, when she had a child of this generous race, bring it up as his own. On the other hand, the law allowed that if a man of character should entertain a passion for a married woman on account of her modesty and the beauty of her children, he might treat with her husband for admission to her company, that so planting in a beauty-bearing soil, he might produce excellent children, the congenial offspring of excellent parents. For, says Plutarch, Lycurgus considered children not so much the property of the parents as of the state, and therefore he would not have them begot by ordinary persons, but by the best men in it. In the next place he observed the vanity and absurdity of other nations, "where people study to have their horses and dogs of the finest breed they can procure either by interest or money, and yet keep their wives shut up that they may have children by none but themselves, though they may happen to be doting, decrepit, or infirm." These regulations we are advised, and contrary to possible expectation, while tending to secure a healthy offspring, and consequently beneficial to the state, were so far from encouraging that licentiousness of the women which prevailed afterwards and in other states, that adultery was not known among them.
After the state laid the foundation for the production of the child it was not left to the father, or the parents, to rear what children he pleased, but he carried the child to a body of the most ancient men of the state, and if it was strong and well proportioned they gave orders for its education, and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares of land. But, if it was weakly and deformed, they ordered it to be thrown into a place called Apothetae, a deep cavern, concluding that its life could be no benefit either to itself or to the public, since nature had not given it any strength or goodness of constitution. The children were raised with great care, but not by the parents. As soon as they were seven years old Lycurgus ordered them to be enrolled in companies, where they were all kept under the same order and discipline, and had their exercises and recreations in common. They were taught to steal and lie, and to practice this and to acquire facility in it, they were sent out into the country, slyly getting into gardens, stealing the produce, or even provisions from the tables, and if any were caught he was severely flogged for negligence or want of dexterity. Plutarch tells this story: "The boys steal with so much caution, that one of them having conveyed a young fox under his garment, suffered the creature to tear out his bowels with his teeth and claws, choosing rather to die than to be detected."
These boys when grown up constituted the manhood of Sparta. The city had no walls, because it was the Spartan's boast that its men were its walls.
I have given a picture here of one of the ancient states of the world in which "the country and its wealth," meeting the demands of modern socialism, was "redeemed from the control of private interests and turned over to the people to be administered for the equal benefit of all" and in which the state was the dominating power. The individual was passed into the hopper when a child, and moulded and furbished in such manner as the state decreed, and from the hour of his birth to his death he had no individuality, but was simply a unit in a great civic machine. He was denied any education except what pertained to fighting. Sparta cultivated neither arts, literature, learning, nor religion; nor has she left us any remains of a spiritual or intellectual type. It was a state in which physical prowess and physical development were the sole purpose of its organization. It may well be understood that such a state was always engaged in war. First the Spartans conquered their surrounding territory of Laconia, and reduced the inhabitants to the producers of the things they needed. The Helots were slaves, attached to the land; they tilled it for their masters. As Sparta grew under the laws of Lycurgus, wars were the direct result of its institutions.
They were at war with the Messenians in the eighth and seventh centuries before Christ, and completely subjugated that people. They carried on war with their northern neighbors, the Arcadians, and the Argives, and again they were successful, so that before the sixth century before Christ they were the leading people in all Greece. In the fifth century they warred against Persia, and in the fourth century against Athens, and entirely humiliated that highly bred people. And so it continued for century after century, this highly trained military nation with the battle cry of "Sparta over all," even as a more modern nation cried "Germany over all," until finally they were conquered by the Romans, so that when the end came in the second century before Christ the nation was in a state of beggary and there were scarcely seven hundred people of Spartan descent.
So this first state which destroyed individual effort and action has no existence in history except as we read a report of her institutions, her revelries of war, and her failure. She has left no literature, no sculpture, no architecture—nothing except a record of the very grossest materialism which failed and fell to pieces under its unnatural system of government. Compare her institutions to that of her neighbors,
"To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome." These two nations were individualistic, and were built upon the ambition, the responsibility and the single purpose of its men and women. Their poets, dramatists, philosophers, painters, sculptors, orators, law-givers and statesmen have handed down to us the results of their intellect and genius, and we have been living on them for twenty centuries never equalling them, but constantly seeking to imitate them as our models. From Greece we have Aristotle, Demosthenes, Homer, Plato, Socrates, Pericles, Euripides and a hundred other great spirits, who have impressed the world from their day to ours. And from Rome Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Tacitus, Virgil, Sallust, who in like manner have furnished the highest ideals in the world's literature.
Turning to the waste of Sparta, which like a desert has no remains, we find the real answer in the fact that one government represents the ambition and spirit of the individual man, and the other is the residuum of a race that was subordinate in every way to the state, and that had no personal or individual mission.
