Plato's Gorgias is essential reading for those who wish to understand one of the major pathologies of democracy. In a democracy, persuasion is power. Therefore, in such a type of government, the art of persuasion would be highly cultivated. Indeed, this was the case in Athens, and Socrates distinguished between two kinds of rhetoric, one that leads to power for the speaker, and another that leads to goodness for the hearer.

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That George Bush and Tony Blair lied ('sexed up reports') came as a shock to some, and to quite a few Bangladeshi Democrats. I am deeply mystified about this discomfiture with economy regarding the truth. America and Britain are, after all, democracies, and democracies have a long and dishonorable tradition of 'sexing things up' for popular consumption. 'Government of the people, for the people, and by the people' is a government of lies to the people, by the people and for the evil of the people, who are a bunch of hicks (some Americans actually believe that weapons of mass destruction were used by Iraq!).

Plato's famous dialogue – The Gorgias – supports my observation to the hilt.  Before plunging into the dialogue, let us review Socrates' attitude towards politics. Active participation in government was highly valued in Athens. Yet Socrates refused to participate in politics.

In The Gorgias, he tells a friend, "Polus, I am not a political man."  Callicles makes fun of him, saying, "He flies from the busy centre and the market-place, in which, as the poet says, men become distinguished; he creeps into a corner for the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four admiring youths, but never speaks out like a freeman in a satisfactory manner."    

In the Apology, he clearly tells his audience, "You know well, O Athenians, that if I had undertaken to do politics long ago, I would have perished long ago and done no good either to you or to myself." He says: "It may seem queer to you that while I go round and play the busybody, I don't dare to mount the rostrum and offer advice to the Assembly."    

Socrates, then, clearly maintained that he was in no way associated with politics; indeed, he disdained the crowd, and disapproved of Alcibiades for the latter's fondness for the mob. Throughout the Gorgias, Socrates constantly refers to speechifying before the public as 'flattery'. The word 'flattery' occurs no less than 24 times!   

And yet Socrates tells Callicles:  "I am the only politician of my time." This apparent contradiction is cleared up when we consider what he had told Callicles a little earlier:  

And now, my friend, as you are already beginning to be a public character, and are admonishing and reproaching me for not being one, suppose that we ask a few questions of one another.   

Tell me, then, Callicles, how about making any of the citizens better?  Was there ever a man who was once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate, or foolish, and became by the help of Callicles good and noble?  Was there ever such a man, whether citizen or stranger, slave or freeman?" 

And here we have, in a few lines, Socrates' entire view of politics, one that would find later culmination in the Republic in a very different way. Politics, for Socrates, consists not in trying to move the public by clever speeches, but in trying to make men better as human beings.  It is true, admits Socrates to Callicles, for whom might is right, that power comes through flattery, oratory and rhetoric. He, however, distinguishes between the higher and the lower rhetoric:  

"I am contented with the admission that rhetoric is of two sorts; one, which is mere flattery and disgraceful declamation; the other, which is noble and aims at the training and improvement of the souls of the citizens, and strives to say what is best, whether welcome or unwelcome, to the audience; but have you ever known such a rhetoric; or if you have, and can point out any rhetorician who is of this stamp, who is he?"   

Callicles admits that he has never known any such rhetorician – they've all been demagogues.   Socrates has therefore hit upon one of the greatest pathologies of democracy.  

"For rhetoric, read demagogy," observed S.E. Finer. We immediately think of the speeches of Hitler, but lesser cases will do just as well. Think of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike's speeches promising the Sinhalese their language as state language; think of Milosevic's speeches urging his compatriots to murder Muslims to avenge a war that had occurred over 600 years ago; and think of the eloquence of George Bush and Tony Blair today.          

To quote Finer in his entirety:  

For rhetoric read demagogy, for persuasion read corruption, pressure, intimidation, and falsification of the vote. For meetings and assemblies, read tumult and riot. For mature deliberation through a set of revising institutions, read instead self-division, inconstancy, slowness, and legislative and administrative stultification. And for elections read factional plots and intrigues. These features were the ones characteristically associated with the Forum polity in Europe down to very recent times. They were what gave the term 'Republic' a bad name, but made 'Democracy' an object of sheer horror.   

The horror is evident in the obsession of The Federalist Papers with the question of war:     

Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they ... often engaged in wars....  Venice, in later times, figured more than once in wars of ambition...   The provinces of Holland, till they were overwhelmed in debts and taxes, took a leading and conspicuous part in the wars of Europe.     

In the government of Britain the representatives of the people compose one branch of the national legislature. Commerce has been for ages the predominant pursuit of that country. Few nations, nevertheless, have been more frequently engaged in war; and the wars in which that kingdom has been engaged have, in numerous instances, proceeded from the people.

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.     

Socrates singles out the greatest statesmen of Athens for censure: Pericles, Miltiades, Themistocles. These men laid the foundation for Athens' imperial adventures and her ultimate moral degradation and ruin.

CALLICLES:  What! Did you never hear that Themistocles was a good man, and Cimon and Miltiades and Pericles, who is just lately dead, and whom you heard yourself?   

SOCRATES:  Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at first, true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our own desires and those of others; but if not, and if, as we were afterwards compelled to acknowledge, the satisfaction of some desires makes us better, and of others, worse, and we ought to gratify the one and not the other, and there is an art in distinguishing them,--can you tell me of any of these statesmen who did distinguish them? 

CALLICLES:  No, indeed, I cannot.  A good shepherd does not make his flock worse, but better. These leaders made their followers so terrible in vice that the multitude finally turned on them to destroy them.  

SOCRATES:  But what I am going to tell you now is not mere hearsay, but well known both to you and me:  that at first, Pericles was glorious and his character unimpeached by any verdict of the Athenians--this was during the time when they were not so good - yet afterwards, when they had been made good and gentle by him, at the very end of his life they convicted him of theft, and almost put him to death, clearly under the notion that he was a malefactor.   

CALLICLES:  Well, but how does that prove Pericles' badness?

SOCRATES:  Why, surely you would say that he was a bad manager of asses or horses or oxen, who had received them originally neither kicking nor butting nor biting him, and implanted in them all these savage tricks?    

A little bit of humor and sarcasm there heighten the effect of the argument. Therefore, let it not be taken as a virtue of democracy that George Bush and Tony Blair may be impeached or have to resign or be unelected next time: such outcomes would not prove democracy a good thing.    

Furthermore, people speak disparagingly of indirect democracy: if a few men have to represent millions, goes the latest argument, then the people are not responsible for their misdeeds. Remember, however, that when Socrates was in his heyday, democracy was direct, not representative. And yet we find that demagogues and rhetoricians practiced on the people, who were not good because they had not been taught by someone like Socrates (it was his divine mission to improve the moral character of his citizens, character which must have been indeed very poor to need such a god-sent gad-fly) and thus led them astray.  

The people themselves were bad, so Plato was to conclude, taking his mentor's premises to their logical conclusion. 

Authors Website: http://iftekharsayeed.weebly.com

Authors Bio:
Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English and economics. He was born and lives in Dhaka, ‎Bangladesh. He has contributed to AXIS OF LOGIC, ENTER TEXT, POSTCOLONIAL ‎TEXT, LEFT CURVE, MOBIUS, ERBACCE, THE JOURNAL, and other publications. ‎He is also a freelance journalist. He and his wife love to tour Bangladesh. ‎