The tendency to magnify the power of law, and the submission of individual to state interest, however, were characteristics of Greek civilization, and not distinctly Platonic or socialistic. His interest in the welfare of the masses, as we have seen, was not primarily economic, but had for its ulterior motive the preservation of the peace of the state. His denial of private property and family interests to the guards, and his opposition to extreme wealth or poverty were, as seen above, devoid of socialistic motive. Moreover, in his hostility to retail trade, he was not moved by the modern socialistic demand for immediate contact between producer and consumer. The conditions that called forth such a demand were not then in existence,[322] as is also true of the modern agitation for a proper distribution of the profits of industry. Above all, Plato made no pretense to any economic basis for his communism, but presented it as a moral and political ideal. The _Republic_ cannot therefore be classified as truly socialistic either in motive or in general plan.[323] In any event, there is nothing in common between the high moral idealism of Plato’s so-called communism and the crass materialistic communism that is the subject of Aristophanes’ satire in the _Ecclesiazusae_. Dietzel[324] has well pointed out that the latter is extremely individualistic, atheistic, and immoral, demanding all from the state with no return; that the _Republic_, on the other hand, demands the loftiest morality and renunciation, and is a direct protest against such tendencies in Athens as are attacked by the comic poet. As he shows, the two are as far apart as are the watchwords, “All for self,” and “All for all.” Plato’s idea that society is the exact counterpart of the individual in the large, however, is quite analogous to the modern comparison of society to an organism.[325] Both are wrong in attempting to press the analogy too far, yet they contain a truth of profound importance, which is at the foundation of the marked change in the spirit of economics in recent years. It is the notion of solidarity, which demands that the individual shall no longer seek the content of his being in himself alone, but also in the conditions that shall produce the highest life for the commonwealth.