Abstract:
Two books feature prominently in this article. The first is Karl Popper's Open Society and lts Enemies: The Spell of Plato written about 56 years ago during World War 11. The second is Plato's Republic written about 2,380 years ago, and just after the Peloponnesian War. Popper (1984:86) summarises the principle elements of Plato's Republic and concludes: "this programme can, I think, be fairly described as totalitarian" (Popper 1984: 86,87). As Popper was writing during World War 11 (Popper 1984: viii), his frame of reference for a totalitarian state would in all likelihood have been the fascist state.
