Let’s get one thing straight: socialism has worked before. Once. In a war camp with spears.

“He trained his fellow-citizens to have neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves.”

—Plutarch, on the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus

Socialism Worked Once—in Sparta. And Y’all Aren’t Man Enough to Be Spartans



Sparta was the original communist wet dream—no private wealth, no individual luxury, shared property, mandated equality, state-raised children, and universal military service. It was a stripped-down society obsessed with discipline, unity, and survival. Everyone wore the same clothes. Ate the same slop. Slept on the same dirt. There was no flexing in Sparta.

As Plutarch also wrote, “They were free, not in being able to do what they wanted, but in being able to do what they ought.”
This wasn’t freedom in the modern sense. It was duty, sacrifice, and strict obedience dressed up as liberty.

But here’s the kicker: it only worked because everyone in power was a hardened warrior, and everyone else was a slave.

The Spartiate class—the full citizens—were full-time soldiers. Their only job was war. They didn’t farm. They didn’t trade. They didn’t build. All of that was outsourced to the helots, a massive underclass of brutally oppressed people who did all the work while living under constant threat of execution.

So yes, Sparta was a “classless society”—but only within the elite warrior class. The only reason they could afford to be equal among themselves was because they stood on the necks of a slave caste. That’s not a bug in the system. That’s the foundation of it.

And it went even deeper than that. Spartans didn’t just live for the state—they were raised by it. At age seven, boys were taken from their families and put into the agoge, the state-run military school. From then on, they belonged to Sparta. The state wasn’t just the government—it was their parent, their god, their identity.

They were not taught freedom as we know it. They were taught obedience.

Spartans didn’t even have currency that could tempt them. They used massive, clunky iron bars for money—on purpose. It was nearly impossible to hoard wealth or bribe anyone. This wasn’t a flaw in the system. It was the system. Strip away temptation, strip away the self, and replace it with loyalty to the machine.

As Xenophon wrote: “In Sparta, the law is the master, and the citizens its servants.”

Sparta didn’t just strip away wealth—they stripped away beauty. Art, poetry, theater—those were luxuries of Athens. Spartans saw art as indulgence, a distraction from the only purpose that mattered: serving the state through war. Music existed only as marching rhythm. Poetry was propaganda for discipline. The only “art” in Sparta was the perfection of the soldier’s body and the choreography of battle. Where Athens built the Parthenon, Sparta built phalanxes.

Sparta didn’t produce art, it produced graves.

That’s what it takes to make socialism work: a society where nobody owns anything, not even themselves.

Modern socialists want free housing, healthcare, education, and wages they don’t earn—but without the discipline, sacrifice, or brutality that made ancient collectivism even function. They want Sparta’s equality with Starbucks comfort. They want communal glory without the shared suffering.

Spartans had a word for their lifestyle “Laconic”, modern socialists would have a different word barbarous.

The modern socialist doesn’t want the laconic lifestyle—boiled roots, barracks sleep, a life with no ornament, no privacy, no choice. They want the slogans of Sparta but the lifestyle of Athens. The Spartans would’ve laughed them out of the agoge and thrown their phones off a cliff.

Athens wrote plays, Sparta wrote epitaphs.

They say they want justice—but what they really mean is comfort disguised as revolution. They want the fruits of unity without the cost of conformity. Sparta didn’t hand out identity. It erased it. It demanded your soul, your childhood, and if needed—your life.

As Plato warned, “In a well-ordered city, the citizen must have neither too much nor too little freedom.”

Today’s “revolutionaries” aren’t Spartans. They’re spoiled Athenians cosplaying as comrades.

You want socialism? Fine. Give up your luxuries. Let the state raise your kids. Sleep in barracks. Eat boiled roots. Train until you bleed. Prepare to kill or die, not for your dreams, but for a faceless system. Otherwise, stop pretending you’re reviving some noble legacy.

Because the truth is, Sparta wasn’t utopia. It was hell—with unity.

As Aristotle said of them: “The Spartans were willing to die for their city, but they never learned how to live in it.”

Most of you wouldn’t last a week in it.

Mic G