In the Republic, the mere suggestion that pleasure may be the chief good, is received by Socrates with a cry of abhorrence; but in the Philebus, innocent pleasures vindicate their right to a place in the scale of goods.

In the Protagoras, speaking in the person of Socrates rather than in his own, Plato admits the calculation of pleasure to be the true basis of ethics, while in the Phaedo he indignantly denies that the exchange of one pleasure for another is the exchange of virtue.

So wide of the mark are they who would attribute to Plato entire consistency in thoughts or words.
He acknowledges that the second state is inferior to the first--in this, at any rate, he is consistent; and he still casts longing eyes upon the ideal.

Several features of the first are retained in the second: the education of men and women is to be as far as possible the same; they are to have common meals, though separate, the men by themselves, the women with their children; and they are both to serve in the army; the citizens, if not actually communists, are in spirit communistic; they are to be lovers of equality; only a certain amount of wealth is permitted to them, and their burdens and also their privileges are to be proportioned to this.

The constitution in the Laws is a timocracy of wealth, modified by an aristocracy of merit.