Specialization in The Republic

How is the ideal city set up? Who would rule it? How would the people within the city operate? 

In The Republic, Plato (as Socrates) attempts to create the perfect city as a method of defining justice. He starts this process by the idea of specialization. But what is specialization? According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary it is "the structural adaptation of a body part to a particular function or of an organism for life in a particular environment."

So why does Socrates believe that in a perfectly just city specialization is needed? On page 35, Socrates points out that "there are diversities among us which are adapted to different occupations." In a simple context he is saying that different people are suited for different things. Furthering that, whatever it is that a citizen is most suited for, that should be the only thing said citizen should ever do. The baker should bake, the farmer should farm, the soldier should fight, and so on. 

Socrates populates his perfect city with a group of citizens who are specialized in their fields; he includes the carpenters, farmers, builders, and doctors. "Will they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and shoes, and build houses for themselves?" This class of specialized individuals will take care that they "do not exceed their means; having an eye to poverty or war." Socrates calls this the healthy State.

After Glaucon states that this is a "city of pigs," he argues that the citizens should be given the ordinary conveniences of life such as sofas, tables, and "sauces and sweets in the modern style." Socrates concedes to create a luxurious State; this will cause the city to "fill and swell with a multitude of callings which are not required by any natural want." Such specialized callings include rhapsodists, players, dancers, contractors, tutors, nurses, tirewomen, barbers, confectioners, cooks, swineherds, and "makers of divers kinds of articles, including women's dresses." There will also need to be more physicians, and, since this "State of fever" has all of this luxuries, soldiers will be needed as war is now inevitable. The last specialized class of people Socrates mentions are the rulers. They will be in charge of the city.

According to Socrates, if each of the classes (the producing, the entertainment - for the lack of a better word - the soldiers, and the rulers) only performs the jobs and requirements that their single occupations asks of them, then the city will be just. The citizens will be just if they only practice their established art, whether that be cooking, farming, healing, etc. 

For there to be a perfectly just State, there must be specialization.