Thomas More's general conception of an ideal state is unmistakably drawn from Plato. Elucidate.

Thomas More's Utopia, first published in Latin in 1516, was perhaps the greatest humanist reform tract of the Renaissance. The work presented a 'perfect society', authoritarian and fictional in its religious, social and political aspects. Indeed, the idea of an ideal state is what Plato's Republic and More's Utopia share, both the works taking a similar stance in their economic systems with regard to the distribution of good and acquisition of wealth.

Both Plato and More were guided by the notion of collective / social good, looking for a state rather abstract and fictional. More's tract with its more pronounced communist / socialist connotations--absence of private ownership and suppression of individuals by the society--looks forward to Karl Marx as it looks back to plato in its general design of a commonwealth.