Plato's Republic Book 5:
>And the city whose state is most like that of an individual man.
>For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for ‘integration’
>with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers, and that is how we come to say that the man has a pain in his finger. And for any other member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain or is eased by pleasure.”
>“The same,” he said, “and, to return to your question, the best governed state most nearly resembles such an organism.”
>That is the kind of a state, [462e] then, I presume, that, when anyone of the citizens suffers aught of good or evil, will be most likely to speak of the part that suffers as its own and will share the pleasure or the pain as a whole.” “Inevitably,” he said, “if it is well governed.”
>But we further agreed that this unity is the greatest blessing for a state, and we compared a well governed state to the human body in its relation to the pleasure and pain of its parts.”
…
>Then will not law-suits and accusations against one another vanish, one may say, from among them, because they have nothing in private possession but their bodies, but all else in common.
>So that we can count on their being free from the dissensions that arise among men from the possession of property, children, and kin.