[davidvaughan]

The novice is less likely to learn from a direct reading of Plato's Republic than to absorb Socrates's arguments and ingest enormous amounts of food for thought.

The novice will then have the capacity to think more seriously about current or historical political questions and devise better responses or approaches to them (better for the novice and better for our societies).

Always go to the masters first - the Platos, the Keynes, the Freuds... They're by far the best exponents of their own thinking.