On Might and Rights

A brief delve into the misunderstood logic of to-day

Might was right when Caesar bled

upon the stones of Rome,

Might was right when Joshua led

his hordes o’er Jordan’s foam,

And Might was right when German troops

poured down through Paris gay;

t’s the Gospel of the Ancient World

and the Logic of To-Day.

It’s a trope you hear all of the time, but never in the fashion it deserves - “might is right”. It’s most commonly used as a rhetorical, ironic complain by anarchists against the concept of hierarchy; other times it’s simply a “gotcha” against apparently powerless people who adopt it. Never does someone encounter it in a true sense of affirmation, where its meaning is actually approached. This article seeks to do exactly that, and see what can actually be used with such an approach.

Jules Lefebvre, La Mort de Priam (1861)

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Anecdotes of the Phrase

It makes sense to start first with where this phrase comes from and some of its historical usage. One of the earliest literary uses of the concept dates to Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue of the Peloponnesian War. In it, the Athenians lay siege to the small island of Melos to assert control over the Aegean. The Melians protest, stating their neutrality and the laws of warfare. The Athenians respond simply, “do something about it” - there is no ius bellum, either surrender unconditionally, or face total annihilation:

Melians : It is difficult, and you may be sure that we know it, for us to oppose your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. Nevertheless we trust that the gods will give us fortune as good as yours, because we are standing for what is right against what is wrong; […]

Athenians : So far as the favour of the gods is concerned, we think we have as much right to that as you have. Our aims and our actions are perfectly consistent with the beliefs men hold about the gods and with the principles which govern their own conduct. Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist for ever among those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way[...] The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

A pair of Socratic dialogues can be found on the phrase in the works of Plato, first in the opening paragraphs of Republic and in the dialogue of Gorgias.

In Republic, Thrasymachus debates Socrates on the validity of “might makes right”. Socrates argues that adherence to natural law, also known to the reader later as virtue, is a prerequisite to might. In other words he inverts it to “right makes might”, now a common trope among leftists, arguing that aligning the soul with higher values is what provides the basis for any of this:

Thrasymachus- “Hearken and hear then,” said he. “I affirm that the just is nothing else than the advantage of the stronger."

Socrates- “Then the ears, too, if deprived of their own virtue will do their work ill? And do we then apply the same principle to all things?[...]Never, then, most worshipful Thrasymachus, can injustice be more profitable than justice.”

In Gorgias, Callicles states the following in response to the drabble of philosophy:

For on what principle of justice did Xerxes invade Hellas, or his father the Scythians? Nay, but these are the men who act according to nature; yes, by Heaven, and according to the law of nature: not, perhaps, according to that artificial law, which we invent and impose upon our fellows, of whom we take the best and strongest from their youth upwards, and tame them like young lions,—charming them with the sound of the voice, and saying to them, that with equality they must be content, and that the equal is the honourable and the just. But if there were a man who had sufficient force, he would shake off and break through, and escape from all this; he would trample under foot all our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws which are against nature: the slave would rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of natural justice would shine forth. And this I take to be the sentiment of Pindar, when he says in his poem, that

‘Law is the king of all, of mortals as well as of immortals;’ this, as he says, ‘Makes might to be right, doing violence with highest hand; as I infer from the deeds of Heracles, for without buying them—’ 

—I do not remember the exact words, but the meaning is, that without buying them, and without their being given to him, he carried off the oxen of Geryon, according to the law of natural right, and that the oxen and other possessions of the weaker and inferior properly belong to the stronger and superior.

There’s also the fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale. In the original of Aesop’s, a nightingale cries out as it is clutched by a hawk. It offers to sing to the hawk for mercy, but due to fear & grief, lets out a shrill. The hawk then consumes the nightingale.

From the medieval to the scientific revolution, the fable diverged into two interestingly contrasted tellings. In the version of Walter of England, a fowler (a metaphor for God) catches the hawk before it can act, concluding:

Vestigat sua pena scelus: Fine malo claudi mala vita meretur.

(Let the punishment follow its crime: an evil life deserves an evil end.)

In the version of Jean de le Fontaine, symbolic of the 17th Century, the story does not feature God but instead the harsh reality of nature. The hawk does not even offer to hear the gale’s voice, but instead remarks:

Ta musique est ridicule pour moi; un estomac vide n’a pas d’oreilles.

(Your music is ridiculous to me; an empty stomach has no ears.)

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-Makes vs -Is: The Logic of To-Day

The terms “might is right” and “might makes right” are used interchangeably, but the change in just one word makes a dramatic difference. Might Is Right is drawn from the 1896 book of the same title, written by Ragnar Redbeard (either Jack London or Arthur Desmond). It’s a piece which extends from Nietzsche’s Antichrist and Beyond Good and Evil, advocating for the transvaluation of values through social Darwinism, and the abolition of moral values in favor for simply strength. Might makes right simply refers to the idea that the strong dictate morality, or rather “history is written by the victors”. But pay special attention to the difference in saying these side by side - might makes right in one case, but in the other, might is right. The former alludes a process, a cause-and-effect, while the latter describes a tautology… to be mighty is to be right, to be right is to be mighty.

In comparison, both of these state a fundamental truth - that any ethic or moral code is utterly sterile if its practitioners are weak and incapable of defending it. This is an undeniable law of nature. The weak and ill-constituted perish, and so with them goes their morality. Redbeard may have been advocating for this itself as an “objective subjectivity” of sorts, but it doesn’t make a difference to me. Any believer in an objective moral framework can easily envision a world conquered by the wrong people and ideas, in fact they fear precisely this more than anything else. Who’s to say we aren’t there already? Maybe the wrong side won a war or two along the way.

It may be that, like organisms, moral values themselves can be born & killed. They may be selected, and evolve. Fit moral values will persist, while terrible ones will quickly vanish. Recall Socrates’ assertion that right makes might: I personally like to imagine an African drug fiend appearing behind him and beheading him for crack money, permanently removing this idea from history entirely. Sometimes, ideas don’t even need be “weak” or “strong”, bad or good. They can just be attached to an unlucky orator, like a gene which supposes itself destined for evolution stuck to an unlucky rabbit who was born just before a hurricane.

This would mean that there’s several types of might, simply strategies, that may greatly differ from simple barbarian pillaging. Indeed, the techno-industrial socialism of the Allies and Soviets overcame a state which embodied “Might Is Right” into its own will. But this reinforces the point - because of this, the moral values of the Nationalist Socialists are virtually extinct today, and outright taboo. On a civilizational scale, there’s no guarantee they’re not gone forever.

Like everything else in nature, existence comes with struggle. You think you’re right? Prepare to die for it. It matters little how right you were if you’re dead - vae victis - best to be on the safe side and be right and strong.

Bald fuck Aquinas stopping a round of .45-70 from hitting his head with his 4 Cardinal Virtues

I leave exactly where “objectivity” fits in this to the reader. But what I am certain of is that the laws of nature are ironclad, and inescapable for man. There are many, but one such law is crystal clear: the unfit are not long for this world. This goes for unfit man, and so too his unfit ideas, cultures, and codes.