In the first book of Plato's Republic, Thrasymachus asserts that justice is the advantage of the stronger, and that justice is obedience to laws implicitly written by the stronger. Socrates challenged his claims, by proclaiming that the purpose of a ruler is to benefit those they govern, not themselves. After more than two millenia of human civilization, it should be self-evident who was correct. I would like to imagine that Thrasymachus brandished a .45 caliber sidearm from underneath his toga to demonstrate his point.
The vast majority of the population would rather side with Socrates, that justice benefits all, ruler and ruled alike. People would rather trust their government, corporations, and institutions to be the arbiters of justice, the same institutions which start wars, rob people via taxes and inflation, imprison the disadvantaged, and ultimately destroy humanity through civilizational capture. When I hear the word civilization, I reach for my gun, but I digress. Socrates appeals to abstract values or forms, that justice is the virtue of the soul, the just live well and are happy. He presents a Manichean dualism in the soul, that it is goodness (excellence, virtue, arete) rather than evil which enables it to function well.
Nietzsche would later recognize this simplistic moral view as slave morality, which implies the existence of a master morality, a separate worldview that the dark archons of this world embrace. He challenged the Platonic forms, of some lofty high-minded ideals of justice, equality, goodness. What we often observe in reality is the inversion of these ideals, of the incessant suffering of the innocent, and the thriving of evil. I think what Nietzsche prompted us to reconsider is philosophy before Platonic thought, what if Thrasymachus was right all along, and we were played as fools to believe Socrates?
Thrasymachus makes the point that it is not truth that we care about, but convincing lies, raw persuasion that appeals to well-meaning fallacy. This is fitting of his profession as a Sophist, one who debates for money, an intellectual whore. He was however, more honest than his opposition, as his views on justice did not benefit the parasitic class, and the oldest profession (prostitution) is the most honest as it exposes what civilization is all about. The moral high ground was always a scam; Mao Zedong recognized that all political power comes from the barrel of a gun (枪杆子里面出政权), and for this reason, the people should be disarmed so that they have no power. Power ultimately reduces to violence, he who has the power to destroy a thing has the ultimate control of it as stated in Frank Herbert's Dune, but there are more forms of violence than just physical. Surveillance is another means to gain an information advantage, and the intelligence apparatuses of the world have the absolute advantage over the populace. Their other main function is propaganda which operates on the principle of repeating a lie enough that it becomes truth.
Even with a full spectrum monopoly on violence in all its forms, the state will still self-destruct, and it is not because they are unjust or evil, but because they are a parasite upon life itself. The parasite cannot survive outside of its host; their entire existence depends on the same organism which they extract resources from. The archons of this world are unable to create for they have no imagination, they can only imitate and corrupt. The death of the host, must inevitably lead to the death of the parasite, however slowly and painfully the process may proceed.
The system asserts its infallibility as a moral appeal, that it alone is the arbiter of truth itself, and this claim can not be challenged in any way that matters. This is the plot device underpinning Franz Kafka's The Castle, in which the narrator must escape a bureaucracy that exhibits glaring mistakes and contradictions in its paperwork. There are many laws which contradict each other, with none forming a consistent and axiomatic set. In the United States for example, there are the first and second amendments to the US Constitution, which restrict the state from infringing on the rights to speech, assembly, and bearing arms, and yet there are entire bureaucracies dedicated to trampling over these rights, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and state and federal departments of self-proclaimed justice. Rights can not be granted by the same institutions which deprives them, and if you have to assert your rights, then you have already lost.
In every real world trial of the law, we can observe that the law is administered subjectively according to the local cultures, traditions, authorities, and individual people involved. Observe also that all prosecution is selective, even in systems where prosecution is mandatory, they are limited only by surveillance, or discovery of law-breaking via illegal methods (fruit of the poisonous tree), and sometimes even the will to prosecute. Even upon sentencing, all punishment is prejudicial, one person committing the same crime will not be punished equally as another, as the mens rea or circumstances around each case are never the same.
I would postulate that it is an absolute lie that the laws were made to benefit the ruler and the ruled, there is only one party which benefits to the detriment of all, and that is the side with the monopoly on violence. Thrasymachus did not make his argument out of desire for how he wished the world to be, but out of lucidity, a desire to uncover the absolute truth. Even a lie told for the greater good, can be more harmful than whatever good it aimed to achieve. At the foundations of Western civilization are these false ideals propagated by Socrates, ideas rejected by contemporary youth, and he was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth. Perhaps that sentence was well deserved.
2025-10-22