Might Does Not Make Right

A critique of force as the foundation of legitimacy

Photo by Ricardo Arce on Unsplash

In 1896, New Zealand-born writer Arthur Desmond, writing under the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard, published Might is Right, or the Survival of the Fittest. Desmond argued that conventional morality was baseless, that civilizations should rely on raw competition pitting the strong against the weak, and that force was the only genuine source of authority.

So confident was he in his argument that he sent a copy to Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, moral philosopher, and the most ardent defender of nonviolence of his era.

But was Desmond correct?

The doctrine lives on. Not always in those words, but in the logic of those who equate winning with being right, who treat dominance as its own justification, and who regard ethical constraints as obstacles to be cleared rather than principles to be honored.

The appeal of might-makes-right has never been limited to bullies, tyrants, or megalomaniacs (or over-confident authors). Its supporters offer three justifications. The most fundamental argument is drawn from the group deemed naturalists. They believe the natural world operates on a hierarchy of force; why should human societies pretend otherwise? On this view, moral codes are fiction layered over a brutal underlying reality.

Second is the “pragmatic argument” made by foreign policy hawks. This group believes it is almost always the powerful who write the laws, define the norms, and determine what counts as “right” in the first place. Capitulating or cooperating with those outside the corridors of power seems futile.

Third are those who argue about the need to focus on necessity. In other words, when a group or nation faces an existential threat, survival must take precedence over principle. The ends, in short, justify the means.

The trouble is that, examined honestly, force is a remarkably poor foundation for establishing anything sustainable.

For starters, pure force produces temporary gains. History is littered with empires, regimes, and warlords who achieved dominance through raw power only to see it dissolve within a generation or two. The Roman Empire held vast territories for centuries through military supremacy, yet even Rome eventually fragmented under pressures it could no longer suppress. Napoleon imposed his will on nearly all of Europe and, within two decades, found himself exiled to a remote island. The Soviet Union dismantled itself under the weight of a system built more on coercion than consent. Force can seize territory, silence dissent, and compel short-term compliance. What it cannot do is generate the foundations of a durable civilization: loyalty, institutions that outlast their founders, or a social fabric capable of sustaining itself without constant enforcement.

The instability of force-based power is compounded by another timeless structural problem: power never stays in the same hands. If might is the only principle of legitimacy, the doctrine offers no stable resting point, simply an endless cycle of displacement. When the stronger party changes, so does “right.” This idea is not a theoretical concern but a historical regularity. Power always shifts.

Force also tends to return. It boomerangs, but with more brutality. The use of coercion generates resistance, retaliation, and downstream consequences that eventually come back to the party that deployed it.

Forced oversight rarely breeds buy-in and is most likely to foster resentment. As much as “the might make right” argues this idea is natural, it is not. Humans do not naturally succumb to others without thought and consent. We desire free will and space to come to our own conclusions (even if it is an illusion). They rebel against strict mandates over authority. Over time, the more indiscriminate and severe the force, the greater the eventual rebound.

There is a litany of examples. A government that suppresses political opposition through violence typically radicalizes moderate critics and often produces the very uprising it sought to prevent. Colonial powers that extracted resources by force found themselves facing increasingly militant independence movements: the brutality of suppression became the engine of resistance. This dynamic operates at every scale, from organizations to empires, and can create a cycle of violence that proves impossible to contain.

The empirical record bears this out. Researchers who study civil conflicts have found that nonviolent resistance movements succeed roughly twice as often as violent ones in achieving their stated objectives, even against authoritarian regimes with overwhelming military advantages. Nonviolent movements attract broader participation, sustain momentum over longer periods, and do not require the logistical and moral preconditions that armed struggle demands.

Morality, too, proves more resilient than Desmond imagined. Human beings are not purely calculating actors stripped of moral intuition; those intuitions shape behavior even in the absence of enforcement. Across vastly different political and economic conditions, most people retain a genuine orientation toward fairness and a corresponding aversion to its violation. This belief is not sentimentality. It is a sociological fact with real consequences for how power operates and how long it holds. The might-is-right crowd pretends these philosophical boundaries don’t exist when, in fact, they shape much of how society is shaped.

The most durable forms of influence — cultural, economic, diplomatic — are not grounded in force. They are grounded in the genuine preference of others to associate with, trade with, or emulate the entity in question. This type of engagement, in our current political climate, may seem unrealistic or outdated, but it remains ideal. Might can open a door, bully you into walking through, but it rarely keeps you in that room.

Moral constraints on power are not idealistic sentiments imposed on an otherwise efficient system. They are practical necessities. A world that takes might makes right produces more conflict, less cooperation, weaker institutions, and shorter-lived achievements. It ignores the tasks and foundations to build legitimacy, consent, and shared principles. The components are most instrumental to the sustainability authority’s authority and legitimacy.

When Tolstoy read Desmond’s work, he was repulsed, treating the book as a symptom of something dangerous in modern civilization. In a 1897 essay, he warned: “It is fearful to think of what would befall humanity were such art to spread among the masses of people.”

That warning has lost none of its urgency. Desmond’s doctrine did not die with him. It resurfaces whenever society abandons hope in reasoned governance and when power mistakes itself for principle. The question is not whether we recognize it. The question is whether we have the courage to say so.