[338e]
“And each form of government enacts the laws with a view to its
own advantage, a democracy democratic laws and tyranny autocratic and the
others likewise, and by so legislating they proclaim that the just for their
subjects is that which is for their—the
rulers'—advantage and the man who deviates1 from this law they chastise as a
law-breaker and a wrongdoer. This, then, my good sir, is what I understand
as the identical principle of justice that obtains in all states
1 On this view justice is simply τὸ νόμιμον(Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 4. 12; Cf. Gorgias 504 D). This is the doctrine of the “Old Oligarch,” [Xenophon]Rep. Ath. 2. Against this conception of class domination as political justice, Plato (Laws 713 ff.) and Aristotle Politics iii. 7) protest. Cf. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, chap. ii.: “We only conceive of the State as something equivalent to the class in occupation of the executive government” etc.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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