Corruption . of . Power

What is basic for a person is the way that he / she conceptualises happiness. Their conception of power becomes the way to attain this happiness. Many people conceptualise happiness to be forms of wealth, sensuality, fame or family. Power is diverted into satisfying greed or sexual desire, or achieving status, or maintaining a nice family. This direction of power is that of materialistic idealism. But materialism can never deliver permanent happiness. Sooner or later pain and sorrow will divert the pursuit of happiness from wealth, sensuality, fame and family into non-materialistic idealisms.

Consider a male social idealist. Power becomes a way of overcoming something about society that he dislikes or hates. The existing state of society and politics causes him distress and unhappiness. The more that he hates society, the greater becomes his desire to change it, the greater becomes his desire to impose his ideas on society. When society is moulded into his ideal of perfection then he will be happy.

But even the social idealist cannot surmount an evolutionary impasse. Since the social idealist is usually in advance of the existing level of social development, so the mass of society can never live up to his / her ideals. Dis-illusionment brings more sorrow and diverts him / her into a course away from social idealism into that of individual idealism, or else gives rise to a tendency towards paranoia.

There are levels to idealism. Such levels can be denoted, in an ascending scale of intensity of practice (in terms of living one’s ideals) by labels like moralist, reformist, revolutionary, anarchist, existentialist. The goal beyond existentialism is to synthesise both the poles of social and individual idealism.

Abuse of Power

A person’s use of social and political power usually reveals the limitations of that person. The limitations reflect the moral boundaries of the person – narrow and bigoted boundaries often indicate little ability to handle power for the common good.

One limitation is the belief that there is one law for those who have power and another for those without it : the person with power respects only those who also have power. This gives rise to a common failing. When a person has power, that power is abused when it is directed into areas of society where the person has psychological problems.

For the person who has some form of political or social power, then when dealing with any sector of society of which he / she disapproves (for example, drunks, prostitutes, beggars, hippies), he / she will abuse their power in their interaction with these sectors. Authoritarian morality produces abuse in the sectors of society which are considered to be immoral or hateful or inferior.

Why does this abuse occur? I consider a man’s difficulty. Abuse occurs because the person’s psychological problems undermine his moral principles and corrupt his exercise of power. Power is neutral but the person is not. So power magnifies both the person’s virtues and his vices.

Within the area of his psychological problems he has a weak self-image. So power becomes the means to achieve self-validation: the person uses his power to bolster this weak self-image. The deception within this stratagem is that, instead of basing power on proven abilities, the person bases power on his vanity. The possession of power has the effect of magnifying the intensity of his vanity. This way of using power as a means of validating himself signifies that he cannot use power wisely in situations that he finds unpleasant. [²]

Unpleasant relationships that are manageable when he has no power become unmanageable when eventually he does have power.

If the person were wise enough to restrict the exercise of power to areas of relationships in which his virtues shone then power would present no problem – he would have no need to rely on power to give himself psychological support.

Paranoia

Sometimes a person has to exercise power within the area of his psychological problems that concerns an ambivalent attitude to a higher authority. The higher authority may be an actual one, or just peer pressure. Now he may tread the path to paranoia. [³]

An example of a paranoid response to peer pressure is Lenin’s attitude to socialist intellectuals during his years of exile, before he became supremo of the Soviet Union.

Paranoia arises from a deep sense of mistrust in other people ; the person becomes enveloped in suspicion and is impelled to reject any form of social or political control. He ceases to be influenced by peer pressure. The suspicion is caused by fear, and the rejection of external control reflects the vanity mode of pride.

The emotional dynamics of paranoia are:

Paranoia = pride (mode of vanity) + fear.

[I use the term ‘emotional dynamics’ to indicate whatever intense emotions are driving the person's state of mind. The dynamics of mental states are based either on emotion or on desire.]

Paranoia is likely to arise when a person is in control of some organisation but is subject to an external group or external forces with yet more power. Consider politics: politicians are vulnerable to mild paranoia since they are always prone to public criticism and ridicule – they may fear the power of their critics. But more severe paranoia may become visible in British politicians who feel threatened that the national government will lose authority to the European Union.

Paranoia flows into religious ideology as well. If a person has a background of authoritarian religion, then its dictates will be embedded in his / her conscience. If they begin to reject the religion then they may well go through a phase of paranoia towards that religion until they have managed to exorcise those dictates.

For an historical example, I consider Hitler. From 1935 to the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Hitler was flexible and successful in his opportunist power politics. But once the German army began to be defeated in Russia, his politics became rigid and inflexible and the army was forbidden to withdraw to more defensible positions. Rigidity and inflexibility are hallmarks of paranoia: the person attempts to maintain an inflexible will in order to mask his deep fear. Once Hitler realised that he was no longer in control of the battle situation, then he sank into severe paranoia, no longer trusting even his best generals.

Effect of Abreaction

There is another factor involved in the corruption of power. I use Lenin as an example. During his youth his father died. A new facet to Lenin’s character emerged. His sister noted the harshness that now appeared in him: he did not have to fear his father anymore. The same effect occurred in 1917 when he became the supremo in the USSR. Since there was no longer anyone in authority over him, so fear was removed and its binary – anger and aggression – came out into the open. [4]. His habitual hatred of the bourgeoisie increased to the point of having them subjected to unwarranted violence and death, in order to intimidate them. He revamped and revitalised the secret police for this purpose.

By considering Lenin’s propensity to violence I extended my analysis of corruption. The immediate ascension of Lenin to supreme power brought the euphoria of catharsis. Then under the twin pressures of the civil war and dis-illusionment with the peasantry so abreactive resentment set in. It was this resentment that crescendoed his hatred of the bourgeoisie to the point of terrorising them just for the pleasure of it. Hence the way that Lenin interpreted his experiences of abreaction had a major influence on early Soviet history. [5]

As a comparison to Lenin, consider Palmerston in the nineteenth century. He had a strong self-image. In his use of power as Foreign Secretary, during the height of Britain’s political ascendancy over much of the world, there was no corruption. In his several accessions to power and dismissals from that power he was dispassionate and unruffled. No paranoia, no catharsis, and no abreactive resentment.

Hence we can see that it is not power that corrupts as such, but that power reveals the latent corruption within the person.

Three Factors

My final formula for the corruption of power is that it has three factors.

• Weak self-image
• Paranoia
• Abreactive hate

Here ‘abreactive hate’ denotes the stage of resentment, which may or may not be followed eventually by the stage of bitterness. [6]

Corruption of power, in varying degrees, occurs in peacetime Western situations. In British politics the coming to power of the opposition party, if it is riding on the crest of an economic wave, generates social catharsis. When the economic situation subsequently deflates and collapses (even if it takes a few years to do so), abreactive hate is generated. The deflection of this hate into an issue such as the European Union is usually a familiar tactic ; otherwise, a well-trodden alternative is that the poorer sections of the community are deliberately penalised. In the latter case, retrenchment of government spending (on the poor) is proclaimed to be a virtue.

Government during social abreaction is usually poor government.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it.

[¹]. See the article on Power. [1]

[²]. My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [2]

[³]. There is an analysis of paranoia in the article Pride & Paranoia on my website Patterns of Confusion. See Links page. [3]

[4]. The binary nature of emotions is described in the first article on Emotion. [4]

[5]. My analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See home page.
Catharsis is described in the third article on Abreaction : Catharsis and Suggestion. [5]

[6]. See the fourth article on Abreaction : Resentment and Bitterness. [6]

Copyright © 2003 Ian Heath
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Ian Heath
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