The Addiction To Power

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

          - Lord Acton

I received a tweet last night that read "You don't believe big banks are funding and influencing political policy? Or is it just "stupid" as u so elegantly put it?"  I would have liked to have tweeted a short answer back but I find Twitter too constraining for real conversation. It's a handy way to connect or announce something but it's not really a great venue to for expressing ideas, as you can easily see by simply reading most of the tweets that fly by in ten minutes.

It was a good question though and deserves an answer.

I absolutely do believe that banks and other financial institutions fund political parties to try and influence government policy but I also understand that this isn't the province of the banks alone. Occupy has tried to frame the debate, which is a good thing, but they have tried to frame the debate simply around the the concentration of wealth and once identifying the 1% as a group, Occupy has then gone on to simply lump all of the ills in the world at the doorstep of that group. It's both inaccurate and naive. The woman who tweeted me the original question had earlier tweeted that she believe Qadafhi  had been defeated because of the influence of the banks rather than by the people of Libya. That's like concluding that Occupy is an instrument of the 1%.

What influences governments and government policy more than financial contributions is power because power grants power. Those who seek power in one area will seek the support of those who have power in another. Money can buy power but it isn't just financial power that influences and not all power is  concentrated  in the 1%.

The big unions, for example, have considerable power and influence in both our political and financial systems and I am not talking merely about blue collar worker unions like the Teamsters or the UAW. Teachers unions, unions representing health care professionals, law enforcement and others have sufficient membership (and pension funds which invest billions) from whom politicians trip all over each other trying to get voter support.  They are influenced by unions in policy development and tax breaks and offer those and other considerations in exchange for electoral support. 

Large religious groups like the fundamentalist Christian right, which framed the debate on issues like abortion, Muslim and Jewish and other groups have no small influence on politics, especially in the areas of immigration, foreign policy and certain social issues.

Lobby groups like the National Rifle Association have more power than some 1% financial institutions. The NRA has successfully blocked limitations on the acquisition and ownership of firearms in the U.S for decades despite increased gun crime.

Even multi-cultural groups, if they represent enough people and are vocal enough can influence policy and political direction. In Canada, French-speaking Canadians represent less than 26% of the country's population but have had enough power to successfully have the federal government declared functionally bilingual, influenced government policy and have had political parties chasing their votes for decades.

The two things all of these groups have in common are that they wield a considerable amount of power and influence on the political process and none of them represent the so-called 1%. Their power comes from the size of their membership. The political process is moved by whatever pressures it and while money can buy influence, nothing is more influential than a group that has the voting power to swing an election.

Consider the growing power and influence of the environmental movement which does not gain its power from concentration of wealth but rather by the popularity of its cause. It isn't money that draws people to support the environmental movement, it is the belief in the cause that draws more people to it. The growth of support for the environmental movement gives it power, a power that is having an increasing influence on politics and government policy around the world.

Occupy is a group with a bit of power now, although nowhere on the scale mentioned above but it should be clear to members of Occupy, or at least those who actually think about things, that the only reason for coming together is because a large group can have the power to effect change more successfully than a small group or individual. In that way, Occupy is in some ways, the very thing it accuses the 1% of being.

As Marting Luther King and Gandhi showed us in the past, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I believe that groups can be more effective in having their voice heard than just one individual (although not always) and if enough voices are singing the same song, that song can influence government and politicians to bring about change. The unfortunate downside is that typically, the larger the group grows and the more success it achieves, the more power it gains and power corrupts. You can already see it in Occupy as much as in any group that has wielded power in our system. As Occupy grows, it draws more and more to its cause who are attracted more by the power of it all rather than by the cause itself.

One of the reasons I criticize Occupy (aside from some of the stupid rhetoric of the lunatic fringe and its mindless violence) is that it has targeted the wrong enemy. To be sure, there is far too much corporate greed in this world. It is equally true that financial institutions have been careless, conducted some of their business like pigs at the trough and too often allowed their greed to make them just plain stupid but they are not alone and they, are not comprised solely of the 1%. It is also true that many in the 1% have made significant contributions to society. It isn't money that is the enemy, it is the abuse of power by any group or individual who uses it for their own benefit at the expense of the society at large.

Unions, political lobbies, cultural and religious groups, as well as, many in the poorly defined 1% have significant influence and are all guilty of misusing that power.

It is the concentration of power in the hands of special interest that is corrupting our democracies not simply money. Money is merely one more means to power and often a bi-product of it.

Power is heady stuff and you can easily get drunk on it. It is more intoxicating than alcohol and more addictive than crack. Those who have tasted it find it very difficult to walk away from and like trying to quit smoking, the craving continues.\ Power breeds the belief that only you have the answer. Only you and your group are right and the ends justify the means. Winning is never enough and once power has been exercised, those who wield it look for new battles to fight and new wars to win.

Hackers invade the privacy and abuse the rights of others, not in pursuit of some noble cause but because they are addicted to the rush they get from exercizing a power over others by the invasion of their computers . They lose all sense of morality; steal data and destroy computers and large systems with viruses and trojans for no other reason than the sense of power it gives them. It's power that drives them because having power is the addiction.

Occupy has seen some of that within its own ranks as some individual or group has tried to influence and even control a GA agenda. In New York there have been complaints about secret OWS agendas kept from the larger movement  We see the same thing every day in our democracies and here's the thing. It isn't a 1% issue. All of us, including the so called 99% thirst for some kind of power and while we may try to fool ourselves that in our case, at least, it is for noble purposes; as the smoking issue demonstrates, too much power breeds a kind of reverse tyranny.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Money is merely a tool, sometimes the result of power and usually something we use to buy stuff. It isn't the financial elite that Occupy should be fighting, it is the power elite and unfortunately, that elite is comprised of many of us because we all belong to some group, union, religion or culture. We all come together in one way or another to try and influence things in our favour.

 How you fight that is more complex than simply chanting we are the 99%. It is the thoughtful, resonsible and compassionate exercising of the power that can bring about real change. Simply using power to get what "we" want is nothing more than what we already have....a system corrupted by special interest and greed.

At the end of the day, it is the addictive and corruptive nature of power and not merely the concentration of wealth that is what undermines our democracies today. Occupy is fighting the wrong enemy but then we all have made that same mistake in the past. To win this war, we need to look not only who has power but who has the power to influence those in government and that folks is more than just a few banks and securities companies. Unfortunately, too many of us are part of one group or another scrambling to gain enough power to influence in our group's favour, how the game is played.

It is precisely what Occupy is doing now but to paraphrase Gandhi, you can't win by becoming what you oppose.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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