What should a five-point social studies essay be like? “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"Power corrupts, absolute power absolutely corrupts"
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” (J. Acton).
In his statement, the American historian and politician J. Acton raises the question of the influence of power on the behavior of the person who has it. This statement can be interpreted as follows: than more than a person endowed with power, the more often he begins to go beyond the boundaries of what is permitted and act only in his own interests. This problem has not lost its relevance for many centuries and history knows many cases when the unlimited power of a ruler led a country to ruin.
So what is power and why does it exist? Power is the opportunity and ability to influence people's behavior regardless of their desire to do so. In any state, power is primarily aimed at maintaining order and monitoring compliance with laws, but often the more limitless power becomes, the more it corrupts a person and ceases to be a guarantor of justice, which is why I fully support the opinion of J. Acton.
A ruler endowed with great power ceases to care about the welfare of the entire people and tries even more to strengthen his position. Let's take, for example, the first Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible: striving for unlimited autocracy, he introduced oprichnina in the camp, which consisted of mass terror, violence, and the elimination of not only the dissatisfied boyars, but also any opposition. Thus, many innocent people were executed on suspicion of treason, which ultimately led the country to a crisis, the destruction of cities and the death of a huge number of people.
My family also faced the consequences of unlimited power during the reign of I.V. Stalin. During dispossession, my grandmother’s family was repressed, her father was sent to the Gulag, and six children were forced to live in a barracks with similarly repressed families. Stalin's policy was aimed at equalizing layers of the population, but the number of those dispossessed during his reign significantly exceeded the number of real kulaks, which is a clear violation of human rights and freedoms.
Thus, we can come to the conclusion that unlimited power corrupts people and brings not so much benefit as ruin and a decline in the standard of living of the population. IN modern society absolute power no longer prevails in most countries, which makes their inhabitants more free and independent.
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” – “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
This is how this saying is usually quoted, although for its author, Lord Acton, it looked a little different: “Power tends to corrupt...” - “Power tends to corrupt...”.
John Acton (1834–1902) was a British Liberal politician and eminent historian. He is also known for the fact that, as a Catholic, he opposed the doctrine of papal infallibility. His famous quote contained in a letter dated April 3, 1887, published in 1904.
The addressee of the letter, Mandell Creighton, an Anglican priest and professor at Cambridge University, has published a number of works on Elizabethan England and the history of the papacy. He was later ordained bishop, and only his premature death prevented him from becoming Archbishop of Canterbury.
In a letter to a fellow historian, Acton poses the problem of the moral assessment of historical figures:
“I cannot accept your view that popes and kings should be judged differently from other people (...). Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even if they use only their influence and not their power; and even more so if we consider that involvement in power usually or even always corrupts (the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority). Therefore, there is no greater heresy than the assertion that high position sanctifies those who occupy it. (…) The greatest names are guilty of the greatest crimes.”
If Acton had mentioned Napoleon here, one might have assumed that he had just read Volume IV of War and Peace, a translation of which had been published in England a year earlier. It is here that Tolstoy’s textbook argument about greatness is contained:
“...When an action is already clearly contrary to what all humanity calls good and even justice, historians have a saving concept of greatness. Greatness seems to exclude the possibility of measuring good and bad. For the great there is no bad.”
And on June 26, 1899, Tolstoy writes in his diary: “... Those in power have become corrupted because they have power...”
The first part of Acton's statement was, in essence, a quotation from a speech by the famous politician William Pitt the Elder. Speaking in the House of Lords on 9 January 1770, he stated:
– Power tends to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.
This idea is, of course, not new. Plutarch already wrote:
[Sulla] rightly brought upon great power the accusation that it does not allow a person to retain his former character, but makes him fickle, arrogant and inhuman.
(“Sulla”, 30; translation by V. Smirin)
Acton's dictum has given rise to many variations; here are some of them:
If power corrupts, then poetry cleanses. (John Kennedy, speech October 26, 1963 in Amherst, Massachusetts.)
All power is magnificent, and absolute power is absolutely magnificent. (Attributed to the English critic Kenneth Tynan.)
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then what about the Lord God? (C. 1991; author unknown.)
Absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely. (CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz, interview in " NY Times" July 30, 1995)
Love corrupts; limitless love corrupts limitlessly. (Author unknown.)
I completely agree with the statement of the famous English thinker and scientist J. Acton, in which he raises the problem of the influence of power on a person. In his opinion, power greatly influences a person, since a person who has power over people changes and does not better side. Cruelty manifests itself in a person’s character, and he begins to increasingly command people and go beyond what is permitted.
An example from the literature can be cited as proof. For example, Bunin shows a person who has power over people in the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” Main character rich and therefore has power over people. We see how the hero commands people and considers them empty space.
You can also recall an example from history. The despotic ruler was Ivan the Terrible, who was known for his barbaric and incredibly harsh methods of rule. He had power over the people. He was a merciless, inhumane ruler.
These examples show that a person with power changes his character. A person believes that everyone should obey him and puts himself above others.
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Power corrupts absolutely.
John Acton
Compliance with state interests,
foreseeing development prospects
society can be expected there,
where there is no sale of positions.
Personnel decides everything. Having put forward this thesis, Joseph Stalin defined his main task - to mobilize “human resources” and establish unlimited personal power in the country. This attitude was of decisive importance in the development of social processes of that time and, ultimately, in the construction of the state under a totalitarian regime. Abstracting from the Stalinist content of this textbook slogan, we can say that it has not lost its relevance today.
"The most humane" monster Stalin's personnel policy not developed since clean slate. The greatest tyrant of all times and peoples had a worthy predecessor - Vladimir Ulyanov, nicknamed Lenin.
Having carried out the October revolution, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of the “leader of the world proletariat,” came to power. What the ex faced after this Russian empire, truly shocked the world.
The murder of the last monarch of Russia and his family, the unprecedented scale of the Red Terror, mass executions, the capture and execution of hostages, the brutal suppression of popular uprisings, including the use of regular troops And chemical weapons(!), hunger as a means of intimidation, the massive use of foreign lumpen to form punitive detachments - all this is Lenin’s arsenal of the struggle for power.
Lenin creates a network of concentration camps. Later, the most famous of them became the ELEPHANT - Solovetsky camp special purpose. But there were also dozens of others. By 1920, there were about 90 of them. They use hard labor, torture, including one of the most common - freezing, demonstrative executions, and deliberately deny prisoners medical care. Here, long before Auschwitz, they invent the practice of “industrial use of the dead” - their personal belongings and bloody clothes are used for recycling or transferred, in order to save money, to newly arrived prisoners.
Without ceasing to claim the role of a humanist, Vladimir Lenin in one of his letters orders: “At... a meeting to make a secret decision... that the confiscation of valuables, especially the richest laurels, monasteries and churches, must be carried out with merciless decisiveness, of course, stopping at nothing and in the shortest possible time.
How larger number If we manage to shoot the representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy on this occasion, so much the better.”
According to the most rough estimates, in 1922 alone the Bolsheviks physically destroyed 8,100 clergy. In addition, thousands of people were killed simply for defending their temples from looting and desecration.
In fact, the Leninist state waged a merciless struggle, first of all, with the Russian Orthodox Church. Monuments of Russian culture were massively destroyed. As a rule, this process was led not by the Russians themselves, but by representatives of other nationalities who worked in the Cheka or in the party apparatus. In essence, genocide was applied to the Russian people and, above all, to their elite.
Lenin himself was a deeply anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox person. He did not even consider himself Russian by nationality, having literally absorbed with his mother’s milk (Maria Blank) hatred of Russian culture and Orthodoxy.
As for Lenin’s desire to destroy “hostile elements” at any cost, it long years was explained by Soviet propaganda as “objective necessity.” Like, this is how Vladimir Ilyich ensured “people's happiness.” In fact, Lenin treated the people just as mercilessly as he treated the “reactionary bourgeoisie and reactionary clergy.” Let us note that it is no coincidence that in his works Lenin almost never resorts to the concepts of “people” or “people”, replacing them with the concept of “mass”. The impulse of the revolutionary masses, the initiative of the masses, the consciousness of the masses - these are Lenin’s formulations (in the interpretation of some current Ukrainian politicians, people are called “biomass”). Simply put, “the most humane man” treated the people as livestock. For example, using the threat of famine for political purposes, he wrote: “Not far from Moscow, in the provinces lying nearby: in Kursk, Oryol, Tambov, according to the calculations of cautious experts, we still have up to 10 million poods of surplus grain... We need not only break down any resistance. We need to force them to work within a new organizational state framework. We have a means for this... This means is a grain monopoly, a bread card, universal labor service... Because by distributing it (bread), we will dominate all areas of labor.”
IN in this case Let's pay attention to the main conclusion: To implement his plans, Lenin had to have the appropriate personnel. That is why he surrounded himself with henchmen, ready to commit any, the most terrible atrocities.
As for those who were objectionable and dissident, Vladimir Ilyich dealt with them mercilessly.
Quite quickly, Lenin successfully eliminated, including physically, many former comrades in the revolutionary struggle. Their number included representatives of those parties that, before the October coup, were allies of the leader in the fight against the monarchy, and representatives of the RSDLP itself, who had the courage (or misfortune) to disagree with the general line of the Bolsheviks. In the staff true Leninists Only figures who shed rivers of blood to preserve and strengthen their power could remain. Only foreigners could be recruited to carry out such an inhuman mission. The leadership of the party and the Cheka from the very top to the district consisted of 90 percent representatives of non-Slavic nationalities and non-Orthodox peoples.
Every person who strives for political power, thus trying to compensate for his complexes.
At one time Lord Acton, historian and political figure, said the famous phrase: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
But at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) they tried to investigate why this happens.
First, people took psychological tests to determine their level of honesty, and then they were asked to play a game Dictator. It was the one who acquired power who received the right to manage money. And over time, even the most honest began to make decisions that brought more benefits to them rather than to other participants in the game. Moreover, the saliva of the subjects was analyzed - the tendency to abuse increased with increasing levels of the hormone testosterone. did not play any role in childhood.
Does everyone who comes to power eventually become dishonest? Does change corrupt? We are thinking about this phenomenon with Alexander Medvedev, candidate of historical sciences and his colleague Ilya Andreev.
Is it really possible that infection by power cannot bypass anyone, even the most honest or strong?
A. Medvedev: - You know, the influence of power on a person is much stronger than we imagine. Similar studies were conducted by American neuropsychologists when the so-called prisoner's dilemma was formed. That is, a person is inclined to choose between corporate interests and his own benefit - the latter, even if this decision is harmful to others or to the common good.
This is human nature. And when someone, even the most noble one, gains power, sooner or later he will begin to do things in his own favor. Moreover, depending on psychogenetics (each of us is more inclined to selfishness or altruism), this can manifest itself immediately or delayed.
By the way, men and women behave differently in power because they have different model power-subject relations. A woman is more focused on the common good, and a man is more focused on his own.
I. Andreev: - Having power in his hands, a person will sooner or later begin to abuse it, even if at the beginning he had noble goals. Therefore, there have never been and never will be honest politicians. And this must be accepted as a fact.
Now there are parliamentary elections, when whoever they want comes to power. Can you predict which of the deputies will start stealing right away, and which over time?
I. Andreev:— Acton spoke about the innate desire for power that each of us has and it manifests itself already in early age. Power-subject relationships exist in the relationships between family members, between children and parents, husband and wife, leader and subordinate. Through dominion over someone, a person overcomes his own inferiority complex. The smaller this complex, the easier it is to achieve compensation.
The larger it is, the greater the need for power. It's like aspiration. The more there are, the greater the need to get rid of them. Therefore, those who cannot satisfy this desire in other respects strive for political power. This is why the political sphere is very seductive. I can say for sure: every person striving for political power in this way tries to compensate for his complexes.
People come to power for various reasons, sometimes even noble ones, but those who have the greatest need to create the illusion of their own perfection and specialness make their way through. This is a psychological phenomenon when a person can assert himself only through power. For this reason, by the way, billionaires go into politics.
But there are countries where politicians are less corrupt. What does this depend on?
I. Andreev: — The motivation for gaining power is the same at all times and in all countries. Another thing is the ability of people in power to abuse it. And this depends on the assessment and control of the other pole - that is, the subordinates. Everyone is afraid of losing power, which is why the slightest opportunity is used to create authoritarianism and dictatorship.
A. Medvedev: — Man is a social being, therefore his behavior largely depends on the method of interaction, that is, interaction with others. Power-subject relationships are a whole complex of complex relationships. However, if there is no control or no sanctions, the person in power will always act for his own benefit.
However, we continue to believe that if an honest person comes to power, he will remain so. Unfortunately no. This has been proven historically and scientifically. Power is evil, and absolute power is absolute evil. nothing will help here.
That is, if simple people do not control politicians, even the most honest politicians begin to steal.
