Power Corrupts: Does Absolute Power Corrupt Society Absolutely?

In the wrong hands, power can be a disastrous tool. So what is power? Power is strength - the strength to push the human will, whether it is one's own will or whether it is someone else's will. So who has power? Everyone, in a sense, has power: you have the power to make decisions for yourself every day that affect your life. You may even be making decision for others during the day. There are people who have power over large groups of people: business managers, elementary school teachers, police officers, and day car personnel, just to name a few.

Now that we have defined power, and have an understanding of who uses power, how does the old commonplace, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely," pertain to what we know? This sentence is slightly ambiguous. Is it saying that power corrupts all people, all the time? What meaning of absolute is being used here? People reading this line might take different meanings from it. Let's look at the first part of the commonplace, "Power corrupts." So what exactly does corrupt mean to us? Simply, corrupt means to move from good morals to bad moral. Sometimes, corrupt people don't understand right from wrong. If they do, they choose to do morally wrong behavior anyway.

Understanding the idea of corruptness and applying our understanding to the commonplace, we would now assume that having power will corrupt us. Is this true? Do business managers and school teachers show signs of morally bad behaviors, using their power over others to help in their crimes and schemes? Not often do we see day care personnel brainwash thirty children into committing crimes. What we have seen are police officers abusing their power over others; they might bribe people for information, threaten people to get information out of them, or use physical force to achieve a desired outcome. Now, looking back on the commonplace, would we say power corrupts all the time, every time? No.

Now let's look at the second part of the commonplace, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Let's break this sentence down into parts we can relate to. The word absolute here means complete. Remembering what we know about the word corrupt, let's rephrase the sentence: "Complete power makes people morally bad completely." Now this sentence isn't as nearly as catchy or as easy to read as the first sentence by any means, but it is easier to visualize.

Is this part of the commonplace true? Looking back on what we "know" of historical events, we have learned of political leaders who have wanted absolute power. Thinking back, we probably cannot come up with one example of a morally good person who has wanted complete power. In comparison, we can probably spit out numerous names where leaders with bad morals have wanted complete, or absolute, power.

After we have analyzed this commonplace, let's rephrase it so that it is more true: "Having some power corrupts sometimes, but wanting all power corrupts all the time." I doubt anyone is going to ever quote our new commonplace, but at least the meaning of this sentence is less ambiguous.