A SURVEY of CEOs and executives showed business to be no less corrupt than government. This is not surprising since avarice and power often go hand in hand. As Lord Acton put it long ago, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’’ One can’t be too rich (“too thin’’) or too powerful; it is human to want more and more.
A recent book by Philippe Gigantes, a former Canadian correspondent, secret agent, and senator, described this in a "lively, fascinating book’’ entitled, "Power and Greed: A Short History of the World.’’ His thesis: The nature of human greed and the eternal quest for power have determined in every era and culture the outcome of world events.
He contrasts the great rulemakers for a just society and the rule-breakers of a corrupt society. On the one hand are Moses, Solon, Jesus, and Muhammad, and on the other, what he calls "the grand acquisitors,’’ who use every trick to get more than their fair share – from the warring chieftains of early societies to the robber barons of the nineteenth century, and, in our own times, the emergence of the superpower states.
He then examines the dramatic consequences of their actions – from the Crusades, revolutions, and conquering of continents, in wars, recent events in the US, and "a world that is turning more and more into a global village.’’
In sum, the insatiable pursuit of power and wealth takes no holiday, and more so now that the world has shrunk. Where the pursuit was localized before, it is now "globalized.’’ There’s nothing unusual, then, in what the survey of CEOs reveal.
However, philosophers and historians do not easily take to reductionism, a method that accounts for all of life from one or two simple principles. As the saying goes, what explains everything explains nothing. Life is no more the will to power as Nietzsche held than it is, as Freud held, the manifestation of the sex urge.
But our society today tends to convince the ordinary person that the "partnership’’ of business and government is due to power and greed.
