Robert J. McShea, in an article in this journal entitled "How Power Corrupts" (12 [1978], 37-48), argues that "the possession of power changes people, and for the worse" (p. 37), and that this happens in five distinguishable ways. Since his article was published (according to the Editor's Note) "in view of the need for open discussion of the problems of our day" (p. 37), I propose to do some discussing of his treatment of this doubtless intriguing and important problem of the relation between power and corruption. My own view is that power, as such, does not necessarily corrupt, but that it gives the impression of doing so because, by its very nature, it strongly attracts the already corrupted and gives them vastly increased scope for indulging their pre-existent immoral propensities. For reasons that will become clear later, I do not intend to argue the conclusiveness of my own view here, but rather to argue the inconclusiveness of McShea's contrary view.
McShea deals very briefly with the first four of the five ways in which he thinks that "power affects the nature of its possessor, in which it corrupts" (p. 37), and I shall begin by looking at each of these first four ways in turn.
- Power supposedly corrupts as a result of "a structural element in all human groupings which inevitably makes for congitive differences between those who lead and those who merely belong to an organization" (p. 37), which means that possessors of power, or leaders, are unable to communicate, to those whom they have power over, all the detailed information and complex practical insights that are relevant to their decision-making processes, and that they are therefore unable to avoid practices like manipulating opinion, keeping secrets, or doctoring the truth. As McShea tersely concludes: "All leaders must lie or dissimulate. Good men who become leaders must lie or dissimulate. People who must lie and dissimulate are, more or less, corrupted" (pp. 37-38). For several reasons, this argument seems to me hardly persuasive. First, McShea does not distinguish between lying and dissimulating to those whom one leads and lying and dissimulating to leaders and members of aggressive enemy groups. Presumably, some wars are fought in just defense, and there is nothing clearly corrupt, logically or psychologically, about tactical lying and dissimulating in the face of unjust aggression from enemy groups. Here, McShea would probably reply that there is something corrupt about this, and that he has explained why in his "metaethical" J. Value Inquiry 14 (1980) 65-71. All rights reserved.