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From: ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Power corrupts?  A note. (Power - (nf)
Message-ID: <1254@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Jan-84 03:31:57 EST
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Posted: Sat Jan  7 03:31:57 1984
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#R:wu1:-22700:ucbesvax:7500069:000:4378
ucbesvax!turner    Jan  6 21:48:00 1984


Re: power, corruption, insecurity...

Seeking power for security is something that even the average person
does--quite understandably.  Perhaps we need to broaden our view of
the adage in question.  "Power corrupts"--corrupts who?  Maybe the
answer is: everyone.

The "security" that President Assad of Syria seeks is possibly a
little more subtle than a need for material comforts and protection
from assassins.  He is willing to take risks in the geopolitical
arena to prove his worth--as a "regional actor", a game-player to
be reckoned with.  (In some ways, he is forced to play an offensive
game internationally, in order not to have to play a defensive game
domestically against the factions that he must contend with at home.
An old trick, certainly.)  His sense of "security" is related to
danger--but not strictly dependent on it.

The "security" of Walid Jumblatt is another thing--the leader of the
Druze has no homeland for his people.  He can't afford (and doesn't
need) to go the Palestinian route, since his people are spread over
Syria, Lebanon and Israel.  Nevertheless, circumstances force him to
be based in Damascus, and to give recognition to most of Syria's
ambitions--particularly in Lebanon.  I have read interviews with him
where he seemed to be fiercely determined to gain political autonomy
for the Druze--only to crumple slightly when pressed on the question
of supporting Syria's presence in Lebanon.

Is Walid Jumblatt being corrupted--consciously, but against his will,
and with no other choice--by his need for the protection of a despot
like Assad?  And the Druze themselves?  Their choices are few--fight
or submit.  Or rather, fight AND submit.

Consider the situation in Sicily today.  There is evidence that the
Socialists (the Craxi government) engineered an economic dislocation
on the island so that the appearance of U.S. missiles, and the con-
comitant influx of American cash through military bases, would appear
as economic salvation--and thus be more peacefully accepted.  It also
seems that the Mafia has been of instrumental value in repressing
opposition to the dislocations and the subsequent U.S. presence--a role
that they have not played significantly since the days of U.S. occupation
after world war II.

The response of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) has been to use the
Sicilian dissent as a political springboard.  Yet this is the same PCI
that help repress the student/worker (Worker's Autonomy) movement of
1975-77 on the pretext of combatting the Red Brigades, working hand-
in-hand with the Christian Democrats.  (This coalition government was
called "The Historic Compromise".  Not the first time that the PCI
compromised history--see its role in breaking the factory occupations
movement of the 1920's)

This leaves the Sicilians a choice between bad and worse.  Accept Mafia
influence and U.S. presence, and prosper?  Work with the Communists,
no matter how many times they sold people out, and hope for better?
Either way, the man in the street is corrupted--not by having power,
but by simply choosing to live with it.

Look at Hungary, whose economy is the work of a great double-thinker:
Yuri Andropov.  After the Russian-aborted revolution of 1956, when
the country rebelled against a Nazi-collaborator government that the
USSR had simply re-installed after the occupation, it was decided that
the best economic model for Hungary was--Austria.  The USSR needed a
capitalist cash-cow.  The Hungarian revolution, which started
spontaneously, and was pushed forward not by dissident Communists but
by workers taking control of state factories and farms, is now
economically indistinguishable from many mixed-economy European
states--except that there are almost no political freedoms.

Hungary might have been the model of industrial anarchism--a nation
where workers governed industrial enterprises, setting the conditions
of labor, prices of goods, and volume of production through a
decentralized council system--democracy in the workplace coupled with
a market system that could be competitive or cooperative, depending
on the situation faced.  Needless to say, the Hungarians have no such
choices now.  So they get what they can.

The examples multiply, but the common tragedy is not the corruption of
rulers by power, but rather the corruption of the ruled.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)