Where There Is Power, There Is Corruption
---Official Corruption Under Different Social Systems

外国语学院2002英教（1）班　朱奕静

     Official corruption is the abuse of the public power. The phenomenon that is prevalent in China today has caused such indignant complaints from different levels of society that many people put the blame on the social system of the country. Some people even believe that the political system of socialism is the only soil for the corruption to grow. But if we have a vertical and horizontal comparison of the corruptions seen in different social systems, we may find that socialism is not the only social system that breeds corruptions. Corruption is a tumor that may grow in any social body where public power exists.

     Public power in its broadest sense is the privilege of a person to manage the public affairs or to run the common properties. The person has far more opportunities to decide the management and distribution of the social resources. Therefore if the person is not sage enough, he may mal-use his privilege to a degree that he occupies more resources than other social members. The fact is that few people can be real sages. So few officials can be so honest as not to consider his personal interest in his official practice, provided the power is free from any supervision. But supervision always lags behind the social activities that are dynamically changing with time. With this accepted, we have the reason to believe that where there is power, there is corruption.

     In the early period of primitive society, the economic development stayed at a very low level, and according to the cultural-anthropological theory, family was the main form of social organization in which all the members shared the meager wealth equally so that no power could be abused in a strict sense. But with the appearance of tribes and clans, some people were chosen to be the leaders who had a privilege control the wealth in the tribes. So the chance began to appear for them to use the public power to gain more wealth and the first corruption appeared in human society.

     However, official corruption, administratively speaking, is related to central control of social wealth. It is conditioned by the development of social properties and people’s awareness of the importance of wealth. When people‘s awareness of the importance of wealth grew with the development of social properties, the desire for more private possessions expanded. Though primitive and slavery societies witnessed corruption, it was only an initial form.

     With the development of social economy, feudal society established various social organizations to manage the means of production, thus different fo rms of public powers were exercised and the bureaucracy emerged. The emperors or kings held the supreme power and the other officials were appointed by different means. The supervision over the power of the official could only fulfilled by the imperial powers including codes of the imperial courts. But as a Chinese saying puts it “ The maintains are so high that they block the subjects from the emperor.” Because the supervision power was highly centralized the court could not really supervise effectively the power of different levels. As a result the official corruptions were so common at all levels of the goernement.

     When the democratic social system came into being in the United States and the United Kingdom, people began to refresh their hope of establishing a society where everyone could enjoy an equal right and where all governments would be “of the people, by the people, and for the people” and no corruption would have the soil to grow. But unfortunately, human nature could not be polished off their weakness in a democratic society. People have their rights to vote and choose their presidents but this does not mean that the president from their voting will not corrupt. Watergate Scandal and the other corruptions of the presidents are the proof. Though in a democratic society laws and administrative regulations are more effective than that in feudal society. But they are not the panacea for the official corruption: weakness in human nature such as selfishness, greediness and other lusts find their way to the private gains through the gaps of laws and regulations or even break the supervision of laws.

      Officials are different from common people in two aspects: the former have the privilege to control the public properties, and as a result it is more convenient for them to get through the gaps of laws. But the foremost reason of the official corruptions is the weakness of human nature instead of the imperfectness of the forms of human institutions. Official power (or position) provides more chances for the human lust to have their full play. So in this sense we may conclude that where there is power, there is corruption.

（李荣宝教授　批阅）