History Shows There Is No Such Thing as Absolute Power Essay

‘The undiminished ability to act in a particular way, or direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events’. Immediately one thinks of mighty Alexander, seizing every territory he set his eyes upon, or Joseph Stalin suppressing the entire population of the huge Soviet bloc with an iron fist. There are certainly individuals in history that would be regarded as absolutely powerful. Absolute power covers both being able to suppress and control opposition and support, and being able to achieve one’s aims, as both are interdependent. However, history as a study and analysis of the past through examining evidence, has shown that cultural relativism renders absolute power a much sought-after but unattainable possession; no person or organisation has been perfectly in control of their people since knowledge of other cultures has emerged, although some have attempted to claim to command it; even in the 21st Century, as seen by the North Korean rhetoric about the state’s absolute devotion to the Kim dynasty; for example, informing the population they should be willing to ‘become human bulwarks and human shields’ to defend their new leader Kim Jong-un. Since the Greeks first explored beyond their frontiers and came across cultures and religions which differed from their own, and since King Herodotus tried to pay the Greeks and Callatians to swap their respective burial practises (the Greeks burned their dead- the Callatians ate the corpse of their father) and was refused for any money, cultural relativism has existed as an obstacle to obtaining absolute power. Without cultural relativism, there are potential examples of absolute power being flouted. One that springs to mind is the ancient community who built Stonehenge. A supposedly ‘primitive’ people felt compelled to cut bluestones and transport them from south-west Wales either carrying them across hundreds of miles of mountainous and rugged terrain without technology, or by shipping them gradually over in handmade boats, before assembling them into the neat arrangement we can still see today. One prominent theory as to why this project was undertaken is that the stones are religious monuments designed to be worshipped or designed to intimidate worshippers into fearing their god. Either way, this points to a religious leader who had absolute power over his people, meaning he was able to persuade them to carry out this enormous logistical challenge. However, this essay will argue that cultural relativism has meant that apart from isolated communities such as that which built Stonehenge, no individual or organisation has possessed absolute power. On the other hand, some ancient historians would argue that the great Emperors of ancient times had absolute, autocratic power: the mighty King Darius and his vast Persian Empire, in which every provincial leader answered to him. Alexander the Great conquered almost the entire known world. Julius Caesar and his famous ‘veni, vidi, vici’ quotation, a demonstration of the ease with which he overpowered enemies. King Darius may have theoretically held absolute traditional authority over his Empire, being entitled by tradition to rule over every citizen, but it is clear that he didn’t hold absolute power. The wealthy Greek merchants in their colonies threw out Darius’s Persian provincial governors, and when Darius attempted to punish them by attacking their homeland, he was defeated. Even the fact that he had to resort to military force shows that he didn’t hold absolute power over the Greeks who were meant to answer to him as they were living in his Empire, but furthermore his military failed to preserve his power. This shows that he did not hold absolute power, and the Greek merchants rejected his leadership because they disliked it relative to the culture they were used to. Moreover, although Julius Caesar is and deserves to be recognised as an immensely powerful figure in world history, after emerging as the most successful of the Roman generals and doing the most to promote Roman interests in the further provinces, it is clear that he still didn’t hold absolute power. Absolute means universally valid and without dependence on anything else; Julius Caesar did not have the power to win over everyone, which would have prevented his murder. Evidently his power was dependent on the support of his Senate, which he failed to retain. There were over sixty conspirators involved in his murder, and he did not have the power to stop them- demonstrating that he didn’t hold absolute power over his people, as they found his leadership unacceptable relative to others. An anecdote which supports the claim that Alexander the Great did not hold absolute power is the story of his encounter with Diogenes. Alexander came across the philosopher sunbathing, and asked him if there was any favour which, as leader of the biggest Empire in the world, Alexander could fulfil for Diogenes. The philosopher simply requested that he stop obstructing the sun. After this experience, Alexander is said to have claimed that ‘if I were not Alexander, I should like to be Diogenes’, as he found the philosopher’s complete indifference to the offer of a favour from the world’s most powerful man to be such an incredible phenomenon. This shows that Alexander’s military and material wealth and power didn’t stop him from wishing he could instead be this anti-materialist philosopher. Diogenes had the power to make Alexander feel that he would prefer to be someone else, so that, even momentarily, he scored an emotional victory over him; if Alexander had had absolute power over his Empire, nobody should have been able to defeat him in any way. Throughout the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages, it could be argued that the church had absolute power in parts of Europe, as the typical image of the ordinary European peasant is one of devout, God-fearing Christianity. However, an interesting and relevant point that Carr made in his book, What is History?, is that, with religious leaders and monks being the only literate people throughout this era, records of this time are written solely from their perspective, and therefore give the impression of a very devoutly religious period in Europe. However, this could be a falsified impression, as the enlightenment and other events such as the atheistic Communist revolution later on in Russia in 1917 demonstrate that the peasants and ordinary working classes of these countries were perhaps not as influenced and submitted to control by the church as first thought. Constantly through these times there were bitter disputes between the Pope and bishops, and the nobility and royalty that ruled over Europe, the most famous of which ended in Henry VIII abandoning the Vatican and establishing the Church of England. These power struggles display that neither the religious authorities nor the monarchies had anything that could be described as absolute power. Perhaps the monarchy were against the idea of Papal consultation, relative to the image they had of rulers before the Common Era who weren’t constrained by religious authorities- but obviously this would have been rejected by their religious subjects. This is another case of cultural relativism undermining absolute power. After the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, with the decline of religious authority and an autocratic hereditary hierarchy in Europe, the power balance alters. Although some areas are still governed by monarchy, for example Russia with the Tsars, other areas see the introduction of parliamentary systems and constitutional monarchy. One key theme of the enlightenment, debatably, was to eliminate even the idea of ‘absolute power’ and absolutist, arbitrary rule by promoting democracy and fair government. For example, in France, with the execution of Louis XVI, a Republic was established. However, the result was far from a fair society in which the government was held to account. Power in France moved between different dictatorial regimes until it was seized by Napoleon Bonaparte and the Consulate. Some would argue that Napoleon held absolute power; he conquered as he willed, and ruled over a large empire autocratically despite the fact that many in Europe now supported the idea of deliberative government. He even had the audacity to declare that he wouldn’t ‘give a fig for a million lives’ in the face of conquering new territories, something that surely only someone with absolute, unassailable power would be able to say without being removed from a position of responsibility. However, on the other hand, it is evident that he failed to retain absolute power. During his rule, there was unrest throughout his territory: from 1808, for example, the Spanish people began an ongoing and constant campaign of resistance against Napoleon’s men, which could not be suppressed despite his best efforts. Then, eventually, he was defeated, and then defeated again, and ended up alone in exile on the Island of St Helen. It is possible that if the people had not had knowledge from foreign sources of more benevolent and successful rulers, they would not have overthrown Napoleon; their ability to relate their experience to other cultures caused them to oppose Napoleon. This Napoleonic style, of attempting to seize absolute, autocratic power and ruling without the security of populism has been demonstrated in dozens of scenarios since Napoleon’s fall, with a myriad of totalitarian dictatorships in Europe and beyond which attempted to suppress and rule with absolute authority. However, each example can be knocked down. Hitler, it could be argued, took power on the merit of his charismatic personality and the appeal of his vision of a strong German people- whether by attracting enough popularity or simply making his thuggish SS a large and strong-willed enough organisation to secure his high position. From then on he suppressed opposition both at home and in German-occupied territory. The way in which he achieved this largely as an individual and then ruled so strongly whilst often ignoring suggestions from his advisors, could be described as holding absolute power over Germany and the territories conquered. Furthermore, some optimists might argue that the instigation of the Holocaust against the Jews and other ‘undesirables’ implies that he had absolute power over people, as ordinary human nature would produce repulsion at the very idea, and yet it was carried out. On the other hand, there is much evidence of resistance within Germany against Hitler’s regime- ranging from political opposition by Catholics and across general German society against the T4 programme (‘euthanasia’ mass murder of disabled people), to the ‘Red Orchestra’ Communists distributing propaganda leaflets, and of course the numerous assassination plots and attempts by Hitler’s own men. The ‘Red Orchestra’ example is very useful to my argument; they had not lived under a Communist system, but had read the teachings of Karl Marx and other Communist writers and therefore felt that relative to the Nazi system, Communism would be the best for Germany. While it is true that none of these were successful as such (except, to some extent, the opposition to T4), they certainly weren’t what Hitler desired and he had not the power to prevent them. Another major dictator of the 20th Century was Josef Stalin; although the Communist state was already in existence, he still needed his skill and slyness to seize power by using his role as party secretary to eliminate potential opponents, and especially by propelling himself ahead of Trotsky in terms of popularity through behaviour such as deceiving him into travelling to an eastern province so that he wasn’t present at Lenin’s funeral. He then purged Russia, the Communist Party and the army in order to ensure absolute control, and this made internal opposition to his regime virtually inexistent in terms of visible or united resistance. His Stalinist ideology also catapulted the USSR very quickly from a backward nation to a major world power, enabling them to withstand the German Operation Barbarossa (consequently, another failure of Hitler’s) and then even to push on until they formed a stand-off with the USA and Britain in Germany. With no opposition to him within his country (and so no possibility of assassination or being toppled), and these incredible achievements, some would infer that he must have had absolute power. Be that as it may, when we explore Stalin’s aims we can see that he was largely unsuccessful. His five-year-plans demanded unattainably high increases in output- such as 200% more iron produced and 335% more electricity. However, there is much evidence that factory owners and officials ‘cooked the books’ and exaggerated production when reporting back to the Party, in order to prevent being punished for failing to keep up. This would mean that Stalin could not achieve all that he wanted. Furthermore, one of his stated aims was to reverse Russia’s backwardness in order to avoid being ‘crushed’ by the developed capitalist powers. While he did generate huge industrialisation which propelled the USSR forwards so that in 1945 it emerged as one of two world superpowers, it was at the expense of over twenty million Russians dead in around two decades, due to famines caused by economic reforms or in the gulags and the purges; this huge cost is a death rate that resembles a backward nation far more than a developed one, and so some would argue that it shows that Stalin also failed in this aim. Finally, his struggle with the Western powers, for example through annexing eastern European countries into the Soviet bloc, although continued to some extent by his successors, was lost in the end. By 1990, the USSR had begun to unravel significantly as former members became independent countries and satellite states such as Ukraine and Estonia, and turned to democracy and the free market, after first breaking the propaganda limitations in order to learn of the other way of life, until Russia formally ended Communism in the year 1991. Stalin’s legacy failed to prevent cultural relativism from reaching into the population of the USSR. On the other hand, it could be argued that although he failed to prevent the future further expansion of the USSR his huge legacy in turning Russia around into the developed nation it is today shows his absolute power. Stalin and his ideology are still popular in modern Russia, as he is seen as a hero by many for seeing off the Nazi German invasion. This legacy, coupled with the extent to which he did manage to prevent notable opposition within his territory and beyond (for example, the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico), make him an individual who was close to achieving the coveted status of having absolute power in his ‘empire’, but still his failure to achieve what he wanted demonstrates that it would be untrue to describe him as such. And now approaching the present in terms of era, an example which was mentioned much earlier on in this essay, the Kim dynasty in North Korea; they make use of the personality cult, controls on education and media, and the secret police which were used to implement Stalin’s leadership in the USSR; however like him, they have been unable to carry out their aims. Kim Jong-Il aimed to make North Koreans the ‘most prosperous people on Earth’, but under his new economic reforms, millions died in a famine and all were affected by a famine which resulted in the army downgrading the height requirements for soldiers to sign up. They have also failed to prevent the black market from flourishing in North Korea and more importantly, they haven’t been able to stop Chinese smugglers from bringing in evidence of the prosperity experienced in South Korea and other countries. Therefore despite not being in particular danger of being overthrown by the people, due to their repressive regime, the Kim dynasty have not had the power to fulfil their plans. The same could be said of the solid Communist Party in China: although they are relatively secure in their position, with legal sovereignty guaranteed over the United Front as stated by the constitution, they have had to open up to imports and exports and allow free market economics, as their Communist planned economy failed. In modern times, nobody has succeeded in fully repressing their people, as defection and resistance has always been possible if not completely successful. Absolute power cannot be attributed to any modern day regimes, because knowledge of outside cultures always finds a way in, and the people learn of their relatively poor situation and rebel. One of the important phenomena to observe over the next few years is that of South Korean DVDs being smuggled into North Korea and allowing the people exposure to other cultures; this could potentially lead to an inability to further repress the people, to combine with the failure to achieve the Kim families’ aims. It is important to consider religion when looking at this question, as we have already conceded that religious authorities in some isolated communities could have held absolute power over their followers. One could argue that especially in the case of the Abrahamic religions, which are characterised by their belief in one single, omnipotent and omniscient God, absolute power is demonstrated by the infallibility of those who represent this one God- for example, the Pope, or the Iranian Ayatollah. In the most devout of communities and times, any religious disagreement could end in death- for example, the burning of Protestants or Catholics at the stake during the European battle between these two ideologies. This can be seen as religious authorities suppressing any opposition to the rule of God. Then, there are many examples of God’s representatives influencing people to act how he would will; for example, the Crusades saw hundreds of rich knights, under the influence of the Pope, leaving the luxury and relative safety of their castles and estates to recover Jerusalem, a city they had never visited. This can be seen as religion and its leaders having the absolute power to control the actions of others. However, for one thing the misuse of the aforementioned tradition of burning religious enemies, by which people would accuse those they disliked or coveted of belonging to the undesirable faith, shows that often people weren’t following the leadership of God but using this phenomenon to their selfish advantage. Another point against religious figures having absolute power is the decline in religious participation and the growth of atheism- this ongoing decline in terms of support of god as a leader demonstrates a decline in power. In times of strife, such as the suffering of the Russians under the Tsar, people lose their faith in religious hierarchies- and in this particular example the atheistic Soviet system was spawned. In addition to this decrease in willingness to submit to religious commands, there is a clear increase in actual opposition to religion- the growth of Humanism and the growing popularity of figures such as Richard Dawkins, who preaches anti-religion and anti-theism, show that God is being undermined as a leader and so can’t have absolute power over humanity as some religious leaders would intend. From exploring all these example of hugely powerful individuals and organisations, ranging from the autocratic emperors of Ancient civilisation, to the absolute monarchies of the middle ages, the Church and the modern totalitarian dictatorships and regimes such as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, or even the Communist Party in the People’s Republic of China, we can see that although their achievements are often incredible, and required huge amounts of power and ability, none of them have been able to perfectly fit both criteria- full suppression of opposition and the full ability to achieve what they wished. Inability to fulfil their political aims can often be put down to a failure to crush opposition, and the failure to crush opposition was caused by knowledge of other cultures which the people enjoyed the idea of more than they enjoyed their own; cultural relativism. When people get the idea into their heads that there are other systems which would benefit them and make their lives better, it is impossible to fully and permanently extinguish this and continue reigning on without reforming policy (failing to do what you want) or falling from power (failing to protect against the opposition). Therefore, the only time when history can show us absolute power is in isolated communities in which the people had no understanding or conception of an alternative way of life, such as the Ancient Britons who built Stonehenge. Bibliography A Little History of the World- E.H. Gombrich What Is History? – E.H. Carr Nazi Aggression- Planned or Improvised? (The Historian)- Hendrik K. Hogrefe Webography Who Built Stonehenge? Stuart Carter (First Science) http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar_t09.html http://www.e-classics.com/ALEXANDER.htm http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/reps.html (Stalin) http://www.chinacyber.com/china_glance/politics.htm Polak