A Case of Corruption
contrast, when the conquistadores got to Peru they found a considerable accumulation of wealth and a corresponding accumulation of political power.
A comparison between the early American political establishment and the present one brings out the point; when in 1789 the economy of the country was largely agricultural and its total wealth was measured in millions, the scope of political authority was sharply delimited; its interventions increased in number and in extent as the productive energy of the people expanded, and now that the wealth of the nation is measured in many billions the hand of authority is felt in every private endeavor. Its interventionary powers are in proportion to its expropriation of one third of all that is produced.
When the nature of political power is put under the microscope of analysis, its incorrigible penchant for predation becomes understandable. For then one sees that political power is not "in the nature of things" but in the nature of man. It is not, like the force of gravity, self-operating and inexorable, but is an expedient devised by man to facilitate his urge for acquiring satisfactions with the least expenditure of labor. In essence, political power is the physical power, or the threat of it, that one man or a group of men may bring to bear on other men to affect behavior. It may originate in a body of social sanctions, but it is hardly political power until these sanctions are implemented with a police force. In any case, it is exercised by human beings and therefore must be related to the all-pervasive law of human action, the drive to get the most for the least.
Since all human beings are dominated by this inner drive, political power is always subject to competition, and one-man domination of the group is possible only when the group
85
