The Corruption of Power

You're home alone on a Saturday morning. Your parents are out running errands and left you in charge of the house. As you stroll through the kitchen, you spy the family cookie jar on the counter, full of you favorite cookies. The temptation to take one is awful-the cookies are right in front of you!-but you know you shouldn't. Wrestling with your conscience, you stand there, indecisive, until you realize your parents put you in charge of the house and everything in it. Besides, they wouldn't miss one little cookie, would they? You pop the lid open and take a cookie, soon reaching in for another and another, saying they couldn't possibly miss just one more, until you find that the jar has become quite empty. This is what happened to the pigs in Animal Farm. The pigs were put in a position of power and they used it to gain more and more until there was no more to gain. George Orwell points out how, when it comes to greed and human weakness, power taken out of selfishness is no different that cookies taken out of a cookie jar.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but many people don't see this because power corrupts a little bit at a time. When a kid steals cookies from the cookie jar in the kitchen they don't take all the cookies at once. They take one cookie at a time, to avoid a situation where the stolen goods have been missed, and the thieves have gotten themselves into trouble. The same is true with power; the one in power starts out with a few extra privileges, then, after a while, they've given themselves so many extra privileges that people are wondering how things got to be this way. The pigs started out giving the orders during the harvest rather than doing any work. Then they took the milk from the cows, rather than give some to all the animals on the farm. From there they slowly took grew in power, taking the beds, drinking alcohol, changing the commandments, and stuffing themselves to the point of obesity while the other animals starved. Each time, the changes seemed so little by themselves that no one noticed them, but once the results were seen as a whole, the reality of the situation was much worse than the animals had realized. This could be shown with Napoleon's secret army; the power hungry pig took the dog pups from their mothers and raised them, secretly, keeping them away from the other animals until they were all but forgotten by the time they were set upon Snowball. The sad truth was, the pigs took advantage of their position of power and made the situation for their "comrades" much worse than when they had started, under the rule of Jones.

When power corrupts people like this, it's not confined to one person, as people, no matter how greedy, tend to share their findings, whether rightfully earned or not, with their friends and allies. Before the Russian Revolution, the Czar held all power in Russia, some of which he gave to the church to better preach the citizens to lives in the manner he saw fit. The rest, the Czar used to keep himself and his family amused and away from work, wasting untold riches gained from his kingly privileges on decorative eggs, only good for collecting dust, rather than using these riches to feed his starving subjects. Farmer Jones, the Czar of the farm, then later Napoleon, giving in to greed, did much the same, living in a warm house among pleasurable trinkets, eating more food than they could ever possibly need, while the subjects of the farm, the slave driven animals, slept in an old barn with barley enough food to live off of. And it wasn't just Jones or Napoleon who enjoyed these special treatments; Jones shared the farm with his hired hands, Napoleon made sure ALL of the pigs had only the best living, food, and education. Like a child sharing stolen cookies with friends hiding under the slide in the playground, the Czar, Jones and Napoleon shared the spoils of their power, and through it their corruption, exclusively with those who could keep them in power.

When a person in a position of power and those around them take advantage of privileges they've been given and use it to gain even more power, they drain the equality and freedom of all people. In communism, all power and ownership is eliminated and everything belongs to everybody; all people are equal. The exact second someone takes something for themselves without distributing it among others who have need for it, they've gone against everything communism is about, not only taking ownership, but conjuring themselves up a small bit of power by having more than the others around them. Equality is shattered and, because of human weakness, there are very small chances that restoring it will be easy. The pigs in Animal Farm did exactly this before they began to walk on two legs, before they brought about the secret police, before the Battle of the Cowshed had even occurred, during the harvest. The pigs stole the milk that the cows had produced, keeping it for themselves, and no one else. In fact, the pigs had shattered equality even before that. During the first harvest the animals had worked on by themselves, without a farmer there, the pigs did no work, but stood there shouting orders to the working animals, taking charge. There is no equality when there's someone in charge. As a result, the other animals got no milk from the cows, slaved away in the fields while the pigs wrote on paper that was burn when the writing as done, had no freedom of speak when the secret police were introduced, and had no freedom by the time it was discovered what the pigs had ultimately become.

There is no greater corruption than power. It twists the hearts of the greatest of people and can turn even the most honest of people into scheming liars. Power made Napoleon greedy, and his greed sent him off in pursuit of more. The one who was supposed to keep order and peace on the farm became the cause of chaos and death, dragging his fellows pigs down to his level. In the end, power made Napoleon and the rest of the pigs exactly what they had hated most, and the worst part was, the pigs didn't even notice. Power is like cookies, everyone wants one, but only a few have them. The pigs are like the children that steal the cookies from the jar in the kitchen, but for the pigs, the cookies never ran out.