Emerson's Abuse Of Excess Power

The best fitting completion for Emerson’s statement is excess power. While some amounts of power or control can be used for morally just purposes, large amounts of power will inevitably lead to the exploitation of other people by the one who is in power. Having a large amount of power bestowed unto one person is dangerous because it eliminates consequences for one’s actions. Rules and consequences are what makes society function; without them, civilization would not be able to exist as we know it today. Rules and consequences make society function because they are backed by a person, entity, or organization powerful enough to enforce them. When a position of power higher than that of the organization enforcing the rules is attained, or when

one becomes the leader of said organization, the fear of consequence is eliminated. This in turn eliminates the effectiveness of rules.
A good example of the abuse of excess power is Benito Mussolini and his establishment of a totalitarian government in Italy during the late 1920s.

In 1925, Mussolini declared himself dictator, and he established the OVRA and the Fasci di Combattimenti to exercise his will upon the population of Italy. He used these strongarm organizations to quell any possible threat to the unity of the state. Mussolini, operating as the dictator of Italy, answered to no one. His excess power led him to directly and indirectly commit many immoral acts. He was responsible for several war crimes committed against the Ethiopians during the second Italo-Abyssinian war, as well as the subjugation and indoctrination of his own people through the use of propaganda. In Mussolini’s Italy, the individual was at the very bottom of the totem pole of priority--one of the main aspects of Mussolini’s fascist ideology was that the state was always more important than the individual. However, Mussolini’s crooked use of power did not stop there. As seen in one aspect of his fascist propaganda, Mussolini states “We dream of a Roman Italy.” He attempted to revive the Roman Empire through imperialism, and justified his actions with a strong sense of nationalism. Mussolini used this same sense of nationalism to marginalize political dissent, branding those who opposed him as unpatriotic and as enemies of the state. Lastly, Mussolini both relied on and created reverence for other dictators of the time, such as

Adolf Hitler. Through these instances of corruption, one can see how the excess power gained by Mussolini caused the rise of fascism in Italy.
Not all immoral acts are committed by dictators, however.

Just as fascism can give way to dictatorship, the consolidation of power can occur in capitalist societies. For instance, in 2005, Wal-Mart settled out of a civil immigration lawsuit in which Wal-Mart was found to have employed hundreds of illegal immigrants. While one may initially believe the notion of undocumented people finding work to be a good thing, this turned out to be far from the truth. The undocumented workers were found to have been working full time for up to seven days per week without the benefits of overtime pay or injury compensation, rights that legal citizens often have access to. As one of the world’s largest retailers, Wal-Mart essentially is a corporation that is too big to fail. As such, Wal-Mart and other large corporations are able to get away with things that smaller companies and individuals could not. Similarly, Nestle has an effective monopoly on bottled water, owning upwards of 70 bottled water brands, and controlling land where water reservoirs are located. Despite areas of the United States lacking access to clean water, like parts of California and Flint, Michigan, Nestle’s chairman Peter Brabeck has said that water should be privatized and sold at prices set by the free market, and that access to water is not a human right. Large companies can also buy political influence through the use of lobbying. These instances of corporations exploiting the working class through use of their

economic power are immoral because they often disregard or exploit vulnerable people.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a transcendentalist, advocating for the empowerment of the individual. His literary works argued that large institutions were dishonorable and unethical, and that nonconformity and independence was good for oneself. Given his own ideologies, Emerson would assuredly agree that excess power, be it economic or political, is a fitting completion to his statement regarding the “surest poison”.