Does Justice have to be a Zero-Sum Game?

Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share, via New York Times

Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share, via New York Times

A Question for the Protesters at Charlottesville

“You will not replace us!” shouted the torch-bearing crowd of white men and women who marched on the University of Virginia over the weekend. Mr. Kessler, the event organizer, said in an interview that his goal was to “de-stigmatize white advocacy so that white people can stand up for their interests just like any other identity group” (italics mine). Both Kessler’s comments and the crowd’s declaration struck me as a deeply emotive commentary on justice and privilege. It appears, from their words, the protestors believe that current practices of affirmative action and diversity initiatives are mostly at their expense. In supporting the increase of power for a particular minority group, this country is taking, indeed stealing, the power of the majority. The alt-right marchers want with visible protest to retain their power. “You will not replace us!”

The events of this weekend prompted a question I’ve discussed with one of my conservative white friends. We’ll call him Steve. To be clear, Steve would never have participated in nor does he share the ideology of the protestors in Charlottesville, but together we’ve discussed the assumption underlying the weekend’s protest. I’ve asked Steve a question I now ask in response to the protester’s angry shouts: Does justice have to be a zero-sum game? In other words, do initiatives to provide power for one group always result in the reduction of power for another? If so, are these initiatives truly just? Is that what justice demands?

Early this summer, I read Andy Crouch’s magnificent book Playing God: Redeeming The Gift of Power. Much of my thought here originates in my engagement with Crouch’s book. I’ll be quoting it, and let me say in advance that you should consider reading the book for yourself. I hope to represent his ideas well, while also developing my own position in response to Charlottesville. I don’t pretend to give a definitive treatise on this weekend’s events but to frame them around the question I believe is at the core of what transpired. Some people fear they are in jeopardy of losing a good thing: power. Yes, power is a good thing, and the fear of losing or not having it has led many to acts of desperate violence. That is what I think we saw this weekend, and the conversation around power is a good and necessary one.

Crouch’s book begins with an exploration of definitions of power. He notes that many of us assume the proverb, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Crouch, 44). While power is a corrupting agent, many of us still think it necessary for existence. However, we believe this to be true in a very Nietzschean way. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

“My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on” (as quoted by Crouch, 46).

The events of this weekend exist in a Nietzschean world. They make sense if we believe power is limited and space must be mastered by one body forcing out another. The uneasy union described by Nietzsche was on display in the alt-right crowd, a mix of KKKs, Neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists. For the time, their interests are “sufficiently related,” so together they marched for power. “You will not replace us” reveals that this collection of people believes it is being “thrust back.” They are, in their view, literally losing ground, and the Robert E. Lee statue that inspired the march is their proof. Thus, they use force (or, in their view, “power”) to regain their space. But, what if Nietzsche was wrong about power? What if it isn’t a corrupting force that should be wielded to dominate all space? What if the Nietzschean world isn’t at all the real world?

Redefining Power

Nietzsche’s vision of the world requires force, coercion, and assumes a limited amount of space and resources. It also assumes that all exchanges of power, a word that in this framework is synonymous with force, are zero-sum transactions. Zero-sum transactions are transactions where one person’s wealth increases by exactly the amount decreased in the wealth of the other person involved in the exchange. Exchanges of money are easy examples of zero-sum transactions. When making a $50 purchase, my wealth decreases by that amount while the person I am buying from is $50 wealthier. The total amount of wealth stays the same, and the only change is its distribution. While this mode of transaction defines the exchange of money, it is not a functional description of power transactions.

Crouch argues true power transactions are positive-sum transactions. Rather than use his example, let me reintroduce Steve.

Steve and I met in college. At first, I thoroughly disliked the guy, thinking him an obnoxious upper-middle class white guy who was clueless. Through a series of unexpected connections, Steve and I became close friends. I learned that he wasn’t at all who I believed him to be, and when we graduated from college my connection to him was a saving grace. I grew up in a family with no money management skills. My parents often spent more than they had, never kept an accurate budget, and often guessed at their ability to maintain payments on major expenses. I grew up learning those habits, and it made my time in college significantly more difficult. Steve, on the other hand, grew up in a family that taught him a great deal about financial planning and how to maintain economic health.

In my last semester, I landed a job that would pay me more than I had ever made. The prospect of managing that money while still properly handling my school debts terrified me. So, I called Steve and proposed to pay him (a zero-sum transaction) to teach me how to manage money. After discussing it, we agreed on a small amount and worked on managing my money together for 6 months. Today, at the age of 27, I have more saved for retirement than either of my parents, I am nearly debt free, and have a relatively healthy financial life. At the start of our friendship, Steve had significantly more power than me by simple means of his cultural and educational background. He grew up with a wealth of knowledge inaccessible to me through my more limited connections. However, in teaching me to manage money (a transaction of power) my power was greatly increased while his was completely undamaged. The overall power of financial stewardship was multiplied not just redistributed. This, like any other form of education, is an example of positive-sum transactions.

This suggests something about the nature of power. Power is not a force meant to be applied to gain and defend “blood and soil.” Power is also not synonymous with violence (Crouch spends some time dismantling this view promoted by C. Wright Mills in the book The Power Elite, 133–39). “Power is the ability to make something of the world… a universal quality of life; Power is for flourishing” (Crouch, 17, 37). True power multiplies capacity and wealth. In other contexts, we accept this idea more readily. For instance, the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, a best-selling book on management and leadership, posits as its central thesis that the best leaders (known in the book as “multipliers”) make the people they lead smarter. Their teams increase their capability of solving harder problems and adapt to changes more quickly. In contrast, the diminisher (the term used for poor leaders) “see intelligence as static” (Wiseman, 19). Most of us can quickly think of such leaders in our work experience. We can recall the leaders that empowered versus those who assumed we were incapable. Indeed, in discussions on leadership we seem to recognize the positive-sum quality of power, and we desire for more leadership of that ilk; leadership capable of making all of us more powerful.

Power, Trust, and Love vs. Poverty, Fear, and Hatred

The distinction between true power and the Nietzschean version of it deepens on two more points. True power and the multiplication of it doesn’t come free. “There is a kind of suffering required to enter into the virtuous circle of creative power, and the suffering is required of both student and teacher” (Crouch, 42). When I approached Steve about my money problems, I had to confess a deep need and reveal the poverty, not only economic, of my upbringing. As my teacher, Steve had to endure patiently the times I called him after foolishly spending my money on unnecessary purchases. The point is that true power was developed within the context of a trusting relationship.

Secondly, my acquisition of power was only possible through love. Like Crouch, I know how silly this sounds, but it isn’t silly when compared to the events of this weekend. We are much more capable of acknowledging the presence of hate than of love. The events of this weekend were, at base, motivated by hate, a deep desire to impoverish another for one’s self-benefit. In contrast, Steve acted from love, the desire to empty oneself to make room for the full flourishing of another. “Love transfigures power” (Crouch, 45). Crouch goes on to write:

“The power to love, and in loving, to create together, is the true power that hums at the heart of the world. The power to conspire, dominate and eventually become single, isolated, lonely god is lifeless and ultimately powerless. True power comes from the very creativity and love that Nietzschean power would extinguish” (Crouch, 52).

Both love and trust guide power to its proper end. I referred to the diminishers earlier as “poor leaders.” I think it’s important to say something about poverty. As I said earlier, a series of unexpected connections led to my friendship with Steve. Those connections enriched my life and gave me more power. The same is also true of Steve. Through me he gained access to others from which he can learn and whom he can teach. “Poverty is the absence of linkages, the absence of connections with others” (quote from Jayakumar Christian, as quoted by Crouch, 23). The “diminisher” and the alt-right crowd have this in common. They are both impoverished by their belief in a static amount of power in the world. This belief keeps them from loving and trusting relationships with the “other” in their world. As Crouch reminds us:

“Because the ability to make something of the world is in a real sense the source of human well-being, because true power multiplies capacity and wealth, when any human beings live in entrenched powerlessness, all of us are impoverished” (Crouch, 19).

Conclusion

While the protestors believe they are protesting the loss of power, I believe they fear a loss of privilege. “Privilege is the ongoing benefits of past successful exercises of power” (Crouch, 150). Privilege is, as Crouch notes, indifferent, if not often blind, to whether the original acts of power were creative (true power) or oppressive (Nietzschean power) (Crouch, 153). Steve bears witness to another way, a different world, one not ruled by the beliefs of Nietzsche. In the world occupied by Steve and me, there is freedom. Steve, indifferent to his privileged status, humbly taught me to count my pennies rightly. Given my line of work, it’s possible I may one day exceed Steve in wealth. We both don’t worry about that because we know it means there is simply more power for us to pay forward for the flourishing of yet another. In this, we see a glimpse of justice. So, does justice have to be a zero-sum game?