![]() Marx's envisaged communism represents the hypothesis that power can be encouraged universally without becoming oppressive. ![]() Nietzsche represents the hypothesis that power is always oppressive since the goods we most desire are those which come at another's expense. At the center of the argument is a reconstructed "argument" between Marx and Nietzsche as to the nature of power. The work consists of analytical argument and commentary on texts: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and several recent writers on power. Only on the basis of a nonzero-sum description of power is the ideal of universal liberation coherent. If one's gain in power equals another's loss, then liberation for one can only mean oppression for another. The purpose of the inquiry is to defend the plausibility of the ideal of universal freedom or universal liberation. "Scarcity," "Conflict," and "Desire" represent practical constraints which must be addressed: the challenge is to show that a universal increase in power is possible, or at least approachable, even where power remains scarce, even where conflict continues to exist, even where power is desired apart from its ends. But it could be logically coherent yet practically impossible. ![]() It is possible in principle if one takes as the primary meaning of power the self-related capacity to realize some intention rather than describing power merely as control of others. Democracy under Siege Explore Country Data As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny. The argument is that a universal increase in power is possible in principle and at least approachable in practice. The dissertation is an inquiry into the possibility of a universal increase in power in other words, a critical examination of the "zero-sum" conception of power whereby one's gain is assumed to equal another's loss.
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