What's the Big Mistake Men Make about Power?

Power and the Profit System

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that our economic system, the profit system, comes from and encourages the worst kind of power because its very basis is contempt. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known Ellen Reiss writes:

The profit system is, Get as much from another human being as you can while giving him as little as possible...The profit motive is fundamentally the hope that other people are weak so you can be "strong."

Eli Siegel explained in 1970 that the profit system in America had failed and would never recover. He gave wide-ranging historical, economic and cultural evidence for this in a series of lectures titled Goodbye Profit System, saying in one, "Industry has been conducted on the basis of warfare and ill will. Men live with more difficulty and incompleteness, and the world is saying 'We don't want ill will to hurt and poison our lives any more.'"

A play which criticizes the mistaken notion men have had about money and the power associated with it is Holiday by Philip Barry, which opened on Broadway in 1928 and was later made into a movie starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Mr. Siegel explained that the play represents "an attitude to money that is different," and he said:

It has been a long time in the making. Philip Barry in Holiday questioned money; almost all dramatists have...The satire of business has been persistent.

Holiday, set in a 1920s Fifth Avenue mansion, takes place in a milieu so different from the intense fear about jobs and money people are enduring today—where men who have jobs hang onto them for dear life, even if they hate them. I see some of that in people I work with every day. Yet I believe Philip Barry, through the character Johnny Case, is getting at a fundamental choice about power that men can learn from now—he wants to know the world, not run it.

We see the playwright's satire right at the opening of Holiday when we meet Julia Seton, an attractive young woman, seated at a desk in her father's huge Fifth Avenue home. Soon, Johnny Case enters and, "In an instant...she is in his arms, being kissed." Johnny and Julia met just ten days ago while on holiday at Lake Placid, and they are going to be married. But Johnny, whose family, we learn, hasa struggled terribly about money, had no idea that Julia is one of the Setons—that is, her father is a wealthy New York banker. Seeing the many servants she is surrounded by, he says to her, "It's the Grand Central. How can you stand it?"

Later, Johnny speaks with Julia's sister Linda, who is intensely critical of the snobbishness and worship of money in her father's home:

Linda.  I suppose you realize you're a rather strange bird in these parts....You don't know the kind of men we see as a rule.—Where have you been?

Johnny.  Oh—working hard...since I was ten.

Linda.  Ten. At what?

Johnny.  —Anything I could get. Law, the last few years.

Linda.  Must be ambitious.

Johnny.  [expels his breath]. I am. Not for that, though.

Linda.  For what, then?

Johnny.  Oh—to live...

Linda.  What is it you've been doing?

Johnny.  I don't call what I've been doing, living...A while ago you asked me if I knew any living people. I know damn few...Well, I mean to be one of them some day. Johnny's dream...

That dream, I believe, stands for something that is affecting people now all over America. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known titled "Jobs—and the Purpose of Our Lives," Ellen Reiss writes about this in some of the most beautifully compassionate sentences I know. She describes the power the profit system has "stunted" in people—in the millions of men and women who are forced to live in poverty, and also in those "who have seemed to benefit from it." The profit system has, she says:

...brought out states of mind in people that make impossible the thought and feelings for which their lives are meant. To see persons in terms of whether we can beat them out, and how much we can get from them while giving them as little as we can, makes impossible deep feeling about another person. It makes impossible the ability to comprehend another and to see that person's depths, knowledge, feeling as adding thrillingly and composingly to oneself. If the activity of our thought is about maneuvering, beating, outsmarting, grabbing, we cannot use our thought to comprehend widely, powerfully, tenderly.

To "comprehend widely...tenderly" stands for a desperate hope in Johnny Case; it's the power he is after. And that hope comes smack up against Edward Seton, Julia's father, who stands for the power of ruthlessly owning the world and running it. At first Edward is against Julia's marrying Johnny—he thinks Johnny isn't a fit husband for his daughter because he isn't rich or well-connected. Later Edward learns that Johnny has had some success as a businessman, he says they can marry, and tells Johnny:

Edward:  Of course, I could put you in the bank tomorrow...You're in a fair way to be a man of means at forty-five. I'm proud of you.

Johnny:  But...I'm afraid I'm not as anxious as I might be for the things most people work toward. I don't want too much money.

Edward:  Too much money? Johnny:  Well, more than I need to live by...You see, it's always been my plan to make a few thousands early in the game, if I could, and then quit for as long as they last, and try to find out who I am and what I am and what goes on and what about it...I'm sure Julia understands...don't you, Julia?

Julia:  [laughs, uncertainly]. I'm not sure I do, Johnny...

Edward:  You have some objection...to our manner of living?

Johnny.  Not for you, sir...But for me—well, you see I don't want to live in what they call "a certain way." In the first place I'd be no good at it and besides that I don't want to be identified with any one class of people. I want to live every which way, among all kinds—and know them—and understand them—and love them—that's what I want!

This play, Mr. Siegel once said, is a very serious instance of the direction that economics and people's feelings about work have been taking in this country. Johnny says:

Johnny. I'm after—all that's in me, all I am. I want to get it out—where I can look at it, know it.

Johnny wants to know himself and the world. He doesn't want a life of smug superiority to people. He wants to "understand them—and love them." He wants the power of respect, not of contempt.

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