I’m no economist. Nor am I the son of economist. Neither are my father or I are socialists. I’ve read the Communist Manifesto but growing up in the 90s I’m very much at home in the world of capitalism. And regardless of whether you buy into the whole Protestant work ethic angle or not, I think it’s fairly safe to say that one of the greatest driving forces behind capitalism and its success is greed. Now, I’m not suggesting there aren’t others, just that it’s hard to deny that capitalism thrives on self-interest—or even something we might liken to Nietzsche’s will to power.

And before you throw a copy of the Wealth of Nations at me, please, let me explain. Furthermore, if you’re looking for someone to burn atop of a pile of Karl Marx’s books, then it’s none other than theologian R. C. Sproul. For it was in his Consequences of Ideas that I encountered the link between our corporate, capitalistic world of business and Nietzsche’s will to power.

Below I’ll offer a brief explanation of the will to power in Nietzsche’s writings; then I’ll quote part of Sproul’s summary in The Consequences of Ideas; and finally I’ll make some comment on his analogy between Nietzsche and the Western business world.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Will to Power

While there are countless places we might turn to in the German’s writings for a definition of the will to power, few are more concise than §2 of his Anti-Christ. Answering the question, “what is good?” Nietzsche says: “all that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power.” Happiness, he continues, is “the feeling that power increases” as any resistance is overcome. The will to power never settles or becomes content. For this would mean stifling that drive. The happy man isn’t the one who is virtuous but rather virulent towards his opposition, warring even. He is proficient and forever climbing, even if other people serve as rungs on his ascent.

Elsewhere, in Beyond Good and Evil (§13), Nietzsche contrasts the will to power with Darwinian self-preservation. He argues that the latter is more passive and infrequent outworking of the will to power. Our “cardinal drive,” however, is the desire to vent strength, exert power, conquer or overcome, and rise to the top ahead of everyone else.

As Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen illustrated, love and power make poor bedfellows. Life is in many ways a choice between the two. At the risk of reductionism, power accrues for itself while the ambition of love is always directed at another. For Nietzsche, those who truly live—and love life—are those who exercise the will to power.

Sproul’s Analogy Between Business and the Will

In making that summary I realise one could very quickly die the death of a thousand qualifications and countless caveats. But I offer none. Instead, I want to consider R. C. Sproul’s observation that Nietzsche’s spirit doesn’t haunt the 21st business world as much as it animates it.

“Corporates are successful only when they continue to grow and expand,” writes Sproul. “When a company enters a ‘maintenance mode,’ attempting to protect its current position, it has in effect decided to liquidate—it simply has not yet set a date for it. The urge to self-preservation is merely the result of a distressed condition. The will to power, on the other hand, struggles to produce more, at a faster rate, and more often. One life is lived at the expense of another. For someone to win the power struggle, someone must lose. There can be no conquerer without the conquered or the vanquished.”

There Are Only Winners and Losers

Admittedly, I understand very little when it comes to business. My guess is that Sproul’s initial point its mostly true: maintenance modes are an indication of distress or even crisis. However, returning to Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ (§2), self-preservation could simply be an expression of contentment, which the German considered a fatal enemy of aspiration and power—and he wasn’t wrong.

But it’s the second half of that lengthy quote from Sproul that really caught my attention when I read it.

My issue isn’t even with “the struggles to produce more, at a faster rate, and more often.” That being said, the obsession with getting more done in less time certainly matches Nietzsche’s rejection of peace and the correlated enshrinement of proficiency. Furthermore, of the many adjectives we might attribute to the corporate world, peaceful isn’t among them. I’m not disparaging productivity, just noting that it’s a way of working not something to worship in and of itself.

What struck me most when I read Sproul is just how fitting snugly the will to power fits in the corporate or business world, and capitalism by extension. This correspondence isn’t to suggest that corporate aspirations can be boiled down to becoming wealthy—though this might not be wide of the mark. Instead it’s to identify Nietzsche’s zeitgeist, in which capitalism lives and moves and has its being. “One life is lived at the expense of another.” Everyone is a competitor. “For someone to win the power struggle, someone must lose.” And it best not be you. “There can be no conquerer without the conquered or the vanquished.”

The Longing for Wealth—and Power

For all its economic sense and irrefutable benefits, capitalism is imperfect. This is true by and large because it was created by imperfect people, people with tremendous ambitions and aspirations, pioneers that longed not only for to accrue greater wealth but also to earn power. The will to power is often associated with fascism and a certain German leader. But it seems very much at home in the seemingly benign world of business too.