Corruption: The Worst thing? The best thing???

Corey Robin has an uncharacteristically short and reactive post regarding corruption at his own institution.  He says that corruption is pure poison and destroys everything.  That's a pretty commonplace view.  Usually Corey is more leading edge.

I have somewhat the reverse view, as I made in two consecutive posts:

Corey hasn’t explained why he’s come to view corruption as “destroying everything.” I’m still with Foundling in #14 that there are things that are worse…and in a neoliberal meritocratic society that’s almost everything. Corruption at least tends to leave things unchanged rather than reformed towards universal wage and debt slavery.

The greatest of science, art, literature, and philosophy are all the residue of earlier corruption. Charles Darwin was a gentleman, and it is impossible to imagine otherwise. That’s to say he was the beneficiary of an ancient corruption, the original theft.

It is precisely the successors of that original theft who would be the beneficiaries of the perfect investment, if it were possible, which would benefit only the investor and neither be a cost nor a benefit to anyone else in society.

That is to say that all the benefits to anyone and everyone else have come through the corruption of capitalism, rather than its perfection.