Since Norbert Elias, it is customary to think of power as a relation and not as a possession. Power is constantly challenged and risked when it is applied. It often has consequences which are not predicted which may undermine that power, but the pathways of power tend to follow socially particular, easily activated, patterns and routines.
Power depends a lot on social imagining, on fear of what would happen if it was found out we were not obeying, or imagining that those who appear powerful are legitimate in that power, rather than flimsy. Basically, power depends upon compliance and habit as much as on violence.
I think it would probably be useful to think about the sources of coercion and power. That way we could actually see why, and what kind of, organisations tend to coercion and what the bases of that coercion might be.
There are a lot of people around who see power as possessed only by institutions they don’t like. Thus Marxists often act as if all power is economic, while Libertarians only see the problem with the supposed power of the State, they hardly ever see economic power or plutocracy as a threat.
Realising there is more than one field of power relations, may be able to open up wider struggles and better analyses. We could actually see why organisations tend to coercion and what the bases of that coercion might be. It may increase the hope that perhaps we can do something. Even if one group largely dominates most of the fields then they may have more precarious dominance in other fields. The State, for example, involves not one but many fields. Corporations are a problem, as in a free market they tend to control all the fields.
With this approach, we may also be able to discuss non-coercive power and its importance. For example if co-operation is banned then few people will be able do anything. Power is necessary for social life. The problem is when its varieties becomes monopolized.
First of all let me try to make an initial list of sources of coercion, and then discuss each one in other posts. The list is certainly not exhaustive, and other suggestions are welcomed.
1) Proficiency in Violence, or control of violence, and the appearance of legitimate violence. This can be possessed by institutions such as the police, by social categories such as ‘men’, or by wealth (‘I can buy protection’). We usually call this ‘Militarism’, but a more general term might be Dynocracy.
Compulsion can come from violence or its threat, but it can also, for example, occur through social organisation in which the survival options are restricted. Thus in capitalism it is very hard to be completely self-supporting, so most people are compelled to have jobs, and to obey a boss, to survive. It is sometimes hard to see these kinds of compulsion as they seem like common sense.
2) Economic power. This primarily arises from Wealth and Ownership, or property relations. It appears in the ability to extract wealth from others, or from the labour of others, or from control of food supply. It also allows obedient servants to be rewarded with money. It is conceivable that different kinds of people may have different types of economic power, but they tend to interact and support each other. Those who own the land, generally own and control the food production. Power through wealth is usually known as Plutocracy.
In a society in which wealth is the ultimate measure of value, wealth can easily buy all the other forms of power: violence, cosmology, communication etc. In that sense Plutocracy is a form of absolute power.
3) The ability to form/impose/promulgate cosmologies. This usually involves religion and can be called theocracy, but it can manifest through those who control any other form of ‘ideology’ or ‘world view’. In our world this comes through institutions like neoclassical free market economics, which tells us what is valuable, and how societies should be organized and patterned, and how things really work – and from corporately owned media which assumes these kind of doctrine are true. This does not mean there are not other forms of economics, there are, but they have little influence unless they can look like the orthodoxy. Cosmologies can be forms of rhetoric. Note the cosmology does not have to be accurate to work as a source of power. We can call this ‘Cosmocracy‘.
Cosmology is often used to legitimate power holders. For example, Aristocrats were placed in their positions by God and, as such, are the best people to rule. Capitalists have talent and virtue, beyond ordinary mortals, and thus deserve their wealth and power. The warrior king has shown his superiority in battle and deserves to rule. Holy men are holy and therefore deserve to rule. People are pretty much equal, and we need different voices to hear the truth, therefore the people and those they choose should rule, and so on. Expert Power is based upon recognition that Experts understand cosmology correctly. However, different social groups may have different cosmologies and who is an expert can be hard to recognise, as with climate change.
4) Organisation itself confers power. The organized are generally more effective than the unorganized (up to a point). Occupying a position in an organization may demand subservience from others, require you display subservience. This form of power is usually known as ‘bureaucracy’, but nowadays that suggests a particular type of governmental organisation, but organization is visible in business and religion and so on, so we need a more general term, say Organocracy…. There may be more than one Organocracy acting in a society. Possibly the more different types of organising the better. Organisations may be fractured; for example the State, or the Corporation, is rarely uniform, and there is competition and incoherence between various parts of that body.
5) Occupying social categories. Some power or status, or lack of power and status, arises from occupying a particular, usually allocated, social category, such as gender, race, or age etc.. This often blends with organising, as occupation and position in a hierarchy can give and exclude from power, and people in particular social categories may not be eligible for positions in the organisation. This is usually part of the society’s cosmology. It is supposedly natural (or ‘in the scheme of things’) that ‘men’ demand obedience from ‘women,’ or one ‘race’ from another. People sometimes try to change their category as part of an effort to gain power or escape from oppression. People may also try and improve the status of a social category, as with the civil rights movement, black power, feminism etc. ‘Categocracy‘.
People usually have loyalty to their category and to those they define as their superiors, and this can mean they accept the cosmologies proposed by their superiors. Social categories often work by emulation. People try to become like the exemplars of the categories they identify with.
6) Control over access to communication or control over the structures of communication. This usually depends on having access to one or other of the above sources. This means control over who can be heard, who may speak, who’s ideas are promulgated, what events count as news and what doesn’t, how many people have to listen, etc. It needs to be noted that control over communication does not mean access to accurate information; the more tightly controlled the patterns of communication, or the contents of that communication, the less likely it is that the contents are accurate. Those in charge may be ignorant, as no one dares tell them what is happening. ‘Oratocracy‘.
7) Control over allocation of risk of danger, waste, hurt and health chances – also usually depends on having access to one or other of the above powers. Nevertheless this is not negligible, and the results can severely damage the opportunities that some people have in life. ‘Crapocracy‘.
8) Networked legitimacy. This indicates the way that different sources of power can reinforce each other, and become part of daily habit, and appear natural. OR the ways in which they can cut across each other and open up vulnerabilities for the establishment.
9) Inertia. There is a power which is based in the difficulties of organised change, in the fact that people tend to behave as they have in the past, in that people don’t know what to do when something new, especially a new challenge, arises. This is the power of conservatism – not to be confused with the self-named political movement, which is, nowadays, rarely conservative.
10) Motility. The ability to move quickly can be a source of power, as the people do not have to be bound to land. Guerrilla fighters can overcome armies with far vaster weaponry, if the armies cannot find them, cannot destroy their territory, and cannot pin them down. Motile corporations can exert power over States through their greater motility. They can force the State to offer them incentive to set up, they may be able to leave after destroying the environment without penalty, or with minor penalty as they never have to use that place again.
11) Control over Energy production and distribution. Societies function through energy, from human, to animal, to wind, to fossil fuels. Societies tend to become tethered to the most efficient forms of energy they can find and heavily influenced by those who control it or use it in quantity, irrespective of whether this is destructive to them or not. Slavery can destroy free labour, and cause poverty. It can also demand constant expansion to get slaves, or becomes dependent on slave traders who prey on it. Fossil fuels can destroy fertile land, poison miners, poison those near power stations and so on.
More than one source of power will frequently be controlled by the same people, or by people in opposition to each other. For example, aristocracy usually arises from a combination of control of violence, plutocracy and social category. It is also based on kinship as a mode of Organising. Capitalism tends to use wealth to buy or promote its version of the bases of power.
Whether the categories are useful or not, they should help dispel the idea that there is only one source of power, everywhere, or that the State has power in itself. When the State is autocratic, it controls, or attempts to control, most of these other forms of power – that is what gives it dominance.
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