Phenomena of Power: Authority, Domination, and Violence 9780231544566

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PHENOMENA OF POWER

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES A S E R I E S I N S O C I A L T H O U G H T A N D C U LT U R A L C R I T I C I S M

Lawrence D. Kritzman, Editor European Perspectives presents outstanding books by leading European thinkers. With both classic and contemporary works, the series aims to shape the major intellectual controversies of our day and to facilitate the tasks of historical understanding. For a complete list of books in the series, see pages 203–207.

PHENOMENA O F P OW E R

A U T H O R I T Y, D O M I N A T I O N , and VIOLENCE

HEINRICH POPITZ Translated by Gianfranco Poggi Edited by Andreas Göttlich and Jochen Dreher

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York

Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu Phänomene der Macht copyright © 1992 Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Popitz, Heinrich, author. | Göttlich, Andreas, editor. Title: Phenomena of power: authority, domination, and violence / Heinrich Popitz; translated by Gianfranco Poggi; edited by Andreas Göttlich and Jochen Dreher. Other titles: Phänomene der Macht. English Description: New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. | Series: European perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016055824 | ISBN 9780231175944 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231544566 (e-book: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Authority. | Power (Philosophy) Classification: LCC HM1251 .P67 2017 | DDC 303.3/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055824

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Noah Arlow

CONTENTS

Editors’ Introduction Translator’s Note

ix

xxvii

Acknowledgments xxix

1 THE CONCEPT OF POWER 1

Historical Premises of the Problematization of Power 1 Power Orders Are Humanly Produced Ubiquity of Power

2

4

Limitation of Freedom by Power

6

Basic Anthropological Forms of Power 9 Power of Action

10

Instrumental Power

12

Authoritative Power

14

Power of Data Constitution

15

Universality of Power Forms and Their Relations

18

VICO NTENTS

PART I : FOR M S OF E N FORCE M E NT 2 VIOLENCE 25

Power of Action

26

Dissolution of Boundaries of Human Violent Relations 29 The Power of Killing

32

The Antinomy of the Perfection of Power

36

The Vicious Circle of the Repression of Violence 38 The Syndrome of Total Violence: Glorification, Indifference, and Technization

42

3 THREATENING AND BEING THREATENED 52

Structure of the Threat 53 The Imposed Alternative Self-Commitment

53

55

Controlling Current Actions via Potential Actions

56

The Everyday Nature of Threats 58 Concealed Threat and Concealed Compliance

59

Economy of the Threat 61 1. Profitability

61

2. The Extendibility of Threats 63 Excessive Disposition to Conflict

65

Modeling the Mental State of Being Threatened

67

4 THE AUTHORITY BOND 71

The Specific Nature of Being Bound by Authority 71 Effects of Authority

74

Recognition of Authority as Response to the Hankering Toward Social Recognition

79

Anthropological Foundations

Who Attains Authority?

80

82

The Significance of the Capacity to Imagine Authoritative Power

90

86

CO NTENTS VII

5 NEEDS FOR AUTHORITY: THE CHANGE IN SOCIAL SUBJECTIVITY 92

Institutional Authority: Sacred and Generative Authority 93 Needs for Recognition: Social Subjectivities Recognition of Belonging

96

98

Recognition in Ascribed, Achieved, and Public Roles Recognition of Individuality

100

104

Reciprocal Relationship of Authority

106

6 TECHNICAL ACTION 112

Usage and Rights to Usage (Property) 113 Modifying (Power of Data Constitution)

116

Producing: Organized Production (Division of Labor) and Conscious Production

118

The Typology of Technical Objectifications

121

The Growth of the Social Power Potential Through Technical Progress

PART II : FOR M S OF STAB ILIZ ATION 7 PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION 131

Power Formation on a Ship

133

1. The Superior Capacity for Organization of the Privileged

135

2. The Birth of Legitimacy from the Principle of Reciprocity

139

Power Formation in a Prisoners’ Camp

142

1. The Productive Superiority of Nuclei of Solidarity

144

2. Power Acquisition as a Process of Establishing Echelons 148

Power Formation in a Boarding School 153 1. The Reproduction of Power in the Redistribution System 155 2. The Ordering Value of the Existent Order as Basic Legitimacy

Final Comment

161

157

125

VIIICO NTENTS

8 POWER AND DOMINATION: STAGES OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF POWER 165

Institutionalization Sporadic Power

166 168

Power as a Source of Norms

170

Positionalization of Power: Domination—the Emergence of Domination Within Peasant Cultures of the Neolithic Era 174 Apparatuses of Power

182

State Domination: Routinization of Centralized Domination 184

Notes 187 Index 199

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

H

aving long achieved high praise within the German-speaking academic community, Heinrich Popitz has still yet to grow in popularity among the English-speaking audience. In the following, we would therefore like to introduce this thinker and his body of work, thus placing his particular perspective on the problem of power, the topic of the present book, within the pertinent theoretical debate. After a brief biographical sketch, we provide an overview of his work, followed by an outline of his theory of power (this paragraph is virtually an abstract of this volume). Finally, we will consider influences on Popitz’s conception as well as counterpositions with regard to the classical and current discourse on power. The introduction generally intends to give the reader, who may be coming across Heinrich Popitz’s name for the first time, some information about the life and work of the German sociologist—information that may prove helpful for understanding and assessing the lines of thought presented in his theory of power. We hope that the publication of the present translation will be followed by others, thereby making increasingly accessible more work by this highly original thinker to the international scientific community.

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THE LIFE OF HEINRICH POPITZ—A GENERATION AT THE MARGIN

Heinrich Popitz was born in Berlin, Germany, on May 14, 1925, in the period between the two world wars. At a conference of the German Sociological Association in 1998, he described himself as belonging to a “generation at the margin,”1 which witnessed the era of National Socialism “with some consciousness.” Like many members of this generation, he later dedicated himself to the question of how the catastrophes of the Second World War and the Holocaust were able to occur and, as a consequence, recognized his task as a sociologist in discovering hidden social structures. The young Heinrich grew up in a bourgeois home, yet already as a child he showed interest in his working-class neighborhood, where he sought “adventures.” His father, Johannes, was perhaps the most influential fiscal policy maker in the Weimar Republic and was one of the German conservatives at that time who at first collaborated with the National Socialists, while becoming increasingly critical of their regime over the course of time. As a consequence, he joined the resistance movement behind Graf Stauffenberg, and after the failed assassination of Hitler in 1944 he was arrested, sentenced to death, and ultimately executed in early 1945. At the time of his father’s death Heinrich Popitz was only nineteen years old; his mother had already passed away several years before. After the war he studied philosophy, history, and economics in Heidelberg and Göttingen, and in 1949 he finished a philosophical dissertation in Basel, Switzerland, his doctoral adviser being the famous philosopher Karl Jaspers.2 Although not academically trained as a sociologist, Popitz was offered a job as a social researcher in Dortmund in 1951, a professional experience that presented the opportunity to receive a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to conduct a large-scale research project on industrial workers’ perceptions of society. Popitz in retrospect said that he and his colleagues in the project were, in a sense, learning sociology by doing. They were so successful that the publications that

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arose from their work turned out to be groundbreaking in the advancement of qualitative social research in Germany and reached a status that may be compared to that of Florian Znaniecki’s and William I. Thomas’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and America.3 The aforementioned publications also reveal a feature that was to become typical for Heinrich Popitz’s scientific approach in general: the empirical examination of the Marxian theory of alienation under historically new circumstances is motivated by a methodical skepticism toward ideology in general, deeply felt by a man who had personally experienced the devastation that ideologies can produce. For Popitz, the defeat of the Nazi regime represented a radical caesura. If Germany wanted to advance as a society, restorative tendencies had to be opposed, even in sociological thought. He therefore opted for a paradigm shift away from a sociology that is akin to idealistic historiography, toward an empirical and pragmatic science of reality.4 In 1957, Popitz finished a sociological habilitation thesis in Freiburg, Germany, supervised by Arnold Bergsträsser. After a five-year stay in Basel, where he attained his first professorship, he returned to Freiburg in 1964, where he became the first ordinary professor at the newly founded Institute for Sociology. There he spent the rest of his academic career until his retirement in 1992, with only a short interruption in 1970–71, when he held the Theodor Heuss Chair at the New School for Social Research in New York. Heinrich Popitz died in 2002; his scientific estate has been a part of the Social Science Archive Konstanz since 2005. Although Heinrich Popitz did not found a particular school of thought as, for example, Niklas Luhmann did, he still exerts a lasting influence on German postwar sociology. On the one hand, he was an inspiring teacher. Among the generation of German sociology professors who are now in their sixties or seventies, many attended Popitz’s seminars in Freiburg and still praise his abilities in introducing students to sociological thinking.5 On the other hand, his rare as well as short, yet all the more elaborated, publications soon became part of the national sociological literary canon. Some of them today still are considered standard literature for students of sociology in Germany—Phenomena of Power arguably being the most important of them.

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THE WORK OF HEINRICH POPITZ—TOWARD A GENERAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

As he was a part of the first generation of German postwar sociologists, Heinrich Popitz’s thinking was embedded in the phase of a new orientation and formation of German sociology after the Second World War. This stage was characterized by a paradigm change from an idealistic to an empirically and pragmatically oriented sociology. As mentioned previously, Popitz belongs to a generation of sociologists who, due to their experiences with German National Socialism, oppose the need for orientation based on any given ideology and strive for an intellectual new beginning.6 These social scientists are guided by the idea of establishing a cognitive paradigm shift toward the empirical analysis of social facts, an idea that becomes apparent in all of their biographical documents. What they have in common is “their orientation toward the fact” through empirical research based on the conviction that focusing on the concrete, observable social reality is the ineluctable precondition of every form of sociology.7 Heinrich Popitz as well is generally skeptical of speculative theoretical constructs developed from the perspective of a philosophy of history. In opposition to this orientation, he promotes research based on the methodically controlled experience of reality, as presented in some of the classical studies in industrial sociology, made popular in Das Gesellschaftsbild des Arbeiters and in Technik und Industriearbeit,8 which are among the pioneering qualitative-interpretive investigations in Germany. In this research project, conducted in Germany’s Ruhr region coal-mining district, Popitz and colleagues developed innovative forms of data collection through phenomenologically guided observations and interviews interpreted through hermeneutic methods, with the aim of investigating the idealist-Marxist idea of selfalienation in relation to techniques and industrial work. Starting from Max Weber’s methodological individualism, Popitz generally advocates an empirically oriented theory formation in his work that focuses on the relationship between the individual and society. The analysis of complex social entities must be related to concrete

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and observable actions of individuals, which is what sociology seeks to explain. In sum, Popitz’s major intention is to develop a sociology directed toward empirical reality and grounded in anthropology and theory of action. It is specifically the influence of cultural anthropology (Bronisław Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and the like) and philosophical anthropology (Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Arnold Gehlen) that strongly determines Popitz’s research program, which can be labeled “anthropological sociology.”9 His central concern is to develop a general sociological theory that characterizes the cross-cultural fundamental structures of human sociation and that conceives the human as social being.10 In this sense, his leading question is how human sociability can be deduced from the anthropological nature of human action, parting from the idea that the human being, when acting, cocreates society, so to speak.11 From anthropological findings, Popitz develops the four essential phenomena of human sociation— norms, power, techniques, and creativity—that represent the four major theoretical pillars of his work.12 No human sociation is conceivable without norm and power structures, technical artifacts, and creativity (as manifested in exploring, creating, establishing meaning, and playing). The four major themes of Popitz’s thinking thus refer to core areas of the social as such. With reference to them, Popitz basically assumes that there is a relative reduction of the instincts of the human being, the faculty of speech, the boundlessness of human imagination, and human body intelligence, that is, the variability and the morphological potential of the sensomotoric. It is significant that Popitz’s theory not only concentrates on the topic of establishing social order, that is, on the normative construction of society and the constitution of power structures with respect to the first two pillars of his work. His theoretical framework also includes sociological aspects of the human potential for technical and technological developments as well as creative action. On the one hand, he describes culture-boundedness and relativity of social norms as “social plasticity” of human beings, referring to their formability and their potential to react to different conceptions of order. On the other hand, he speaks of “social productivity” in describing the power to create as well as

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the imagination with which humans are able to construct their organization of life. Humans are able to interpret biological conditions, reshape them, and stylize themselves through their behavior.13 This means that the human condition includes the capacity to flexibly confront normative requirements. Popitz’s late theory of creativity concentrates on the analysis of the individual and social productivity of human beings and on their potential to transcend themselves, which can be understood as the counterpoint to the theories of power and norms; the theory of creativity does reflect upon phenomena beyond the realm of constraint.14 His position strongly underlines the power of subjectivation of the individual with the potential to confront established objectified social orders and the potential to discover and create new solutions in human action. Based on these ideas, Popitz’s theoretical project aims at establishing a “general sociological theory” related to the area of tension between norm-boundedness and freedom of action as a result of human beings’ biological constitution. They are compelled to reshape their surrounding world through action to be able to satisfy their fundamental necessities in life. Their biological condition does not dictate how they ought to shape their surrounding world, because they are relieved of their instincts and left to care for themselves; without instinctively knowing how to act or knowing the boundaries within which they can act, they react to themselves by acting. In other words, his general sociological theory based on the four pillars of norms, power, techniques, and creativity not only explains the construction of social order—by establishing norms and power hierarchies—and the completion of the human world through technical achievements, but also describes the resistance against and transformation of the social order through creative action.

P H E N O M E N A O F P OW E R —THE BOOK

The considerations thus far point out that for Popitz power is a highly significant object of study. In more than three decades of teaching sociology, he regularly gave lectures on power. These lectures provided him

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with the opportunity to repeatedly think about the topic, gradually improving and refining his own understanding of it. The present book is the outcome of these ongoing reflections. It represents the peak of Popitz’s considerations of power, as it builds upon former publications that are covered in this edition: Prozesse der Machtbildung (Processes of Power Formation) from 1968 and the first edition of Phänomene der Macht (Phenomena of Power) from 1986.15 Popitz includes the various essays from these earlier publications and adds further chapters for the second edition of Phänomene der Macht, published in German in 1992, which is the basis for the translation you now hold in your hands. The genesis of Phenomena of Power within a context of teaching throws light onto some of its stylistic characteristics. First, it is written in a lucid yet nonetheless sophisticated style that avoids sociological jargon wherever possible. Apart from the personal “habitus” of the author,16 this can be explained by didactical necessities, since Popitz had to make his reflections accessible to young students who were to become sociologists in the first place. Second, it is free from wordy discussions of what other thinkers have written about power; it leads the reader directly in medias res, to the analysis of the phenomenon itself. This corresponds to a writer who has repeatedly discussed the state of the art and thus gained the sovereignty to leave such discussions largely behind and instead rely on his own reflections. Third, despite its genesis, it is a book with a clear-cut structure in which the sections build upon one another, lending the book a high degree of consistency. It is rather likely that this feature as well is a result of Popitz’s long-standing exercise in imparting his theory to an audience of students. In terms of content, the book is divided into two main parts, the first dealing with forms of the enforcement of power and the second with forms of its stabilization. They are preceded by a chapter that provides a general conceptual framework for the subsequent analyses. Already here Popitz presents his fundamental thesis: power is rooted in the human condition and is therefore part of all social relations. For him, the notion of a power-free society is indeed a utopia in the literal sense, that is, a place that does not and will never exist. Regardless of whether one prefers to call this standpoint pessimistic or rather realistic, it is important to point out that in the case of Popitz it is not connected with an

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attitude of fatalism. Power can be limited by counterpower; total power is fragile and likely to implode over the course of time. Thus, the thesis of the omnipresence of power can definitely be combined with a critical perspective on concrete power manifestations and the prospect that they may change. To overcome the trivial lament over the depravity of power and its immoral repercussions, however, presupposes what Popitz once called “the leap from bad universality to the most detailed, pedantic analysis.”17 His conceptual instrument for this purpose is the differentiation of forms of power. It allows him to conceive of societal changes not vaguely as an increase or decrease in power, but rather as a shift between its various appearances. A historical perspective complements the anthropological one. The distinction between anthropologically determined forms of power, whose thorough discussion is the subject of part 1 of Phenomena of Power, can be read as an answer to Max Weber’s observation that the concept of power is amorphous. Popitz’s conception, as it were, gives shape to a presumably shapeless phenomenon—hence the talk of “forms” instead of “ideal types” of power. It starts from the various human abilities to act and arrives at four anthropological forms of power. (1) First, power of action, especially violence, which Popitz reckons among power, thereby contradicting thinkers like Hannah Arendt. (2) Whereas violence is limited to temporary situations, the second type, instrumental power, is more persistent. It includes the power of the promise as well as that of the threat, or in other words the carrot and the stick, which are sometimes categorized separately by other thinkers. (3) Authoritative power rests upon specific socio-psychological bonds between the performer and the sufferer of power, on a process of internalization on the part of the latter. Affecting the “inner” constitution of persons, it transcends the merely behavioral dimension of the first two types. (4) Finally, data constituting power, which means the ability to influence the behavior of others via the manipulation of the shared material setting. With a view on the growing significance of the electronic processing of information, some argue that this particular power form will significantly gain importance in the near future.18

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Popitz’s claim to have found elementary forms of power is supported by the revelation of their anthropological roots. Human individuals are exposed to potential harm and are able to inflict harm on others. They make plans, are concerned and anxious about their future, and thus can be manipulated by influencing prospects. Humans need standards and look for approval from others. They also produce a “second nature” comprising artifacts that in turn influence their behavior. The four power forms are moreover part of the basic experiences any child makes during socialization, giving further evidence of their fundamental nature. After the rich and profound investigation of the four power forms, the reflections on processes of establishing power that are presented at the beginning of part 2 substantiate the more abstract considerations thus far in the form of detailed analyses of paradigmatic social interactions in which power emerges. Their general interest is inspired by David Hume: “how does it happen that few gain power over many? That a small advantage gained by some can be transformed into power over other human beings? That some power becomes more power and from more power arises much power?” (chapter 7, p. 131). Popitz seeks the answer by means of fictional episodes, albeit with a realistic background.19 These episodes all represent closed social settings of a manageable size, so that he can keep ceteris paribus assumptions to a minimum. They have the further advantage that they allow reflections on the emergence of power from an initial state, in which everybody has equal power—a starting point that is simply impossible to find when using historical examples. The first episode, situated on a Mediterranean cruiser, shows the significance of superior capability of organization and the emergence of legitimacy from the principle of reciprocity. The second episode, situated in a war prisoners’ camp, shows the productive superiority of solidarity cores and how taking over power comes along in a process of establishing echelons. The third episode, situated in an educational institution, shows the reproduction of power by means of redistribution and the significance of order in terms of a basic legitimacy. The common proposition suggested by these three episodes implies that power is always the result of human action and that established power

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relations may not be reified by sociological reflection. Power in general may be the unavoidable fate of every form of sociation, yet any concrete power structure is not. The final considerations of the chapter “Power and Domination” put the anthropological reflections within a historical framework, which Popitz understands as a further development of Weber’s pertinent thoughts. Within a general historical process of the institutionalization of power, three stages are distinguished: (1) depersonalization, (2) formalization, and (3) integration into comprehensive systems of order. Popitz considered the current assertion of power in our everyday lives to be a preliminary final stage. Looked upon as a whole, Phenomena of Power proves to be a book that well deserves its title. Popitz’s intention is not so much to inform his readers about concrete manifestations of power in any given historical situation; examples hereof are accompaniments only given for the purpose of illustration. His concern is instead to provide a handful of key concepts of universal validity, which can be applied by the reader himself when performing case studies on social power. This reflects a general attitude of Popitz, who strived for an explanation not of any concrete society—modern, postmodern, premodern, or whatever—but of society as such. His profound training in philosophical anthropology as well as his precise observational skills enabled him to break through the empirical appearances of power and to discover its bare structure, its phenomenality. It is this achievement that gives the book its continued significance.

INFLUENCES AND COUNTERPOSITIONS—PLACING POPITZ’S STANDPOINT WITHIN THE THEORETICAL DEBATE ON POWER

When comparing Popitz’s theory to other power conceptions, it is adequate to start by emphasizing that his notion of power is anthropological, as it “refers to something the human being can do—it entails the

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ability to assert oneself against external forces” (chapter 1, p. 9). “Power” is an integral element not only of human relations but also of human acting toward nature. This is specifically important with respect to the fourth form of “data constituting power,” in which the power gained over others is based on a domination of nature through technical action. This fundamental notion of power as a general consequence of human action can already be found in antique philosophy, where the roots of Popitz’s theory of power lie, with thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Thucydides, which is discussed in chapter 1. These philosophers establish an “idea of the political” that perfectly suits Popitz’s purposes: creating a concept of power based on the assumption that the political order can be rearranged and modified by human action. According to their “idea of the political,” the best constitution can be shaped following the postulates of justice, the rule of law, equality before the law, the idea of the “polis as society of the free,” or the idea of the “polis as an aggregation of citizens who see that happiness depends on freedom” (chapter 1, p. 2f.). Continuing in chronological order, it is the aforementioned Scottish philosopher David Hume who strongly influenced Popitz’s reflections on power, although Hume refrains from the use of the concept as such. Hume somehow presents the theoretical basis for Popitz’s anthropological notion of power, since he parts from the basis that power essentially belongs to the human condition and that it is universal for human beings to establish hierarchies of power when they live together. Popitz starts chapter 7, “Processes of Power Formation” (a famous piece of writing in German social sciences), with David Hume’s statement: “Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few”; Hume continues with the words (omitted by Popitz): “and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.”20 The crucial question of how the many are governed by the few posed by David Hume is answered by Heinrich Popitz’s genealogical analyses. The smaller group through its actions develops social mechanisms such as organization, specialization, division of labor, technical developments, and so on, and thus

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gains power over the majority. Th is power imposed on others may be accepted because of rational consideration or approved because it is considered to be legitimate. Another philosophical influence on Popitz’ theory of power—not explicitly mentioned in Phenomena of Power—certainly goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche’s vital philosophy. Nietzsche parts from the assumption that the “will,” as the driving force in each human being, is a “will to power” striving for a particular interpretation of the world. In this sense, the “knowing” of the philosophers “is creating, their creating is legislating, their will to truth is—will to power.”21 Nietzsche discovers the potential self-conquest of every human being based on the will to power, which is indeed an anthropological idea also present in Popitz’s thinking. The human condition is based on the quest for power over others, expressed in any form of human interaction. For Nietzsche, those who are successful in self-conquest and who are able to define an acknowledged truth are the “chosen ones” who successfully acted according to their will to power—a judgment that Popitz surely does not share, and yet he integrates Nietzschean motives into his own conception. Certainly the strongest influence on Popitz’s theory of power and his theoretical framework in general stems from Max Weber. It is Weber who handles the concept of power in a careful and distanced manner and describes it as “sociologically amorphous,” therefore refusing to deal with the diff use and unstructured topic. Instead, he concentrates on tackling the topic of domination as a form of political power, anchored in firmly established hierarchies and institutions. “Power,” according to Weber’s argumentation, is “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.”22 The focus is on the probability that one actor following his or her own will is able to dominate the other person. While Weber decides to distance himself from the rather vague and “amorphous” concept of power, it is Popitz’s self-determined task to clarify this concept, establishing four general types, or rather anthropological forms, of power: “power of action,” “instrumental power,” “authoritative power,” and “data constituting power.” They are not ideal types, developed through

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historical and cultural comparison such as Weber’s three ideal types of “legal authority,” “traditional authority,” and “charismatic authority.”23 As ideal types, these do not occur in their pure form within the empirical world; they are constructions and abstractions by the social scientist. Popitz’s four categories, however, are universal anthropological forms of power that may occur in any society. Despite this epistemological difference, specifically “instrumental power” is somehow derived from Weber’s defi nition of power, since it is based on the persistent probability of the actor to carry out his or her will, using the threat of sanctions or the promise of gratification with the effect of keeping this form of power continuous. Furthermore, Popitz’s concept of “authoritative power” is related to Weber’s ideal type of “charismatic authority,” since it is also based on the personalization of the power holder who is respected and acknowledged due to an alleged and believed authority. But as far as the legitimation of power is concerned, which Weber designated “domination,” it is important to mention that Popitz further develops Weber’s idea of a depersonalization of domination in modernity by arguing that power is bound no longer to a specific person but to the specific function of the power position. Thus, the person who holds the power position can be replaced without any changes within the power hierarchy. A rather unconventional theory of power is presented by Hannah Arendt, who is only scarcely cited by Heinrich Popitz in his volume. This is peculiar since the two of them had a close friendship based on regular meetings in Freiburg and especially during Popitz’s stay at the New School in New York City. Arendt conceived of power as based on the human condition and discovered that power only comes into existence within actions and interactions of human beings; it “springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.”24 Power according to Arendt only occurs in the moment of action; it does not exist anywhere else. The major differences of Arendt’s power conception and Popitz’s and a variety of other theorists become apparent with reference to “violence.” For Popitz, violence would be a primary stage of power; he considers violence as power to harm or “power of action,” which is only temporary and not meant to endure. Hannah

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Arendt would be completely opposed to this idea, since in her view violence would not be a form of power at all. Those who exert violence ultimately only demonstrate their powerlessness.25 She is convinced that “power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.”26 Taking the view that power is the greatest wherever it copes without violence, Arendt intends to establish a positively connoted concept of power. Another sociological conception of power that is particularly related to the one presented by Popitz is designed by Norbert Elias, who rather distances himself from Weber’s methodological individualism. As with Popitz, Elias considers power relations to be relative to the specific social context in which they occur; they are the product of human interdependence. According to Elias, social order comes into being through the continuous intertwining of actions and experiences, based on the interdependence of human beings. Power is not bound to a specific person, for him; “power is not an amulet possessed by one person and not by another; it is a structural characteristic of human relationships—of all human relationships.” Therefore, in proposing a game theory, Elias decides to replace the concept of power by the term “relative strength of the players.”27 In this respect, terms of balance serve to describe power relations and not terms of substance. If we follow Popitz, it becomes obvious that he understands power-based orders as humanly produced realities that are not divinely ordained or predetermined by myths; they are not imposed by nature or determined by traditions (see chapter 1). They are absolutely relative and relational, since they are a product of human activity; orders of power can be constructed, reshaped, and destructed. Since Popitz considers power to be a component of all social processes, for him it is ubiquitous and an anthropologically constant part of any social situation. Thus the question arises as to who are the antipodes to his position. He strictly argues that a “search for a power-free space or for a domination-free discourse appears as merely a subject for academic speculation” (chapter 1, p. 5f.). This argumentation is clearly

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meant to argue against the discourse ethics of Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, based on the assumption that normative or ethical truths can be established by analyzing the presuppositions of discourse.28 Following Habermas’s The Theory of Communicative Action, the discourse is the process of negotiation of individual validity claims of the actors. Rationality is immanent in language, he argues, which is why the results of communication are inevitably rational if communication is free of power and hierarchies. The “domination-free discourse” as an ideal offers the best possibility to reach truthful insights if it is based on discourse norms such as fundamental equality of the participants, fundamental openness to critically discuss topics and opinions, and fundamental inclusion of the public as well as authentic sentiments.29 The aim of the “domination-free discourse” is to reach communicative rationality. From Popitz’s viewpoint, since he considers power to be omnipresent, ubiquitous, and existent in any form of human interaction and communication, discourse ethical reflections appear to be fundamentally speculative. A very popular and, with respect to Popitz’s theoretical outline, contrary position is represented by Michel Foucault, who perceives “power” as the ultimate development and integration principle of our society. For him, power is always related to knowledge, which he expresses by reformulating Nietzsche’s essential reflection “the will to truth is a will to power” into “the will to knowledge is a will to power.”30 Power and knowledge, as Foucault points out, are directly mutually inclusive: “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.”31 As opposed to Popitz and Weber, who are of the opinion that orders of power are the product of human actors following their own will (acting subjects), Foucault examines knowledge discourses that have the power of subjectivation: power discourses subversively form and individualize subjects. For Foucault, “discursivation” is the execution of the will to power. He investigates technologies of power that transform individuals into subjects. From this perspective, the term “subject” describes both the subject

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subordinate to someone else and, conversely, the subject that through consciousness and self-awareness is bound to its own identity. In each case, it is a power that subjugates and subdues. These reflections allude to those of Steven Lukes, who among other things assumes that power includes the potential to prevent others from recognizing their own interests. He describes three dimensions, or “faces,” of power with respect to the formula “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that he would not otherwise do.” The first dimension of power is absolutely compatible with Weber’s and Popitz’s ideas, since it refers to the ability to affect another’s decision-making, that is, to influence B to make a decision that he would not have otherwise made. The “second face” of power is rather related to non-decision-making, when power does not operate by directly influencing B’s decision-making. Power in this case functions by preventing B from raising concerns that contradict preferences of A. As far as “the third face” of power is concerned—and here the proximity to Foucault and also Bourdieu becomes obvious—it is not only the case that A gets B to do what he or she does not want to do. A exerts power by shaping B’s thoughts and desires in a way that B is convinced that he or she acts following a free and autonomous decision. Within this dimension, power functions through thought control and manipulation and is able to provoke someone to act not according to one’s own interests.32 An internationally renowned concept of power was developed by Bourdieu, who allows us to focus on the subjective agent when investigating the phenomenon of power, especially when referring to the concepts of symbolic capital and symbolic power. Symbolic capital is any property, which could be physical, economic, cultural, or social, when other social agents recognize it based on categories of perception that motivate them to know and identify it as a providing value.33 Recognition and appreciation of the different forms of capital are important; the meaning and value of symbolic capital are given through recognition of the members of a respective social group. This recognition of symbolic capital is based on the specific habitus of the individual social agents. “Symbolic capital” is a generic term referring to economic, cultural, and social capital. With respect to Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power,

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“symbolic” refers to social symbols that function as distinguishing signs that make visible what is given on a deeper, very real, and, because of its consequences, experienceable level, the level of social order, especially of the economy.34 Objective power relations therefore tend to reproduce themselves in symbolic power relations.35 Marxian roots, also strongly relevant for Popitz, become quite obvious in Bourdieu’s conception. Following Marx, the base and objective power relations are highly significant, and different interests of the power holders determine the form and substance of the theories they develop; their material interests influence the expression of the theories.36 Similar to Marx and Bourdieu, Popitz regards the discovering of “ideologies” that support existing power hierarchies as a means of enabling counterpower. To conclude this section, we would like to mention the most important reception of Heinrich Popitz’s theory of power within the Englishspeaking academic context, which can be found in the works of Gianfranco Poggi,37 who is also the translator of this volume. He starts with Weber’s characterization of significant stratification units, such as status groups, classes, and parties, and takes up Weber’s idea of “the multiplicity of power forms.” All of these units typically align individuals who share the possession (or the lack) of a distinctive power form, centrally relevant, in turn, for the purposes of a different allocation process. Poggi establishes a basic trinity of social power forms—normative/ideological, economic, and political—that depends on a group’s privileged access to and control over specific resources. Poggi specifically follows Popitz with respect to the idea of the “institutionalization of political power,” which is related to the depersonalization and formalization of power relationships. Finally, those relationships become increasingly integrated into a broader, encompassing order. They become absorbed into a societal whole, which they support and by which they are supported. “Institutionalization” for the politically powerful is not necessarily a matter of surrendering or limiting their privileges, as Poggi argues. If they recognize that some values transcend their own interests by becoming depersonalized, formalized, and integrated, power relationships are made more secure, and their sway over the social process may become greater.38

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We end the discussion of influences and counterpositions at this point. One could certainly go on and consider other thinkers and theories, yet we are confident that what has been said—together with the preceding paragraphs—provides sufficient background information for a comprehensive understanding of Popitz’s Phenomena of Power.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

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he translator is grateful to the two colleagues from the University of Konstanz not only for their excellent introduction to the volume, but also for the indispensable contribution they made to his work in the course of several months of close collaboration. He also would like to thank his wife, Marcella Poggi Veglio, for the generous material and moral support she lent from the beginning to the enterprise of making the masterpiece of her favorite author, Heinrich Popitz, accessible to the English-reading public.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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he editors would like to thank first of all Gianfranco Poggi for his exemplary work in translating Popitz’s text. We are further grateful to Barbara Handke for her successful efforts in finding a prominent publisher for this edition, to Marie Bundt, who spent many hours with literature research and fixing technical issues, and to Daniel Kleboth, who compiled the subject index. Last but not least, we would like to say thank you to Wendy Lochner and the team from Columbia University Press for their cooperation and professional support. This book was supported by funds made available by the “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration” Center of Excellence at the University of Konstanz, established in the framework of the German Federal and State Initiative for Excellence, as well as by the Social Science Archive Konstanz.

PHENOMENA OF POWER

1 THE CONCEPT OF POWER

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he aim of the following considerations is to construct a general frame of reference for the analysis of power phenomena. In the first place, I seek to identify the historical premises of the problematization of power. In what presuppositions is our understanding of power grounded, both currently and for the foreseeable future? It appears obvious: we can assume that power constitutes a universal element of the human condition, fundamentally affecting the very essence of human sociability. On the basis of this assumption, we must also ask: On what grounds does human power rest? On what capacities for action, what conditions of existence? These questions lead us to distinguish between four fundamental anthropological forms of power. Together with some additional comments, these forms may in turn serve as analytical signposts of the discourse that follows.

HISTORICAL PREMISES OF THE PROBLEMATIZATION O F POWER

How do we problematize power? Which aspects of it do we take for granted, and which do we question? Duly addressing historically these

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questions (to the extent that they lend themselves to historical treatment) would require a comprehensive history of both the problem and the concept. And yet it is possible to briefly identify some premises almost universally agreed to, which are particularly consequential for the way in which we perceive power phenomena.

P OWE R O R DE R S A R E H U MA N LY PRO DU CE D

The first and fundamental premise is the belief in the nature of powerbased orders as humanly produced realities. These are not divinely ordained, predetermined by myths, imposed by nature, or derived from sacrosanct tradition. Rather, they are the product of human activity. In the same way as they have been brought into being, they can also be refashioned. This idea that social orders are the products of human agency is one of the incomprehensibly abrupt and radical discoveries of the Greek polis. If anything deserves to be called the “idea of the political,” this does. It renders the overarching political ordering of collective human existence something open to fashioning and modifying. In this manner, the status quo is experienced from the distance suggested by the fact that it can be imagined differently. It is now viewed as a result of human capacity. The status quo can be imagined differently when contrasting it with the imagination of something better. The idea of the political entails the belief in the possibility of designing a good order, “for the sake of the good life,”1 according to Aristotle. And, should it not be possible “to achieve the best, the good legislator and the true politician must know both what is best absolutely and what is best in the circumstances.”2 In a quest for the best constitution, whether the absolutely best or the best possible one, postulates were formulated that have ever since accompanied the idea of the political, whenever it was given new life in the course of history: the postulates of justice, the rule of law, equality before the law—since “law became the lord and king of men, not men tyrants over the law”3—and the understanding of the polis as the “soci-

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ety of the free”4 or an aggregation of citizens who “see that happiness depends on freedom.”5 The presence in close proximity to one another of the diverse political orders of Greek city states—all experiencing in various ways the precariousness of any constitution, as well as war and civil war, tyranny and revolt—must have inspired the making of comparisons. The awareness that political orders can be designed and their improvements controlled was accompanied by a relativizing skepticism, for “everything that comes into being must decay,”6 Thus the first comprehensive theories of political power systems came into being as comparative theories of constitutional forms like those of Plato and Aristotle, the intensity of which remained unmatched until Montesquieu. The second great historical phase of the belief in the possibility of the purposive production of power relations begins with the bourgeois revolutions of the modern era. Here too, as previously during the heyday of the culture of the polis, that belief is one aspect of a general assumption that one can produce changes and improvements through methodical action—an aspect of an overriding “consciousness of ability.”7 Characteristically, in the modern era this creative certainty expressed itself in the same domains of action as in antiquity: besides the ordering of political affairs, it was also in the knowledge of nature and metaphysics, navigation, architecture, the art of war, and education. Here, again, the prospecting of political-institutional changes eventuates in democratic constitutional designs. An example may suffice to characterize the idea of the political that was emerging from new conditions. In the first article of The Federalist Papers, which recommended to the electors of New York the adoption of a draft constitution for an American federal state, Alexander Hamilton writes in the year 1787: It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether

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they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Not making the right decision would “deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”8 Now is the time to make that decision and that for everyone. As happens also in France at the same time, an acute sense of the moment’s epochal significance for humanity finds expression here, transcending national boundaries. The belief in the power of reason that inspires this pathos is not naive—various risks are considered and debated—but at the end of the day it remains unshaken. Chance and violence can be overcome if we find the right concept. A constitution for free citizens is a matter of design, and that design can be put into being: we can do it. Today, we may share neither the confidence nor the enthusiasm of the American Founding Fathers. We may disagree about the scope for variation and the degree of urgency of new institutions. None of this affects the certainty that one can do things differently, and can do them better. One of the taken-for-granted premises of our understanding of power is the conviction that power is “made” and can be remade otherwise than is now the case.

U B I Q U I T Y O F P OW E R

A second premise of our historical understanding of power is the assumption that power is ubiquitous. The awareness of this, too, emerges with the bourgeois revolutions. One no longer senses, as under absolutism, that all power phenomena converge toward the institutions of the modern state, that power is intrinsically a property of the state itself. On the contrary, power is now perceived as a property of society itself.9 New classes develop power potentials of their own. The educated bourgeoisie focuses on the power of public opinion, claims the power of reason, the power of ideas.10 The property-owning bourgeoisie establishes the “power of mobile prop-

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erty,” the power of money, “the supremacy of the bankers,” the “force of property” (Marx).11 Within the proletariat emerges “the elemental force of the popular masses” as a counterpower (Engels).12 These new powers oppose the old ones: nobility, landowners, the Catholic Church. The bourgeois configuration of societal powers does not disempower the state. Externally the nation-state enforces new interests in territorial expansion, internally new rights of intervention. But “the” power is no longer concentrated within political institutions. Tensions arising from power conflicts pervade the whole society. The two vital human relationships, that between man and woman and that between parents and children, are also increasingly understood as power relationships. Behind every tension between the genders and between the generations, one detects a question of power, and wrong answers to that question occasion the breakdown of the relationship. It is presumed as a matter of course that the power at stake here is in principle of the same kind as the political power of making decisions, or the economic power of disposal over material resources. In a competitive society, power conflicts become a constant experience for the individual. Under conditions whereby the individual’s life course revolves around the opportunity for status gain or the risk of status loss, around success or failure in the competition with others, the individual’s own biography must be perceived as a sequence of voluntary or involuntary power conflicts won or lost. The more society appears open to processes of vertical mobility, the more strongly power experiences become individualized and the more individual experiences are interpreted in terms of power. When the critique of power reaches the private sphere, a process comes to conclusion that can be called the generalization of the suspicion of power. Every association, every personal bond is now exposed to the suspicion of either maintaining conventional power inequalities or breeding new ones. Power lurks behind everything—all one needs to do is to see it. It does not matter whether this view is advanced as a theoretical claim or is only emotionally supposed in the form of a generalized suspicion of power: power is assumed to be a component of all social processes. It is ubiquitous. A search for a power-free space or for a domination-free discourse appears

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as merely a subject for academic speculation. There ought to be a power-free space, somewhere—but where? It should be possible for communication to be free of domination—but how? Let us remember Max Weber’s definition: “Power means any chance, within a social relationship, of giving effect to one’s own will even against opposition, whatever such chance rests on.” Within any relationship, for whatever reason. Weber’s comment underlines the point once more: “All conceivable qualities of a person and all conceivable combinations of circumstances may put him in a position to impose his will in a given situation.”13 The assumption of the ubiquity of power is not expressly articulated here, but the independence of power from context is strongly emphasized. Power is not bound to relations having any particular content, it can associate itself with relations of whatever sort, and it intervenes everywhere. This definition is not, as it may seem, out of touch with the real world. It reflects the historical process that has eventuated in the generalization of the power suspicion.

L I M I TAT I O N O F F R E E DO M BY POWE R

The third premise of the understanding of power is based on the contrast between power and freedom. All exercise of power is a limitation of freedom. On this account, all power needs justification. Wherever a new, more sensitized consciousness of freedom makes itself felt, power relations are called into question. The times when consciousness of freedom became more acute and intense were also the times of the great theories of power. Once again, the most significant examples are offered by the Greek polis and by the modern, bourgeois revolutions. In 1802, in “The Constitution of Germany,” the young Hegel remarks: “Given that over the last ten years Europe as a whole has become aware of an awful struggle of a people for freedom, and Europe as a whole has been put in motion, unavoidably concepts regarding freedom have undergone a change and have attained clarity beyond their previous emptiness and indetermination.”14 What did the new content and the new

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determination consist in? To begin with, they express a will to liberate oneself. The initial impulse behind this new striving for liberty is the emancipation of consciousness. In Germany, Kant has famously formulated this as “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.”15 Marx goes one step further: “We must emancipate ourselves before we can emancipate others.”16 So this is the first half of the equation: “catharsis” of the concept of freedom from its “previous emptiness and indetermination” means the demand for self-emancipation, a call to come of age. The freedom movements inspired by the Enlightenment are movements toward awakening. The other half of the equation is that this new process of liberation is decisively characterized as a power struggle intended to subvert the existing power relations. Hegel: “This thought has to do with reality and has become a force opposing the present condition, and this force entails revolution in general.”17 Power conflicts qua liberation conflicts have marked the history of the last two centuries: the overthrow of the feudal order, the national liberation struggles in North America and Europe, the liberation of peoples outside Europe from colonial oppression, the innumerable movements for the emancipation of minorities, the beginnings of the emancipation of women, and, above all, overlapping with many of those power struggles, class conflicts. Here, in the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, finally emerges the most radical speculative venture of the new liberation movement: the struggle of the proletariat, in its specifically German alliance between proletariat and philosophy, leads to the emancipation of the human being, which in turn means the abolition of any kind of servitude, the suppression of all circumstances “in which man is humiliated, enslaved, abandoned, despised.”18 Insofar as the modern European-American liberation movement in its call for the self-emancipation of the individual expresses the search for an awakening, the power conflict it unleashes also entails a search for redemption. Very different consequences can be drawn from this confrontation between power and freedom. However, it has become impossible not to put into question every exercise of power as an interference with

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self-determination. This does not mean a wholesale condemnation of all power, for one views power as unavoidable: consider, for instance, the indispensable protective and educational power over children, the need for organized power within larger collectivities, the necessity of concentrated power for securing law and peace.19 Yet, in modern society all power, all imposition of limits on freedom, needs to be accounted for. There no longer is any power—neither in the state nor in the family—whose legitimacy is so unquestionable as to exempt it from justification. Every determination by others is confronted with a claim to self-determination, and every claim to power with the consciousness of freedom. Power, in all contexts, in all forms, is indissolubly connected with the question “why?” Never again will it be possible to allegedly answer that question once and for all. Power is a product of action; power orderings can be modified; a good ordering can be designed; one can do all this. Power is ubiquitous; it permeates social relations of whatever content; it presents itself everywhere. Power lays limitations on freedom; it interferes with the selfdetermination of others; and therefore it requires justification; all power is questionable. The first of these premises, namely, that power relations are a matter for human design, is part and parcel of the modern awareness that the world in which we live is something made. No power ordering is either divinely ordained or imposed by nature. Reflection on power means reflection on something in principle amenable to deliberate, planned human intervention. This is the basic constellation on which the second and third premises rest: the diff usion of the suspicion of power and the activation of a more acute claim for self-determination. Together, they render the problematic of power both wider and more intense. These premises are the outcome of a historical process, but are not limited to a particular historical constellation. Their inherent claim to universal validity is obvious. Power has come to be understood as a universal component in the genesis and operation of human societies. It is universally the case that power is a product; its effects are also universal, not connected with any specific social context; the danger it poses to self-determination is equally universal.

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If one accepts these premises—and I fail to see how one can escape their intellectual and moral cogency—they lead to an obvious theoretical consequence. The implicit anthropological grounds of the power concept must be made explicit. The assumed universality of power must be accounted for. On what rests the power of human beings over their fellow human beings? Of what capacity for action, what “ability” to prevail over others, can we avail ourselves? Why is it possible to construct power relations and modify their design? What accounts for the suspicion that the power bacillus is present in all human relations? Why is there reason to suspect that the germ of power is inherent in all human relationships? While reflecting on these questions, one must also locate the roots of unfreedom. What generates the particular susceptibility of the human being to power, its exposure to suffering from power? Power as ability and power as suffering—only if we pose questions of such general nature can we hope to attain understandings whose scope matches the premises of our historical consciousness of power.

BASIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL FORMS OF POWER

“Power,” in a general anthropological sense, refers to something the human being can do—it entails the ability to assert oneself against external forces. The history of concepts reveals numerous expressions that, often vaguely and fleetingly, point to this or that aspect of the power phenomenon. However, within all this variety, over and over again there has emerged a conception that the human species generally possesses a potency to assert oneself. Krátos means a general superiority, a capacity to subjugate, the force to overcome extraneous forces.20 In the same way, potentia remains both in Rome and in the Latin Middle Ages an undifferentiated concept relating to superior forces of any kind.21 Linked with potentia are power and pouvoir, as well as Macht in its medieval and modern German usage.22 (Kant: “Power is a capacity which can overcome great obstacles.”)23

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The concept circumscribed by krátos, potentia, and Macht appears to possess generality or indeed universality. It can encompass the whole position of the human being in the world, as well as its social constitution in both a static and a dynamic sense. This tendency can also be reconstructed in conceptual terms. The most general category underlying the power concept is the ability to modify (a capacity constitutive of all human action), that is, the disposition to alter the world through our action. Ever since humans began to settle, and thus committed themselves to produce their own provisions, they have modified nature in increasingly efficient ways; and in so doing they have also modified the mode of their own social existence. Human action has increasingly become the capacity to define anew one’s own situation. In the light of this broad capacity to produce change, the history of human power is the history of human action. Our analysis, however, does not require such a stretching (or overstretching) of the power concept. If we limit ourselves to the question of why, on the basis of what faculties, men can exercise power, and to the complementary question of why they must suffer from power, we can differentiate the human ability to assert oneself against external forces. It can be shown that such ability is connected with a variety of determinate faculties of action and a variety of equally determinate vital dependencies. In my attempt to identify more precisely these faculties and these dependencies, I have encountered four anthropologically irreducible conditions. Accordingly, I distinguish four fundamental forms of power. To clarify these distinctions, I shall resort to a chorus from Sophocles’s Antigone—the most solemn paean to human power and one of the most precise descriptions of that power we know: “Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man.”24 What are the grounds of human powerfulness?

P OW E R O F AC T I ON

1. Sophocles describes the power of the hunter who captures and kills the animals of the wilderness and the sea:

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Skillful man of clever thought Traps in the woven coils of his nets The birds, with thoughts as light as wings, And tribes of wild animals, And the creatures of the deep. With his devices he overpowers The wild beast that roams the mountain.

The hunter asserts himself against external forces with both cleverness and violence. He shows the superiority of his own power. The weaker party must suffer what the hunter does to it. A capacity to inflict harm on others, a harming power of action: this is what the human being possesses with respect to all organisms, including other men. As the hunter does to animals, so human beings can capture and kill other human beings. As a rule this power is unequally distributed. Its inequality results from inborn endowments, muscular strength, dexterity, swiftness, cleverness; it also accrues from benefit of practice and, above all, from unequal control over contrived devices that enhance the efficiency of the harming action—weapons and the organizational arrangements for combat. Since there is apparently no limit to this artificial enhancement of efficiency, the potential dangerousness of human beings for humans is also unlimited. At the same time, the human being is exposed to being harmed in multiple and subtle ways. Anything alive can be deprived of its life, yet the vulnerability of the human body to harm is particularly striking. It lacks fur and carapace and stands erect, so its vital organs are open to external attack. (The particular vulnerability is matched by a particular disposition of human fantasy toward ways of inflicting harm. Just listing the various ways to inflict the death penalty would require pages.) To the humans’ creatural vulnerability is added economic vulnerability, the multiple ways of depriving others of their means of subsistence, such as robbery, devastation of resources, and constraining their access, especially to cultivable land in particular. Finally, there is the vulnerability related to the denial of social participation. (Sophocles: [Man] is loft y in the city; but exiled, and homeless is the man who consorts with evil

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for the sake of greed and ambition. He has my curse upon him.)* The loss of social affi liations entails an unending series of exclusions and humiliations, which can jeopardize an individual’s very existence. This, then, is the first root of power: humans can exercise power over other humans because they can do harm to them. In historical terms this appears as the beginning of various forms of subjugation. Damaging acts do not presuppose any continuous methodic control or organized exploitation; they can literally be performed by simple gestures of the hand.

I NST R U ME N TAL P OWE R

2. Often the power to harm expresses itself in a single act. It can be routinized in typical ways, as happens in the seizing of booty by hunters, but qua single act it remains limited to a given trial of strength that is undertaken ever anew and is decided upon in each single case. This differentiates the damaging power of action of the hunter from another form of power, which Sophocles introduces in the same passage. The human being is also capable of taming and domesticating both “the rough-maned horse” and “the untiring mountain bull” into submitting to “a yoke over their necks.” Here power becomes durable; it can continually direct the conduct of those subjugated. The wild beast has been captured and has learned to obey. Again, harmful power of action comes into play. The beast obeys because it fears the blows. Or it may do so because it also hopes for rewards. Power is rendered durable to the extent that certain acts—punishments or rewards—can be turned respectively into threats and promises, extending across time and space the effect of the mere power to do harm. What may happen at any time can control conduct at any time. A credible danger and a credible opportunity can be put to use in grounding permanent submission. The basis of this instrumental power is the ability to give and take, to have at one’s disposal rewards and punishments, or more precisely to be * This passage in Sophocles’s Antigone immediately follows those cited before—Eds.

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able to make arrangements concerning punishments and rewards that appear credible to those concerned. The strategy behind the exercise of instrumental power requires that this credibility be generated and maintained. In the case of instrumental power, the method of exercising entails the formulation of an alternative—this or that. The person who poses the alternative assigns the conduct of those affected to one of two categories: submission or insubordination. He dichotomizes anything the affected party can do into yes-actions and no-actions. Whatever the affected party will do unavoidably constitutes an answer to a question not posed by him. The affected party cannot avoid answering. The definition of his or her situation is imposed. In the case of threat the alternative can be characterized as extortion, in the case of promise as an act of corruption. The motives generating compliance are respectively fear and hope. Such alternatives can only work because our social action is oriented to the expected conduct of others, in other words because interactions are essentially guided by expectations relating to the future. What functions to control conduct is what we believe we can foresee (or what we unconsciously anticipate). Hence, one who can credibly formulate power alternatives as a rule can also avail himself of the fact that no future state can be precisely predicted and that all orientation to the future is uncertain, and thus of the fact that anticipated futures are intrinsically versatile. It is possible to manipulate hopes even over the long term. It is possible to upgrade threats into a power to frighten others, which overshadows rational calculations. In the case of harmful power of action, men cannot successfully defend themselves from something that others do to them. In the case of instrumental controlling power, men are durably induced to act as tools on an alien will. One should note that social power—as distinct from power over animals, as with the horse and the bull—is exercised over subjects who in principle are just as capable of action as are those exercising power: they, too, are speaking, thinking subjects. The distinctive human capacity for action of those subjected to power also renders them exploitable in a specific fashion. They can place their diligent and

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planned action at the service of systems exercising power. As helpers and helpers of helpers, they can serve not only as tools but as intelligent power multipliers. The instrumental power to threaten and to promise is the typical power of everyday life, the standard way of asserting one’s will against external forces. By the same token it is a necessary component of all durable exercise of power. Every long-lasting power relationship also rests on instrumental power.

AU T H O R I TAT I V E P OWE R

3. A particularly obvious distinction between power phenomena is the contrast of “external power” (as that manifesting itself in threats and promises) with “internal power.” The latter does not need to operate by means of extrinsic advantages and disadvantages: it produces a willing, compliant disposition to obey. The effectiveness of such power is suggested by its also inducing conformity where one’s actions are not subject to another’s control. It works beyond the limits of what it can control. You carry it with yourself as internalized self-control. Internal power works even in a dark hole. Such power is effective not only in guiding actual behavior. It also guides the attitudes, perspectives, and criteria of those affected by it, the manner in which they perceive and judge something. What are the grounds of power of this nature? Its general anthropological foundation is the fact that, in order to act, the human being needs standards and norms by which to orient him- or herself. The human’s “not yet determined” nature must itself engender the constraints that guide his or her action. This happens via the great objectifications of normative orders. (In the chorus of Antigone: “He honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold.”) Such norm-making power accrues to the great mediators of those orders: priests, kings, patriarchs. As we know, this power to impose standards of action can lose its transcendental legitimacy. But its ultimate ground, the need for standards, is tremendously immune to trivialization. Today,

TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 1 5

standard-setting power is present everywhere in secularized, trivialized forms. To understand the effectiveness of “internal power” there is something else to consider. The need for standards also entails that our selfesteem depends on conformity with those standards. The person who needs standards hankers after assurance, after signs of approval that various kinds of success can evoke. Within this relationship to certain individuals and groups functioning as standard-setters, recognition on their part constitutes the decisive sign of approval. This kind of dependency brings forth what we may call authority in the strict sense. The authority relation rests on a twofold process of recognition: recognizing the superiority of others as standard-setters, and striving to be ourselves recognized, to receive from those standard-setters signs to the effect that one has proven himself. What is at stake in this authoritative bond is nothing less than the reassurance about one’s social orientation and about one’s self-esteem. Hence we encounter again the dichotomous structure that we already found with regard to instrumental power relations. Here it appears as the alternative between hoped-for recognition and dreaded withdrawal of it. Whoever can and does intentionally establish such alternatives in order to guide the conduct and attitude of others exercises authoritative power.

P OW E R O F DATA CO NSTIT U T IO N

4. We have started from the power of the human being over animals that he or she hunts and tames. But power over nature does not limit itself to other creatures. The human being can also assert him- or herself against alien forces of inanimate nature and even here establish his or her superiority over whatever comes in his or her way: the tree is felled, the ore is smelt, the clay is baked, the stone is quarried. Sophocles mentions the key activity with which the human being’s systematic overwhelming of nature commences: “Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses.”

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Clearly, to Sophocles it was obvious that this furrowing and harrowing of the earth, this putting nature to human use, constitutes one of the fundamental manifestations of human power. And this has become again evident in the light of the current awareness that the destruction of nature has come to constitute a danger to humanity. We have become conscious that we find ourselves in conflict with foreign forces operating on their own behalf. When we modify for our own benefit what is naturally given, we exercise power over nature—yet not only power over nature, but besides that also power over other men. As a rule, the artifacts we produce do not only act back on the producer by serving him more or less well. They also act upon other men: the road smooths the way for many, the wall obstructs it; farmed land supplies food to many, the overexploited earth condemns many to starvation. Those who plan and design a new settlement determine the conditions of existence, the areas of freedom, or the constraints encountered by many men. They build worlds for others. Not all technical action has such wide-ranging consequences. However, every artifact adds to the previous state of the world a new circumstance, a new datum. Those responsible for the new datum exercise in their capacity to “constitute data” a peculiar power over others, over all who are affected by them. The power to constitute data is a power mediated by objects. It is brought to bear on others in material fashion. On this account it is by no means a power of things over men—although it suggests the ideological imagery of “reified” power—but a power of producing and of the producer, built by the latter into things, which often remains long latent, but can manifest itself any time. We can dig such power mines into the ground for tens of thousands of years, affecting generations to come. Thus, there is good reason to reflect on the twofold power nature of technical action: the power over the forces of nature, and the power, mediated by objects, to determine the life conditions of other human beings. In its technical action the human being asserts himself against recalcitrant forces of nature that obey laws of their own, turns nature into artifacts, and thereby also modifies the life conditions of all those who must insert themselves into the world of artifacts.

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Human beings have power over other human beings because one inflicts harm on the other, prevailing upon his or her resistance. He can “do something” to him: interfere with his bodily integrity, his economic livelihood, his social participation. Every individual, every group is susceptible to and endangered by harm. (“Power of action.”) Human beings have power over human beings because they can take something from others or give others something, and this enables them to formulate threats and promises that guide the others’ conduct. The basis of such power is the possession of something, the (at least presumed) having at one’s disposal punishments and rewards. But this possession produces power only by putting to use the orientation to the future constitutive of human action, putting to use the human beings’ concern over the future. It is part of such concern that human beings are fearful of other human beings or hope to receive something from them; their action is thus open to influence by fear and hope. (“Instrumental power”) The other form of power steering conduct is authoritative. It rests on human beings’ need for standards and their seeking recognition from those individuals and groups whom they recognize as the sources of standards. Our self-esteem depends on such confirmation. Human beings can exercise authoritative power over one another because the need for standards and recognition engenders psychical dependencies. (“Authoritative power”) Human beings have power over other human beings by virtue of their capacity for technical action, their productive intelligence. We are affected by power via technical action because we are bound to an artificially modified world of objects, which has always been entirely or partly produced by others. The human being as the “tool-making animal”* cannot but produce the conditions of his own existence, and equally cannot but embody power decisions into things. (“Power to constitute data”)25 The roots of social power lie in the correspondence between faculties of action constitutive of the human being and the dependencies of its existence. The latter are the human being’s ability to suffer harm, its * English in the German original—Eds.

18 TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER

concern for the future, its need for standards and recognition, its dependency on artifacts. The respective action faculties are the capacity to act so as to infl ict harm, the capacity to engender fears and hopes, the capacity to set standards, the capacity for technical action. Power relations arise because relations between humans are determined by their ability to inflict harm and their openness to such harm, by fears and hopes that can be manipulated, by the inescapable necessity to set standards, and by the compulsion and the ability to modify the objective world. Or, in a nutshell: human beings can directly do something to other human beings; furthermore they can modify expectations, standards, and artifacts that exercise effects upon others. We live an existence open to harm, we depend on artifacts, our action is future-oriented and it needs orientation. Therefore we must suffer power. It is possible, so it seems to me, to derive from these four roots most of the concepts of power that have been proposed in the literature.26

UNIVERSALITY OF POWER FORMS AND THEIR RELATIONS

Instrumental power and authoritative power have something in common: they guide the conduct of those affected by them. They both work on the basis of alternatives: in the case of instrumental power the alternative between “external” advantages and disadvantages; in the case of authoritative power the alternative between attainment of recognition and withdrawal of recognition. Instrumental power guides only conduct, whereas authoritative power guides both conduct and attitude. Power of action and the power to constitute data have one thing in common: they modify the situation of those affected, and thereby the degrees of freedom of their conduct. Power of action affects the person directly. The power to constitute data decides the material-artificial conditions of existence.

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Clearly these forms of power can at any time shape social processes of any kind. This holds also if (as is undoubtedly wise to do) we limit the recourse to the power concept to cases in which we may assume the intention to exert power, that is, the intent to do harm, to guide the conduct and attitudes of others, or to modify their life circumstances. It equally holds if we limit ourselves to cases where the exercise of power is particularly evident. The person who does something that affects others is, as a rule, in a position to do serious harm to them. The person who influences the action of others by posing the alternative of foreseeable yes-or-no reactions can make use of multiple opportunities to bribe or blackmail. In the most varied contexts, what we do and what we don’t do is determined by the need for standards and for recognition, and thus by psychical dependencies which can be exploited. In the end, all social dramas in which we perform a role can be manipulated by shift ing the stage props. The chance to exercise power is part and parcel of all day-to-day social interactions. It can be put to use, intentionally and strikingly, in innumerable constellations. It is always used, and must always be used, in the process of socialization. Every child learns how to deal with power. It suffers its own vulnerability to harm—be it that something is taken away from it in order to protect it, it learns to comprehend that its actions can have good and bad consequences and that these may be brought about by others (the masters of its fear and hope), it commits itself to the attention and recognition it receives from adults and accommodates itself to a world fabricated by somebody else. The sentiment of their own inferiority is a component of children’s social knowledge, no matter how well or how badly the culture covers up this experience. Wherever human beings take care of and educate children, they exercise power intentionally and with marked superiority: as power of action, as instrumental power, as authoritative power, and as the power of imposed circumstances. The distinction between power forms can be put to three analytical usages.

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1. Each of the four forms of power can establish power relations in and of itself: as sheer violence, outright blackmail, unquestioned dignity, or sheer effectiveness of technical action. We can comprehend each of these cases to the extent that we learn to see in them the effects of a distinctive form of power. 2. Many constellations, however, are more difficult to grasp because several forms of power are present in them and operate. How do such combinations emerge? Examples are easy to come by: power of action can manifest itself in the conquest of foreign lands; the new possessions can become the sites of the instrumental power of exploitation; enduring oppression can be transfigured into authoritative power; and all these processes can find physical expression in walls and fortifications. Alternatively, by allowing him- or herself to be blackmailed by threats, somebody may finance an accumulation of a potential power of action, which only then makes it possible to carry out the threats. There are frequent connections between instrumental and authoritative power. The latter can be turned into the former. The guru can convince his devoted followers to hand over to him their possessions and thus acquire complete control over them. Or instrumental power can become authoritative. Even the cruelest potentate can acquire a kind of hieratic charisma. The result of such connections amounts to a twofold power situation. “External” and “internal” alternatives become amalgamated into combinations that are often difficult to figure out; but it remains worthwhile to detect the bipolarity behind such combination. The structure of every form of power has aspects that lend themselves to the acquisition of other forms of power. Accordingly, it is possible to distinguish between two ways by which power is accumulated: on the one hand, the internal buildup of one particular form of power (power of action leading to even more power of action, authoritative power becoming more deeply rooted); on the other hand, taking the chance afforded by any form of power to transform existing power into other, additional forms that are put to use in adding further forms to the existing one. One may indeed speak of a “tendency of power forms toward reciprocal attraction.”

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Power accumulations via the acquisition of additional forms of power are assisted by the fact that power experiences tend to become generalized. Proven superiority and suffered inferiority become generalized. If one has shown superiority or experienced inferiority in that situation, the same will happen in this situation.27 Similarly, the person who is superior in this respect will also be superior in that respect. 3. Alongside the ways in which combinations between power forms come into being, the specific modalities of their interplay are equally interesting. Such interplay can operate as a coalition between associated forces, with the different forms of power complementing and enhancing one another as if all the exits potentially open to those subjected to them were closed off at the same time. To conclude and somewhat extend this argument, let us consider a childhood memory from Peter Weiss: There stood Friederle at the fence of the neighboring garden, it was the day we moved in. He folded his arms and asked me imperiously what my name was. Are you going to live here, he asked, and I nodded and with my gaze followed the men who were carrying our furniture out of the moving van and into the house. Your house belongs to my father, Friederle said, you are only renting it. My father is a president, he said, what is your father. I did not know. What, you don’t even know what your father is, he said. I sought for an answer that would overpower him, or win his favor, but I found none. Then he asked again. What’s that you’ve got on your hat? I took the hat off. It was a sailor’s hat with golden lettering on the headband. What is that, he asked again. I did not know. Can’t you even read what’s written on your own hat, he said. It says, I am stupid. And with that he took the hat from my hand and threw it high up into a tree. The hat stuck in the branches, the long blue ribbons fluttered in the wind. My mother came out onto the terrace of our house and saw us standing there side by side. Have you found a new playmate already, she cried. Are you having fun? And I cried back, Yes, we are playing very well.28

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Here, a child is thrown into a new environment: a residential area with mansions, a garden, few neighbors, and hardly any children. It doesn’t matter, least of all to the child, to what extent the parents have themselves given shape to the environment or are merely transmitting its effects to the child. Friederle, the neighbor’s son, starts off in a boastful tone (“Your house belongs to my father,” “My father is a president”) and then quickly raises the level of aggression (“It says, I am stupid”). Finally, he grabs the stupid child’s cap and—making use of the power of action—throws it away. The child under attack, just barely arrived and younger of age, is scared. Friederle will successfully threaten him, and the best he can do is “win his favor.” Thus the ground has been laid for the consolidation of instrumental power. However, the child could run away, complain to his mother, try to make a new start. It is only the apparition of the mother with her authoritative power that blocks off all exits. “Have you found a new playmate already, she cried. Are you having fun?” This is a breathtaking concentration of clichéd expectations. The cliché of friendship: when small boys meet, they quickly make friends; that’s how children are. The cliché of adaptation: children adapt quickly to new situations. And the cliché of play: when children are together, they play. The child’s answer to his mother is easily understood. He will not “disappoint” her (the key expression for all authority relations); he wants to be the way his mother sees him, he needs the mother’s approval, and on that account he accepts her definition of the situation. It is only the authoritative bond with the mother that exposes the child to the power of the neighbor’s child. It is truly over the child’s head that the interplay of power forms begins. The child, bound to the approval of his mother and thus to her wishful thinking, becomes entrapped in helplessness. “Yes, we are playing very well.”

Part I FO R M S O F E NFO RCEM ENT

E

2 VIOLENCE

T

he most straightforward form of power is the sheer power of action: the power to inflict harm on others in an action aimed at them—the power to “ do something to them.” This does not presuppose the durable possession of superior power means. Occasionally, even a weaker party taking advantage of a favorable moment can find itself capable of power of action; but here we suppose that the harm is inflicted intentionally, not as the result of mere misfortune. Let’s leave out of consideration how the other party reacts, whether or not it seeks to defend itself. In either case, it does not manage to fend off the action aimed at itself. Whoever exercises power of action can do something from which others are not immune; he or she has the power to subject others to something. He or she can demand back what he or she has borrowed, set fire to his or her house, imprison or expel the other, mutilate, violate, kill. The power of action is the power to do harm; action-powerful is the person who can inflict harm. The harm-inflicting act manifests more openly than other forms of power how overwhelming the superiority of some human beings over others can be. At the same time, the act that infl icts harm points out the permanent vulnerability of each human being on the part of others, how open it is to harm, how fragile and exposed is its body, its person.

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Together, the ability to harm and the exposedness to harm suggest one fundamental meaning of what we call “sociation.”* The concern, fear, anxiety we experience vis-à-vis one another are aspects of sociation that can never be thought away. Living together always also means to be afraid and to protect oneself. That a human being can be harmed by another one cannot be done away with. It cannot be compensated for by any suffering and submission. “To the disadvantage of those being ruled over and to the advantage of those ruling, man is so constituted that, as long as he remains alive, there is always something else one can do to him” (Solzhenitsyn).

POWER OF ACTION

To begin with, let’s take a comprehensive look at contents and intents of power actions. If one views psychical harm not as a self-standing category but in its connection with externally manifest harms, one can identify three groups of power actions: respectively, those diminishing social participation (social integrity), those causing material harm, and those infl icting bodily harm. There are of course overlaps between them (branding someone with fire inflicts both physical harm and social discrimination), but generally one can identify one central effect. In this context, verbal reproach and expressed reproval can be understood as forewarnings that may precede each of the three types of action. Actions intended to affect the other’s social participation begin with keeping someone at a distance, expressly ignoring him or her, excluding him or her from contact. They can escalate to disparaging others, making fun of them (poor Marcel Proust, taken to church in a girl’s clothing), and lead on to formal status degradation: placing someone on the pillory; making someone ride a donkey; “the lads will tear at her wreath, what’s more, we’ll scatter chaff in front of her door.”† Or * Throughout the text, “sociation” stands for the German Vergesellschaftung—Trans. † Quotation from scene 17 of Goethe’s Faust, describing the treatment awaiting impregnated and abandoned Barbara, which Lisbeth describes to Gretchen—Trans.

VIO LENC E27

think—in a modern context—about blackballing someone seeking membership in a club. At the end of this range we fi nd full-scale social exclusion, banishment, confinement, privation of civil rights. One can also find gradation in the severity of material harm (from restriction of resources to total loss of means of subsistence) and in the severity of corporal harm (from deliberate infl iction of pain to mutilation to killing). Bodily harm is often (for the active subject) and always (for the passive subject) connected with strong emotions. This applies especially when it does not occur in the context of struggle but as punishment; here it affects not just the integrity of the body, but inexorably that of the person. The person can perhaps loosen him- or herself from social memberships denied to him or her; he or she can view itself as not dependent on material possessions that are taken from it. But he or she can never separate itself from his or her own body. It is true that bodily sufferings can often be borne and to an extent overcome. But the sufferings someone else inflicts upon us are never something “merely corporeal.” In the relation with another person we can never withdraw from our body. On this account, the person who is being physically punished perceives his or her own power inferiority not as a partial but as a general and vital submission. Systems of legal or ethical sanctions reflect this very clearly. As a rule, physical penalties are imposed only in case of particularly severe violations of norms—against “serious offenders”—and as sanctions against norm violators of lower status (handicapped people, residents without citizenship, slaves, children). They express either a particularly harsh condemnation of the act or a particularly low evaluation of the integrity of the perpetrator. Only as ultima ratio do severe physical penalties affect everyone. Lesser ones affect only those of lower status.

R All power actions can aim to establish or to increase a durable power asymmetry. The harmed person is supposed to lose his or her ability to compete: as an outsider who can no longer be taken seriously, as lacking material means, or, once again in a particularly obvious manner, as

28FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T

physically harmed. In all these cases the power distance between those acting and those affected is altered. If one considers the consequences of a power action for the relations between those capable of it and the victim, one notes, first, that several power actions have their own meaning in themselves. The robber only wants his booty; those seeking revenge only want their revenge. Once the action is accomplished, the person harmed is no longer of interest; one no longer expects of it anything more. What we see here is mere power of action. Mere power of action lies at the beginning of the story of the exercise of power among men. It was possible even before an economic basis for exploitation had been created, and before strategies for durable control had been developed. What is peculiar to it is that it entails an exercise of power by some men over other men in which the former have no interest in what the latter do. Given that mere power of action can be indefinitely increased by employing more and more effective technical means, it could be also thought of as standing at the very end of the story of human power exercise. Durable power relations are based on binding power of action. This becomes binding when it is exercised, or the plausible assumption of its exercise can be transformed into threats. For instance, a successful attack on a neighboring population may lead to imposing on it the regular payment of tribute once the repetition of attack can be credibly threatened. Or a power relation that is in the process of failing can be reestablished by a power action that adds to the credibility of the threat. Finally, inflicting harm on the weaker party even without a specific reason can stabilize the power relation in terms of demonstrating “ ‘symbolically’ the capacity of ego to control the situation.”1 On a particular day, the Spartans used to attack and offend the inferior population of the Helots in order to demonstrate their own superiority, with the additional effect of putting the willingness to fight of young Spartans to the test. In all these cases the power action being carried out has a preventive effect; it constitutes at the same time a warning regarding possible future insubordination. What we call coercion is always also—no matter how miserable, how hopeless the current circumstances of those subject to

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it—an activity under the pressure of threatened, future power actions. (Because as long as a man remains alive, there is always something else one can do to him.)

DISSOLUTION OF BOUNDAR IES OF HUMAN VIOLENT RELATIONS

We do not intend to stretch and distort the concept of violence, as has become common to do. Violence means a power action, leading to the intended bodily damaging of others, no matter whether for the actor it finds its meaning in its being carried out (as mere power of action) or, translated into threats, is supposed to establish the durable subjection of the other party (as binding power of action). If one considers what men do to others violently, we are confronted with a first and fundamental aspect: the removal of limits to the human relation of violence. The anthropological basis of such removal is the relative release, in men, from instinct, which goes along with a broad liberation from constrictions to act and impediments to acting. The release from the constraint to react violently under specific circumstances and the release from necessarily interfering inhibitions make it impossible to limit violent actions to specific motivations and specific aspects of the situation or to victimize some persons exclusively. Given this, there is no motive, no situation, no opponent that may irresistibly and automatically induce us to violence.2 Among the motives or impulses for violence, one finds most often mentioned aggression (often in association with fear). Such circumstances are indeed very significant. But violence does not necessarily presuppose either aggression or sentiment. Violent acts can be carried out coolly and without delusions, for example, as the routinized execution of commands. Violence can take place out of playful curiosity, absentmindedly or out of boredom, zealously or soberly. It has been said that one of the greatest illusions is the belief that ordinarily wars take place

3 0 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T

on the basis of illusions. One could add that it is a great illusion that wars ordinarily take place on the basis of aggressions. Peace research inspired chiefly by theories of aggression has feet of clay. The temptation of gain, of glory, or of the conversion of pagans is not necessarily a motive entailing aggression. It is a dangerous illusion to put out of the question any rational pursuit of ends. In order to solve the problem of material scarcity, the designing and production of weapons “in many cases [have] led to better effects than that of productive tools.”3 Identifying determinate aspects of the circumstances leading to violence has been a worthwhile result of research on animal behavior. Clearly humans, too, frequently react violently to those intruding into their territory or in the “struggle between rivals over sexual objects” or that over booty. But such reactions do not lend themselves (as they do for certain animal species) to be derived from objective features of the situation, which the researcher merely registers. We possess a considerable degree of freedom in how we define the situation. Under which circumstances we consider others as intruders or as rivals, what is or is not desirable booty—this is subject to considerable cultural variation, and to an extent (particularly in our culture) is up to the individual. Konrad Lorenz observed the “lack of cause” for several aggressive activities, and considered that as validating his own theory of drives. But there are much simpler assumptions that can explain such apparent lack of cause. The violent act can be the product of motives operating over the long term, immune to particular features of the current situation— had we not brought this about, we could not act deliberately. Or the formation itself of motives can be a long-term inner process, which under the surface, step by step, turns into a “cause” and does not need to be called for by particular circumstances. The fact that often one cannot discover an activating factor does not prove the drive theory, but rather suggests only the low probability of success of a search for objective features of the situation.4 Consider finally the victims of violence, the persons affected. Human beings can engage in violence toward strangers and toward intimates, toward the members of their own groups and of those of others, toward grown-ups and toward children. Certainly, there are relative inhibitions,

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but it remains highly questionable whether in concrete social relations these can ever attain the strength of the incest taboo. In times of anomie such inhibitions also break down collectively. “Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers.”5 To sum up, humans never must but always can act violently; they never must but always can kill: by themselves or in groups, on their own or within a division of labor; in all situations, fighting or taking part in celebrations; in diverse states of mind, in anger or without anger, with pleasure or without pleasure, screaming or silently (in the silence of death), for all thinkable purposes. Anybody can. A second anthropological foundation of the boundlessness of violent relations is the capacity of the human imagination, with its own lack of boundaries. Violence “exists” for the human being not only as something that takes or has taken place—in memory—but also as that which could take place: the violence feared from others, the desired triumph of one’s own violence. As we know, the horizon of what is possible widely surpasses all that one can assume. In the imagination, violence springs up in all manner of daydreams and nightmares. The imaginative transgression of what is the case naturally does not hold only for the theme of violence. But the imagination of possible violent acts is particularly obsessive and compelling. Apparently there is no free space in human consciousness that the imagination of violence cannot penetrate. The workings of the imagination are particularly boundless because they are not exclusively connected with past experience, and what is merely imagined can overcome existent inhibitions even more than our actual doings can. Imagined violence can envisage anything. Its boundlessness also becomes apparent in another boundary-expanding effect. Fantasies of violence obviously can penetrate our consciousness at any time, without a clear external stimulus. Violence seems to be always present within some corner of our consciousness. It can at any time present itself unbidden as mere imagination. Finally the representation of our own violence transcends limitations in a particularly dangerous manner because it can be thought

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up without incurring any danger itself. We can ignore, practically at our own will, any resistance, any risk, any limitation upon our own force. In our imagination our own violence is capable of colossal success. Certainly imagined violence can offer some relief from and compensation for existent conditions as well. But doubtlessly the effect of imagination can also consist in its being translated into productive activity. Thought about violence becomes actual violence. We can break through limits to action that we perceive as impediments and moralistic restrictions; after all, there are no boundaries that we cannot imagine ourselves incapable of transgressing. The extent to which we can loosen up our activity from any instinctual basis and the extent to which we can transcend reality itself in our imagination must be conceived as belonging together, as features of the same anthropological design. Their effects upon the relationship of humans to violence are conjoint and reciprocal; they amount to a twofold removal of boundaries. Finally, the resulting double effect upon motivations to action—upon the will itself, in a broad meaning of the expression—amounts to removing boundaries on what we are capable of. The particular manifestation of human intelligence constituted by the production of artifacts leads to an apparently limitless escalation of technical effectiveness. This includes the ability to generate more and more efficacious means of exercising violence, and to increase the amount of actually exercised violence.

POWER OF KILLING

The increase in violence is itself not limitless. It finds in killing its ultimate limit. To this extent, all violence has its own termination. There is a power to harm that differs from all that which humans can do to one another. “The consciousness of death” amounts not only to the awareness of one’s own mortality, but also to the awareness of the ability to kill. As suicide or as homicide, death is for the human being

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something at its disposal. It is susceptible to being killed, but can itself bring about the absolute-on-earth. Both the human relation of violence and the phenomena that remove its limits are characterized by the fact that an extreme limit can be envisaged and attained. The possibility of this, the fact that there are violent acts that cannot be surpassed, the existence of absolute violence, leads to the idea of perfect power. 1. Perfect power constitutes the extreme realization of rule over other human beings, attaining their life and death. The person who possesses absolute power literally holds in one’s hands the lives of those one rules over, whether from one’s desk or from the gallows. In this precise sense human power can attain its own perfection. On this account the act of killing stands as the symbol of complete, “total” victory and the unfailing proof of the highest majesty.6 What is absolutely superior proves itself in what is absolutely frightening. This manifests itself in diverse contexts. Absolute violence confers personal and institutional legitimation to the ruler, gives proof of knightly status and noble virtue, gives evidence of his virility, celebrates through human sacrifices the sacredness of days and places. At the summit of all legitimations from violence stands violence as a signum of the gods, the divine disposition over life and death. The triumph of the killer can reach beyond the act itself of killing, when he destroys the hope in the survival of the victim’s soul by mutilating the corpse and denying it burial. Hector, mortally wounded: “I pray you by your life and knees, and by your parents, let not dogs devour me at the ships of the Achaeans . . . and send my body home, that the Trojans and their wives may give me my dues of fire when I am dead.” Achilles: “Now I have laid you low. The Achaeans shall give him [that is, Patroklos] all due funeral rites, while dogs and vultures shall work their will upon yourself.” 7 The immense heroic story of Iliad eventuates in this theme of “the second death blow,” of the rule over the corpse of the defeated, and in the appeal of Hector’s father, imploring Achilles’s pity. In this case, as frequently happens, refraining from “the second death blow” entails refraining from the fi nal

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triumph of revenge as the ultimate annihilation of the integrity of the victim. 2. Perfect power produces perfect impotence, the power to kill produces the helpless fear of being killed. From a historical point of view, this being at another’s mercy is a trivial everyday circumstance. Most humans, at any rate from the beginnings of high cultures, have lived under conditions in which their physical existence depended on the will of a ruler. Fear, fear of death, has always affected the form of relations of rule. In the history of the world, the resistance to rule normally entails the danger of death. Correspondingly, the rule that can put in jeopardy the lives of others has constituted the most reliable guarantee of its own stability. But the fear of death is also a source of the rule’s legitimacy. Fear of death can generate reverential fear, humble reverential fear toward him who kills, an acknowledgment of immeasurable superiority of the winner, who has won the life-and-death struggle and will continue to do so. Essentially, this reverential fear toward the one who kills—the fear of the honor of the one who rules over life and death—leads to the conception that there is an ontologically higher human entity, a superiority of humans over humans similar to that of the gods. The perfection of power suggests the perfection of the person as well as the perfection of the order thus safeguarded. What this means, in its extreme manifestation that renders others impotent, is shown in a command issued in 1933 at the Dachau concentration camp, which threatens severe and humiliating punishment to whoever seeks to kill himself.8 This criminalization of suicide has two motivations, which complement each other. On the one hand to the prisoner must be denied a final decision at his own disposal, a last spark of autonomous power. On the other hand the act of killing appears as the monopoly, the privilege of the power holder. Killing oneself violates such a monopoly. One’s own life must be inviolable for the one who is under complete subjection, in order not to put into question the complete power holder’s capacity to violate it at will. 3. Jacob Burckhardt calls violence—“evil on earth”—one “part of the great economy of world history,” prefigured by “that struggle for

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life which fills all of nature, the animal and the vegetable worlds, and is carried on in the early stages of humanity by murder and robbery,” later by “the eviction, extermination or enslavement of weaker races, or of weaker peoples within the same race, of weaker States, of weaker social classes within the same State and people.”9 What is meant, at any rate by implication, is the ultimate component of all violence, the absolute violence of killing, referred to as “struggle for existence,” “murder,” “extermination.” One finds absolute violence at the beginning of larger social units—Burckhardt mentions the earliest forms of state formation, where “violence is ever the prius”—but their expansion is also grounded in violence, as to a large extent their inner stability also is, and absolute violence marks their final point. The power of humans over humans to kill also means that whole social entities, such as cities, peoples, cultures, can be disposed of in a single action, an assault, a battle, a mass murder. Each collectivity is in danger of being collectively killed. Here the final stadium of killing can attain a peculiar, semiobjective character. “The Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and settled the place themselves.”10 End and beginning—like the closing and the opening of a door. How peoples have gone under is by and large an unknown story. Burckhardt again, on Alexander’s campaigns: “All the lonely royal fortresses of individual peoples . . . which Alexander encountered marked the scenes of ghastly last struggles, of which all knowledge has been lost.”11 None of this, of course, warrants viewing all human history as nothing else but essentially a struggle over life and death, that is, a generically Darwinian view such as the one that one can mistakenly consider as echoed in the first quotation from Burckhardt. Yet violence in general and the violence of killing in particular cannot be seen as mere incidents within social relations, as marginal aspects of the social order, or as merely an extreme phenomenon or ultima ratio, not deserving excessive attention. Violence is indeed “one component of the great economy of world history,” an option permanently open to human activity. No comprehensive social order is premised upon the absence of violence.

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The power to kill and the impotence of the victim are latent or manifest foundations of the structure of human social existence.

T HE A N T I NO MY O F T H E P E R F E CT IO N O F POWE R

We have labeled “perfect” the power manifest in extreme violence, in the earthly finality of the act of killing. Its sufferers can psychically deny such perfection through their belief in a life after death, which together with all other earthly phenomena also relativizes earthly power. Yet one may question the utter perfection of power also in terms of its own premises. The fact itself of the boundlessness of what humans can do to one another imposes a boundary upon all power. To express pointedly the antinomy of the perfection of power, one can say: “Because humans can kill other humans, the power of humans over other humans can attain perfection” (in view of its earthly finality). But also: “Because humans can kill other humans, no power of humans over humans is perfect.” The incompleteness of all power that follows from the availability of the power itself to annihilate others becomes visible in the two great symbolic figures of radical resistance—the assassin and the martyr. The absolute violence exercised by the power holder can also be turned against him by the act of the assassin. For if we look on men full-grown, and consider how brittle the frame of our human body is . . . and how easy a matter it is, even for the weakest man to kill the strongest: there is no reason why any man trusting to his own strength, should conceive himself made by nature above others. They are equals, who can do equal things one against the other; but they who can do the greatest things.12

“How easy a matter it is, even for the weakest man to kill the strongest”—in fact that is not always easy, but it does not presuppose superiority either of bodily strength or of other resources. The protection of the power holder remains always insecure. Even potentates with

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several bodyguards are to this day remarkably vulnerable vis-à-vis a determined assassin. The murder of the power holder continues to affect power in itself. That even the absolute power holder can himself be killed, that the power of killing can at any time be transformed into the impotence of being killed, undoes the claim to the completeness of the power not only of a given power holder, but of all power. The worst that men can do to themselves is also something anybody can inflict on everyone. “The ability to do the greatest things” eventually again refers to equivalence: the uniformity of the human body and its creatural exposure to other men. While the assassin is the symbol of the radically active resistance, the martyr, who unconditionally denies his obedience, is the symbol of the radically passive resistance. “Even in the most oppressive and cruel cases of subordination, there is still a considerable measure of personal freedom. We merely do not become aware of it, because its manifestation would entail sacrifices which we usually never think of taking upon ourselves.”13 The sacrifice that it seems out of the question for us to accomplish is in the last instance one’s own death. The decision to take one’s own life is the final proof of one’s freedom. The person kills himself evades all subjection. Also the martyr sacrifices his life but does not take this last step by himself. He does not escape confrontation with power, but rather leads it to its extreme end. This entails something peculiar. The most extreme helplessness, insofar as it is borne, generates a power of its own, the counterpower of letting oneself be killed. The power holder can kill the martyr—he rules over his death—but cannot compel him to remain alive, to do something to preserve his life. This means he is no longer lord over life and death, having lost the lordship over the life of the other. By his own unconditional rejection of compliance, the martyr reveals that obedience is not compulsive, and this also applies to the power grounded in obedience. It becomes clear that all power to threaten (and

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to promise) is conditional. If the martyr acts upon his own belief in the justice of a life beyond—if he surpasses the boundary of life since it is not for him the ultimate boundary—then the relativization of physical existence renders all earthly power provisional and inessential. The killing of the person who resists unconditionally means furthermore that the power holder surrenders this particular power relation. The martyr can challenge him to such an extent, can push him over the threshold where all power ceases. When the martyr provokes the power holder’s own alternative, he demonstrates at the same time that he himself is the decider when all is said and done. However, what is in question here is not a kind of strategy of resistance, thus not whether the radical resistance of the martyr will somehow, in the short or long run, show itself “successful.” What is decisive is that the martyr, by having recourse to his own autonomy by getting himself killed, reveals a peculiar heteronomy of the power to kill. The assassin and the martyr publicly deny the completeness of power. Both show that the decision over life and death does not lie only with the power holder. They show that the power itself to kill limits all power of humans over humans. Power can be complete, insofar as it can do the utmost harm. Power is incomplete because the decision to do the utmost harm cannot be monopolized—anybody can kill—and the decision to let oneself be killed cannot be denied to others.

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF THE REPRESSION OF VIOLENCE

Although no claim to complete power can overcome the antinomy of all power completeness, the possibility and the awareness of the possibility of absolute violence continue to characterize the overall nature of the power to do harm and of the exposure of human beings to it. This is possible—we can do it—this can happen to us. Also the general tendency of human power relations to transcend limitations cannot be set aside. The relative release from instincts, the extent to which the powers of our

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imagination can go beyond what is the case, the possibility of increasing the means of violence continue to constitute ineliminable dangers. But the removal of limits from the power relation between humans is opposed to a specifically human opportunity to lay boundaries on violence. Social relations can be consciously organized in such a way as to reduce the danger of violent activities. Social arrangements can also, even essentially, constitute attempts to deal with violence. Theorists of a state of nature such as Hobbes and Locke have construed this point in genetic terms. The social order can not only repress violence; the idea of order arises in the state of nature from the fear of violence and from the contrasting search for security. Violence is the experience leading to the formation of order par excellence. Freud is a late descendant of this genetic conception. In Totem and Taboo he tells a wild story in which the sons kill their jealous and violent father (who exercises tyranny over a Darwinian primordial horde), eat his corpse, and in the shock of this act attain the first norms of human society, the incest taboo and that of killing. The vision of a socially binding Good and Bad can only be the product of an act that, previous to any moralistic reflection, signifies that which may not be repeated. Thus the brothers commit themselves reciprocally: “no one of them must be treated by another as their father was treated by them all jointly.”14 Freud regards the brothers’ reaction to what they themselves have done, their sense of guilt, as a productive element. Order is based on a creative sense of guilt. There is an interesting contrast with Hobbes, for whom order is based on creative fear. He views the genesis of the social order from the standpoint of the deviant actor rather than, as Freud does, that of the victim. (What according to him sets in motion the chaos of violence is, as it happens, a very modern problem: the fear of a preventive first attack on the other’s part. Since the other can kill me, if he thinks that is to his advantage, I must go on the offensive as long as the opportunity exists.) Accordingly, for Hobbes the beginnings of a social order rest on the establishment of an authoritative entity that promises protection, whereas for Freud the social order begins with a renunciation, with reciprocal autolimitation originating from the call of conscience. But the

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fundamental idea is the same in both: the notion of order arises from the experience of violence. In whatever fashion, prepolitical or political, social orders may have emerged historically—certainly not only for the reasons we have considered and often not primarily for them—violence can be limited and can be only durably limited, thanks to social institutions. (This is also the meaning of the “scientific myths” of both Freud and Hobbes.) But social orders that lay limits on violence also do not simply spirit violence away. Rather, they themselves need violence—a violence inherent in order itself—if they are to contain violence and be able to defend themselves. The design of all orders must submit to this vicious circle of the repression of violence. The social order is a necessary condition of the containment of violence—violence is a necessary condition of the preservation of the social order. Social order as a necessary condition of the containment of violence: without a system of norms, endowed with regulated sanctions, a lasting and fairly reliable limitation to violence cannot obtain. The fundamental condition is an understanding about an express prohibition of violence: Who with regard to whom in what circumstances is to abstain from what violent activities? Further, precautions against the violation of this prohibition are necessary: If forbidden violence irrupts into collective existence, who is to become active, in what regulated ways must the irruption be blocked? One cannot dispense with at least a minimum of institutionalization, of “consolidation” of such decisions. Projects of order that do not reckon with deviant conduct are based on a fiction. Violence as a necessary condition of the preservation of social orders: social orders that do not surrender their existence must from the beginning protect themselves through violence when violence is threatened. This holds for threats both from outside and from inside. (Only small groups protected by wider political collectivities can observe for a long time the imperative of no violence, as in the case of some Protestant sects.) Internally, every order that intends to contain violence and protect itself must be in a position to concentrate power. Naturally, this

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does not presuppose that monopolization of legitimate physical violence we are familiar with, or, at this stage, prestate authorities of any kind. Even societies lacking those—orders without distinctive authorities capable of undertaking decisions and sanctions—can successfully confront those responsible for violence. In the case of conflicts between members of the in-group, that can happen by means of the prevailing opinion within the group, shared by all or nearly all those who “belong.” In the case of conflicts between members of the in-group, that can happen by intervention of the general public—all or nearly all those who do belong. In the case of conflicts between members of the in-group and those of the out-group, that can happen by a gradual withdrawal of solidarity toward members of the in-group who have clearly put themselves in the wrong. In each case a tertius intervenes or threatens to intervene, one power that is stronger—stronger also as concerns means of violence—than the power that can be deployed by the concrete opponents or by a single dissentient group. Only through such concentrations of power—whether they possess permanent seats of decision or they emerge ad hoc with some degree of reliability—can orders contain violent internal conflicts between their members and defend themselves from violent challenges. Since, then, institutions or quasi-institutions that set limits to violence must themselves be capable of it, unavoidably the problem of limiting it presents itself on a new level. Who protects the members of an order from arbitrary violence on the part of the institutions that protect them? How can the delimitation of institutional violence succeed? How can one keep under control the violence that is supposed to repress violence? Let us limit ourselves to the two extreme situations. Even in despotic regimes some limitations to violence, sometimes particularly strict and effective, can assert themselves—for instance, prohibitions of violent conflicts between individual subjects or between second-order powers, such as tribes, towns, associations. Internal pacification, particularly in the aftermath of civil wars, can become a significant cause of legitimation. Yet the violence of the highest powers remains untouched by general restrictions that transcend specific opportunities.

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Only rarely, in the history of societies, has a chance presented itself to even just pose in a planned and purposive manner the question of the limitation of institutionalized violence. Basically, this happened only in the Greek polis, in republican Rome, in a few other city-states, and in the history of the modern constitutional state. The answers to that question have been surprisingly similar: the postulate of the supremacy of the law and of the equality of all before the law (“isonomia”), the principle of limitations to all legislation (basic rights), norms regarding competences (division of powers, federalism), procedural norms (decisions taken by established organs, the public nature of their operations or of the outcomes of those, the possibility of appeal to higher organs), norms of occupancy (rotation, election), norms regarding the public sphere (freedom of opinion, freedom of assembly). Such similarity between the answers, or indeed the sharing of them, suggests that there exist systemic solutions to the problem of how to limit institutionalized power and violence; naturally such solutions can only be introduced if some presuppositions are given yet to a large extent do not depend on given contexts, for instance, presenting themselves in both city-states and territorial ones. However, there definitively is no answer that can solve the problem in a satisfactory manner. Each limitation to institutionalized power and violence must in turn be subjected to limitations by the establishment of counterpowers and counterforces. A method that is nonviolent as a matter of principle is a pious dream. The vicious circle of the repression of violence inevitably always presents itself anew.

THE SYNDROME OF TOTAL VIOLENCE: GLORIFICATION, INDIFFERENCE, AND TECHNIZATION

I have called “absolute” a specific violent action, the act of killing; I would designate as “total violence” a complex of elements of action, connecting the glorification of the exercise of violence with indifference toward the

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suffering of its victims and with the technization of the performance of violence. None of these elements is a historical novelty. Today, however, their combination brings about an activity of such a potency of action that in regard to it all historically experienced ways of limiting violence cannot but fail. 1. All power aspires to legitimation. The legitimation of violence is typically enhanced, heightened by its glorification. The violent action both of an individual and of a collectivity is celebrated as heroic, whether it defends one’s land or it invades a foreign one, whether it turns existent wealth into booty or it annihilates the unfaithful. Such exaltation, such extolling of the justification of violence by investing it with splendor and fame, serves presumably as an emotional compensation. Events evoking a sense of horror are outshined by splendor; one’s fear is overcome by excitement. The glorification of violence renders all reflection, all hesitation illegitimate. Almost without exception, the glorification of violent actions is based on appeals to religion, refers to divine commands or divine assistance. Even the pathos of national states standing ready to fight one another still echoed such appeal to divine approval. As to the grounds for such diversity in the glorification of violence, we may distinguish between two fundamental nexuses. We have already mentioned the first: violence and particularly absolute violence constitute the extreme degree of superiority over other humans. On this account, celebrating the violent act amounts to extolling a superior being, the entitlement to rule per se. The victorious ruler, the victorious city, the victorious people demonstrate through their victory, their superiority, their mission, their being chosen. Violence is glorified as evidence of the glory of ruling. There is a second, contrasting ground of the glorification of violence: violence as the disintegration of rule, as an act of liberation. The pathos of the humiliated, which justifies violence as a necessary turn, indeed does not belong within the context considered so far. The oppressed can barely hope to be able to prevail upon the violence exercised against him. He chooses the single suitable means that—perhaps—remains to him.

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However, the pathos of liberation can also dispense with any concrete reference to an actual liberation through violence. It can become the dream of a gloriously enormous impetus of violence that brings all previous history to an end. The bloody irruption of vital force becomes a final judgment and a purgatory. One can find this vision of a violenza sacra in many cultures, including those of primitive peoples.15 A “sacred violence” breaks profane time, reproduces the originality of creation, or frees it to attain its truth at the very end of time. The same happens also in secularized form: a great collective act of violence destroys “all that exists.” Violence becomes the luminous pointer to a thoroughgoing remaking of the world. Spontaneity, totality, community can now be lived as uncontaminated experiences. The human being is released and becomes itself. Whereas the glory of the ruler’s violence celebrates his victory as something that continues to return in history—confirming ever anew the superiority of a higher being—the glory of the great disruption is understood as something radically new, singular, unprecedented. Both determinants of the glorification of violence—here described in their extreme versions—appear also as components of many justifications with much less dramatic resonance. They insinuate themselves into all manner of common places. Yet even when weakened and concealed they obviously can justify great wars for truth. 2. Man’s power to inflict harm is probably accompanied by indifference more strongly than by all other motivations, such as hatred and contempt. Indifference toward the suffering of the victim forms a kind of protective membrane that keeps at bay inhibitions and above all any reflection on what is taking place. This function of indifference is similar to that of glorification. While glorification is like a drumbeat that chases away possible scruples, indifference renders us deaf. Lack of interest in and indifference toward the other human being can increase to the extent of rendering it totally irrelevant, to the point where it is no longer perceived within the categories of feeling, thinking, acting that we apply to ourselves. The suffering, the death of the victim become meaningless, because nothing comparable to the sensations of the actor himself appears suitable for him. Even an expression like “a human

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kills a human” appears misleading. For the actor the other does not belong to the same category of living beings as himself. The event resembles if anything a violent act between two different animal species. Marcus Terentius Varro distinguished three kinds of means of production: genus mutum, a silent means (such as the cart pulled by an ox); genus semivocale, a means endowed with a voice but unable to speak (the ox itself ); genus vocale, a means endowed with language: slaves.16 This classification merely expresses a social-historical truth. That a group of men can be set alongside carts and oxen reveals from what incommensurable distance the phenomenon of slavery may be perceived. One can try to account for such “distancing” in terms of the particular conditions of a given society and a given class. But it is important to look beyond this, and consider that attitudes of indifference are rooted in the structure of all sociation. In all societies we know there emerge cellular units, social entities such as families, clans, leagues, associations, all of which cut themselves off from the outside. One cannot easily enter into them. Belonging to any presupposes distinct features such as gender, age, provenance, or specific qualifications such as wealth or particular performances. Each such unit draws boundaries around itself, erects social walls between an “inside” and an “outside,” being within and being without. Other valid norms hold within than those that hold without; the social wall marks the beginning and the end of obligations. The sociation principle of structuration of belonging unavoidably produces lines of separation. This involves not only the trivial fact that each person entertains close relations to some persons, less close ones to others. Rather, when we grow within closed social circles, or are admitted to them, we learn alternatives: one is or one is not a person who belongs, “one of us” or not, one is here or one is outside. We apprehend the “standing on the other side of the boundary” of other persons at the same time as we do our own memberships. According to the circumstances, this may lead to the most diverse attitudes—defense, diffidence, curiosity, or whatever else. But lines of separation remain a constituent of social experience—just as understanding and compassion are primarily learned and practiced within

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memberships—and such lines can be activated whenever they appear “appropriate,” for example, when affording some relief. As a consequence, the disposition to indifference has something to do with the construction of human societies. It can be further promoted by another constructive particularity of shared existence, by the division of labor. Its manifestations are often connected with memberships, and emphasize the relevant social boundaries and distances. But they can also produce further indifference. This has often been observed: the smaller the part of a given individual within an organization’s division of labor, the narrower his or her competence, the less he or she perceives him- or herself as a competent and responsible actor (and the more one hears of his or her “responsibility”). This diminished competence of the mere “coworker” becomes fatally associated with the nonmembership of the persons whose cases are being dealt with. The coupling of the two factors (the lack of competence of those not belonging) easily leads the smoothly proceeding excesses of indolence we all know.17 3. Glorification of violence and indifference to the victim’s suffering become connected with the human being’s capacity for removing limits to violence, the species’ intellectual faculties for technical production. We owe to such faculties the possibility of apparently increasing indefinitely the efficiency of technical artifacts. Thus humans find in their hands means of violence whose efficiency is apparently unlimited. Probably the development of weapons reaches as far back in the story of the human species as does the development of working tools. The earliest of these have probably also been put to use by primordial gatherers and hunters as hunting weapons, and these in turn as fighting weapons. With a rough-hewn stone and particularly with a club one could hit both animals and human beings. Archeological findings suggest that both began to happen very early.18 The spear, presumably the first specialized fighting weapon, constitutes already something to be methodically aimed, with the intent of producing a particular kind of harm. We enter a new stage in the development of weapons with the production of bronze and steel. Metallic weapons such as the war ax and the sword, the chest cuirass, and the metal shod rim of the wheels of

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battle chariots afford those who possess them a new superiority. Weapons become rare and expensive. Their employment requires special training. There emerge warrior aristocracies whose domination depends on their superior armaments. Here manifests itself for the first time an effect that has since become more and more significant: the technology of weapons makes possible the superiority of small numbers. Few fighters, if better armed, can prevail upon many and durably submit them. The fact that the artifice of armament can hugely increase the differences in the capacity of damaging the other is one of the consequences of the productive intellectual faculties of mankind. The next essential increase in efficiency comes with firearms. Their destructive force at first grows slowly, then more and more rapidly. A “twelve-pounder” field cannon of the seventeenth century has ten times the effect of a javelin; a cannon of the eighteenth century attains an effect two hundred times greater.19 The technology of firearms also increases the range of their impact—the opponent can be hit at great distance. Increasingly, battles do not require body contact. One “lets the weapons talk.” Subsequently the industrial revolution produces a huge push, of unprecedented rapidity, in the volume of the production of weapons, in the growth of its productivity, and in the rate of innovation regarding weapons. The American Civil War sees the first employment of the machine gun, the first cannons with rifled barrels; railways acquire strategic significance. A thoroughly mechanized battlefield makes its appearance.20 This process culminates in the Second World War with the development of advanced fighting machines of all kinds, operating under and over water, on the ground and above it. At this point, there irrupts into the mechanization of destruction— which by and large mirrors the technization of other branches of industry—something unheard of in its novelty. Already the first atom bomb overrides by hundreds of times the magnitude of all destruction effects so far seen. But it constitutes a mere first sign. One recognizes that nuclear fission and fusion can set into motion destructive forces of immeasurable dimensions. Today’s bombs mounted on intercontinental

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missiles, in turn, surpass by hundreds of times the effects of the Hiroshima bomb, those of the most recent bombs do so by thousands of times.21 Again and again one seeks to articulate the sense that here enters into the world something new, not just as a matter of degree but in its very nature. What we are confronted with is the possibility of annihilating, if not all life on earth, at any rate all human life. (Mind you, today’s augurs assure us that even a third world war would not entail this, it being economically too expensive and militarily unnecessary to also kill— intentionally, at any rate—marginal populations.) I consider it important not to view as new only this last possibility. Even the employment of a single atom bomb, or a so-called limited atomic war, attains a degree of intensity and a mode of operation that even words such as “destruction” and “annihilation” cannot encompass. It’s enough to consider even just what would happen in a single great city. What one does when one deploys such bombs is not so much annihilation as eradication. The novelty lies not just in the possibility of the annihilation of man. The possibility of the instantaneous eradication of millions entails a new power to inflict harm, indeed a new power to kill, even a new act of killing, a human action of unprecedented nature. The three components of the syndrome of total violence not only complement but reciprocally enhance one another. Glorification and indifference foster one another. Exaltation over one’s own violence becomes possible to an even more unhesitating, more unrestrained extent insofar as the enemy is a nothing—although a dangerous nothing—whose own motivations are unworthy even to consider. Vice versa, the other becomes all the more indifferent for the killer insofar as his own ideals and his own heroic actions shine over the whole conflict. In the same way, glorifications and indifference intensify the readiness to employ technological means of violence, and the technization of violence in turn affects both attitudes. Missiles, satellites, radar, electronics, laser, supersonic bombers—this whole build-up of speed, maneuverability, precision, energy, dynamism makes the human person partake of and control such speeds and energies. Those who master the

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technology become fabulously powerful thanks to it. Its own glory perfectly reflects that of violence. In the same manner the perfection of technology leaves those using it personally uninvolved. It is one thing to strangle a man with one’s hands and another to hit him with an arrow. The arrows attain a greater and greater range; the place of the stretched bow is taken by a button or a lever. The connection between one’s own act and its consequences becomes less visible, less identifiable. What is necessary is concentration on the object; emotions could only disturb it. One can evaluate differently the effective significance of the various interdependencies I mentioned. It seems unquestionable that the tendencies to the glorification of violence and to indifference advance with technological development and are connected with each level it attains. Thus, the syndrome of total violence should not be conceived as a constant phenomenon, but as one undergoing a progression. Currently, the progress of total violence advances within the field of tension generated by the competition between two world powers, a competition from which neither side can withdraw without putting its own existence at risk. The tendency to further build up an already-enormous potential of total violence seems to proceed ineluctably. The arguments put forward so far are confirmed by this persistent tendency of the human capacity to do harm to outbid itself. They do not lend themselves to generate a sense of assurance in the face of the dangers threatening us. But they ought to have a bearing on the question of which counterforces may be thought of. Admittedly we cannot identify the move that will lead to a draw. On the contrary, the person who raises the question of counterforces must be willing to engage in reflections that sound illusory. Naturally all limitations of armament and all disarmament initiatives are useful. However, putting a halt to the progress of total violence with some assurance and durability requires not only a reduction of the number of weapons, but also a renunciation of the development of new weaponry. If this does not take place, all accords are destined to be overtaken in the short run by innovations that negotiations have not taken

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into account. Renouncing the development of new weapons requires either blocking the transformation of new research into technical applications or preventing further research into the terrain of weapons technology. Each alternative encounters innumerable difficulties in detail. Both require an attempt to place off limits as a matter of principle the fundamental capacity for the technological production of the human species, its productive intelligence. Can one imagine even only the will to attempt this? Probably only in the light of a great fear and of an understanding that carrying on the competition over armaments would not increase the security of either side, but rather increasingly reduce that of both sides.22 This could lead to the recognition that within the perspective of atomic confrontation, our traditional military and strategic understanding of security no longer makes sense.23 In these circumstances, the security one must pursue can only be the security of both sides. A coordination of strategies of conflict that takes into account and promotes the security of both sides presupposes—as experience shows— at least a minimum of trust. Thus it is not sufficient to place under control just the technological component of the syndrome of total violence. Even a minimal trust is unthinkable if the possibility of atomic conflict is framed, within the context of any given “philosophy of history,” as the possibility of annihilating the enemy of humanity. All glorification of a violence that produces eradication threatens any accord that could prevent it. All that has been said so far rests on the presupposition that one can increasingly conceive a commonality of vital interests, thus the recognition that one can attain security only as the security of reciprocity, that there must be a shared intent to prevent innovation within the realm of weapons technology, that all those involved ought cease to confer on atomic conflict a higher consecration. If this is considered capable of realization, it is not deceptive to also hope for the attainment of a further, perhaps decisive premise for the formation of trust—the hope that we may learn to conceive the threat to human existence on both sides of the boundary as a unique whole. The instantaneous eradication by means of atomic violence, whomever it strikes or does not

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strike, is a universal catastrophe. It brings into the world a new form of killing and being killed that places all men under an immense, new risk. The emotional insight that this is the case may assist us in overcoming the limitations on our capacity for being shocked. What is being hoped for is not the good human being, but a new strength in our capacity for imagining. The forces that contrast the syndrome of total violence ought then— it seems to me—to aim at all its components: at the unlimited use of our productive intelligence for innovation in the field of weapons; at the tendency to glorify and justify our own violence; at the disposition to regard its victims without concern, with indifference. I do not believe that these aspects assign the problem to the realm of irrationality. They do suggest how difficult it is to offer grounds for hoping to cope with the new violence.

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he considerations that follow concern the form of power I call instrumental. I mean, by this, the steering of others’ conduct by means of threats and promises. Threats steer conduct by generating fear, promises by generating hope. Thus, in my view, instrumental power means having at one’s disposal the fear and hope of other human beings. As instruments of such power, threats and promises variously complement and strengthen each other. Here, however, I am concerned exclusively with threats. I refer to promises only insofar as considering analogies and differences between these two power instruments helps us understand how threats operate. What is of interest to me is the flexibility of the threat, its manifesting itself across all social relations, its expansibility and its reach, its energy to transform the most diverse circumstances—in one word, the effectiveness of the threat. Such effectiveness is a condition of possibility of all lasting power relation. In my opinion, this does not depend exclusively on its content, on the possibility of raising the intrinsic entity of the threat, but also, most significantly, in the exploitation of potential effects inherent in the threat’s very structure. I can only apologize for a degree of pedantry in what follows. Whoever has reflected on the threat knows that no other topic lends itself as easily to the most arbitrary answers.

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STRUCTURE OF THE THREAT

The components of the threat are easily identified. One person, one group, one country—the threatener—informs the other—the threatened—or presupposes as a known fact that the other is aware of the following: If you do not do (noncompliant conduct) what I want (the conduct demanded), I will inflict harm on you or arrange for someone to do so (threatened sanction). If you do what I want (compliant conduct), you spare yourself the harm (the sanction refrained from). In a nutshell: your money or your life. Each of these components can take most varied forms. For instance: “The threatener”: In groups where the participants jointly take all binding decisions, each member is at the same time threatener and threatened. (Groups constituted in this way, if they expect that the equal participation in decisions does away with power structures, are bound to be disappointed.) “The threatener informs or presupposes as a known fact”: Threats do not always need to be clearly expressed; gestural or mimic signals of intent can often be understood without being verbally communicated. Often all express signals are unnecessary. It can be part of the knowledge generally presupposed in the interaction (awareness of norms, orientation of conduct deriving from precedents, common sense) that behind a particular expectation is a threat. One could easily indicate numerous variants of the components of the threat and catalogue at great length whatever is possible. The only way to go beyond this is to inquire into the relations between the components listed, in other terms into the structure of the threat. I view as constituting that the following three structuring relations.

THE IMPOSED ALTERNATIVE

First, that between demanded and noncompliant conduct. The person who threatens creates an alternative: he or she divides up all the threatened can

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do in a given situation into two classes: compliance and noncompliance, yes answers and no answers, right and wrong. He or she thus imposes on the threatened a question, and whatever the threatened does will be considered an answer to this question. With this “question-setting power” the threatener redefines the situation for the threatened. The sense of the conduct of the latter is thus determined. At this point, what the threatened does is viewed as a “provocation,” although it may be in no way intended to pose a challenge to anybody. Or his or her conduct is considered compliant although he or she would not have behaved differently anyway. The actual intentions of the threatened become irrelevant. The meaning of its action is determined by the interpretative frame imposed by the alternative. The threatener attaches to its alternative an unequivocal preference, with which it seeks to make that of the threatened coincide, imparting a bias to the alternative. The threat of sanction is counterposed to its omission in case of compliant conduct. The choice belongs to the threatened. True, the contrast between the consequences of compliant conduct over against those of deviant conduct may be so marked, the pressure so overpowering, that there may be no doubt over what the threatened will decide. All the same, that pressure of the threats constitutes no absolute constriction, no vis absoluta, no irresistible violence. The question here is not when resistance might be reasonable or not— something generally impossible to establish, and anyway difficult in any particular case. Rather, what is in question is the relation between threat and constriction. If no opportunity to decide is allowed for the threatened, what is being exercised is not instrumental power proper. Then the threat is not an instrument of steering conduct anymore. What looks like a threat is instead the announcement of an unavoidable aggression, the proclamation of an imminent act of revenge, or the execution of one of history’s decision (see Hannah Arendt’s “objective enemy” or “discrimination against the non-guilty”).* * Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), 422ff.—Eds.

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The person who puts into play the threat as a power instrument wants something from the threatened. The threat does not dispose of the fundamental contingency of human conduct. It presupposes that those threatened can either comply or defend themselves.

S E L F - CO MMI T ME NT

Second structural characteristic: the twofold role of the threatener as the source of a threat and as the one who executes (or triggers) a sanction. The threatener, too, enters into the alternative it poses. He or she makes a prognosis concerning him- or herself. This twofold role suggests the distinction between power and influence. The physician who warns a patient of some risk does not have to take action himself or herself in order to give effect to the warning. It is not he or she who brings about the liver’s malfunction. The lawyer who gives advice does not him- or herself issue the judgment. Warning, advice, recommendation—these are attempts at persuasion, attempts to influence others by pointing to possible dangers or opportunities. The threatener, instead, gives notice of something that he or she him- or herself can put into being. Threats as attempts to exercise power entail a price for the threatener him- or herself, the price of a commitment, of tying him- or herself down.1 This may be a high price. It is up to the threatened whether to take the threatener at his word. The person who threatens (or for that matter promises) expressly makes himself or herself depend on the future conduct of others. This can also mean that the other determines at which point in time conflict occurs, decides when to provoke conflict. The advantage of a surprise effect often belongs to the threatened. Furthermore—and this is frequently the highest risk—the threatener puts into question his own credibility. If he or she cannot realize the threat, he or she reduces the effect of any future one. The person who issues a threat not only seeks to exercise power, but also puts his or her own power at risk. The commitment involved for the threatener becomes more precarious the more openly he has to announce the threat. A clearly expressed

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threat is clearly an unfriendly act. The person who threatens explicitly binds him- or herself to a power claim, commits himself or herself to the necessity of further conflicts, poisons all relations that cannot bear such challenges.

CO NT R O L L I N G C U R R E NT ACT IO NS VIA P OT E NT I AL AC T I O NS

A third structural characteristic of threat is the connection between a possible action (the sanction announced) and a factual action (the compliant conduct). The threatener communicates that in given circumstances he or she will do something, and can thus induce the threatened to actually do something, here and now. An action merely announced can determine an actual one. Now, of course it is never utterly certain that the threatener will in fact perform the activity prospected. Such activity is possible, not certain. Th is confronts the threatened with a cluster of questions. Does the threatener really have at his disposal the power means with which he threatens? Will he take upon himself the cost of carrying out the threat? If confronted with resistance, is he ready for conflict? What resistance can he overcome? Whether or not the threatened poses such questions to himself, they are inherent in the situation of being threatened. If they are taken into account, the cognitive complexity of doubt can be high. Thus, the import of threats is to impose not only an alternative but also an uncertainty. Such uncertainty can be purposefully stoked. The defi nition of the situation of the threatened by the threatener may also entail that the latter defines it in an indeterminate manner. In strategies of indeterminate threat the threatener can purposefully formulate vaguely the desired conduct as well as the content of the threatened sanction. In both cases he or she can make use of the possible psychological effects of uncertainty. The threatened who does not know what precisely he or she ought to do, or when and how he or she may fail to do what is

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expected of him- or herself, may perhaps start feeling afraid of stepping on concealed mines from one moment to the next. A possible result is a disposition to comply most zealously, most promptly. The threatened who does not know what penalty awaits him can thus be induced to imagine it in fantastic terms. Instead of the determinate concern of fear, there arises the indeterminate concern of anxiety. The power of the threat is transformed into the power to generate anxiety. The uncertainty of the threatened can also be put to use in strategies of empty threat. Does the threat lend itself to be carried out or not? Whoever submits to a threat often cannot know, even subsequently, whether the threatener was in a condition to carry out the sanction threatened. He or she remains in a situation of uncertainty. The hypothesis that has determined his or her conduct remains unverified. Threats of all kinds also operate in this manner in long-term power relations, without anything ever being put to the test. The avoidance of dangerous conflicts leads to a lack of precedents, a lack of experience, and in the end the assumptions about the real relations of force attain the status of mere conventions. However, to the extent that the power of threat becomes conventional, it also becomes increasingly a matter of speculation. All this pertains to the structure of the threat, arising from three relations between its components: the alternative between compliant and deviant conduct that imposes a dichotomous frame on everything the threatened can do; the prognosis to which the threatener commits himor herself; and the prospect that an actual action may be motivated by a potential one. The threatened finds him- or herself confronted with a question that he or she has not posed to him- or herself and mostly would prefer never to pose. The threatener trusts in his own credibility and at the same time puts it into question. Threats bind to one another the action of the threatener and that of the threatened in such a way that both find themselves compelled into a conflict situation, where they must act on the basis of hypotheses.

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THE EVERYDAY NATURE OF THREATS

What is the use of clarifying the structure of the threat? What about it deserves notice? Not so much what’s peculiar to it as the fact that formally it does not differ from most of the relations in which we find ourselves involved on a day-to-day basis. Suppose we enter a shop to buy something. The seller hands us the merchandise and expects that we pay. Mostly we do that. We do it also (or perhaps exclusively) in order to avoid an unwelcome reaction on the seller’s part. In other words we allow ourselves to be guided, in what we do now, by the expected conduct of others. The sign “Parking forbidden” does not prevent us from parking in that very place. But it confronts us with an alternative. The authority that oversees the prohibition is, experience suggests, ready for conflict. It is on this account—and in this particular case only on this account— that mostly we refrain from parking there. When do such situations of threat arise? Whenever humans want something from one another. More precisely, when they expect something from one another with a certain degree of urgency and will not accept disappointment without somehow reacting. As soon as our own action is burdened with the expectations of others, an alternative arises. Each answer we give enters the sphere of the question that such expectations pose. We can only answer Yes or No (even when there are many different Yeses and many different Nos). Whatever our answer will be and whatever its basis, it will also be determined by assumptions about the likely dismay and the likely reaction of others. This merely suggests that we act in the awareness of being interdependent and of affecting one another. Those we have described as the structural characteristics of the threat are general components of the syntax of social interaction. The fact that the predictable reactions of others can be not only negative (threatening) but also positive (promising) does not modify the omnipresence of threat. As in every threat harbors a promise (that of abstaining from punishment), so in every promise a threat, that of no

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reward in case of deviance. Also, in the orientation to promises the implicit threat produces motivation. However, if threats are nearly ever present in social interactions, why do we not live in constant fear and terror? In general one can easily say: because our day-to-day action is of a conventional character, being packaged in standardized decisions. In this context, this means two things. First, we are seldom aware of the questions. Conventionalized action means being able to avail ourselves of ready answers. We cover the open questions of day-to-day decisions with predisposed answers. Social orders are combinations of covered-up questions. The conventionalization of action entails, on the other hand, that we can count on not needing to reckon with certain risks. This and that will not take place. Very few people, in the course of their existence, are induced to reflect what one ought to do in case a child gets abducted. We are rarely threatened by neighbors with submachine guns. Social orders are combinations of omissions. Naturally, these relieving effects of social orders do not always work. Suddenly something unusual is not even omitted; covered-up questions break through. We fi nd ourselves confronted with outrageous claims, threatened with horrendous sanctions; trusted people confront unfamiliar alternatives; innocuous situations appear laden with risk; taken-for-granted priorities become doubtful. The reflection such events evoke can be extended and make us aware of further combinations of concealments and omissions. This means that we acknowledge that the structures of our day-to-day shared activity are also structures of threats.

CON C E A L E D T H R E AT AND CO NC E A LE D CO MPLIANCE

The ways in which threats express themselves are extraordinarily varied. Threats can be staged with pomp and pathos, but can also be concealed in mere hints. Such variety has its uses. The external image, the phenotype, of even extraordinary threats can be adapted to match the present

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opportunities. As a rule, the person who threatens can choose the most apt style from a wide range of possibilities. We have already considered why this is the case. He or she who threatens can make use of the numerous threats hidden in everyday circumstances. They can draw upon the whole arsenal of theatrical staging in choosing the appropriate costume. In this way the unusual event can also be concealed in the usual. Th is occurs prevalently in the type of the disguised threat. For instance, the threatener can hide the fact that the threatener is himor herself. The lobbyist can induce the parliamentary representative to vote “the right way” by hinting at the danger of losing friends if he or she votes the wrong way (not being nominated for reelection is always a possibility), of alienating those who fund him (who are so sensitive anyway), of compromising his or her standing within the parliamentary group, of finding him- or herself out of the loop of confidential information. All this is disguised as the conveying of information—with the lobbyist as merely a messenger—or, more explicitly, as a warning, with the lobbyist as advisor.2 To some extent it can be clear that the lobbyist may him- or herself carry out the sanctions he or she warns about, or play a decisive role in activating them. “If you do not follow these recommendations, you will fail” (and I will see to that myself). All this takes place in the conversation between friends, colleagues, people of the same social status, councilmen, party members. The possible consequences of a vote are jointly assessed. No one holds a knife to the other’s throat. Above all, the significant premise of equality (significant for all fictions of shared understandings immune from power) is maintained. For the threatener such fiction is desirable, for he spares himself the disadvantages of a clear self-commitment. One must not show oneself as ready for conflict. One raises no open claim for power. At the same time compliance becomes easier for the threatened; he or she can comply without losing face. The disguised power of the threat affords them the opportunity of a covered-up compliance.

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The person who complies covertly does not yield to a pressure, but simply changes opinion. (It is obvious that the formation of a decision also takes possible risks into account.) Since the immediate confrontation with a threat is missing, a power not manifest as such can be exercised and a compliance not manifest as such can be offered. It is easy to deny a covered compliance. Dissimulated compliance does not produce any dissonance. Such intentional avoidance of dissonance can become a routine for the individual and a convention for the bilateral relation. In this way the characteristic ambit of “power-free spaces” emerges.

ECONOMY OF THE THREAT

Threats not only are everyday phenomena, but can also operate as a lever for domination over wide territories. Why is it possible to increase their efficacy to such an extent? A first answer easily suggests itself. Their efficacy can be increased because their dangerousness can be increased. On a larger scale, this can take place chiefly by promoting the efficiency of technical power resources and by raising the level of organization of administrative and coercive units. A second answer, which will chiefly occupy us here, can be derived not from the content but from the structure of threats. Threat as an instrument entails intrinsic opportunities of increasing its efficacy. I characterize such opportunities by using two expressions: profitability and extendibility.

1 . P R O F I TAB I L I T Y

If one considers the resource outlay, the costs respectively of threats and of promises at first appear no different in principle. It can cost little or

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cost much to make credible either threats or promises. It can cost little or cost much to put into effect either punishments or rewards. However, threats have a considerably more convenient price if one can count on compliance. They are cheap if the threat works.3 If the threatened behaves compliantly, the threatener has indeed nothing to do. On the contrary, promises are costly if they succeed. If they do not consist in mere verbal acknowledgments or symbolic awards, the one who promises and who elicits compliance must deliver something: money, offices, prebends, daughters, promotion, banquets, jewelry, all kinds of assistance. The person who exercises power based on promises pays for success. In the case of compliance, threats are convenient, promises expensive. In case of noncompliance, threats are expensive, promises convenient. This economy of threat holds for all power relations, indeed has consequences for the construction of any social order. The normative demands that all social order entails are strengthened by the threat of sanctions. The person who violates the norm must reckon with negative consequences—come to terms with society’s teeth, ready to bite. On the contrary, norms are not secured by promises, at any rate in single cases. Not all compliant conduct is expressly rewarded. When we park according to rules, we find no thank-you note from the police under the windshield wiper. We find no official encomium in our mailbox, if once more during the previous year we have not robbed a bank. Rewards in a very general sense do not relate to a single act of normative compliance, but to a general conformity with norms, to the overall balance of our conduct. As long as we conduct ourselves rightly, in the expected fashion, in a manner predictable by others, we can take advantage of the “benefits of social participation.” We are included in the normal interactions; we are welcome as members of an association and as renters, and we pursue a normal career. This simply means: if we fulfill the ordinary expectations, we can also expect the same of others. Particular rewards are not connected with the ordinary, but with the fulfillment of particular levels of performance, with the demonstration of capacities to which society attaches particular value. Such performances cannot, like conformity with norms, be expected of everybody, but only by few.

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An easily understood exception is constituted by the reactions of educators to the conduct of children. In this case even normally compliant conduct gets rewarded, or rather any way of conducting oneself that in due course ought to become normal for the child. This gets rewarded exactly because his fulfillment of banal social commandments cannot yet be presupposed as self-explanatory, but rather resembles the fulfi llment of particular performance standards. This confirms the rule: to the association between norms and sanctions (and thus threats) corresponds a connection between performance standards and rewards. Why so? Why are norms protected through threats, not promises? One reason, sufficient even if considered alone, is the fact that rewards for normative compliance would simply be too expensive. We could never stop handing out smaller or greater gifts—although there are cultural styles of conduct that approximate a similar condition. On the contrary, threats are profitable because in general we can assume the respect of norms. Whenever a higher level of compliance is expected, this can be obtained more cheaply and rationally via threats. This is perhaps a somewhat surprising conclusion. As a rule threats, especially harsh and dangerous ones, are generally associated with dramatic situations, but their peculiar sphere of operation lies in what is not exceptional. The threat is in its place where everything proceeds normally. It sees to it that the house is not set on fire. This holds both on the small scale and on the large scale. Threats are everybody’s weapon for the exercise of power. At the same time they serve to consolidate power of the greatest magnitude. The threat attains it most rational effect when resistance has become sporadic.

2. T H E E X T E NDI B I L I T Y O F T H RE ATS

Whoever threatens successfully is spared the cost of carrying out the threat. One does not need to have recourse to one’s own potential for executing the sanction. On this account this person can employ the means, the energies, the time he or she has saved, in order to produce

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new threats. Once country x is pacified, country y can be put under pressure. Effective sanctions liberate new forces. The higher the compliance level attained, the greater the number of people who can be ruled over by means of threats. (One runs no risk in multiplying laws with a high probability of being followed.) Furthermore, the extendibility of threats can take advantage of the fact that their credibility does not require the punishment of all transgressors. If the threat can be carried out in a few selected cases, danger exists for everyone. As someone with apparently only one bullet in his gun threatens two men at the same time, both of these men must take into account the possibility that the single bullet hits one of them with full effect, though both may be sure that it will not hit both. Clearly the threat to both is excessive, incapable of realization. But that against each is credible—and each of the two is each. Here the threat has a preventive function on account of the selectivity at its disposal and of the selection’s imponderability. Even calculations of probability that set the number of those threatened against that of the bullets are at best difficult to carry out. Great empires, major expansions of power centers have become possible not only because of the availability of new accumulations of means of power (for example, new weapons technologies) but at all times also— and chiefly—because of the strategically clever use of the extendibility of threats. Yet, this process also naturally encounters limits. Each threat-based power over many people rests on the premise that deviations occur over time with a normal distribution. Such a power is usually not able to apply multiple sanctions at the same time, as a bank cannot cope with multiple simultaneous withdrawals of deposit. Even the modern state’s incomparable capacity of enforcement depends on the nonsimultaneity of norms violations—say, on the unlikelihood that all the violations expected in one year occur on a single day. Also the history of revolutions indicates this. Typically the overthrow of power centers takes place within a constellation of events in which diverse challenges—different groups go on to attack for dif-

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ferent reasons—condense themselves into a simultaneity without precedent. To conclude: the efficacy of threat can be enhanced not only via the growing dangerousness of the sanctions threatened, but also—in essence— by making use of its distinct profitability. The threatener that can expect compliance is highly capable of maneuvering. Accordingly threats can gain extension. Their reach can be stretched well beyond that grounded in the power means standing behind them. It can be extended because power means that are not put into action remain available. And it can be extended because the terror that the threat evokes does not require that all threats be capable of execution. The credible execution of selected sanctions usually does the trick. Both profitability and extendibility rest on the efficacy of potential action. Threats are profitable because of the profitability of what is merely possible, which spares the threatener the cost of effectively realizing them. Threats can be extended on account of the extendibility of what is merely possible, of the open-endedness of what can take place in any given case.

EXCESSIVE DISPOSITION TO CONFLICT

The profitability and extendibility of threats can be raised in a methodical or even in a semimethodical manner. The successes of the latter approach deserve particular attention. Among these, consider the peculiar opportunities of an excessive disposition to conflict. The person who is excessively disposed to conflict also reacts to insignificant events, pushing toward conflict every minor matter, reacts in an uncommonly sharp, frantic manner, astonishes by his readiness to take risks, to put everything into play upon any occasion. Above all, he signals from the beginning a scarce disposition to put an end to conflicts, to accept compromises. Every dispute threatens to escalate into an unending spiral of conflict. Behind this may lie a well-considered tactic, beginning with the simple calculation of bluffs, but there also may be emotional components,

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such as a vulnerability that sees a declaration of war in any resistance to one’s own will, a demand for self-assertion immune to experience, and, finally, a neurotic hysteria. Methodic as well as obsessive motives merge into what one labels “will-to-power.” An excessive disposition to conflict increases in all those potentially affected the motivation to avoid it. For them, getting out of the way, evasiveness, making concessions become more likely than in normal conflict. One yields not so much because the challenger is presumed to have available superior means of power, but because one presumes he is ready to put all he has into play without further ado. He is feared on account more of his being ready for conflict than of the energy he can commit to it. This may have an effect in the first place in utterly insignificant circumstances; yet the tendency to get out of the way of conflicts that threaten to be disproportionate can subsequently, by the same logic, apply also to potential conflicts of greater significance. An excessive disposition to conflict is an efficient method for raising the price of reason. But if possible parties to a conflict pull back from it, the person who is excessively disposed to it is spared the cost of engaging his means of power. The threat suffices. Thus he can progressively take advantage of the increased profitability of the threat. As a consequence the power of the threat can be intensified and extended. One can easily comprehend how such processes unfold. The awareness that as a rule someone asserts him- or herself in conflict cases has an effect in terms of “power conditioning,”* that is, the expectation that he will continue to do so in the future. The person who so far has exercised power has power. The expectation of success produces success. From the beginning, one expects that the successful party will assert itself by means of threats; thus, each subsequent threat gains profitability. The threatener who can count not only on the fear generated by his disposition to conflict but also on the ongoing expectation of his success can have his way at a diminishing cost. The person who exercises power in this way will also have an opportunity to increase his own conflict potential. He will be able to attract * English in the German original—Eds.

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followers, collect all sorts of tributes, gather forces around himself. In the end it is no longer primarily his disposition to conflict that pushes him toward greater power. In the end he really is the strongest.

MODELING THE MENTAL STATE OF BEING THREATENED

The opportunities of profitability and extendibility offered by threat as an instrument render the true significance of the threat easier to comprehend in terms of power politics. But something must be added. The person who threatens can teach others to fear. But he can also increase his power by modifying the others’ sensitivity to their threatened condition. This point warrants further reflection. We have spoken of threats, sanctions, fears. Now, let us also consider promises, rewards, hopes. It is a significant banality that hopes and fears are subject to change and manipulation. In this they witness the generic social plasticity of the human being, its ability to react to the most varied projects of social existence. It can be manipulated both in what it fears and hopes and in how it does so. That human beings can exercise power over other human beings can also mean that they make use of the plasticity of their fears and hopes. They use it to put their own will in control of what others aspire to and seek to avoid, what they do and what they omit doing. Alongside with the changing of fears and hopes, the value and the weight of determinate punishments and rewards, threats, and promises may be changed as well, to the effect that the instruments of power become more capable of producing impact, less expensive to employ, more reliable, more efficient. What follows is a tale from a reading book just like many others. Women and children were left under the shelter of a circle of wagons. The young warrior took leave of his own spouse and children. All warriors swore to fight bravely and not to flee. Some chained themselves to others. As the young warrior understood that the battle was lost, he

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sought to throw himself on the enemies’ swords in order to not experience final defeat. However, he was taken prisoner. All prisoners were compelled to bend and pass through scaffolding, and by doing so they became slaves. As the long march into the winners’ land began, the young warrior was seized by the fear that his feet would fail him. Those who could no longer proceed were slain. In the evening his concern was that he would be starved to death. However, his feet did not fail him and he did not die of hunger. The young warrior survived this and became a competent slave. As a rule, the various fears and hopes that motivate us are in accord with one another. There develops a “budget” of fears and hopes within which we arrange ourselves. This budget can be thrown out of balance by extraordinary anxieties, but on a day-to-day basis it is limited by, and orients itself to, a horizon of things on which one can count. If we compare such budgets of fear and hope that hold for men in different social situations, we come across discrepancies barely amenable to empathy. The Brahmin and the Paria, the lord and the slave, the nobleman and the serf—what they hope for and what they fear, beyond their absolutely vital needs, have very little if anything in common. The high and the low levels of their expectations are measurably different (whether they are seated at the wrong place at the table or whether their soup bowl is missing). Wide as such differences may be, clearly individuals are in principle able, if the situation requires it, to reset their total budget of fears and hopes. The shift can take place very fast and naturally. We do not mean here to overgeneralize the capacity, acquired today under the auspices of rapid social change, to creep as a matter of routine from one to another snail shell of the “life world.” There is also a refusal as a matter of principle, dictated either by pride or by humbleness: the highborn, who refuses to accept his deep fall; the religious ascetic, who refuses to ascend to worldly glory. Yet we can be sure that the experience of being compelled to adapt and of being able to adapt is as ancient as the story of the human being. It traveled alongside every stream of refugees, is at home in all asylum of the old and sick, is familiar to the prisoners of the whole world and to the winners of all colors.

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What needs explanation is in the first place how one comes to terms with a need not experienced previously. Clearly, in this case, the individual is successfully relieved of his or her own expectations. One succeeds in distancing oneself to such an extent from old hopes and also from old fears—in letting them go—that new fi xations can take their place. Ultimately this ability to adapt to new situations is an expression of the human “openness to the world,” our capacity of arranging ourselves for more than one world. Power politics can variously put to use this disposition to adjust to highly different budgets of hope and fear. One can intentionally worsen the condition of a group, a class, a people in order to induce in them a relation between fearing and hoping that makes them also vitally depend on small punishments or small rewards. When one approaches a condition of fatal famine each reward and each punishment have extraordinary contrasting effects: even a minimal improvement in the food ration can make a difference to one’s sheer subsistence, while a minimal reduction can be deadly. Thus one can exercise a fearsome pressure at a very low cost. The possibility of manipulating fears and hopes also comprises the opportunity to freeze expectations at such a minimum level. Large empires, rule over great multitudes, insofar as they possess limited wealth, can depend on economic power means. Their rule can endure not in spite of the fact that the majority of the population lives at the very margin of subsistence, but because of that. Finally, fears and hopes can be manipulated via not only the alteration of vital relationships but also that of the criteria of evaluation. In a society where it is possible to place the highest value on professional careers, every little step forward entails an extraordinary experience of reward, to which corresponds the fear of all that does not assist one’s advancement. To give an innocuous example, the prestige attached to certain rewards that cost very little to those conferring them—a ceremonially awarded honorable title, a belt of a specific color, a diploma, a larger work desk—can be increased to such an extent that they come to stand for the highest recognition one can aspire to. In a context where individuals unquestioningly seek to perform better and better, it is easy

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to attach ever-new significance to people’s hopes of success or fears of failure. One can easily multiply such examples. In the last instance, the whole culture in all its manifestations reflects like a mirror the manipulation of fears and hopes—the meanings carried by religious phenomena or the worldly understandings of luck and of the good life; the ideals of fame, honor, and respectability, as well as the dictates that tie individuals together. Insofar as every cultural system shapes fears and hopes in a particular manner, every culture by the same token arranges for particular opportunities to employ threats and promises as power instruments, and every cultural change modifies those opportunities. This does not entail reducing all system and all change to power-political intentions. But all cultural change produces new bases for the exercise of instrumental power and does away with old ones. Each cultural transformation shows how being subjected to threat lends itself to conscious shaping. One final observation. The young warrior whose story I have narrated became a good slave. Humans can become such good slaves on account of a twofold disposition to submit. They can place all human faculties of action at the service of others—the ability to speak and to think, fantasy, strength of will. In this manner they can be as useful to the lord they serve as only one man can be to another. But they also have at their disposal an extraordinary capacity to reduce their expectations to a minimum, to surrender their own will, to disregard all alternatives. It is the possibility of reducing to such an extent a human being that renders so awful the manipulation of its fears and hopes.

4 THE AUTHORITY BOND

THE SPECIFIC NATURE OF BEING BOUND BY AUTHORITY

Experiences, questions, theses, emotions of all kinds are connected with the word “authority.” As a provisional pointer to matters of interest here, it is probably best to indicate some distinctions.1 Authority shall not necessarily mean something extraordinary or particularly dramatic (as is the case when one implies its proximity with Weber’s concept of charisma). Authority relations, effects of authority are also everyday phenomena. This does not exclude that extraordinary, “inexplicable” events may awaken an often-justified suspicion that the specters of authority are at work again. Authority should not mean a historically limited phenomenon (as happens when one attempts to identify the original meaning of auctoritas).2 Effects of authority persist in the present: no modernity, no rationalization has set them aside. Finally, authority shall not mean something consistently good or consistently bad—as is the case when one expects the salvation of sound authority or salvation from the disappearance of authority in a world totally regenerated. It is not enough, however, to avoid burdening the

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expression with an excess of meanings. Caution must be exercised even before this. In the 1920s Alfred Vierkandt recommended a distinction that greatly influenced the thinking of Toennies and Oppenheimer, among others: the distinction between a disposition to comply motivated by sheer fear and one motivated by unconstrained inclination. In its fi rst meaning, that disposition amounts, for example, to “fear of immediate bodily suffering (corporal punishment)” or of impending economic disadvantages. In its second meaning, in which it “corresponds with an unconstrained inclination,” that disposition is present “where an individual looks up in reverence.” Here obedience is based on the “awareness and recognition of superiority in value.” The person who complies in this state of mind subjects him- or herself to an “inner power,” to an “authority.”3 This sounds admirably simple. Here, free inclination and value superiority; there, money and violence. Vierkandt’s formulations seem to have struck his contemporaries as particularly cogent. Indeed, the pattern of thought in which they are grounded goes as far back as the reflection on power itself. Here is the Chinese philosopher Men Tzu (Mencius): “When men are subdued by force, they do not submit their minds, but only because their strength is inadequate. When men are subdued by power in personality, they are pleased to their very heart’s core and do really submit.”4 The idea is the same, but here instead of value superiority one speaks of “power in the personality.” It would be easy to add further components to the list of understandings of authority as an inner, voluntarily recognized power. Horkheimer distinguishes, for example, between “authoritarian” and “authoritative” relations, and characterizes the latter as “consented-to dependency,” ranging from “loving” to barely patient obedience.5 I have no doubt that there does exist something like compliance from consented-to dependency, and that it is a matter deserving reflection when one contemplates “authority.” Only the assurance with which such statements are formulated makes me uneasy. Yet this does not yet represent an argument. More concern should be caused by the history of the concepts of potestas and auctoritas, which indeed belongs to the

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framework of the polarity between external and internal power in the broadest sense. In the Roman empire, as well as in the Catholic church, auctoritas, taking advantage of its halo as “consented-to dependency,” was put forward as the stereotypical legitimation of claims for higher power of whatever kind, and in this capacity constitutes one of the most successful ideological concepts within European history. But this, too, merely warns of the possible abuse of a conceptual formulation particularly prone to abuse. The key problem, as I see it, lies in simply labeling two power forms as standing respectively for good and evil. The inner power, the authority, is described as plainly pure, loving, free, and thus depicts straightforwardly the contrast between natural superiority and natural inferiority. With the alternative power form, the external one, sheer constriction comes into being. We can leave out of the discussion what may be in general the negative or positive import of such polarities. But as concerns authority, in my opinion, they entirely miss the phenomenon. The effects of authority can lead to utterly contrasting relations and actions, to obedience that is blind or blinded by anger, to a submission clear-sighted and inspired by love, to a fanatical sacrifice of oneself, or to a self-conscious search for emotional security. Characteristically, there is often ambivalence in a conduct determined by authority, such as the oscillation between forced engagement and boastful opposition, the transition from emphatic admiration to aversion and hatred, the proximity between loyalty and betrayal. Such contrasts, ambivalences, transitions are not marginal occurrences. All understanding of authority should also contribute to understanding the divergence between its possible effects. The “good” as well as the “evil” effects originate from the same sources. But where lies the unity of the authority phenomenon? It consists—this is the premise of my argument—in a specific boundedness, which binds a human being to something another one does or omits doing. The person who depends on authority is fi xated on the other, fi xated in particular on all actions that one may consider as a reaction to oneself. One is chained up to a relation, real or imagined, that binds one to the other.

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If one describes it in this manner, such boundedness does not yet differ from one grounded in libidinal impulses or on self-identification. Yet the boundedness, the entrapment we are dealing with, can be considered more precisely as a distinctive, fundamental form of human relationship of its own.

EFFECTS OF AUTHORITY

In spite of all differences in understandings of authority, they share some aspects that can constitute our point of departure. Certain distinctive traits of authority are very often expressly mentioned; in other cases they can be deduced as obvious assumptions. Such—incomplete but extensive—commonality comprises, as far as I can see, four distinctive traits. 1. One who attributes authority to another adheres to the wishes of the person in authority not only in one’s own observable conduct but also in what one does without being observed. Even if one can safely assume that what one does or omits doing remains in the dark, one conducts oneself (often) in a compliant manner. The effects of authority comprise adaptations that go beyond the sphere of what the person in authority controls. 2. The effects of authority comprise the adjustment not only of one’s conduct, but also of one’s attitude. The person who depends on authority adopts judgments, opinions, standards of evaluation of the person in authority—“criteria” of that person—and with them his or her “perspectives,” the viewpoint from which he or she judges, the rules by which he or she interprets. The recognition of authority always entails a psychical adaptation. Authority relations reach below the skin. This also explains why a compliance determined by authority goes beyond the context subject to control. The person who depends on authority keeps oneself under observation. One judges one’s own conduct as the authority would, having taken over its criteria and perspectives.

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The recognition accorded to a new authority may lead to a radical change in attitudes. The new authority opens up a new world, makes new truths visible, converts to a new belief: ad fidem faciendam auctoritas. 3. The person who exercises authority does not find it necessary to employ “heavy” means. She can refrain from threatening physical and material punishments. Authority is, or seems to be, as it were, unarmed; it represents the successful result of low-grade means. A teacher who holds a class “in the palm of her hand” is probably recognized as an authority. Additionally the original meaning of auctoritas in the Roman Republic suggests a force capable of effects without the power of constriction. The general, the official, the pater familias, when he had to take an important decision, convened a council of experienced men and asked for its advice. “All of a Roman’s private and public existence is ruled by the principle that he takes no important decision without previously asking for the advice of all those who appear to him competent to offer it.”6 The advice of an ad hoc convened council—at the political level, that of the Senate—possessed auctoritas. Wieacker describes such auctoritas as “indirect power,” a kind of reinforcement that conferred on the legal acts of another person a complete legal effect and on the social conduct of another person additional weight in the public sphere.7 Consulting authoritative advice upheld the legitimation of a decision and increased the trust in its validity. Such reinforcement, such increase (augere—whence authority—means “to increase”), was grounded in the reputation enjoyed by those who gave the advice and in the dignity of the institution. This is just one example of the intrinsic weight of authority effects. But a limitation is necessary, if perhaps at this point it also entails going beyond the area of consensus. Authority can refrain from means of constriction, but does not  need to do so. Exactly on this point one should not overstate the polarization of internal vs. external power—auctoritas and potestas. The violent father may well exercise authority, indeed a fearsome and nearly irresistible authority. Whether violence and authority can agree results from the interpretation of the one who depends on authority, from the way he makes sense of exercised violence. We

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shall reflect on this further. For the time being, just a reservation—the effects of authority are not necessarily connected with means of constriction of whatever nature, but are not in principle incompatible with them as well. 4. The person who attributes to others authority upon oneself acknowledges the superiority of another, looks up to him as from an inferior position. For him the other, we can also say, possesses prestige. The recognition of superiority can be partial and refer to specific advantages, considered particularly valuable and desirable, such as superiority in terms of possessions, of capacity, or of knowledge. The other has more—more wealth, power, honorable ancestry. He is capable of more—is more skillful, more intelligent, more creative, more efficacious. The other knows more—he can avail himself of more information, more experience, greater insight. At this point of course one can think of infinite variations. But it is not always the case that the recognition of superiority relates to definable advantages. The other’s superiority may appear as general and at the same time remain vague and somewhat mysterious. Lewis Leopold interpreted in this fashion the concept of prestige, and Vierkandt and Toennies, later also Heinz Kluth, largely followed him in this respect. Leopold describes a kind of “prestige of the higher being.” The other  is straightforwardly more—in a way that excludes all comparison, all competition with him. “The uncanny sense that one has before himself someone that to a great degree one cannot live up to in one’s own thinking, valuing, willing: this is prestige.”8 Here prestige means the acceptance of an incomprehensible and inexplicable superiority. On this account prestige appears as a phenomenon of social distance, an otherness perceived as utterly out of reach. This holds above all within an order subdivided into higher and lower social estates. The higher estate lives in a different world. But something like a “prestige of the higher being” does not have to be associated with a capitulation of understanding. It is possible to acknowledge and at the same time comprehend a general superiority. Wilhelm Meister motivates his own decision to become an actor in terms of an acute, persistent reflection on the essential inferiority of the

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bourgeois vis-à-vis the nobility. “The cultivation of my individual self, here as I am”—for the bourgeois such a thing is possible only on the stage. In the following, I have to report his reasoning in strongly abbreviated form. I do not know what it is like in foreign countries, but in Germany only the noblemen can attain a certain cultivation that is both general and personal, if I may say so. A bourgeois can acquire merit and develop his own spirit to a great extent: however, his personality is lost in the process, whatever he does. The nobleman, instead, in his dealings with the most distinguished people, is obliged to impart to himself a distinguished deportment, which, giving him access to any door, becomes a free deportment: given that he must pay with his figure, his person, whether at court or in the army, he has reasons for adhering to it, and to show that he does. . . . He is a public figure. . . . He can put himself forward wherever he is, whereas nothing suits the bourgeois as much as the pure, mute sense for the boundary laid down for him. He cannot ask, what are you, but rather, what do you have? What views, what knowledge, what capacity, what patrimony? While the nobleman offers everything by representing his person, the bourgeois offers nothing through his personality, and should give nothing. This one can, and ought to, appear; that one only ought to exist, and what he may appear is ridiculous and tasteless. That one ought to act and produce effect: this one, perform and create; to make himself useful he must develop this or that capacity, and it is assumed that in his being there is not and there cannot be any harmony, because, in order to render himself useful in one way, he must neglect all others.9

The premise of this reasoning is astonishingly unperturbed. The formation of the personality requires a public sphere, requires the presentation of oneself as a “public person.” The opportunity, or indeed the duty, of public self-presentation is the basis for the nobleman’s superiority. It establishes a general superiority, the superiority of the higher being over against the bourgeois, who pays for his own partial utility

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with a partial development of his faculties. Here the superiority is recognized, but at the same time seen through. It constitutes not (as in Leopold) an accepted coincidence, but a challenge to act. In any case, the actor remains only a proxy for a “public person.” Let us consider together all these versions of acknowledged prestige— the superiorities partial and general, the inexplicable ones and those comprehended—and ask about their import for him who, via the other’s recognition, locates himself among the inferiors. One may expect in the first place such emotions as high esteem and reverence or envy and resentment. The stronger the emotions, the more they will affect the manner of the inferior’s relations, the way he conducts himself visà-vis those held in high esteem, whether in a particularly respectful or provocative manner, with routinized submissiveness or inhibition. Above all, in any case, the recognition of superiority generates an openness, a disposition to be influenced. He who counts on others having a greater understanding of what goes on in the world derives from that some certainty concerning the big affairs. He gains insight by following the other’s insight. “He himself” (the great theological teacher, the great scholar) “has said this”—autós épha. Truth has been proclaimed. Put more conventionally, the counsel of prestigious persons is worth more than that of common mortals. It is the counsel of somebody who has attained success. When one follows it, one associates oneself with success. Here indeed, as a rule, exists the tendency to generalize advantages: the person who is superior on this point is so also on another point. The same holds for the connection between prestige and exemplarity. One is on the right road if one imitates who is successful and follows him. Thus, he to whom superiority in its meaning as prestige is attributed influences the conduct of others, consciously or unconsciously. This may be the essential reason for identifying the effects of prestige with the phenomenon of authority. Hence Bertrand de Jouvenel’s statement: “I want to use the word ‘authority’ to denote the position in which A finds himself in relation to Bs who ‘look up to him,’ ‘lend him their ears,’ have a strong propensity to comply with his bidding.”10

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One could call this the conventional concept of authority: authority is based on the recognition of superiority that leads to a strong disposition to conformity. This seems to assume the traits of which we have spoken so far: compliance also in the absence of controls, adoption of attitudes, and independence from constriction. I consider this conventional concept of authority not as misleading, but rather as somewhat short-winded. The acknowledgment of superiority together with the related disposition to accept influence constitutes one component of the authority phenomenon, and can also correspond with a preliminary aspect of it. But it does not grasp the particularity of the effects of authority. Above all it leaves unexplained the specific nature of the bond it lays upon the person who depends on authority, the complicated manner in which he or she is a captive to a particular social relation.

RECOGNITION OF AUTHORITY AS RESPONSE TO THE HANKERING TOWARD SOCIAL RECOGNITION

I assume that authority bonds are based on the aspiration to obtain recognition from others. Authority is exercised by persons obtaining recognition from someone who is felt as particularly urgent, as decisive for the assurance of being socially recognized, of being taken seriously socially.11 The sense that one is socially recognized is essential for our own selfacceptance, our self-esteem. Insofar as recognition from authorities is decisive for a sense of being socially recognized, our own self-acceptance also comes to depend on that “authoritative” recognition. Accordingly, the aspiration to recognition from authorities is also an aspiration to accept ourselves. Thus it is via this component, our own aspiration to recognition, both from others and from ourselves, that we engender the effects of authority in the first place and produce boundedness to persons in authority.

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When we observe how authority bonds emerge, as a rule we can identify a twofold process of recognition: the recognition of the superiority of other persons—the attribution of prestige—and, connected with this, the fixation of our aspiration to recognition upon those superior persons or groups. We want to be particularly recognized by those we particularly recognize.12 The fi xation of that aspiration on particular people explains the dependency of the one who recognizes authority as the dependency on those whose praise and respect he or she particularly hopes for, whose blame and contempt he or she fears with particular intensity. Such fi xation also explains why authority bonds lead to psychical adaptations, to the acquisition of the perspectives and criteria of others: these are the perspectives and criteria in the light of which we must prove ourselves. Also the boundedness, the being captivated by authorities, becomes more understandable: our aspiration to recognition is hooked on them; they tip the scales, hold us in their hands. Recognition on their part is the social success critical for our self-confidence. Finally one can grasp why disengagement from authority ties can be so painful: we cut a tie on which depends our confidence—assured or tentative as it may be—that in the world we have a certain worth and significance. What is often oppressive in the loosening of authority bonds also reveals itself as the oppressive awareness of a subjection from which we are being freed, a security from which we are released.

A N T H R O P O LO GI C A L FO UNDAT IO NS

So much for the basic assumptions that I believe characterize a universal anthropological structure. To justify this, a few reflections (in turn necessarily based on premises that must be postulated). That we necessarily aspire to self-acceptance, and could not do otherwise, derives from the fundamental fact of our reflexivity about ourselves (again, not just a gift bestowed on us but also a constriction laid upon us) and from the equally fundamental evaluative relation to the

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reality in which we live. In our evaluations, we also comprehend the part of reality that we are. Our consciousness of ourselves is always a consciousness of our own value. But the reaction to the self-evaluation is not only a contemplative taking something into account, but rather the concern of a being that acts, that is, that can change reality. In this regard one must generally assume an aspiration, an active effort to achieve a satisfactory self-esteem, whether in order to compensate for something we lack or as a defense against danger. We cannot avoid the problem, and must— barring pathological resignation—respond to it by acting and aspiring. However, on what account does self-acceptance depend on social recognition? First, let us return to the fundamental fact that reflexivity also addresses oneself. A human being does not simply “have” a consciousness of him- or herself, but rather develops it in the course of the first years of its life. In the child such consciousness of him- or herself has its origins in his or her experience within the interplay between action and reaction with regard to others. Reflexivity about oneself has its origins on the “inner side” of communicative experiences. The decisive step is indeed (as George Herbert Mead was the first to see) the emergence of the capacity to view from the standpoint of the interaction partner both what is taking place and oneself as a participant. By learning to see him- or herself as the other sees him or her, the child also learns to see him- or herself. We can make an object of ourselves, because we can make ourselves an object as seen by the other.13 This experience and this capacity not only determine the genesis of self-consciousness but constitute its structure. “All self-awareness combines the ego’s awareness of one’s own person, tinged with the consciousness of the ‘other’s’ reaction to it.”14 Perceiving oneself is always also a perceiving of oneself with the eyes of others. This reasoning can be made more specific with regard to self-acceptance. Self-evaluation, too, develops from communicative experiences, and indeed especially from social experiences of recognition. What the child can successfully accomplish, he or she experiences essentially in the context of social attention, from applause or displeasure, from help, stimulation, being faulted. If there is also some autonomous material

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evidence of success (what can be “accomplished,” what capacities can be expected), all this is, in essence, defined through social success, through recognition from others. From such experiences of recognition emerges what constitutes self-evaluation, as the taking over of recognition by others into a relation with oneself. Thus, social experiences of recognition determine from the start the structure of self-acceptance. In the same way as all seeing of oneself is always also a seeing with the eyes of others, all evaluating of oneself is always also an evaluating with the eyes of others. In the same way the structure of the self cannot be conceived without a capacity to internally represent the perspectives of others; in particular, self-acceptance cannot be conceived without the capacity to internally represent the recognition by others. Only when the child has learned this internal representation has he or she gained the capacity to experience authority.

WHO ATTAINS AUTHORITY?

Let us seek to characterize more concretely such capacity to experience authority by posing three questions. So far persons in authority have come into our considerations merely to play the role of dummies. Thus, first question: Is it possible to figure out somehow who gains authority, and why? Further, the recognition a person experiences is of course that which he or she perceives, the recognition he or she imagines—thus not necessarily the intended one. What role does the imagination play, including the merely imagined, in our authority experiences? Finally, we have often spoken of the dependency of those who acknowledge an authority. As one can easily see, such dependency can be consciously exploited by the authorities. The effects of authority can become an instrument of the exercise of power—but the exercise of what kind of power? Who gains authority, then? In traditional societies authority is to a large extent institutionalized. It is associated with certain societal posi-

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tions and survives the individuals who exercise it qua incumbents of such positions. In this manner, attributions of authority are preordained. The individual grows into them. One takes for granted whose judgments have particular significance for being recognized, who represents social recognition. Authority is not an object for selection. It is set in advance structurally, is not so much an offer as an obligation. After the decline of traditional authority, acquire prevalent significance authority relations of a personal nature (which were always present in marginal and exceptional circumstances). This does not mean that the person who is chosen becomes an entirely arbitrary matter. Institutional conditions persist as a context. Societal values to a large extent prescribe who is considered as markedly superior—whether in terms of wealth, capacity, or wisdom—and whose recognition has particular value. Prestige makes more probable the attribution of authority. But within these contextual conditions, and sometimes cutting across them, the authority relations in which one is involved in the course of one’s existence, their intensity and their duration, become an identifying feature of the individual’s biography. Th is suggests a “personality theory” of the attribution of authority that claims to account for at least the extraordinary effects of authority. According to it, the source of such effects is an outstanding personality, which has a strong presence. Some outstanding force fascinates others, strikes them as a force that establishes authority. There is no doubt that such fascination effects exist; but they can barely be conceived as authority-conferring properties that someone simply “possesses.” The authority effects of some individuals are all too clearly relative. One teacher regularly gains authority upon younger pupils, but loses it with older ones, for whom another gains authority. There are men who have authority typically over women and others who attain authority only within men’s associations. Certain authorities operate only within narrow circles, on account of social proximity, intimacy; others instead operate only within large gatherings, by making use of a podium and a microphone. Authority effects can be limited to a particular social stratum (for example, the petty bourgeoisie) and, naturally, to certain countries (see German over against

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English authorities). Such effects in turn depend on temporal circumstances (see German authorities in 1914, 1933, 1945  .  .  . ).* Even great historical figures did not have unlimited effects. For whom did Caesar possess authority? For whom Socrates? Authority, then, does not derive eo ipso from determinate (or even indeterminate) human qualities. It is not something one possesses but something one attains. It is a relational phenomenon that can be explained only by the encounter between properties of numerous people within particular constellations. Explained? Comprehensive explanations of this kind are, as we know, extraordinarily difficult. They succeed, rather, when one focuses on the dispositions of those in need of authority. It is not possible to characterize authority persons in general, contextfree terms. But perhaps one can give something like a substitute answer, referring not to actual but to supposed qualities. Are there certain postures, attitudes, capacities typically perceived in authorities by those who acknowledge authority? To reconstruct an image of authority seems to be not utterly impossible if one reflects on how authority bonds produce their effects. An example brings to mind some features very precisely: The Bellerophon sailed to Cartagena, in Spain. The figurehead was painted afresh. Nelson himself came on board, too. A delicate, decisive gentleman who also knew how to smile. When he stood before the crew of the Bellerophon , he spoke in a whisper, almost beseeching. He appeared like a man fi lled with love—love of glory, and love for his own kind. And so soon there was no one who didn’t want to be of Nelson’s kind. . . . This man Nelson seemed to be utterly certain that they would all do what he loved them for, and they did so. He loved madmen, and so it seemed tempting to go mad for England. Suddenly the seamen pressed into service and the abused soldiers were all determined to become heroes. They now believed they were among the

* Popitz refers to dramatic incidents in German history: the beginning of the First World War, the coming into power of the National Socialists, and the end of the Second World War—Eds.

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greatest of the earth. They had only to show it. Honor committed everyone to do what he had already been praised for. Honor was a kind of proof to be furnished after the fact.15

Authorities establish standards that others adopt. As a rule, their disposition to do so is probably greater if the authority appears to represent such standards with great assurance, firmly, with a solid faith in their validity. What qualifies for adoption must appear self-evident, unquestionable, untouched by reasonable doubt (as the decision for heroism on the Bellerophon). Accepting standards is made easier if they are clear, present no nuances or uncertainties. It is absolutely clear what one must believe in, and what one is to do. Any ambivalence would hamper adoption. (On the Bellerophon it was evident to the soldiers who was “among the greatest of the earth.”) The individual who depends on authority is fi xated on the judgment of the authority person upon him- or herself; he or she hopes for approval, fears disregard. Such hopes and fears will become more intense the more the dependents sense that the authorities actually react to their behavior. Their eye focuses on what others do or omit doing. They are interested, participant, involved. The authority appears as constantly able and ready to judge. (“Honor was a kind of proof to be furnished after the fact.”) As a rule, hopes and fears also gain intensity when the reactions expected from the authority person are more striking. The authority appears not only to react constantly, but also to be particularly capable of empathy. Its judgments are loaded with meanings of love or hatred, with unconditional affection or approval or contempt. (Nelson could be sure that the sailors did “what he loved them for.”) The person depends on authority believes he must be constantly concerned with the generalizing scope of the authority’s judgments. Whatever he does leads to an evaluation of his “whole person.” No matter how he conducts himself toward the person in authority, the relationship is invariably at stake. So far we have considered some of the supposed properties of persons in authority. Such suppositions are derived from certain features of the authority phenomenon, connected in turn with psychological rules of

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plausibility. What renders more likely that the criteria and the perspectives of the authority persons will be adopted? Presumed assurance and clarity. What fosters an intensive dependency on the judgments of persons in authority? Presumed readiness to act and the unconditional nature of their evaluations. Sure, such an image of authority presents particular emphases that depend on experience and are culture-bound. Yet its basic traits appear to me closely connected with the characteristics of the authority bond. This tentative answer should not conceal that the interpretation of the authority phenomenon attempted is in contrast with theories of the effects of authority which decontextualize the personality. Such theories indeed appear more credible in the light of experiences of authority that affect particularly deeply one’s existence. This may be due to the fact that the person who depends to a greater extent on authority tends to see the authority person as the source of all things that have significance for him or her.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CAPACITY TO IMAGINE

As happens with all human relationships of some intensity, within authority relations the effectiveness of the power of imagination also acquires outstanding significance. This is already apparent in the interpretation of the reactions of persons in authority. What is intended as recognition or withdrawal of recognition can often be clearly identified. There are verbal, gestural, mimic signals, which plainly cannot convey something other than assent, confirmation, disapproval, disappointment. Yet on the basis neither of wellmeaning intentions nor of any kind of objective features can one safely infer which reactions the persons concerned will view as conveying recognition and which will not. Verbal reactions, for instance, may have lost any importance if someone has learned to experience only physical punishments as involving relevant denials of recognition. Naturally

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every action in every context is open to interpretation. However, when what is at stake is the sense of self-worth, one can particularly expect the formation of peculiar imaginary contexts that impart shape and color to judgments respectively feared and hoped for. The development of authority relation attributes further indicates the significance of imagined realities. A simple model can distinguish the stages of development of incomplete, complete, and latent authority bonds. Incomplete are those bonds where recognitions and withdrawals of recognition become effective only when they are actually carried out or are expected from those concerned. Conformity thus limits itself to the sphere subject to control, as happens particularly in the case of growing children. The bonding is complete if the imaginary projection of recognitions and denials of recognition can replace, entirely or partially, their realization as matters of fact. Finally, within latent authority bonds the person in authority is no longer psychically present as the source of judgments, but his or her perspectives and criteria continue to operate as internalized norms. Only thanks to the autonomous weight of the imagination, dependency on authority becomes a complete boundedness, a relationship that the dependent has fully taken on and carries everywhere with himself. The judgment he imagines guides him even when he knows he is not observed by anyone but himself. Only when reality can be replaced by imaginations is the dependent permanently captured by authority. In the same manner the authority relation may gradually loosen itself from actual interactions. Such loosening from actual interactions can be increased within authority relations of a peculiar nature. A demagogue who propagates new standards of judgment and at the same time proclaims his judgment upon believers and nonbelievers becomes a “public authority,” if his audience not only adopts his standards but also perceives his general judgments as personal recognitions and withdrawals of recognition. This differs from aroused aggressions or from a consensus achieved rhetorically. The person who attains public authority must be in a position to evoke in those listening to him a self-reference that goes beyond mere emotions and mere assent. He must become the judge of their

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self-esteem. This includes that it must be possible to imagine that he registers all they do or omit to do, and reacts to that in terms of an evaluation. Such imaginary aspects of recognition can become a mass phenomenon—with the peculiarity that they are based not on dumb conformity or on simple contagion effects, but on acts of imagination or, if one prefers, on imaginary ventures that anyone must perform on his or her own. Public authorities emerge when many people bridge over the distance separating them from actors who represent themselves publicly and accomplish this peculiar form of self-reference without interaction. A further progression toward the realm of what is merely imagined is represented by one’s imaginary relation to the idols of storybooks, fi lm stars, war heroes, the protagonists of legends. At any rate within daydreams such a relation can attain the traits of an authority bond. One does not simply emulate the model chosen, but also imputes to it reactions to one’s own behavior. This can have a certain significance for one’s self-acceptance, for instance, as a surrogate for an approval that is missing from everyday experience. In general, however, these fi xations on illusionary authorities are likely to be of brief duration, being connected with particular stages of one’s life or with temporary fashions. There is finally an ultimate product of imagination that often influences our life—the “authority of posterity.” Posterity turns into a last imaginary instance of the evaluation of one’s own existence. The highest recognition one can attain is the fame that survives the person’s life. This idea has had a particular impact on warrior cultures. The primordial exemplar of fame attained is the war hero. It is precisely death, heroic death, that gives the certainty of survival. Undoubtedly this idea has enjoyed success, and has affected the actions and self-esteem of innumerable individuals. To what extent the hope stretched toward posterity may be grounded or becomes a fiction is not the decisive matter. What determines conduct is the recognition anticipated in the imagination. The belief in posterity attains a remarkable new color in the figure of the unrecognized genius, which takes form as a social type in the nineteenth century. For the unrecognized genius the fame to come means

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retributive justice and a belated triumph over the contemporaries who have ignored him or her. Such hope may afford comfort and encouragement, but here the reference to “authority” becomes totally fictional. The unrecognized poet, artist, philosopher, discoverer of new worldviews indeed cannot orient her- or himself with regard to the content of a preestablished model of honorable actions; she or he can only focus on the novel insight of those to follow, on their disposition to reconsider their judgment and to learn. She or he must thus carve out for her- or himself such posterity of her or his own design, something like a special posterity. In such a situation everything must be thought of individually, both the recognition and those granting it. The “external support” expected from the authority bond is for the time being just a dream. This set of examples of the extent to which the force of the imagination supports and constitutes authority seems to have carried us away. But the sequence of examples is not arbitrary. The bolder and more productive the force of imagination is, the more obvious the effect, direct or remote, of experiences of religious authority becomes. Already in the transition from incomplete to complete authority bonds, the idea of an omnipotence that sees everything, knows everything, from which nothing is hidden reasserts itself. By adopting in one’s own imagination this permanent control—as the imagined reaction of the higher power—the dependency is recognized as inescapable. Public authorities are often prone to overtly borrow from the pattern of ritual acts, say, in public ceremonies or in their speech style. In a more or less disguised form they proclaim knowledge of salvation. In their glorifications or condemnations they present themselves as the mediators of supernatural forces and decisions. If this pseudosacred claim asserts itself, it becomes comprehensible why many individuals refer to themselves the proclaimed glorification or condemnation. In the fictitious authorities of storybook worlds, the reference to religion is generally even more undisguised and naive. The heroes are semigods, and do not need to mediate anything but themselves. Finally, the “authority of posterity.” Here the idea of immortality recurs explicitly as an imperishable fame thanks to which existence continues. The judgment of posterity plays the role of last judgment.

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Those to follow pronounce the definitive verdict. If this is understood as compensating for the lack of recognition from contemporaries, the proximity to the idea of an ultimate, celestial justice becomes particularly striking. This transposition of religious experiences can be tracked through successions of historical events. Its particular significance in the context of authority relations—all the greater when imaginations play a more significant role—can be explained by a particular elective affinity involved. The highest possible authority bond is undoubtedly the submission to the authority of god, his omniscience, and the omnipotence of his judgment. This does not mean that all authority experiences are religious experiences secularized. But there is a structural correspondence, which manifests itself above all when great tensions challenge the force of imagination.

AUTHORITATIVE POWER

So far, we have spoken of authority bonds and the effects of authority. When does power emerge from such bonds and effects? The answer is obvious: authoritative power emerges when the others’ need for recognition, their fi xation on recognition, is consciously put to use in order to influence their behavior and their attitudes. The methods of the exercise of authoritative power consist in the giving and taking of recognitions and expectations of recognition (hopes and fears). If one compares this with other forms of power, what becomes immediately apparent is the similarity to the most banal of all methods for steering the behavior of others in conformity with one’s will—putting into action substantial (physical, material) punishments and rewards and the corresponding threats and promises (“instrumental power”). Here, too, function as methods of the exercise of power the giving and the taking, the confrontation with advantages and disadvantages. Authoritative power does not differ in structural terms from this banal, fundamental power form. In both cases the one who exercises power

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operates with alternatives, seeks to direct others according to his or her own will by means of an either-or. In the exercise of authoritative power, putting power alternatives into play is rendered easier by the inner vulnerability of humans whose selfrespect is tied up with the Yes or No of others; it is rendered more problematic by the difficulty with which such effects can be predicted. The two matters are strictly correlated. One’s vulnerability, one’s exposed position, sensitizes one to even small shifts in the judgment of the authority persons. As the authority bond confers consistency on the world in which we live, consistency by way of assent, the loss of assent can by the same token make one feel like falling out of the world. If this effect is put to use in a planned fashion, even slight means and weak threats can produce a high level of conformity. With such critical relations, however, there will always be effects not consciously produced and not intended by anyone. This derives already from the sensitivity of the individual involved; the more sensitive its reactions are, the more difficult it is to produce carefully calculated effects. Even the protest against authority often appears surprising and unmotivated. However, even leaving aside the question of sensitivity, it remains an inevitably precarious affair to seek to influence not only the behavior of others, but also their perspectives and criteria, their attitudes. It is always difficult to calculate, in particular, the effects on attitudes. One can hardly predict, for example, to what extent given ideas will be generalized, what will be adopted and what shut off, which opposing reactions will be unleashed, let alone how principles accepted today will stand the test tomorrow, under changed conditions. In addition, the person who seeks to exercise authoritative power, that is, who activates consciously a particular potential influence, is not unconditionally the master of all the effects he or she unleashes. The authority bond is indeed that fundamental social bond which most distinctly lends itself to power use. Yet at the same time this power, no matter whether intended to protect or to suppress, is particularly subject to risk.

5 NEEDS FOR AUTHORITY The Change in Social Subjectivity

Then you’ll also know about long retreats, I dare say. Must have seen it as war correspondent. They bring out the best and worst in men. And, paradoxically, it’s in retreat that some men find their talent for leadership. I don’t mean leadership in a race for safety, but the kind that turns headlong retreat into a rearguard action and withdrawal with light casualties. I think that’s what must have happened to Zander. I think that in those last few months he found in himself qualities as a soldier that he hadn’t known he possessed. He found the secret of leadership at combat level. He found that he could command obedience, make men do things they were afraid to do, by making them believe that his respect for them was something really worth having.1

A

retreat without precipitous flight, covered by a rear guard, with the smallest possible losses—such a thing can only succeed if many people do something they are afraid of. In this situation someone discovers “the secret of leadership,” discovers authority. Undoubtedly, people trusted him to give the right commands, had

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respect for him. But they did not obey only on that account. They were convinced—and here lies the secret of his effectiveness—“that his respect for them was something really worth having.” This twofold recognition, on the one hand the recognition of the leader’s faculties, on the other the aspiration to his respect, is in the first place the basis for the force of authority as we understand it here. A sense of self-worth, self-recognition (a problem compulsively connected with the human consciousness of oneself), requires social validation, requires external support, requires confirmation from others. The striving toward such confirmation can be focused on certain individuals. In order to attain their decisive recognition, we take over their perspectives and their criteria and we labor to accomplish what they expect of us. Our own sense of self is chained to their recognition or their denial of such recognition. Authoritative power emerges from bonds of this kind. It is exercised by one who consciously makes use of others’ fi xation on recognition in order to steer their way of thinking and their behavior. This was the chain by which the many were bound to the one who organized the retreat. They wanted to be particularly recognized by the one whom they particularly recognized. They did things they were afraid of because he made them “believe that his respect for them was something really worth having.” I would like to clarify this remarkable relationship, critical for our self-consciousness, by describing a few historical variants of needs for authority. Taken together, they form a historical sequence that, it seems to me, has a logic of its own, at the provisional end of which stands a new kind of authority relation, currently in the process of formation.

INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY: SACRED AND GENERATIVE AUTHORITY

In traditional societies a substantial range of authority relations are institutionalized. Authority is attached to particular societal ranks, to positions. The authority connected with a position survives the

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individuals who occupy it at a given time. One who grows up in a traditional society grows into authority relations attached to positions. One does not choose the authority relations that one is part of; they are chosen, not as an offer to one, but as a matter of obligation. The primary form of superiority conferring authority is the superiority of the divine over the human. The perspectives and criteria taken over are those prescribed by the gods. Rightful conduct obeys their will. It is their recognition, or the denial of it, that decides on fortune or misfortune. The divine will is mediated by knowledge of salvation, which generally is not accessible to all in the same way. The person who possesses particular knowledge of salvation can perform the function of mediator with respect to those who do not possess it. This prerogative of the mediator has been institutionally established in the figure of the priest (shaman, magician, prophet). Being the mediator between divine omnipotence and human impotence, he represents the authoritative claim for recognition of the divine. One can follow the process whereby such claims emerge and slowly assert themselves via various examples, which are particularly transparent and comprehensible in the early phases of the consolidation of the Christian church, where the construction of the bishops’ position was of central significance. In them was concentrated the mediating function qua divina auctoritas. In this context the monopolization of knowledge of salvation came about in close connection with the legitimation of punitive justice. Divina auctoritas included the entitlement to exercise violent sanction (ecclesiastical penalties) understood as applied knowledge of salvation.2 The connection of authority with punitive (instrumental) power was always obvious and often put to use, especially of course in the legitimation of political domination. At the beginning of what we know about political domination lies the sacred kingship of the cities in the Bronze Age, and the ruler equal to a god or godlike in the earliest high cultures. Such legitimation on sacred and priestly terms holds over long historical periods, from the Roman cult of Caesar to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, from the god-granted sovereignty of the absolute ruler to the formulas that committed God to king and fatherland,

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all the way to the last or next-to-last unpleasant aftereffects of nationalistic phraseology. A corresponding legitimation has also been conferred on power positions of the second order, as in the case of the feudal lord and later of the lord of the manor. Still in the Wilhelmine era, in Germany, such positions as teacher, officer, judge had something that reminded of the mediator of eternal values, safeguarded from any individual judgment, endowed with a solemnity and a suprapersonal superiority in which resonated something of the divina auctoritas. A second source of institutional authority, closely connected with the sacred source, is the generative authority, auctoritas paterna. The boundless superiority of parents over the child, the total exposedness of the latter, resembles the relationship between divine omnipotence and human impotence. In the will of the parents, in their help, in their care or lack of it, the child experiences the vital physical and psychical significance of social recognition. Its self-esteem emerges under the spell of such recognition. At the same time it learns to experience the parents as mediators vis-à-vis social reality, as mediators of the perspectives and criteria that render social reality accessible and meaningful. But mostly generative authority does not limit itself to the parentschild relationship; it extends to the elders and the ancestors of the sib, to all those who represent descent and social origins. Here, too, the function of mediating between this world and a different, higher one is decisive. Its insertion within a line of descent and a sequence of generations gives the child the security of social belonging and social continuity. It provides the certainty of the child being recognized as a member of an extensive and durable order. Parents and elders, by imparting the child’s introduction into such order, function as mediators of an “earthly transcendence.” Generative authority, too, has often been transferred to political agencies. This holds for gerontocracies and senate bodies as well as for the honorable title of pater patriae and finally for the legion of fathers of the land (father of the house and children of the house, father of the land and children of the land). By the same token the political body represented itself as a fatherly totality, as patria or as “father state.” What all these transpositions have in common is that the topos of the father attaches to political domination the aura of fatherly care. At the same time

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the legitimizing effect of generative authority is put to use. Political domination comes to guarantee social continuity, mediates between what was and what will be. In turn, this imparts its own colors to notables of different kinds. The lord of the manor, the officer, the teacher—they all obtain something fatherly, the dignity of protector and wise person, and above all that of custodian of the tradition they represent and protect. Finally, both legitimations are connected with the highest claim to authority, by cumulating the fatherly and the priestly superiority in one position, one institution: the sacred father—the sacred fatherland. In the same way as institutional authority draws on both oftenconnected sources of authority, its historical decline must also be understood as that of both sacred and generative authority. Not only the religious transcendence but also what I have called “earthly transcendence” is progressively lost. The individual no longer transcends the meaning of its own existence by referring to something that lies beyond the duration of its life, not even to a social collective that encompasses its own life. What confers meaning it must seek within the biologically limited span of its life. For sure, the decline of institutional authority has by no means come to an end. There is still the nearly unquestioned authority of a position, for example, that of a priest in a confessionally homogeneous context and certainly, often, that of the parents; and in various settings institutions insist on their authority—precariously, but not without effect. Yet everywhere the obvious validity of institutional claims to authority is threatened or no longer existent.

NEEDS FOR RECOGNITION: SOCIAL SUBJECTIVITIES

Should one, in view of the decline of institutional authority, celebrate or deprecate a general “loss of authority”? Not at all. The specifically “authoritative” significance of social relations has not disappeared from

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modern societies. To see this, however, one should not look for authority phenomena exclusively within an institutional context. As institutional authority declines, the significance of personal authority grows, which has always existed. Such authority is not straightforwardly conferred from certain positions to those who hold them at a given time. It develops from personal relations that can be relatively open to choice and can be ended relatively freely, as a particular event within an individual’s biography. Obviously sociocultural conditions— in particular, status and class, the width or narrowness of the field of relations, typical occupational itineraries—also here generate certain boundaries and probabilities. Yet the aspirations to recognition become focused on given individuals as a result of how one subjectively experiences the particular personality of the other.3 One can grasp quite a few aspects of the historical changes in authority phenomena in the light of the distinction between institutional and personal authority. Yet we should broaden the frame of reference. First, one must bear in mind a simpler experience. Needs for authority encompass not only from whom one seeks social recognition but also as what one seeks to be socially recognized. As a person, of course. But as what kind of person, in what social manifestation, what social personality? Merely as a member of a nomadic horde, or as one holding a particular position within a line of descent, or within a particular professional probation? The aspects of recognition to which one may possibly aspire are subject to sociostructural constraints and become differentiated in the course of the historical process. I will summarize them by constructing a few types, which I call types of social subjectivity. The concept of social subjectivity reminds one of the connection at the base of the authority phenomenon, that between the “subjective” and the “social,” the subjectivity of any social actor—its relatedness to the singularity of its existence—and the fact that its subjectivity depends constitutionally on external support in the form of social confirmation. Or, in the expressions mostly employed here, the connection between self-recognition and social recognition. Generally, social subjectivities, their needs and claims, find a corresponding offer from the society. In every society there develop patterns

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of conduct connected with social acceptance. (If you accomplish this, if you behave yourself this way, you will be socially accepted in a particular sense.) Qua actor of such patterns, qua particular social subject, social subjectivity can manifest itself and generate satisfaction. (“Social role” is the most common concept for a given type of social subject.) The general fit between the “demand” for social subjectivities and the “offer” of social subjects naturally has its simple reason in the fact that each society raises its children in a suitable manner. Our social subjectivity is prearranged, gets arranged with regard to the kinds of social subject that we find established. Obviously this does not always happen. Social subjectivities emerge that find in society no locus of approval, can nowhere be understood and find a place—they constitute diverse forms of the unhappy consciousness. This does not only lead to the usual problems of escapism and marginalization. The discrepancy between social subjectivity and the repertoire of social subjects on offer can attain a systematic character. A society—it seems to me, our society—can produce a dominant type of social subjectivity, which by its own nature cannot fi nd a pattern of realization as a social subject in this society and probably cannot in any other.

R I distinguish five types of social subjectivity.

R E CO GN I T I O N O F B E LO NG ING

The first type shall be understood as the need to be acknowledged as a member of a group, as a member of this horde, this sib, this tribe (and further, this state, this church). Being acknowledged, here, aims at being like others, at identity in terms of comembership, of coinclusion. The experience of belonging is a fundamental form of social experience; the certainty of belonging is a fundamental form of social selfapproval. All societies we know, from the primordial nomadic hordes

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to industrial society, make this experience possible. They put it on offer by forming a plurality of social units, each of which draws certain boundaries toward the outside and in this fashion defines distinctions between “us” and “the others.” (This is the principle of sociation via cell formation.) The recognition of social membership can never be understood entirely by itself. The child indeed gets born into social units, but must learn how to fulfill the criteria of belonging. All social units lay down conditions, demand activities such as participation in the defense of the group toward the outside, in reciprocal help, in collective work and the assent to the style of the group’s behavior and its shared interpretations of reality. One can also fall short of such belongings. To this extent, the aspiration to being recognized as a member is always also an aspiration to receive recognition with regard to something that one brings about oneself. From whom can be expected the “critical” recognition of a membership? In the first instance, from institutional authorities such as the patriarch or the priest, who, being in possession of the decisive knowledge, can pronounce the judgment decisive for the group. Occasionally single individuals without the support of preestablished positions can attain a personal authority so great that the measure by which all members are measured and measure themselves lies in their hands. The decision on who belongs, however, can also reside with the group as a whole. In such a situation, “the group as a whole” exercises authority— more precisely, all individuals and each individual. All, in that they contribute to a shared atmosphere of trust or mistrust toward a member, probably also to shared verdicts. Each, to the extent that each individual can represent group opinion. The more homogenous the group is and the more all members appear unquestionably as equals, the more effectively each member can operate as the custodian of group membership. Each can, through his involvement or his detachment, through proximity or distance, reinforce in each of the others the security of their membership or suggest doubts concerning it. Innumerable symbolic attitudes can signal “you are one of us” or “are you one of us?” Each, as custodian of the membership, has authority vis-à-vis each of the others.

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Together, the individual relations form a circle of authority, in which each is caught and each keeps going. Within groups where such group authority manifests itself, social control is omnipresent. Occasionally one can escape the control of an individual in authority, if necessary behind the back of a neighbor. But if group authority exists in a pure form, there no longer is such a back. The neighbor itself is authority. There are no empty spots as concerns control. The control, the eye of the little Big Brother, is everywhere. We do not know which forms of authority may have formed themselves in the earliest human societies, the hordes of nomadic hunters. But very likely group authority played a role “from the beginning on”—the more significant the more egalitarian the group structures were. Thus, not only social approval based on membership but also the bond with group authorities constitute a universal human experience.

RECO GNI T I O N I N AS C R I B E D, ACH IE VE D, AND PUBLIC ROLES

Second type: the social subjectivity that aspires to recognition in an ascribed role (as the social subject of an ascribed role). The patterns of conduct of ascribed roles are associated with features recognizable from birth: age, gender, descent, and possibly social rank. Self-esteem can thus be socialized, from birth on, with reference to such patterns of conduct. In comparison with the first type, here the aspiration to recognition can be made to an extent more specific. The person who lives up to ascribed roles attains confirmation on the basis not simply of his or her equality with all other group members but also of a particular social function. Thus, the performances in the light of which an individual must prove him- or herself (as a young man, a wife, or a mother) are also defined more narrowly and precisely. This type, too, is universal. In all societies we know, role ascriptions have emerged on the basis at least of age and gender, with some probability already in hunting cultures.4 But only in the case of settled agricultural societies do role ascriptions manifest a solid structure. Along

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with the new, economically conditioned significance of stocks of provisions, property, and inheritance, the key points of reference for societal rights and obligations come to be descent, gender, and age. A precise definition of birth status procures social continuity—the great theme of agriculture. To this day peasant societies remain the stronghold—often indeed the enclaves—of ascribed roles. Under these new conditions, what new authority relations were able to form? Probably agricultural societies were the first to offer stability and continuity sufficient for the construction of institutional authorities. At the same time as role ascription becomes systematic, a new variety of group authority emerges. For those seeking recognition in social roles, the key persons of reference become their role partners and role peers (see, for instance, the recognition of a man’s masculinity by women and its recognition by men). Structures concerning families and relatives offer a sufficient connection with role partners, but often not for role peers. Thus special groups of role peers (men’s associations, peer groups among young people) are formed, in the context of which recognition can be very significant for approval as concerns ascribed roles. A new type of group develops, whose formation is largely motivated by a particular need for authority.5 The third type of social subjectivity: the aspiration to recognition in an achieved role, above all an achieved “occupational” role. In this case, the claim for recognition regards two kinds of performances. First, as with the ascribed role, the competence required to accomplish a task (role probation). But to this is added the success in attaining a role. One has attained something, has “become” something not determined as from one’s cradle. It is generally supposed that such successes are based on special qualifications. Therefore, the recognition aspired to is in turn further specified; it aims at the social confirmation of personal faculties. A new aspect of self-esteem appears: the reflection upon a self that is distinguished by a particular capacity. Historically, this third type may have emerged not before the late Neolithic era. While the subjectivity based on membership was certainly a determining aspect of the structure of relations in the Paleolithic

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horde, and role ascription became systematic in the early agricultural societies, this third type presupposes the beginning of a division of labor comprising whole societies. This, probably, became possible in peasant societies around the year 5000 bc, within a few particularly fertile regions.6 It is in these territories that the surplus agricultural production became sufficient for feeding full-time artisans (potters, smiths, occasionally miners and foundry workers, subsequently also carpenters and stone carvers) This was the first large push toward differentiation in the history of society: the separation between the activities of peasants and of artisans. The type of the specialist emerges, who fabricates special products, not those necessary for nutrition. In this way in these peasant societies certain vital activities cease to constitute a communal experience. From this point on, in all newly developing societal structures there is an element of separateness, of nongenerality: the diversity between the qualifications, the burdens and the risks of working activity. This is the premise of what we call “occupation”—although for a long time the acquisition of occupational roles remains closely associated with descent. In the urban societies of the Bronze era, during the third and the second millennium, emerge two fundamentally new divisions of labor: one between manual workers and traders, and one between physical and intellectual labor. The trader takes charge of the manual worker’s tasks of distribution and further promotes his function as a mediator in the context of long-distance trade. In the courts and temples of the great empires and in the city-states’ power centers form administrative occupations (scrivener, overseer, tax collector, governor, ceremonial officials, positions within the priestly and the military hierarchies, builders, astrologists). In this manner not only grows the number of societal positions one can attain. What is new is above all the pattern of stepwise occupational advance, the career. The trader can make his fortune, turn into a rich man. Administrators can, step by step, “rise to the top.” This entails opening up to a new kind of societal success. At the same time the constraints that depend on birth are loosened up; competition becomes more diverse, the performance of the role incumbent more significant.

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However, we are still dealing with relatively small leeway, and that for a small part of society. The acquisition of roles has asserted itself as the principle for the distribution of societal opportunities only with the bourgeois performance society of the nineteenth century. Whose recognition is critical as concerns this third type? Certainly, in many cases, in the first place recognition by the lord and ruler, who confers and allocates the occupational roles, who subsequently also becomes the example of professional competence—the acknowledged master, who is outstandingly capable. The more explicitly personal qualification calls for recognition, the more the aspiration to it becomes focused on those personally qualified. Their judgment counts because they have proven themselves. The occupational role strengthens the significance of personal authority. Fourth type: social subjectivity as the aspiration to recognition in a public role. Whether inherited or achieved, a public role requires the representation of a performance visible for a public. Kings publicly represent their majesty within closely regulated ceremonies; Achilles and Agamemnon carry out their rhetorical duel before the encamped armies, in front of an assembly of princely warriors; the war hero proves himself before the public of the battle formation, the demagogue in front of a crowd of citizens. Wherever many come together, ready to watch and listen, a space offers itself for the impact of public roles. Courtly and religious festivities, political assemblies, crowds on the square, court cases, theater, sport, and circus need interpreters who perform something of general interest. The key impulse for the historical emergence of public roles was not, as it was for occupational roles, the division of labor, but the rise of a political milieu in which the demand for consensus and participation from many produces something like a “public sphere.” Such a demand renders relevant public performance, the presence of a public. Courts, temple areas, marketplaces turn into arenas for soliciting appeal. The legitimations of domination, which directly or indirectly are matters for debate, require acclaim under the banner of possible competition. This dependency on acclaim from a public produces peculiar tensions for the actor of public roles. On the one hand the recognition it

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seeks and can attain is more closely and sensitively connected than was the case for the recognitions discussed so far, with its own personality, its peculiar appeal, the distinctive way it talks, the fascination aroused by its boldness. On that account its self-esteem comes to depend more precariously on approval through acclaim. On the other hand, the public qua authority is an uncertain entity. The humans whose recognition the public role player seeks are often for him no more than the substratum of collective moods. Furthermore, the role player’s success is substantially determined by his capacity to manipulate the emotions and the approval of the public. It is he in the first place who produces the kind of reaction that for him amounts to decisive recognition. He more or less by himself fashions the authority to which it submits.7 No essential changes are produced by the emergence of new types of publics. The physically present public has been superseded by one mediated often via writing and reading, and in the end by a pseudopresent public, which hangs at the passive end of auditory or visual means of communication. A public of this nature can also be manipulated by the actors of public roles and yet at the same time, with its effective or presumed judgment, can execute the typical effects of a public’s authority. Sure enough, the diversity of possible self-presentations (as one who solves riddles, as one who climbs mountains) has infi nitely grown. Everyone now can dream of self-representation and self-affirmation on the basis of public recognition.

R E CO GN I T I O N O F I NDI V IDUALIT Y

Fifth type: social subjectivity as aspiration to social recognition of one’s own individuality. Such social subjectivity is aimed neither at the recognition of equal identity in terms of comembership, nor merely at the recognition of one’s particularity qua actor of social roles. It demands a social approval granted to an existence in the singular. Societal approval is supposed to go to being different, to being like no one else.

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Historically this type develops as a consequence of growing societal complexity and openness to the outside.8 Urban agglomerations play a key role. The confrontation with otherness makes one conscious of one’s own particularity, the typical urban encounter with people who do not do the same work as you, do not live in your neighborhood, with people who come and go. Experiencing the stranger throws the shadow of unfamiliarity back on one’s own existence. The concept of individuality, with which today we are familiar, indeed arose essentially as a project of bourgeois emancipation. As a form of social subjectivity, as a claim for social recognition of individuality, it currently asserts itself above all in the academically educated bourgeoisie. The new social subjectivity creates authority relations of a new kind, which deserve further reflection.

R The historical succession of the five types gives evidence of two constant tendencies. First, obviously each of the successive types does not displace the previous ones. Each new type emerges alongside the already-existent ones. Th rough a cumulative process emerge new and increasingly diverse expectations and offers of recognition. Today the plurality of social subjectivities is almost taken for granted. Men and women expect to be able to find the assurance that is provided by the security of membership, above all in the family, but also in the notoriously underestimated voluntary associations, and if necessary in other aggregates that promise alternative experiences of commonality; they expect to be acknowledged as wife and mother, as husband and father; they expect to have the right and the opportunity to freely achieve roles, to attain occupational success and follow careers; they expect, at least as a matter of principle, not to be excluded from the possibility of proving themselves in public roles. Finally they also expect to experience as this single individual, as this distinctive existence, meaning for

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others and meaning through others in the more intimate social relations, or at least in one of them. Thus one demands a great deal from “the” society, but also from oneself—not just a whole range of skills, but also the ability to maintain different social subjectivities in parallel and in cooperation with one another. This requires the modern actor’s routinized skill in balancing a complex set of reflections upon himself and of requests addressed to society, including the capacity to choose the appropriate reference from time to time. This flexibility, which is learned, includes the possibility of escaping relatively easily from authoritative fi xations. Many authority relations remain weak and sporadic. Often, dominant relations can be changed in a relatively painless manner. A second continuous tendency is clearly the gradual individualization of social subjectivity. What is supposed to be recognized by society and is so recognized consists, more and more, in particular, peculiar, distinct qualities. “I am like all others and want to be recognized like all others” turns into “I am like no one else and want to be recognized as somebody who is like no one else.”

RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP OF AUTHORITY

“I am like no other”—this awareness of individuality extends through society. It becomes a form of self-esteem; the sense of self seeks social validation. If this search for social validation of one’s own individuality gets fi xated on a critical, decisive recognition from particular other persons, a new authority relation comes into being. We assume here as a hypothesis that there is something like individuality but not in a way that we can attain “complete knowledge about the individuality of the other.” “It appears as though every man has in himself a deepest individuality-nucleus which cannot be subjectively reproduced by another whose deepest individuality is essentially different.”9 The recognition of another’s individuality presumes the idea of individuality in terms of a heuristic principle, not the hybrid delusion

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of a complete understanding. Indeed, the claim that one can see through another person contradicts a being-for-oneself that is included in the idea of individuality itself. Individuality can be understood as something that evolves, something emerging in the individuation process, thus as the unfolding of all our inherent individual energies as a task of our existence. Even if understood as a process, the idea of individuality refers not to a stadium but to a telos. This in turn implies the notion of wholeness, of an indivisible unity. Individuality does not mean the particular properties of a person to the exclusion of those widely shared. The acceptance of individuality can indeed also be incomplete, reluctant, open to challenge but not in principle partial. It must mean the entire constellation of all “properties,” not the sum of properties minus one. We accomplish the idea of the recognition of individuality as little as we do with other regulative ideas. Yet, here the fi rst step already reveals a principal dilemma. How can individuality be represented in social terms, made visible to others? How shall we do this? All the needs for recognition discussed so far encountered a societal offer of corresponding patterns of action connected with social acceptance. For instance, the need for recognition of affi liation meets an offer of memberships where it is not problematical what one has to do or has to abstain from doing. This equally holds for the demand for particular performances. Social roles define what such performances are supposed to be like. But when it comes to a socially standardized pattern of representation of individuality, or to the exhibition of uniqueness, what shall they look like? In this case there cannot possibly be a societal offer of preexistent configurations. There has emerged a social subjectivity that is not “capable of representation” as a social subject. The match between social subjectivity and social subject has been abolished as a matter of principle. This is confirmed when we consider a set of stereotypical configurations that at best can assist in asserting a claim for originality. It can be a matter, for instance, of an “unexpected” combination of clichés generally considered as incompatible: say, the despotic father with an (equally ostentatious) tender heart, the sophisticated lady with the vocabulary of a street urchin. Such “patterns of individuality” get worn out as soon as

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they are imitated and become fashionable. In the form of parody, they reinforce the incompatibility between representation of individuality and social standardization.10 The representation of individuality is possible only by means of approximation and only if there come into existence spaces for social relations that can, at least halfway, dispense with societal standardizations. It must be possible, to a degree, to seclude oneself from the outside, to gain some autonomy in the formation of togetherness. There can be representation and recognition of singular actors only if there is a chance to construct a “social form for a single case.” If this can succeed at all, it is probably in relations endowed with social proximity, in lasting and intense two-party relations, and in small groups. The key recognition of individuality will be recognition by the authority of your neighbor. Here, however, a further contradiction seems to appear. The processes characteristic of authority relations indeed imply that the person who wants recognition seeks to give proof of itself from the viewpoint and according to the standards of who grants recognition, and thus adapts itself along a range that goes from conversion and change to a tentatively cautious approach. Is such a disposition to adapt oneself not in contrast precisely with the aspiration to be recognized in one’s individuality? Certainly this contrast exists, and it is experienced often enough. But it is possible to turn it into a manageable tension, without overcoming it. This is possible within relations between unequal parties (such as the old and the young) in which the disposition to adapt oneself serves the developmental search for individuality or within which a lasting dependency is approved of in principle. It is also possible in relations between equals, where a process of mutual recognition and adaptation can create an authority relation based on reciprocity. This, first of all, seems to me the form in which in today’s society a claim for recognition of individuality can actually realize itself. The reciprocity makes bearable the pressure to adapt, which is implied in authority relations, for the person who has a marked sense of individuality. Now, relations of friendship and love have probably attained a high level of individuality pretty much under all societal conditions. But only in the process of development of bourgeois society does the claim for

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recognition of individuality get taken for granted to the extent of determining “normal” expectations from life and controlling an institutional bond. That claim enters the institution of marriage. This does not mean that institutional authority is born anew. With the institutional bond is associated the expectation of a particular personal experience: here, in this relationship, the confirmation and recognition of one’s individuality, so to say, its social manifestation, can, or indeed has to, succeed. As a consequence, both parties are ready to attribute to each other recognition of crucial significance. The reciprocal disposition to understand and to be understood becomes a claim that defines the meaning itself of the relation. If this claim is not lived up to, what has failed in the first place is not the institution, but rather the specific relation that the institution ought to establish. Comparable claims begin to assert themselves in the relations between parents and child as well. A unilateral authority bond forms, today as yesterday, in early childhood. Yet, among the most significant changes in the parent-child relation over the last decades there is the increasingly intensive attempt, by many parents, to take seriously, without concessions appropriate to age, the individuality of their children, not as something still to be developed, oriented to the future, but as individuality here and now, as already-existent individuality.11 Here we find the germ of a novel equality of the child—of “the child’s emancipation.” The child recognized as individuality, appointed as individuality, turns from an object into a possible subject of the recognition of individuality. Parents perceive the respect from their children—not a generic gratitude, but the respect for themselves as persons—as a criterion of their individual accomplishment. When the child withdraws its recognition, their selfesteem is threatened. The child becomes an authority for them. In this way, reciprocal authority relations can emerge here as well. Similar forms of relation develop also within small groups, indeed become a motive for group formation. Associations are formed with the intention of assisting members in finding themselves. Groups of this kind clearly differ from communities where individual members seek merely the certainty of affiliation. They must also not be confused with “nirvana” groups, which promise liberation through self-abandonment, relief from the burden of individuality. Groups oriented to the individu-

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al’s finding himself are more optimistic, “more positive”; the individual hopes to come to him- or herself. Hence the terminology of self-reference: experience of oneself, identity, autonomy. One is to succeed in finding oneself by means of reciprocal help within the group, of a reciprocal recognition that is lacking outside the group. On this account such groups often see themselves as an alternative to marriage and to the parentchild relation. Yet what is expected is the same thing—the gratification of a social subjectivity that seeks the societal validation of one’s individuality. Here, too, one seeks to render communal the finding of oneself through authority relations oriented to reciprocity. Such relations are not immune to the virus of power. If one of the participants is relatively less hooked on recognition than the other, he can at any time make use of the superiority conferred on him by his relative independency. The party who is less vulnerable is always more powerful, whether by conferring recognition or by withdrawing it. In spite of this, all such attempts at establishing relations contain a tendency to equality. In principle everyone is bonded to the other in the same way as the other is to him. Everyone expects from the other what the other expects of him. This reciprocity of boundedness and of expectations may be interpreted at least as an outline or a pattern where authority relations between equals become possible. It is rather a long way from Eric Ambler’s organization of a military retreat to groups oriented to finding oneself. A few cues may serve to clarify the connections between the various components. In traditional societies sacred and generative functions mediating between the here-and-now and the there-and-always are components of the structural design of society. Such institutional authority goes into decline alongside with their transcendental foundations. But this is only one aspect of the historical change of authority relations. Another one, which has particularly attracted our attention, is the change in the types of recognition that are possible and worth aspiring to. Within peasant societies, the economic interest in birth status, descent, age, and gender, the beginnings of a division of labor at the societal level, and the need of political domination for public consensus lead

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to the development of new types of social subjects, of ascribed, achieved, public roles and the corresponding social subjectivities. The last type— the aspiration to the recognition of individuality—develops in the course of long processes where social experiences become wider, and finally through the movement toward bourgeois emancipation, until today it becomes a “normal” claim for what one expects of life as a matter of course. Since the types of social subjectivity build on one another, there emerges a growing plurality of needs for authority. Self-esteem becomes, so to speak, bound up with social experiences via more and more channels, and becomes more diverse in content. This accounts, among other things, for the simple everyday experience that people behave differently in different social contexts. They do so, as concerns the role of authority phenomena, because in different social contexts different authority needs (for instance, those oriented toward shared belonging or toward achieved roles) become relevant with different intensity. The intensity of the need for authority that is particularly relevant within a given context determines the extent to which the need for authority and the disposition to adapt oneself govern the behavior of an individual. This does not exclude the possibility of constructing comprehensive dispositions toward authority. But it brings to attention the fact that the dispositions of a single actor can be most diverse in content. We have considered, finally, the individualized authority relation aimed at reciprocity. Describing this relation in terms of tendencies toward equality contrasts with the common understanding of authority as a matter of superordination and subordination. In fact there is nothing peculiar about confrontations between people who possess equal power. They produce stalemates, armistices, permanent conflicts, perhaps victory and submission, or perhaps a situation where both parties are indifferent toward each other—any of the circumstances from the usual repertory of power relations. But authority is a form of superiority that, when it becomes reciprocal, can be converted into a relation of a particular nature.

6 TECHNICAL ACTION

T

he adjective “technical” (we may well start from this preliminary understanding of the term) refers to something made, put into work by human beings—as against something that has come into being without their involvement. Technical objects are “artifacts,” artfully and skillfully made things. As a consequence we can define “technical action” as a specific type of human action that creates artifacts (or rather modifies or repairs artifacts; the mere handling of technical objects, as, for instance, the driving of a car, is just a technically conditioned activity). I would like to comprehend the basic traits of this “creation of artifacts.” How can one characterize more precisely technical action as a specific type of human action? Are there principal connections between this kind of action and certain structures of human coexistence? First, three modalities of technical action shall be distinguished: employing, modifying, producing. (In whatever sequence.) Technical action is always intentionally oriented to employing its objects. What one produces shall be capable of being put to use for particular ends. Technical action modifies what it finds preestablished, generates a new, different reality. Technical action is productive action, a skillful “putting into being,” an art that can be learned, can be diversified, and can be increased.

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To employ, to modify, to produce are all activities of subjects related to objects. At the same time, however, such subject-to-object conduct is always at the same time a relation that is subject-to-subject. This does not simply mean that technical action is conditioned by society and has consequences for society. Rather, in such action itself are established determinate social conditions of the human being. The intent to employ inevitably involves the question of claims to ownership; modifying implies a particular form of exercise of social power, not just that of “power” over objects; and producing implies a differentiated set of activities, thus always a form of division of labor. Because men act technically, also because men act technically, their coexistence is determined by ownership, power, and division of labor. In the following, toward the end, after proposing a typology of technical objectifications, I return again to the theme of power. As power is ab ovo connected with technical action, the increase in the power of men over men is by the same token connected with technological progress.

USAGE AND RIGHTS TO USAGE (PROPERTY)

First, let us consider employment. Straightaway I would simply say: the object produced must have a practical use. Yet the expression “practical use” is burdened with multiple meanings. Is a toy train of practical use? Let us say more cautiously: the person who produces or acquires an object intends putting it to use, doing something with it. He or she produces or acquires something that is serviceable for determinate ends. Useful, serviceable in the meaning intended here, is something with which one can make something—over against objects whose value resides in their existing, over against objects whose mere being-so represents something of value (perhaps as a revered form or as something beautiful), and also over against objects that point to something invisible, to a transcendent power, to a different world, to an eternal life. Now, “making” and “being” are merely two poles between which lie numerous, often tension-laden, intermediate circumstances. But for a

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highly general distinction between “technical” and “symbolic” objects this will do. In their pure form, technical objects never have a meaning in themselves. They are always merely means. Often the intended practical employment is distinctly imprinted into technical objects in the form of a particular “in-order-to,” as an instruction manual materialized. The examination of such objects, even when they belong to a different culture, often allows us to identify straightforwardly their practical destination. It is perfectly clear what the thing is useful for: this is a tool for cutting, this a container, this a plow, this serves to transport objects. The form suggests possible uses that are known to us, or that we can identify by means of analogies. The process of employing them is already half predicted by their form; it begins, as it were, in the form itself. Technical objects, to take this argument further, are means to the provision for human existential needs. As a rule, what one produces technically does not have a very narrow time horizon; it is intended not for a once-only need, but rather for employment over the long term. It is thought up out of a preoccupation with the future, made out of such a preoccupation. On this account one can distinguish the tool use by humans from the one by animals. Even a thing merely stumbled upon, not produced (a stone, a branch lying around), can be put to use, here and now, to drive away an enemy. Even if the thing is expressly prepared—the branch is sharpened, the stone hewn—it may perhaps be used only once, as something to throw away. Tools properly so called, human tools, are manufactured auxiliary means, which ought to lend themselves to future employment. This also indicates that the shaping activity has reached a certain level. One has modified the thing in such a manner that it deserves to be preserved. Its production requires an outlay of resources. Foresight is also involved. One expects that certain situations and certain uses will occur again. This component of foresight and planning is by tendency presupposed by the production of all technical objects.

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Now, if the nature of technical action implies that the producer intends to create something to be put to use over a longer period, a question naturally presents itself: Put to use by whom, for whom? Who decides about future employment? This means, in turn: To whom does the product “belong,” who is recognized as the owner? Sociologically, this is to be remembered, ownership is defined not as a fi xed entity, but rather as the sum of rights of use that are historically and culturally variable. One must ask, from case to case, what is comprised within such rights—for instance, if someone is entitled not only to put something to use but also to sell it or destroy it. In general we assume only that “owners” have at their exclusive disposal some rights to employment, to the exclusion of others. Ownership thus implies a prohibition addressed to “all others.” In this there is no difference between individual and group ownership. Whatever the nature and the extent of the rights of use that are being delimited—who attains them and who is excluded from them? Addressing this question from the viewpoint of who acts, who produces, reveals three fundamental possibilities. First, it is the owner who produces the object. He or she can use it him- or herself, perhaps can also barter it or sell it. Society grants to such an act legitimacy based on production. The exclusion of others is justified by their not having taken part in the process of production. Second, the producer is a member of a group in which every producer has conveyed to all others the rights to employ. Whatever is produced counts as group property. Here is in the act a reciprocity that has no need for a formal act of exchange, but precedes the act of production. There exists a we-consciousness that from the beginning comprises whatever the members compile. Incidentally, in this case one cannot say that the producer is being expropriated. In his quality as a group member he participates in the right to employ his product. The exclusion of others is justified by their nonmembership in the group. Third, the production of an object and the ownership of it lie in different hands. Here, the producer is either not free (a slave, a serf) or the seller of his own labor power, and as such he has from the beginning

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given up his right to employ the product of his own labor. In the first case the lord’s right of ownership over the object produced derives from his claim to ownership over the person of the producer; in the second case it derives from his claim to ownership over the means of production put to use. These are the three basic forms, which have developed early in history and hold to this day. There are of course some mixed forms. The land holding of a peasant family, for example, can perhaps approximate the third type—if a patriarch has a monopoly on the rights of disposition—or also resemble the ownership-in-common situation. What holds generally is that all scarce goods—not only technical objects, but also water sources, the resources lying under the ground, fertile regions—raise the problem of ownership. But technical objects are in principle scarce; otherwise they would not be produced. Whatever artifacts men create through technical action, the question necessarily poses itself—presumably beginning with the primordial hand ax—of who decides its employ. This question is directly connected with the nature of technical action. There cannot have been a social order that did not address its own answer to it. All social orders are also ownership orders, among other reasons, and essentially, because technical action takes place in all social orders.

MODIFYING (POWER OF DATA CONSTITUTION)

People who build a boat, a bridge, or an electrical power station modify something that was already there. Technical action always also signifies rendering the world different. The difference generated is often visible, and you can grasp it by hand; one can always quantitatively define it, measure it. Technical action is not something imponderable. By intervening with such changes, the human being assimilates things to him- or herself. He or she imprints on them his or her own ends and views. Naturally, such assimilation is in the first place at the service of mere survival, the protection from hunger and cold, from natural

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adversities of all kinds. But it is not bound to a given level of needs; rather, it is an aspect of all technical action. Only where human beings relate themselves to nature exclusively to safeguard it and care for it, with as little intervention in it as possible, without transforming it, does their action escape the mode of assimilation. But at this point their conduct ceases to be “technical.” A frequent theme of the contemporary critique of culture is the complaint that within industrial societies we truly only encounter ourselves; we thus confront exclusively an environment we have ourselves constructed, as if we lived in a natural reserve produced by humans for humans. This is naturally so. The extent to which we are enclosed in a world of artifacts has been increased enormously by industrial technology. But the principle—let us say it once again—is not new. Technological advance has also always been an advance in the process whereby the world has been built to the measure of the human being. In the end, one can imagine the whole globe as a single urban landscape, an artificial environment of existence that embraces everything, in which we move only within fabricated realities. The person who alters realities, “makes them different,” generally alters the conditions of existence not only for him- or herself, but also for others. The person who cultivates land, plants trees, poisons forests, biologically kills waters decides possibilities and burdens for generations to follow. The person who builds residential areas decides on the constraints, opportunities, desires, and norms of behavior of future inhabitants, and walls in the space of possible experiences. Those planning an airport have decided what burdens the region’s inhabitants will have to bear, just as those constructing a machine settle what can be produced and how. By modifying the world of objects, we lay down “data” or “facts” to which other people are exposed. We exercise a kind of materialized power, a power of constituting data, where the effects that the powerful can have for those subject to their power are mediated by objects. Such effects may be unintentional, random, unpredictable, or they may be aimed at and planned—a question that here may be left open. In any case, a potential of social power pertains to the human being in its capacity

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as modifier of the world of objects. The power humans can have over other humans also rests on the anthropologically given possibility and necessity of rendering the world different through action.

PRODUCING: ORGANIZED PROD UCTION (DIVISION OF LABOR) AND CONSCIOUS PRODUCTION

The possibility for man to change and to render useable what exists expresses a peculiar capacity that we would name the faculty of producing. This is also meant by the way Aristotle1 interprets the Greek word techne: a particular capacity, the human skill to modify intentionally the state of things. (Linguistically, techne is closely related to tekton, “the carpenter,” “the builder”—an expression whose root persists in our architect.) Understood as such a skill, producing can be taught and learned. And as anything can be learned, anything can also fail. The jug made of clay can be broken; so can the Tower of Babel. Such skill is also open to differentiation. We can apprehend wholly diverse ways of producing, and produce wholly different artifacts (we are not committed by instinct to a single type of nest or of lair). In the structure of the human hand—something else Aristotle emphasized— is particularly perceptible the variety in what man can do technically. It is clearly so constituted that it can grasp and form a multitude of things. However, the skill of producing is in the first place capable of growth, capable of progress. We can raise in various ways the efficiency with which artifacts are produced: by increasing the varieties of products, the volume of production, and the products’ quality, and by reducing the outlay required by the production process (increasing productivity). This can take place not only because we learn from experience and pass on what we have learned. The human being, rather, has two special talents for raising the efficiency of its production: it can organize activities conducted in common and can gain insights into the nature of things.

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Organized production—this means in this context not only that there is a preconstituted pattern to collective operation, but that it varies, can be designed and improved ever again. The history of organized forms of production is also a history of discovery. The basic patterns have appeared early on. First, a matter of coordination of similar activities. This can entail merely adding together the forces of the single participants (this dam must be in place by the time the next flood comes), or expending their forces jointly (only together can we lift those heavy blocks of stone), or sequencing activities (to pass on buckets of water from one person to the next is more effective than having each person run back and forth between the water source and a house on fire). Finally, arranging for similar activities to take place simultaneously can also compensate for a risk. All this is fairly obvious. The coordinations of similar activities indeed do not yet divide the labor; rather, they put to use their addition to one another, and perhaps also their more or less skillful relation—as with the principle of sequence. The coordination of disparate activities attains a higher level, at first merely via the coexistence between complementary ones. This was already of assistance for the hunters of the Old Stone Age. The men brought the game they had hunted, the women the fruits and roots they had gathered. (If once again the men had not caught anything, at least one had the fruits and roots.) We might say that one had thus discovered the societal division of labor. It entailed the differentiation between diverse functions and the beginnings of specialization. The next step is the coordination of unequal activities into a comprehensive course of work, the processual division of labor. Here different performances are immediately tied into one another; the product wanted comes into being only because several persons do not do the same thing, but rather—as they work together—do something different. The first moments of this process may have also been known by primitive hunters, for instance, when they established a camp or in the course of the hunt. Within history, then, there are many intermediate steps within more complex organizational forms, which attain high

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points in the early high cultures and in Ancient Rome. But the history of the systematic exploration of the possibilities of a processual division of labor arguably has its first beginnings within modern manufacture and industry. However, all societies we know, even the simplest, have discovered the fundamental forms of the division of labor: the coordination of equal activities, the division of labor at the societal level, and—at any rate in its elementary components—the processual division of labor. Anthropologically, the social division of labor rests on the previously mentioned basic faculty of differentiating the modes and the objects of human production. The processual division of labor is made possible or assisted by a particularity of human voluntary movements: the fact that their course can be subdivided into small, independently available components, which can be integrated into “skillful movements.”2 Whatever the use made of these arrangements, connecting technical actions with a societal organization of production (in recognizable, distinct forms) is a universal phenomenon. All social order is also an order in the division and coordination of the skills for modifying the condition of things intentionally. It is also possible to increase the efficiency of production because the human being can comprehend* what it does, can in fact comprehend what takes place with things by starting out from them, their particular nature, their movements, their transformations, and ultimately their “laws.” Technical production is conscious production. Techne, as again one reads in Aristotle, designates not only a capacity, but also a distinctive kind of knowledge, knowledge oriented to creating and shaping. Such knowledge is more than a mere accumulation of experiences, more than a matter of remembering. Conscious production, productive knowledge, goes beyond single events and the registra* “Comprehend” is employed here to translate the German begreifen. The root of this expression could be translated as “to grasp.” One of its multiple derivatives is the noun Begriff, usually translated as “concept” (for instance, in the title of this book’s opening chapter). Hence, the German begreifen here has both a bodily and an intellectual aspect. By italicizing the word, Popitz makes clear that this twofold meaning is essential for his argument—Trans.

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tion of their reoccurrence. It recognizes not only the “what,” but also the “why” of determinate effects. According to Aristotle, the character of techne pertains not to all manual work, but only to that connected with insight. An intervention in nature sustained by such insight is not extraneous to it. All that is natural, all that grows from itself, also aims at an end. So does the knowing producer. He or she further advances the processes of nature according to the same principle inherent in them, the principle of destination to an end. The “technician” fulfills nature’s ends as the higher ends of the human being. Of course such knowledge oriented to production does not attain the highest level of knowledge, the fundamental knowledge (the episteme), the cognition of what is unchangeable, of the pure being. It remains an explanatory knowledge related to production, in an intermediate position between experiential and fundamental knowledge. Now, it would take us too far to discuss the horizon of meaning of episteme according to Aristotle. But certainly, to him, mathematical and astronomic insights were elements of such fundamental knowledge. This, however, means that the intermediate position Aristotle attributes to productive knowledge has revealed itself to be a historically conditioned understanding of it. Modern scientific technique connects the mathematically formulated knowledge of the unchangeable, of the laws of nature, with strategies of production. Productive knowledge has become a special case of this fundamental knowledge. In this way only, the potential for increased efficiency inherent in the human being’s cognitive production is entirely released.

THE TYPOLOGY OF TECHNICAL OBJECTIFICATIONS

Technical action, as skillful production, modifies things and makes them useful for the pursuit of human ends. Th is intervention into what is the case shall now also be considered in the light of its specific result.

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What humans do technically becomes “objective,” becomes object. The artifact we produce confronts us as something objectified. “This is the shack I had in mind to build.” What I had in mind has become visible. What was in me stands in front of me as something external. Technical action (including the production of symbolic objects) belongs to the type of objectifying action. It imparts form to the intents, faculties, imaginations of the actor. It is in such form—as an externalizing doing that has taken form—that the actor finds him- or herself confronting his or her own intents, faculties, imaginations. This has become the fundamental conception of a philosophical anthropology and a philosophy of history (Fichte, Hegel, Marx). Here, I will connect with this variously grounded phenomenon of objectification (and of the self-consciousness gained from it) a very simple question: What kinds of objects are actually generated by technical action? Which intents, faculties, imaginations become objective in them anyway? This question includes the skill of producing, of the will to modify and employ. But it aims further, to particular aspects that can be recognized in the multitude of technical artifacts of different nature. Is it possible to reduce the intents, faculties, imaginations rendered objective by technical action to a small number of leading ideas? 1. The notion of indirect effect becomes objective in several technical objects. Many artifacts serve for nothing else than the production of other artifacts (the potter’s wheel for shaping clay, the oven for melting iron). When we produce such artifacts, we produce things that have an end only because one can use them for producing something that has an end of its own. Such means of production can be simple tools, composite instruments such as the potter’s wheel, or complex contraptions like the oven or machines, including all facilities for generating power. The production of artifacts of this kind is a typical detour action. Indeed, it demonstrates in the first place and impressively that the human being has a particular talent for roundabout action. He or she can work painstakingly and at length at things that lie miles away from the proper end of the satisfaction of needs. And he or she can do so in such a way that the detour these activities involve turns out to be productive in a

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special way. With one knife one can cut several hides, with one harpoon catch many fishes, with one digging stick dig out many roots—and this always better than with one’s bare hands.3 What we call technical progress rests essentially on the idea of producing means of production. Hence the further idea, in seeking to improve the products wanted, of focusing on the improvement in the means of production. These become the central theme of technical innovation. It remains fundamental that the novel elements that the human being by acting technically introduces into the world are to a large extent artifacts for producing artifacts. The “technicized world” is in the first place also a workshop for the production of means of production. 2. With the assistance of means of production, we produce in the first place objects that assist our survival—food and clothes. In both cases two tendencies of the technical provision for survival appear particularly clear: the progressive sophistication of needs, from what is vitally necessary to the refinement of enhanced consumption, and the increasing capacity to store stocks. Even easily perishable consumer goods can be preserved and stockpiled, in pots, amphoras, granaries, warehouses, and cooling houses. The sheer quantitative diff usion of technology, which so much strikes us, is to a large extent the diffusion of technical objects for storage. 3. Furthermore: built habitations, from the cabin to the palace. The house, as an artificially closed space, intensifies a remarkable feature of self-objectivation. I refer to the container nature of technical artifacts. Much of what human beings produce tends to assume a form that surrounds them. This does not apply only to residences in the narrow sense; the farm also constitutes an enclosing container, the fence, the village, the farmed land (which is bounded by uninhabited spaces), the fortified town, the market, the marked boundary, walls of all kinds: all such things enclose a separate world, a container for existence. With these bounding artifacts men delimit themselves, at the same time, from a world that remains outside—be it from the “other” nature, the nature that we are not ourselves, or from other social groups, the strangers, who do not belong here. Technical container: this always means also concealing oneself from what is different.

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The effect of such delimiting and enclosing can be further strengthened by means of “centering objects”—the fire around which to gather, the fountain, the castle, the church, which define the middle of an enclosure. Within such containers a structure of coexistence is represented technically. They mark memberships, environments of existence, acts of distancing. One can also see this the other way around: the container character of technical artifacts suggests that the structure of human coexistence is determined by processes of inclusion and exclusion. 4. Just as dwellings generate delimited, familiar areas, means of transport form connections that bridge over open spaces. Here, we refer to technical means for transporting people, goods, and information, thus vehicles and ships, and also roads and canals (as auxiliary means of transport), the drum in the jungle as much as television. What is particular to this category of objects is that they overcome space, conferring an artificial reach on the human being. The human being can move further than its feet can carry him or her, can hear and see farther than ear and eye reach. The more this is the case, the less one is bound to the place on which one actually stands. As distance becomes relative, the place where one is also does. With the increase in mobility, human beings enter new connections, discover foreign worlds, risk new social contacts. They become “translocal.” As the human being withdraws into its technical containers, insulates itself from space and from all kinds of foreignness, he or she in the same way dares, with the technology of transport, to open up space and to open itself up to the unfamiliar. 5. Finally the production of weapons, fighting weapons with which to exercise physical violence against other humans.4 We shall return to this topic. Here let it be simply noted that technology has always served to practice violence and to protect oneself violently from violence. From at least the Bronze Era this has been one of the leading motives behind technical progress. What humans produce as technical objectifications always also points to aggression and to fear. Essentially, technical artifacts can be subsumed under these five categories. (For the sake of completeness, one might add the residual category of “consumer goods.”) Seen as a whole, this is a clear structure.

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If one starts out from goods of day-to-day necessity—those that originally protected from hunger and cold and often still do that—one encounters two main situations of tension: the tension between the techniques of proximity and distance, of one’s location in space and of the overcoming of space, and the tension between means of production and means of destruction. The options of technical action lie within these tensions.

THE GROWTH OF THE SOCIAL POWER POTENTIAL THROUGH TECHNICAL PROGRESS

The historical development of technical action shows, all stagnations and catastrophes apart, a tendency that is clearly and indubitably present in no other realm of existence: a progress, an advance in efficiency. We have progressively altered the world to suit our intent. We have progressively discovered new purposes of use. We have progressively designed more effective forms of organization, and have progressively accumulated scientific knowledge. We have generated more and more, more diverse, more useful products by means of ever more rational processes. In this way, new forces, new potentialities have developed for human activities. We can artificially put energy to our service, we can easily overcome distances, we have at our disposal ingenious methods for transforming matter, we generate heat and light, and so on. I do not intend to expand this into a colossal fresco, nor do I intend to initiate a calculation of gain and loss. I rather want to concentrate my attention on the growth of a particular action potential: the growing dimensions of the potential of social power. Nearly every technical object, from a sharpened stone to a device for fighting parasites, is potentially a weapon—mostly a better weapon than objects not worked upon, than something left unpointed, unsharpened, not hardened, not poisoned. Yet we need not stop at the mere possible employment of technical objects. Weapons against animals were from the beginning also weapons against men. With the production of met-

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als begins the specialized fabrication of fighting weapons (for example, war axes and later swords). Weapon production expands and essentially determines technical development as a whole. Superiority in war becomes one of the larger impulses of technical innovation, and remains so through today. Consequently, technical progress also entails the escalating efficiency of technical means of violence. This needs no examples; it is enough to notice that “escalating efficiency” also means the escalation of productivity in the exercise of acts of violence. The commitment, of persons or of time, required for killing a given number of persons has been steadily reduced. It rates as a Hobbesian law that humans are all the more dangerous for humans when the superiority of their artificial means of fighting is greater than their natural means, their fists, teeth, and claws. For Hobbes it was still plausible to start from corporal force as the basis for violence. Today technically produced violence has grown to such an immense extent that all reference to corporal force must seem irrelevant to us. Yet Hobbes had very well seen the essential point: the possibility of increasing dangerousness. The superiority based on the violence of weapons can be transformed into a durable power relation. First, via the permanent threat to employ violence and via promises to spare and protect those who are compliant; after that, by allowing or denying access to all manner of scarce goods. In various contexts, the perfection in the durable exercise of power is much assisted by the perfection in technical means. Consider such examples as the employment of new means of transport (ships, vehicles, roads that permit the control of large territories in the first place); of techniques, like electrical fences and mine fields, which imprison subjugated people; of techniques for the electronic gathering and analysis of data; of centralized arrangements for the provision, for example, of electrical power, which tie even the simplest processes of existence to central suppliers. Escalation in the power potential through technical means thus means both: a tremendous escalation of the disaster caused by a single

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violent act, and additional instruments for the construction of durable power relationships. Moreover, there is a third connection between technical efficiency and social power: the escalation of the efficiency of the “power to constitute data.” The technical modification of the object world confronts, as we have already seen, an often-indeterminate number of affected individuals with faits accomplis that modify the surroundings of their decisions. Certainly, there also exists technical action that does not affect or only affects little the conditions of existence of other human beings, for example, bricolage within one’s home. But in principle all technical modification can become an act of exercising power. The magnitude of potential power exercise has doubtlessly increased with growing technical efficiency. Today we can alter whatever preexists more rapidly and dramatically than ever before, for example, we can build a town in the desert in a very short period of time and make it disappear even faster. In a hightech society the objective, objectified conditions of human existence change radically with the speed at which we turn the pages of the calendar. The person who today decides the technical shaping of our environment of existence, who has the power of data constitution, can within a very short lapse of time exercise an immense amount of power over an immense number of humans, and perhaps (as with the building of a nuclear power station) over immensely long stretches of time. We can look back and detect the technical progress. But if we look forward, we cannot decide how long and how extensively the efficiency of technical action will further increase. Our experience so far does not suggest any principle from which to derive such a prognosis. Technical action seems to constitute an intrinsically open-ended human faculty. On the same account we cannot know, either, in which nameless regions the potential of social power can further build up. If technical action is in principle open-ended, so is the potential dangerousness of humans for humans as well. One ought to bear in mind this lack of knowledge—a truly fundamental lack—if one seeks to predict future societal developments. At any rate, in the foreseeable future we can with great probability reckon with

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a further increase in the power potential, in fact, in the threefold sense we have described. But, with this, the problems of power control become more and more difficult to solve. At the same time it becomes more and more certain that in modern society the control over technical action constitutes the key aspect of all control over power. What success—even to a limited extent—can such an enterprise achieve? We have barely begun to try for it. I do not intend to conclude with a flowery “if we don’t . . . ”-statement. But even a sober reflection reveals that a control over technical action, understood as control over enormous power potentials that are increasing tremendously further, is unthinkable without difficult changes, difficult even to imagine, comparable with the conceptual and institutional innovations that have put into being the modern constitutional state.

Part II FOR MS O F STABILIZATION

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7 PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophic eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. — D AV I D H U M E

H

ume’s sentence is somewhat apodictic. What, in considering human histories and history, has caused most wonder in a philosophical mind? This is indeed the object of debate among philosophical minds. In any case, the question to be posed here is so closely related to Hume’s question that we can appeal to his authority without further debate: How does it happen that few gain power over many? That a small advantage gained by some can be transformed into power over other human beings? That some power becomes more power and from more power arises much power? Clearly not all initial attempts at power formation are successful. But if they do succeed, the processes of power takeover often unfold in such an absurdly obvious manner, as if the parts in them had been assigned in advance. This provokes mystifications and ideologizations. However, one can perhaps indicate that, and on account of what, the actors of the

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power takeover, in various stages of the formation of power, are presented with specific opportunities that can be put to use as if they were “obvious.” Here, one can take a step in this direction, in fact with the aid of the simplest method known hitherto: the narration of examples. From these we derive certain complexes of factors to which we impute more general significance. More general significance, we assume, in that such complexes reappear often in processes of power formation, and in that considering them permits the discovery of some specific opportunities of power takeover, to be stated here first in a descriptive-analytical manner. I have taken such examples where I have found them; but it is possible to justify retrospectively the choice of them. They are chosen in order to exclude three current interpretations of power processes: the interpretation of power formation as an expression of a general consensus, particularly evident, for instance, when an external threat increases the group’s need for decision; their interpretation as an effect of one person’s authority; their interpretation as pure, violent oppression, which can be seen as merely giving course to a previously established superiority. Consensus, authority, superior violence certainly need explaining in turn. But they push too rapidly toward preestablished tracks the question of interest to us here. What deserve our interest are power formations in which a minority asserts itself in contrast with the evident interests and intentions of the majority. The somewhat exceptional circumstances of all three of the examples to follow—passengers on a ship, a prisoners’ camp, an institution for the reeducation of juveniles—present two advantages. First, we are dealing with “spatially bounded processes of sociation,” whose conditions do not allow the participants simply to each go their separate way. Thus conflicts cannot be dealt with by going apart, exiting, separating, departing, moving away. The typical avoidance behavior of our society is out of the question. Furthermore, we are dealing with situations that all participants, being largely cut loose from normal relations, enter, so to speak, empty-handed. They make a start under equal conditions. The sociation process starts anew.

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POWER FORMATION ON A SHIP

First example. A ship cruises from harbor to harbor in the eastern Mediterranean, having on board merchandise of all kinds and passengers of all languages, tradesmen and tourists on their way to the next market or the next temple, travelers who intend to visit with family members, to move, to flee. Most of them camp on the deck. The only luxury and at the same time the only prerequisites of what is going to take place are some deck chairs, numbering about a third of the number of passengers. In the first days, between three or four harbors, these deck chairs continuously change their occupants. As soon as one of them stood up, the chair counted as free. No symbols of occupancy were acknowledged. This practice asserted itself fully and appeared appropriate. The number of the deck chairs sufficed more or less for their use at any given time; mostly one could be found when someone wanted it. It was a consumption good available in limited numbers but was not scarce. After the departure from a harbor where, as usual, the passengers had changed, suddenly this arrangement fell apart. The new arrivals had made the deck chairs their own and claimed them as their own standing possessions. They declared as “occupied” even a deck chair they were not sitting on at a given time. As before, this could not be imposed via symbols of occupancy. But it took place through a common use of force on the part of all copossessors of the deck chairs. If someone approached in a suspect manner a chair free at the time, the postures, gestures, and yells of the copossessors pushed this person back. These acts of deterrence made such an impression that a tangible conflict never took place. In the course of time they were further empowered by the fact that the possessors pushed their chairs closer to one another, until in the end they formed concentrations resembling a defensible circle of wagons. Unoccupied deck chairs were folded together and served as walls. After the assertion by one partial group of exclusive faculties of disposition over a consumer good desired by all, the previously formless ensemble of passengers acquired a structure. Two classes had established themselves—possessors and not-possessors, those positively privileged

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and those negatively privileged. A comparison between the two new partial groups and the totality of the passengers, who had been part of the previous order, shows immediately that the intrinsically original aspect of the new order was—at any rate in its initial phases—the creation of negative privileges. One partial group saw itself denied access to a consumer good. The privileged partial group, instead, could make use of that good when it needed to, that is, in the same manner as previously all did. Thus, assuming that the demand remained equal, that group was not yet in an advantageous position vis-à-vis the previous totality. The enviable value of its situation lay in the first place in the fact that it did not belong to the others. Subsequently, however, that value lay chiefly in the fact that it could be developed further. It does not take much fantasy to predict the later course of things, if the travel continued a while longer under the same conditions. The next step is undoubtedly the temporary rent of deck chairs to some not-possessors. This could be reciprocated chiefly by their giving in return, beside some natural produce, some services, among these in the first place the performance of that function that is associated with any claim to property—the function of the guardian. Delegating to some notpossessors the office of guardian entails not only a true relief for the possessors but also a further enrichment in the inner structure, which now presents a tripartition—the groups constituted respectively by the possessors, the guardians, and the mere not-possessors. With this, an essential clarification takes place: from now on, the not-possessors find themselves in the worst position voluntarily and because of their own fault. We only repeat the basic question that must impose itself constantly and everywhere for this last group, if we consider how all this could take place. The process is accomplished in clear contrast with the will of the majority, for which its outcome is unfortunate. It need not proceed this way, but it can—as everybody knows. Absurdly, the minority has a chance to impose its new order. How so? On what is this chance based? Already a first reflection indicates that an open trial of strength, a physical conflict, would have been most dangerous for the minority in the first phase, when it imposed its own claim for possession and with it a bipartition of the whole. Once the tripartition has established itself

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with the formation of a service class, it is already no longer sure, in the case of an open trial of strength, who actually would find himself in the minority. Thus we begin by concentrating our attention on the first phase. To what strange potencies can the minority give effect, in order to pass through this first phase?

1 . T HE SU P E R I O R C A PAC I T Y FO R O RG ANIZAT IO N O F T H E P R I V I L E GE D

Here we can leave open the question of at what point the newcomers may have agreed on their claim for possession. We explicitly do not suggest that what was involved was from the beginning a solidary group, say, a family clan. At a certain point, a series of quarrels must have shown that on the ship two contrasting conceptions of order had collided. Those who deduced lasting, exclusive powers of disposition from an alreadycompleted act of “occupation” lay claim to an advantage. They viewed themselves as already the beneficiaries of a privilege—on account of duly acquired rights. Those opposing them did not ask for such a privilege for themselves, but contested it as a matter of principle. For the time being it remains clear who makes up the majority. But already now it is in question how much weight majority relations have. If one compares the two groups, a much more significant difference appears: the privileged have the greater chance to organize themselves promptly and effectively. The interest they share is not necessarily more pressing, but it is more capable of undergoing organization. To begin with, one must bear in mind a very simple circumstance. If I wish that a chair I temporarily occupy will not be occupied by others in my absence, while there are no recognized symbols of occupancy, there is only one thing I can do at first: ask another person to keep an eye on it and to represent my claim. But in this first phase such a person can be none other than another deck chair occupant, my neighbor. Only he or she can have an interest in aiding me. But such interest is also extraordinarily evident: first, he or she can hope for my own aid under the same circumstances; second, every case in which a claim for

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possession gains validity advances his or her own chances. Thus reciprocal aid, cooperation, immediately suggests itself forcefully. In aiding the other, we aid at the same time ourselves and the principle. Cooperation is necessary: I cannot, without help from others, preserve a possession on which I cannot continually sit. Cooperation is obvious: the possessors immediately have something to offer one another—being represented, being protected, receiving confi rmation. Individual and shared interests coincide. This coinciding instantly appears evident and relevant for action. The new possessors of deck chairs were to discover promptly their need for organization and their capacity to organize. The situation of the not-possessors is much more complicated. Here too, in itself, the commonality of interests seems obvious. But it becomes questionable as soon as one seeks to convert it into action. Only the interest in expelling the possessors is indubitable. But this first step appears problematical when the next one is considered. What should happen if common action had success? What will happen to the deck chairs newly recovered? The expectation of dislodging the possessors does not yet entail for the single individual the certainty of attaining something for him- or herself. The agreement about the unfairness of the existent arrangement does not in itself entail an accord on what new arrangement would be fair. On the contrary, the consensus that the existing arrangement is fair posits at the same time agreement as to which new order would be fair—that is, none. In the case being considered, the obvious solution for the not-possessors would seem to be restoring the previous arrangement, that is, a pure right of use without claims to continuity. But under the given circumstances this obvious solution is also the most difficult and least probable. Taking back the deck chairs in a particular case would indeed in no way suffice to impose the principle, as long as the opposing group insists on its claims. It could again and again reoccupy and defend the chairs. In the free competition between the two projects of order, those defending a pure right of usage would each time have to assert themselves against standing claims to possession, whereas on their part after using the chairs they confer the right to use without conflict, make them again freely accessible, without conflict. As a consequence, anytime the

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conflict situation would manifest itself, they would find themselves among the not-haves. For them, “free competition” would mean nothing else than their letting themselves be maneuvered into the position of those who are aggressive and disturb the peace—with nothing but their principle at their disposal. The conclusion is not new: those who represent the corporate principle of equality can only impose themselves if they do so in a radical fashion. They must either succeed in suppressing the idea of possession itself to the extent that it cannot attain practical validity—a form of “reeducation”—or build a closed society of which the others are not part, being excluded from the right to use. In this way emerges that remarkable compulsion to intolerance that seems intrinsic to a determinate conception of order “in itself,” but is instead only the product of the relationship between two conceptions of order. The rules of the free-competition game unavoidably generate unequal chances in the conflict between those two conceptions. Those who are opposed to “having” cannot freely compete with those who want to have. On our ship, the restoration of the old order was improbable, because attempting it would have been either (if competition was free) hopeless or (if the others were excluded) “way too radical”—a highly typical alternative. But if the possession-less attack without a plan or just with the intent of turning the game around, there presents itself for everyone, immediately and predictably, the problem of redistribution. As soon as some yet possession-less sit down on the reconquered deck chairs (as soon as some land-less have marked out for themselves the land they now occupy), they have to deal with the question of whether they cannot personally consider the problem of distribution settled and thus the action closed. The idea of not-possession, of the pure right to use, in the meanwhile will have lost its innocence. In any case it does not suffice for everybody. The first success therefore divides the attackers into groups with at least latently different interests. This difficulty of persevering immediately after the first taking of possession is however only the beginning of a sequence of similar conflictual situations. Their common core is the fact that the attackers introduce into the confrontation the distribution problem that those on the defense have solved for themselves. They inherit it, as it were, from the status quo against which they struggle.

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Th is burden is, as we said, predictable. Before we commit ourselves to common action with other possession-less, we ask ourselves what is in it for us. The answer is vague or loaded with risk. The reciprocal assistance—the cooperation in actions of conflict—does not yet assure individual success. The prize for cohesion does not go immediately to the individual; the commonality at first means merely a risk. What the possession-less can effectively offer one another is only decided later. Thus solidarity depends on all participants being oriented to the next phase but one. The disposition to organize must arise with reference not to an instant advantage, but to a distant end, not to the actual but to the imaginary deck chair. It can only be based on a speculative trust, a speculative solidarity—an incomparably higher performance than is expected of the privileged. The formation of such trust is made even more difficult by specific opportunities for manipulation that exist for the privileged. They are in a position to make the hope for future advantage compete with the offer of present advantages, in the form of material prizes for services rendered and for loyalty, of chances of relative individual advancement. (Why should I not assist in watching over deck chairs if by doing this I can from time to time use them myself?) We know this strategy from all stratified societies. It does not create obstacles to the organizational capacity of the negatively privileged, but it reinforces them. Naturally such obstacles can be overcome. But to attain the level of capacity for organizing that for the positively privileged can almost be taken for granted requires much stronger impulses for the negatively privileged. The mere disposition to act—the “determination for acting”—does not compensate for the difference. The disposition to a solidary action oriented toward the long run necessary here clearly entails a “lack of proportion” between ambitions and hopes. Utopia (intended as such a “lack of proportion”) appears as the realistic method for rendering justice to the speculative nature of the solidarity required. The deficit in organizational capacity is compensated by a realism of a different nature. On our ship a remarkably greater expenditure of internal and external resources would have also been necessary in order to set aside the

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new order. Remarkably, because here a minority claim asserts itself. Remarkably great, because a benefit, so to speak, falls into the lap of the new possessors of deck chairs—the intruding chance for cooperation with a force of its own—while the not-possessors are suddenly confronted with an unusual difficulty, that of converting what everyone wants into something they all want. Thus, David Hume’s question—why the few apparently govern the many—could in the first place be answered as follows: because, and insofar as, the few are those in possession and because the possession—the defense of it, the settled problem of distribution, and thus the consensus about the order—gives access to a superior capacity to organize. They govern, not least, because in this way they are superior, and because they govern, they can continuously reproduce and perhaps increase such superiority. Of course there are also processes that go the other way: thus what we today call “democratization” is essentially the product of what from a historical viewpoint appears as the wholly exceptional capacity for organization of the lower stratum, newly generated with the advance of industrialization. Identifying the grounds for such gradual changes is a task in itself. Our case shows that the “additional chance” of superior organizational capacity manifests itself already within the status nascendi of a power formation. The new group at first possessed only the momentary opportunity of having de facto at their disposal a good of general use, and advanced the claim to an exclusive and lasting power of disposal: this apparently very small advantage sufficed for the formation of a superior organizational capacity—and thus for the beginning of a process of power accumulation in opposition to the interests of the majority.

2. T H E B I RT H O F L E GI T I MACY FRO M T H E P R I NC I P L E O F R E C IPRO CIT Y

The road to further expansion of power is probably widely predestined: one part of the negatively privileged majority is placed in a position of immediate dependency, gets involved in the exchange of performances

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for reward or obedience for protection (the creation of a service class). This subsequent phase will be examined more closely in reference to the second and third example. Here we are interested in the first place in a phenomenon that can already be observed at the beginning of power formation and equally contributes to explaining the new group’s absurd capacity to assert itself: a process that one could name the generatio equivoca of the achievement of valid legitimacy. According to Max Weber an order, and particularly a domination order, acquires valid legitimacy insofar as it is recognized as “in itself binding”—a fundamental kind of recognition, which creates a further motive, beyond mere habit and expediency, for behaving in the sense prescribed by such order. Thus, in association with the degree of legitimacy also grows the chance for behavior in conformity with the particular order of domination. Now Weber views such legitimization as something like a vertical social relation, one that runs from bottom to top or from top to bottom. Those who dominate address a claim to legitimacy toward the bottom, those dominated address to the top a belief in its legitimacy. This is a rational simplification for the description of structures of legitimacy. But it can be misleading if one asks about the emergence of the legitimate rule and the early recognizable traces of this process. On our ship slowly developed a new order, which privileged a determinate group. For whom did such order first acquire legitimacy, how did a legitimacy become valid here? The answer is as simple as the question. This order appeared legitimate in the first place to the privileged themselves. But not simply in the sense that each of them believed in himself, in his own claims and properly acquired rights. The recognition took place much more according to the reciprocity principle within an exchange process of the privileged with one another. This is decisive. As they out of evident interest assisted in the defense of their claims, they assisted themselves reciprocally in building up their convincingly good conscience: I do not recognize only my claim, but also the claim of the other who recognizes mine. Because I recognize the other, I am in the right; because the other recognizes me, he is in the right. Because the other recognizes me, as I recognize him, and I him, as he me, our claims are based on our right.

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Here, legitimacy initially emerges along a horizontal social line, as the reciprocal approval between equals, as the consensus of the privileged about the validity of the order that privileges them.1 There are precisely no social barriers to overcome in the first place. It is a matter of internal process within the group of those for whom legitimacy is a primary interest. This internal process, however, not only offers increasing security to the participants; it also radiates a further effect: the suggestive force produced by the agreement. One knows that a strong conviction that something is rightful and approved is in any case massively contagious: if such conviction comes from groups as a certainty that has already become social, it emanates a stronger force. This does not necessarily presuppose that the group expressly appeals to others, that it directs claims toward the outside. The shared understanding already has a suggestive force if the internal reciprocal process of recognition becomes visible and can be observed by others—say, in the ceremonial display of the privileged, which “performs” the legitimacy, symbolizes it in representative behavior (forms of greeting, clothing, gestures of recognition with their exemplary effect). In our case, of course, things did not proceed as nicely. The reciprocal recognition among the privileged had the character of a militant demand, was immediately connected with the demonstration of a common readiness for defense. But here, too, the process of the successive spreading of legitimacy becomes clearer if one understands that the legitimacy in question manifests itself to the “others” in an already-formed, selfconscious, consolidated form. Before the validation of legitimacy attains its true objective—as a belief in legitimacy along the vertical, bottom-to-top line—it is invariantly already present in a developed form (even a domination based on constriction is in this sense already legitimate, before any “proper” process of legitimation begins at all). This is a further, additional opportunity, already present for its agents in the first phases of power formation: the internal construction of that kind of consciousness that provides motivations for compliance beyond those constituted by habit and interest. Here, too, a power accumulates potency as if spontaneously.

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The reciprocal recognition of the privileged is, by the way, not only the first manifestation of the legitimacy of a new order. It can also—as the last trace left behind by an old order—survive for a long time the de facto breakdown of “its own” order. The European nobility is a clear example. Here, too, the residues of legitimacy are still preserved chiefly within the internal process of mutually exchanged recognition. This exchange process of its own accord produces a lasting force. In this way it still seems to exercise, in the last phase as in the first, a certain effect of suggestion toward the outside, rather than in turn depend on external confirmations.

POWER FORMATION IN A PRISONERS’ CAMP

Second example. In the last days of the war, prisoners were herded into an improvised camp. A flat field, barbed wire—one dug oneself in wherever one could. The bulk had been thrown together randomly from the most different military units, without previous acquaintances. The only shared circumstance was that nobody could get away from the others. A certain sense of comradeship did develop, by no means as great as one reads in books but undoubtedly favored by the fact that one does read about it in books. It sufficed to put a brake on certain impulses. As far as possible one did not bother others and maybe rendered them some assistance as long as no particular effort was required. Essentially, however, it was each man for himself. Within this ensemble of people took form a group of four men, within which a wholly uncommon solidarity developed. These four, too, had not known one another before, but somehow they had come together and they threw whatever they had into the same pot. Whatever possession one had brought along became common property, including the camp’s currency—cigarettes. No account was taken of what each could contribute. This also applied to further activities to be performed. The tasks were divided and rationally specialized: one was a cook, another a

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plumber, the third knew English,* the fourth had a physical force that commanded respect and projected the image of one who fights opponents. All this resulted in an exceptionally productive cooperation, thanks to which the group soon became the prosperous aristocracy of the camp. The most important accomplishment was the making of a stove on which one could boil water and soup and which operated with little fuel. (In the camp the food was distributed raw, open fires were forbidden, combustible materials were very scarce.) The making of the stove required a lot of time, a high degree of ability, and a considerable expenditure of effort. Besides this, the group became the camp’s center of trading activities, including what could cross its boundaries on the way out or the way in. To a limited extent there also was formed a place for the exchange of ideas and a manufacture for the production of objects made of tin. Step by step, as these performances progressed, there also emerged dependencies of other individuals, which came to comprise a larger and larger number of them and became more and more intense. At first the outsiders paid only small sums for making use of the stove; the payments turned into services rendered; as the demand increased so also did what was asked in return, until in the end the selection of those allowed to use the stove came to be understood as an act of mercy—beyond the services rendered of course. A privileged clientele emerged. Further groups established themselves at different distances from the center constituted by those owning the stove. What was decisive was that in this prison camp no second stove was produced. Here one may distinguish two phases. At first no other group emerged capable of cooperating to an extent sufficient for attaining the performance level required. Certainly the necessary skills of individuals were not concentrated exclusively in this particular group. But the * Popitz himself was a war prisoner at the end of World War II. It is likely that his depiction of a prisoners’ camp draws from this biographical experience, so one may imagine a camp of German war prisoners run by Allied Forces in World War II. Knowledge of English was then much less common among Germans than it is today—Trans.

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other talents were not sufficiently integrated with one another, and those possessing them did not so decisively renounce the advantages attainable by single individuals. The group’s performance remained exceptional in its being maintained over a lengthy stretch of time. Certainly, after a while the group’s brilliant success could well have inspired attempts at imitating it. But before this could happen, the group’s opportunity to exercise influence had grown enough to prevent the making of a stove that could compete with its own. In this second phase the group could avail itself of numerous possible assistants and could practice reprisals. Within the camp, every unfriendly act had become a risky matter. Every attempt to begin making a stove would now constitute such an act. The group’s own stove had come to constitute a monopoly. Furthermore, a bit at a time, one began to take for granted the existent distribution of rights and duties. It had become part of the camp’s order. We will first inquire into the group’s capacity for action, and then into the specific opportunities to convert that capacity into power over an overwhelming majority.

1 . T HE P R O DU C T I V E S U P E R I O R IT Y O F NU CLE I O F S O L I DA R I T Y

Within this camp, as in every other one, there were surely formed in the course of time numerous personal relationships, comradeships, circles of friends. At first the group of interest here only stood out because of how tightly connected it was and how early that connection had come into being. This distinctiveness could have been due to various constellations of circumstances. But one can easily surmise one condition of it: in the emergency we have described, in which an inappropriate act might jeopardize somebody’s existence, and every close bond was at first rare and risky, such extraordinary solidarity could emerge only if one dared to engage in rare, risky activities. What was necessary was not just any act of assistance that could be useful and noble without requiring much more than goodwill, but actions on behalf of another that were extremely dangerous for the agent unless reciprocated. What had taken place be-

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tween the four prisoners must have been an act of daring disproportionate and ungrounded given the circumstances—a conduct that simply presupposed the reciprocity of solidarity, a “leap into trust.” Trust was not tested, and was instead anticipated: one put oneself reciprocally into the other’s hands. The four had to let themselves fall into a relationship in such a way that they could in fact fall into a trap. This assumption at least accounts for the rarity and also the exceptional rapidity of these particular solidary relations. In the course of time the group produced uncommon performances. Naturally this presupposes a certain individual motivation. But we need not assume that in our case such a disposition was extraordinarily great. It is enough to realize that the creation of solidarity offered the group numerous chances of rendering the performance of the group as a whole greater than the sum of individual performances: the capacity to perform had improved eo ipso, notwithstanding that the disposition to perform remained the same. Why this is the case constitutes an old and perhaps never entirely solved problem. After all, today we can avail ourselves of numerous concepts, such as “division of labor,” “specialization,” “cooperation.” But there is a tendency to cover too many things with these concepts. We intend to characterize more precisely the new possibilities that opened for the group. 1. The basis of all we can understand as solidarity is helping and dividing. It seems clear that both of these in their most simple, spontaneous forms offer chances of increasing performance: we lend support in order to compensate for individual deficiencies, we watch out for one another, we assist ourselves from case to case, we divide according to need, we sleep under the same blanket. 2. A coordinated collective activity can develop from these simple forms. One tackles something together: one responds to the same heaveho in order to get a boulder out of the way, all the way to the communal action in fighting. Here, certain performances are made possible by merely adding energies together. A somewhat different variant is to chain together intertwined activities, for example, handing over materials from one person to another instead of each person rushing and fro. (We call collective

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activities all forms of coordination between activities of the same kind being performed in the same place at the same time.) 3. Adding together activities of the same kind can also make sense if the unity of time is given up: one person can, for instance, be periodically replaced by another in carrying out any heavy earthwork that can be taken on only by one person at a time. Periods of work and periods of rest are divided up in such a way that each individual contributes his or her maximum performance to the common task. Thus, here the temporal sequencing of similar activities attains a particular effect. 4. Instead of the unity of time, the unity of place can also be abandoned: it is agreed that each does the same thing as the others while separated from another (stealing wood or selling wares). Such spatial separation of similar activities may be intended to make use simultaneously of different chances or to reach rapidly a cumulative result or to make up for the failure of one via another’s success. This last one would be the tactic of contemporarily multiplied effort, which makes sense chiefly as a way of balancing risks. 5. By having someone representing others it is possible to economize labor power and to make some of it available for other purposes: in one trip one can fetch water on behalf of four, if one carries enough containers; one can answer a role call in the name of four. The resulting effect of relief is striking although it can only be used in particular circumstances. Just like collective activity, acting through representation constitutes a particularly evident, plainly convincing demonstration of the advantage of constituting a group—a crucial point all can promptly understand. What characterizes the organizational chances mentioned so far is that to be effective they require only relatively little coordination effort. The big feats of group organization, however, only begin when activities of diverse nature are fitted into one another, with the division of labor in the strict sense. But putting to use the possibilities that here offer themselves not only presupposes a higher level of coordination—at the same time each discovery made in this direction challenges the ability to think up modes of coordination. 6. Already merely working hand in hand at a common task with short-term division of labor saves at least time: the work can be com-

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pleted more rapidly, the so-called dead time occasioned by changes in a person’s work activity is disposed of. What matters above all, here, is the intervention of a thought process whereby single conventional performances are integrated into a shared task, which in turn is partitioned into “artificial,” unusual components. Thus one finds that indeed activities that would make no sense as individual performances become productive at the level of the group. In connection with this are discovered numerous activities that one individual can perform for all as a substitute. In this way “division of labor” becomes a consciously constructed subdivision of the task conceived as a whole into substitutional activities. Further variants (as in [3] and [4]) can appear when the unity of time or of space is abandoned. 7. If one proceeds to the standing division of labor, the effect of specialization gets introduced additionally, the benefit of a practice where one always does the same thing, and thus learns to operate more and more rapidly, effortlessly, with fewer mistakes. In this manner, obviously particular talents and occupational experiences—preexistent effects of specialization—can be put to use in advance, as in our case the apprenticeships undergone over years by the plumber and the cook. Once this level is reached, particular chances for innovation (already identified by Adam Smith) present themselves: 8. The concentration on a specific, limited task makes it easier to discover new methods of work and production of the partial processes. (Mechanization, as is well known, is also in this sense, among other things, a product of innovation in the division of labor.) 9. The decomposition into simple phases and the increased supervision point to new chances of articulating and coordinating the overall process (in the meaning already suggested under [6]). 10. Meanwhile, our group accomplishes so much faster and better what all others also do that its labor power is freed for new tasks. It makes the stove. Whether our group itself has discovered and put to use all these organizational opportunities makes little difference, but it is actually likely that it did. For they all represent developments of the fundamental forms of solidarity, helping, and dividing. On this account, these are not

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modern discoveries, but have the character of “strategic plausibilities”— possible arrangements that, given the existent condition, impose themselves to such an extent that as a rule they are also discovered. They possess that character to the extent that—and as soon as—a particular intense sociation is attained in situations that generally call forth a productive performance disposition. The beneficial effects of such intense sociation are not, by the way, only “external” in nature. The practice of solidarity generates security, a sense of being cared for and protected. We can assume that along with the increasing external security of the group, its internal security was also strengthened, and that both determined its relationship with outsiders: the group probably developed a consciousness of its own privileged condition, a sense of superiority that predisposed it to further superior actions. This, however, did not yet mean that the group exercised power over others. Power relations began to develop only with the increasing dependency of outsiders—with their having to rely on the group’s favor— and were reinforced when the monopoly over production became accepted. But the productive superiority of the group already generated a power potential, put at its disposal means that could be converted into power. Productive superiority was a result of the higher organization capacity, which in turn was a “strategically plausible” outcome of its uncommon solidarity.

2. P OW E R ACQ U I S I T I O N AS A PRO CE SS O F E STA B L I S H I N G E C H E LO NS

One must ask, at this point, how the gradient of dependency in the prison camp actually comes about. At the beginning of this process, the group has jumped ahead in terms of production. At the end, it has the power of preventing others from catching up with that jump ahead. From the beginning it is not a matter of justifying claims to possession. Nobody doubts that the group can exclusively and steadily avail itself of the facilities and the goods it has produced. For the group, in turn, it is not

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necessary to contest similar claims to possession from others. It must only take care that others do not find themselves able to attain a competitive level of production. Thus, within a generally acknowledged order of possessions—which it will take care not to render problematical—the group establishes a monopoly. The majority of those concerned can in no way want such a monopoly from the beginning. Naturally it does not arise ineluctably either. But the group can make use of specific chances in such a way that the whole process appears ineluctable. On account of its superiority in production the group already had at its disposal scarce, generally desired goods. It was the only one in possession of a production facility. Clearly, it could make use of this economic advantage within a series of advantageous transactions; further, it could increasingly exploit the imbalance between supply and demand in order to impose more and more exacting conditions for the use of the stove. It was also relatively easy to favor some outsiders and at the same time render them particularly dependent. But, by themselves, manipulations of this nature could have hardly led to the outcome attained. They do not explain why in the end the group had managed to impose on the whole camp the law of its own monopoly. All that was required in order to make a competitive stove was organized work performances. It was exactly the pressure progressively exercised by the group that could have induced others to organize on their own account the necessary work performance. It was thus not sufficient to extend the position of economic advantage and to produce individual situations of dependency. From whatever you consider the matter, the group had to aim its policy not only at those it dealt with at a given time but at all those potentially involved, that is, at the whole social aggregate that the camp constituted. While progressively expanding its power, the group needed at the same time to prevent the formation of anticoalitions. The device adopted in order to prevent the formation of anticoalitions is well known from history: the policy of dividing. Its trivial version is the attempt to set others against one another and to take advantage of their quarrel. But the policy of dividing can also be immediately

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connected with the process itself of taking power: as an attempt to differentiate outsiders in their relationship to the power center, ranking them and thus generating different interests by dividing them in this fashion. We shall call this the creation of echelons. Dividing in the first meaning presupposes that there already exist groupings that can be played off against one another. This was not the case in our camp. The power center depended on creating at the same time the groupings and their division, setting them up, with respect to itself, as different echelons. Naturally one cannot state in general terms how many partial groups get formed as distinct echelons. But one can, simplifying things somewhat, describe the strategic object of echelon-making as an attempt to form three partial groups. Two of these can be seen—again, simplifying things—as preliminary forms of particular social strata. But one must not forget that at first it is not a matter of constructing a comprehensive structure, but rather of separating, dividing, and keeping interests apart. Let us first mention a partial group or echelon that according to the circumstances can be characterized as “part owners,” as “kinsmen,” as “staff,” or as “clientele.” The members of these partial groups depend on the power center, but are entitled to something like a participation in gains. Particularly in the first phase of the process their position can resemble that of outsider-associates. Their belonging to the power group is ambivalent, something like a yes-and-no relationship. The significance of this group for the general process of taking power depends essentially on how many and which functions can be assigned to them as executors. A decisive step has taken place when the group is able and ready to turn against others on behalf of the power center. If in particular carrying out sanctions against rebels—the execution of punitive commands—can be delegated to this staff group by the power center, then its position acquires, so to speak, a new quality. (One can easily observe such a situation in the formation of power within any group of boys: the position of chief of the horde is consolidated when he or she need not personally intervene against eventual recalcitrants— when instead of the fist the thumb does the job.) In particular such delegation also improves the economy of power exercise, reducing the re-

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sources the power holder him- or herself must put into play in order to impose his or her own will. Already before such broad delegations can take place, the group can take over the function of “reinforcer” (of any opinion, any command, any action of the power center) and in case of failure the function of “lightning rod.” In this latter capacity it suits both sides: it covers up the infallibility of the top both for the power center and for those particularly harmed in each case, by letting the failure be imputed to itself.2 Recruiting such a staff group will not, according to the state of things, have been too difficult for the center, which is able to offer rewarding partnerships. Here as elsewhere, the problem rather consisted in the necessity of blocking tendencies to gain autonomy and to disperse power. The most arduous task might well have been to form, maintain, and gradually reduce a second echelon, that of the neutrals, the spectators, the noninvolved. Taking power must in any case exclude a “public” to whom it can be suggested that it has nothing to do with the whole process of power extension, with conflicts that might arise. Furthermore, neutrality must be plausibly presented as a privilege of peace. This requires a particularly clever tactic, a cautious, reliable dosage of the claim to power put forward at a given time. Those who are neutral must, like those “kept out,” be able to feel appreciated and as much at ease as possible, until they represent no more than the residue waiting to be parceled out. It is decisive, for overall success, that such neutrality groups be formed. No extraordinary acquisition of power would be possible unless considerable sections of those to be finally affected are disposed to play the role of the spectator. In the end they constitute the most important, decisive auxiliary troop of the acquisition of power. The greater the capacity is for the illusion of a social unit in this regard, the greater the possibility that extreme power relations develop. The third group—which need not be the last to form—is constituted by the unequivocally underprivileged, the “pariah,” the “shirtless,” the “serfs.” It can be created with the help of the staff group; but it may also be the first group to form and serve to get the process of echelon formation going. The formation of a group of the underprivileged has

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the special advantage that as a rule it can count on the particular support of those not affected, who not being themselves underprivileged remain on the sunny side. Often it is hardly necessary to elicit explicitly the related impulses of discrimination. The field from which such a group can be recruited is all over the place—it is constituted by the new people, the foreign people, the people of a different kind. In our prison camp were also to be found individuals whose deviant characteristics predestined them to be oppressed. Those in power, who carried out such oppression, found themselves additionally in the favorable condition of carrying out the volonté générale. We do not suggest that such a tripartition, or for that matter a further differentiation of echelons, was from the beginning the conscious objective of the solidary group. But the single tactical steps of power conquest will have pointed in this direction—it already emerges, in negative terms, with the mere effort to prevent, from time to time, the formation of anticoalitions. The chief trick in arranging echelons, seen as a whole, consists not so much in recruiting as helpers or as helpers of helpers appropriate people, and often even less in identifying, labeling, and putting in their place the predestined “zero people.” The particular ability to take power is manifest essentially in leaving out and decimating, in a manner appropriately dosed in each case, the temporarily notinvolved, that is, any grouping particularly well placed for forming stronger majorities if it did constitute itself as a “group.” In the first place, this may not be provoked. The advantages of the status quo must be properly emphasized. On this account the policy of peace is such an important component in the acquisition of power. But, furthermore, the development of any solidarity between the individual groups must be prevented. Thus, in all its phases the process of dividing must create interests different and divisive by means of “echelon” relations to the power group. In this sense, the three groups we have mentioned have a maximum of social distance from one another. The power potential of the group, the means by which at any given time it was able to establish and grade the dependencies, was having at its disposal rare and desired goods. The relations of dependency of different nature were obtained through a differentiated employment of

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such goods: a degree of participation of the staff group as compensation for certain services; “normal” trade relations with the neutrals as compensation for their abstaining from competition; economic ruin of the lowest group and consequent exploitation of their labor power. Thus, in the end the extension and intensification of the dependency relation rested on the fact that the accumulation of goods could be converted into the exercise of power over human beings (tributes, services rendered, renunciation of opposition, disposition to act as followers), and that in turn such exercise could be converted into further accumulation. This is not the dialectic of the “subversion” of the relationship, but rather the more or less calculated conversion of powers of disposition over rare goods into powers of disposition over men, and of these powers into powers of disposition over rare goods. Here we showed in the first place that this process is only possible within certain strategic conditions of the context. In turn the power strategy of creating echelons rests on the possibility of utilizing and manipulating the others’ defective sociation.

POWER FORMATION IN A BOARDING SCHOOL

Third example. This story could be derived from fiction that has as its heroes army cadets or from any film dealing with educational institutions. In this particular institution a relatively high degree of autonomy had been granted to a group of young men fourteen to fifteen years of age, due to being resocialized and to trusting in the blessings of selfadministration and in the salutary effect of education by comradeship. In terms of organization and of space the group in question was separated from the rest of the institution. At the time of interest here, among the thirteen youths had emerged a power center from which issued the directives. It comprised four youths. One of them, the “chief,” had the decisive say on contested cases. A second group of three served as an auxiliary team and in certain cases as a task force. To the remaining six were imparted commands at will and they were exploited.

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At breakfast each youth received two slices of bread. It was possible to make these slices disappear, subsequently soften them in water, and at night squash them under the bed, forming in this way a substance that to an extent could be conserved and that resembled rusks. With this discovery was connected a system for redistributing the bread: each of the six exploited youths had to deliver to the power center one of his two slices of bread, which the auxiliary troop had the task of collecting. The power center kept for itself five of the six slices (two for the chief, one each for the three other members). The remaining bread was assigned as payment for their services to the three youths of the auxiliary troop, each of whom thus made a profit of a third of a portion of bread. A similar formula determined the individuals’ quotas of common working tasks and their training in particularly unpleasant activities, and it determined who would serve as scapegoat. If one of the oppressed youths made a fuss, he was subjected to punishment (for instance, they took away his bedcovers); in more serious cases the task force intervened instantly, in the extreme case of open and repeated insubordination punishment was inflicted at night and all others were compelled to take part in it. Such a social order may have come into being in ways similar to those we have already considered. Here, the process of forming echelons had already produced a stable stratification. The group of spectators has disappeared; neutrality would now constitute sabotage. The oppressed were probably mainly recruited from new arrivals, thus successively and one at a time. (This takes place easily and unintentionally through the sheer lengthening of initiation rituals.) From the special position of the chief, we cannot infer that he as an individual had put together the power structure centered on him, for example, by availing himself of special authority effects. The hierarchy within the top group could as well have been a product of the extension of its power, a repercussion of its expansion. What is of interest here, however, is not how the group developed, but rather the processes that continue to take place within the system. Even if we assume that the power gradient has strongly established itself and remains essentially unaltered over longer stretches of time, we cannot

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assume that the processes of power formation had come, so to speak, to a standstill as its “final result.” All power orders must be considered as systems in which the power that ordains the order continually reproduces itself. If there is a relatively stable power gradient, this means only that a given power distribution also reproduces itself in those processes.

1 . T H E R E P R O DU C T I O N O F POWE R I N T H E R E DI ST R I B U T I O N SYST E M

The exploitation of the six youths is, here as elsewhere, only a particularly unfavorable aspect of a system of redistribution. At the point that our example has reached, furthermore, this system must still be secured rather often by means of direct employments of violence. As we know, over time measures of this kind can be converted into mere threats. But even these in the end barely need to be spoken out; they are automatically understood. The redistribution system functions as if by itself, and acquires a functional security of its own, detached from specific circumstances. Violence still intervenes only as an emergency measure taken to dispose of occasional disturbances. In fact, it is no longer present (as long as one does not provoke it). It is a feature not so much of the system as of its failures. The power center takes over the rations of bread, keeps them, and gives them. Keeping comes first: the center can give much less than it takes. This usually offers a chance of accumulation. In our case, however, the slices of bread put aside from the redistribution system are simply consumed. Under less limited circumstances part of the received values can be invested, and in this way the productive capital—with the power potential implied—can be increased over time. But the taking and giving, even independently of this opportunity for power accumulation, have an essential significance: as part of a system of planned redistribution, they constitute suitable methods for reproducing power and the existing power distribution. Those from whom the top takes the bread are not only objects of an employment of power. At the same time they give the top a means of

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obtaining auxiliary forces for the confiscation, thus a means for controlling the behavior of others. By putting themselves at his or her service, those who receive bread from the top do not merely comply with his or her will; they place themselves at his or her service. In this way they also give him or her the means for collecting the bread, thus by the same token for controlling the behavior of others. Each of these two groups to the extent that it complies also takes care of the others’ compliance. For the top, one group’s compliance is at the same time the means for making others compliant. One and the same economic good reproduces power both in its right and in its left hand: the right with which it takes from others, the left with which it gives to others. At the same time, both groups under subjection are pushed into a situation with conflicting interests. Each exercises the same function vis-à-vis the other: they mutually keep themselves within the system. The power tools required to this end, which both groups offer (goods and services), are in each case rerouted via the power system. The center need only transfer the power potential supplied to it into what is the other state of aggregate. Clearly the center can modify the pressure placed on each of the two groups by means of minor changes in the formula for redistribution. The reinforced pressure upon one group can be compensated in each case by giving the other a premium: the extortion of greater tributes from the lowest group can be compensated by higher payment for the auxiliary group, the reduction in such payment by the reduction in the tributes due. “Disruptions in the equilibrium” of the system can thus be corrected in the most diverse ways, insubordinations can be repressed, conformity can be induced. Furthermore, chances of exploiting the special weaknesses of both groups present themselves. The weakness of the exploited lies above all in the fact that each step toward greater exploitation is rendered all the more threatening the closer their situation approaches the minimum required for sheer survival. As this extreme condition is reached, the little fi nger of the powerful becomes as much of a danger as previously its strongest battalions were. Such a situation further enhances the effect of each power decision, negative or (occasionally) positive as it may be. (If for someone

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only one of the initial two slices remains, the next decision concerning one half slice of bread is more decisive than the previous one concerning the confiscation of a whole slice.) On this account, even the policy of moderate means has extraordinary chances of success. The weakness of the auxiliary troop lies chiefly in the fact that its composition can be changed. To be sure, its support is indispensable for the exercise of power, but the particular person that gives support is not. The assistance its members render to the exploitation of the lowest also means that all of them together aid the digging of a pit into which at any time each individual member can fall. The service they perform is indeed awarded a premium, but to the extent that they help to sharpen the power gradient, the members lose the freedom to renounce both service and premium without further consequences. The position of the auxiliary troop is “favorable” only within the relationship forced upon it by the power system. Orders of this kind resemble machines, power machines whose driving energy is supplied by the dominated themselves. Such systems can no longer be “spontaneously” broken up from inside. They are destroyed either by an attack from the outside or by developments in their economic bases that offer chances to new groups. As long as such aids are missing, the prospects of the lower groups are poor. The deficit in their capacity for organization has systematically consolidated itself. It is always possible to play against one another the interests of the intermediate and the lowest groups. If in spite of this the beginnings of an anticoalition present themselves, it is relatively easy to put a stop to them. The majority condition becomes irrelevant here; every arithmetic exercise that adds the different interests to one another can only remain an abstraction.

2. T HE OR DE R I N G VA LU E O F T H E E X IST E NT O RDE R AS B AS I C L E GI T I MACY

It is possible—as we know from experience—that the six youths who hand over their bread in the morning, perform the most unpleasant activities, and in doubtful cases are considered the guilty parties, from

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a certain point on, accept exactly this order, this partition of rights and duties, as the binding constitution of collective existence; that they do not merely comply, but serve; that they not only are in fear of the norms of this order, but internalize them; that they do their part, not just as a matter of stolid habit but dutifully in terms of prompt willingness and as followers. Such an outcome appears to us not just possible but plausible because it is an outcome we know. But the process itself is not yet clear on that account, but indeed—to use this expression again—absurd. The intrinsic recognition of a power order by those oppressed and underprivileged is a further power process, whereby power relations become more secure and “deepened,” and which can take place against the “obvious” interests, indeed—indubitably—even against the original will of the majority. What chances of seizing power come into play in our institution—or in the prisoners’ camp or on the ship—in order to render possible such a process? The fi rst stage of the legitimation process—this was our previous thesis—is the reciprocal recognition among the privileged. This process of exchanging recognition engenders a social certainty that subsequently also exercises a suggestion toward the outside, on the not-participants. Such an external effect can, for instance, weaken opposing convictions, render more difficult, less safe the formation of opinions. It can contribute to form certain dispositions to consent and comply. But one should not imply that one can satisfactorily explain the diff usion of a belief in legitimacy by assuming such suggestion effects.3 The further effects and countereffects that come into play here are probably not yet anywhere sufficiently envisaged. Yet one can perhaps identify a phenomenon that presumably constitutes a condition necessary for a process of legitimation to succeed4—as long as one is disposed to tackle this question in a sufficiently trivial manner. The power system of the institutional group we are considering will attain recognition if it affords order over a longer stretch of time, or more precisely if continuity and order can maintain their significance in shaping consciousness. In this context, affording order must mean in the first place to afford the security of order. Those involved are assured of order when they can safely know what they and what others are allowed

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to do, and must do; when they attain a certainty that all those involved can be fairly reliably expected to actually behave in the way they are expected to do; when they can count on transgressions being as a rule punished; when they can foresee what one must do in order to gain advantages, to obtain recognition. In one word, one must know how to conduct oneself.5 Now, security of order so understood can also obviously be attained in a despotic regime. It can be perfectly associated with oppression and exploitation. The credit enjoyed by energetic, all-present power centers is usually indeed grounded exactly in the fact that they have “made order” and maintain it. Undoubtedly such a security of order could assert itself in our institutional group. Even those belonging to its lowest group can, in the course of time, adapt themselves to it. They, too, in the end can know what they have to expect, how they can get around obstacles, how best to manage to a relatively bearable extent. In this way they attain a certain reliability in their orientation within the existent order, a certain capacity to predict what reactions one can expect. For them, too, the existent relations acquire—in terms of their persistence—a value of order. However, as soon as such certainty is attained, they also begin to invest interests in the existent order. They do precisely what each peaceable citizen does in order to keep him- or herself above water, as well as within an order coercively imposed: he or she gains an education that within this society offers some occupational prospects, assuring him or her of a place of work that guarantees to him/her a certain income, achieving an entitlement for a tolerable dwelling, gaining the trust of superiors, and being careful not to get him- or herself into trouble. Each member of our group will seek something of the kind, for instance, each will specialize him- or herself in a relatively suitable work and in this way render him- or herself as far as possible irreplaceable, put him- or herself under special protection on the part of one of the powerful, and so on. Attaining this requires innumerable petty, everyday activities, which tighten the network of bonds to the existent order. Such activities in no way presuppose one’s approval of the existent order, or even one’s particular opportunism, but only the conformism inescapable if one wants to avoid heroism. But they imply much more than this: just as everyone

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is interested in not losing what one’s activities can gain him or her, one also becomes interested in the persistence of the order into which one has deposited those activities. One’s investments accrue from the sheer duration of this order. In this way emerges a further value of order: the respective investment value of the existent order, the value of the investment capital that the conforming activities of the participants accumulate within that order. Whether such invested capital is comparatively large or small says nothing about its subjective value. The fact could be decisive that one’s day-today outlay is necessarily entangled in the relations existent at any given time. On this account the offer of alternative, better orders can also only with some difficulty generate conviction. It is precisely a matter not just of how problematic it is to barter an actual order against a virtual order, but also, and above all, of the unreasonable demand to put at risk the investment value that the existent order has for the individual. The wellknown reaction opposed to a factual threat from outside—the affirmative reaction even of the underprivileged who now discover that they want to protect “our order,” “our society”—could be based, among other things, on the fact that this demand becomes suddenly evident. Now, the value of order—both as security of order and as investment value—is a subjective datum that can have a very different content of reality. It seems to me, however, that there is some evidence for the assumption that our social consciousness is in this respect less susceptible to illusions than usual. Within our institutional group, presumably, such a value of order will also emerge only if the power center is willing and able to create some concrete premises. First, it must render the oppression systemic, that is, make it predictable in its details. A degree of arbitrariness need not undermine the majority’s security of order, but it must limit itself only to a particular circle of people involved or allow the expectation that it has some definite limits. In the second place, the power center must also try to attribute a certain value to the investments made by the negatively privileged. Naturally one cannot determine in general terms where the limit will be. The fact that a class may have nothing further to lose but its chains may perhaps indicate a limit, but only when it holds almost literally. Apart from that, the relevant performances natu-

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rally depend not only on the decisions of the power center, but also on external circumstances and on developments in the economy, products of the “involuntary arbitrariness.” Third, and finally, the power center must succeed in making the existent order durable. It is decisive that the order endures. The most valuable gain consists in the time gained. If the power center can satisfy these presuppositions, it becomes likely that, via the recognition of the value of its order, the system as a whole will receive recognition. In the first instance, this is not a question of a particular content of values. The recognition can emerge circumventing political convictions, even those expressly provided. The order value of the existent order makes itself evident in everyday experience and this in such a way that its conditions—the existent power order—become themselves a part of that experience. What remains to be enforced is not the recognition of those conditions on its own, but their interpretation and their significance. We do not consider, here, how internalization processes may advance further in specific circumstances. But the recognition of the order value of the order undoubtedly characterizes a situation of consciousness that goes beyond what Max Weber understands as conformity based on sheer habit or on interest. On the other hand it does not yet attain the specific contents of his types of legitimacy.6 To duly characterize this intermediate situation, one might speak of a basic legitimacy. “Basic legitimacy,” also because different configurations of content can be grounded in it and built on it. Such basic legitimacy can be connected with the different mentalities we designate as “bourgeois” or “peasant,” or—preferably with polemical intent—“petty bourgeois.” We find them in diverse manifestations in all subtenants of the house of power.

FINAL COMMENT

Naturally the six complexes we have derived from our examples can be connected with one another in different ways. Moreover, opportunities

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for theoretical construction offer themselves, and it would be appealing to try to capture one of these abstract specters. Instead, we remain here within the framework of descriptive-analytical reflections. A few final suggestions might make it somewhat easier to retrospect on what said so far. In our examples, the actions by which power is exercised—modifying the behavior of others in a desired direction—present three distinguishable connections: the superior or inferior capacity for organization of particular groups; the exclusive power of disposal over more or less scarce, more or less desired goods (“possession,” “ownership”); the processes whereby new orders receive recognition, which we have related to the concept of legitimacy. Naturally, expressions like “capacity for organization” can denote very different phenomena of social organization; but our examples should clearly suggest each specific meaning. In all three cases a superior capacity for organization rests on the three elementary acts of solidarity, help, and sharing. Their further development, from a spontaneous behavior to one repeated according to a plan, differentiated and coordinated, reaches a high level in the second example, in the working organization of the solidary group. In the first example, instead, it is sufficient for the possessors to take turns in monitoring the deck chairs and if necessary to defend their possession against transgressors. Thus, here are necessary only two organizing performances requiring a degree of mutual understanding and communication: temporal succession of similar activities, and defense as collective action (coordination of similar and simultaneous activities in the same location). In the third example (the educational institution), we have not gone further into the organization of the power center. We have only added the formation of an internal hierarchy as a possible repercussion of the expansion of power. In all three cases the divergence in the capacity for organization is decisive. The deficit of organization among the “others” in the first example is the product of the matter-of-fact allocation of possession, in the second example is further manipulated by the extension of power relations (strategy of creation of echelons), and in the third example is rendered systemic within a relatively consolidated power arrangement (system of redistribution).

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On the ship, the claim for possession is the issue of conflict from which emerges a gradient of power. It is not problematical for the participants in the prisoners’ camp; in the educational institution it presents itself as legalized expropriation (the taking-over of the bread slices). Yet the “unproblematic” prisoners’ camp example is by no means the least harmful. The possession of the stove can already be interpreted as disposition over means of production—and on this account there were particularly significant chances of accumulating the goods under possession and at the same time of rendering rationally evident the dependency relations. Obviously the advantages of the capacity for organization and that of possession can be viewed as “power tools” that can be converted into power. In such a way the greater cohesion of those in possession of deck chairs suffices to put the brakes on attacks on their possession, and thus to modify in the desired direction the behavior of others. The possession of the stove makes available the petty cash for paying dependent labor. Vice versa, the power so gained can be translated back into power tools with which to add further to the advantages that get the process going.7 Of particular interest for us in the examples were of course the diverse connections between those two “tools of power” themselves, the possibility of converting each into the other. In the second example (the prisoners’ camp) their connection is at first quite simple: the increased effectiveness of the organization of work produces a superior stratum of possessors, even before the process of taking over power begins. In the first example (the ship), vice versa, the advantage of possession produces organizational advantages—yet in this case it is already called for by a power conflict, a need to defend. If we consider further both these examples, and especially add to them the third (the institution), it becomes evident that the reciprocal convertibility between the advantages of possession and those of organization not only can initiate the power process, but also can be promoted, mediated productively by advances in that process. In other words, power over other human beings can be steered in such a way that the use of advantages of possession can raise the organizational ones, and the use of organizational advantages can increase those of possession. Th is conversion can be further manipulated the more the behavior of others can be governed. In the end, it is

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those subjected to power who perform that conversion on behalf of those in power. It helps those seizing power in gaining a capacity to decide as concerns the benefits of power and in choosing what means of offense to employ, and adds to their room for maneuver that accounts for the strategic superiority that progressively falls to them so obviously with increasing power. One should add to this the possibility of manipulating the recognition process. The context of our examples admittedly presented no opportunity to discuss the particular methods for exercising influence deriving from this further component of the “tools of power.” The processes of recognition described are among those that need no assistance. It is as if they attained success by themselves—in the presence of particular conditions, among these the fact that all actors within our examples operated according to conventional patterns of behavior, which they transported from larger societies into these small societies. Claiming and accepting power relations replicated trusted models of conduct. Emotional reactions of resistance, despair, or naked rage could be expected only within very late stages of the process, when the capacity for resistance had been markedly reduced. A disposition to resist as a learned reaction, together with learned ways of proceeding, was missing. In the earliest stages of the process, it could count on almost certain success. In this sense the three power takeovers, which were realized “as if inevitably,” with “absurd naturalness,” were in fact not inevitable, but absurd.

8 POWER AND DOMINATION Stages of the Institutionalization of Power

P

ower” and “domination” have been conceptually connected with each other in various ways. Here, I understand by domination institutionalized power. Max Weber also viewed it this way, as indicated above all by his examples: a bank that lays down conditions for conceding credit to one who seeks it—say, it demands his taking measures to insure liquidity—exercises power if in view of the circumstances the credit seeker must swallow those conditions; it exercises domination if, to improve its control, the bank can impose that its own directors become members of the board of the firm seeking credit. “That board, in turn, can give decisive orders to the management by virtue of the latter’s obligation to obey.” The same holds for coal dealers supplied by a coal trust. “All these retailers may well be reduced to employed sales agents” of their customers, compensated on a percentage basis, thereby practically becoming “subject to the authority of a department chief.” Or, consider the development from the dependency of the artisan on a merchant with a good knowledge of the market, to the dependency of cottage producers, and finally to domestic work with authoritative regulation of working time: power congeals into domination. The “authoritarian power of a patriarch or monarch” gets mentioned as the “purest type” of domination. This appears clear enough. But Weber

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does not succeed in characterizing more precisely, in conceptual terms, the specific relations between those exercising power and those dependent on the power he calls domination. He stereotypically repeats “power to command” and “duty to obey” and occasionally, as a vague connotation, lays on top of these “authority.”1 How could one express more precisely what is intended here?

INSTITUTIONALIZATION

“Institutionalized power” points to a process—the institutionalization process—within which, as a matter of first approximation, three tendencies assert themselves. First, an increasing depersonalization of the power relation. Power no longer stands or falls with the particular person who at the moment is in charge. It becomes progressively connected with determinate functions or positions of superpersonal character. Second, an increasing formalization. The exercise of power becomes more and more strongly oriented to rules, procedures, rituals. (This does not exclude arbitrariness. But one can also speak of arbitrariness and grace only when arbitrary decisions or acts of grace deviate from the standard of a rule.) A third feature of the progressive institutionalization of power is the increasing integration of the power relation into an overriding order. Power becomes geared to the “existent relations.” It integrates itself and becomes integrated into a social complex that it supports and by which it is supported. Depersonalization, formalization, integration: all this together signifies increased stability. This particular form of power enhancement entails at the same time that it becomes more secure. What has been attained gets consolidated; the power position gets expanded, fortified. It is relatively difficult to reverse such processes. They are arranged in such a way as to produce abiding structures, reliability, consistency. If one seeks an expression alternative to institutionalization, I would consider “reinforcement” most appropriate. Power establishes itself, takes steady forms, becomes more solid. Power institutionalization is

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one of the fundamental processes of “stabilization,” “establishment,” “solidification” of social relations, thus of processes integral to the constitution of human coexistence such as we know it. Now, the processes of power institutionalization are often connected with processes that lead to power gains of a different kind, as Max Weber’s examples suggest. We must pay attention to such connections, but at the same time differentiate between the particular line of power institutionalization of interest to us here, and other ways in which power gets reinforced. These comprise in the first place its increasing reach (power over a greater number of people, over a larger territory), the higher level of validity of the will of the powerful (it can more safely rely on being complied with), and finally the increased intensity of its effects. The last takes place in two particularly significant variants, the capacity for enforcement (against a resistance of what intensity can the power holder impose his will at most?) and the capacity for innovation (how capable is he or she of breaking with what exists and of making something unusual binding?). This is not a pointless enumeration. It is difficult to find instances of power institutionalization that do not simultaneously increase the reach or the level of validity or the intensity of the power effects. A case in point is a story narrated in the 1970s by the American press. Apparently the following had taken place. Some young families tired of living in big cities had moved to the Midwest, in order to build up a new existence for themselves in a dilapidated village previously inhabited by gold diggers, and to inscribe on their (actually inexistent) flags such slogans as respect for nature, equality, liberty. One of them, James Frederick, owned a tractor, which he loaned to others in exchange for certain services. Since all found it necessary to make use of it, some rules had to be set for its loan. But this could not be easily done without coordinating the work done in the village better. James Frederick took charge of organization, and added to it the introduction of some desperately needed forms of collective work, the collaboration in which he naturally made obligatory for everyone. Unavoidably, one had to establish some penalties for those who showed insufficient commitment. He

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often had to absent himself in order to arrange for the sale of the collective produce, but fortunately on such occasions his wife could join in and perform in his stead the central tasks of organization. Once the administrative activities began to exceed the family’s capacities, a few helpers had to take them on as their main task, with James Frederick carefully coordinating them. Meanwhile, the village community had become admirably larger, had established various productive units, had built a sewer system, and had introduced its own identity document. As the newspapers related, James Frederick received the reporters in the newly built town hall, busily engaged in swiftly formulating new directives, carefully mediating controversies, considering new projects. The tractor, which stood somehow forlorn in front of the town hall, had rusted up. It was clearly thought of more as a monument. The story gives an account of the most diverse forms of power enhancement. But it also describes, in connection with other power gains, a process of power institutionalization.

SPORADIC POWER

If we consider institutionalization as a matter of increasing depersonalization, increasing formalization, and increasing integration, this process can be described via a model of development in successive stages. I will try to do this in what follows. As a first stage, or prestage, we posit sporadic power. The exercise of power is sporadic when it limits itself to a single instance or just a few instances, which one cannot count on to repeat. Take the famous bandit in the dark forest who points his pistol at our breast. Frequently, the anonymity of large cities sets the stage for similar situations in which someone right now, just on this occasion, comes to be in a position to direct the behavior of others by means of power alternatives. (If you park here, I call the police.) Why does the exercise of power so often get stuck at this stage of sporadic power? In which cases does it not manage (even assuming the

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power holder’s will to go further) to go beyond occasional effects? It does not, if one of the following four conditions is not met: 1. There must be available power resources that do not get consumed too fast. The blackmailer, who in exchange for a constrained activity must hand over the compromising letters, has surrendered his power resource. 2. The exercise of power must relate to situations that can be reiterated. The mere exploitation of a unique situation—something like the chaotic disorder caused by a power failure in a large town or others’ temporary inability to defend themselves—can be fruitful, but remains a one-off power, which depends on the circumstances being or not being favorable. 3. The person who exercises power must be able to impose repeatable performances. If the person who is in a dependent position knows only one secret that he or she can disclose, or if the performance he or she must engage in exhausts his or her energy, the use of compliance has come to an end in the first place. Now, sometimes new capacities can be discovered and exploited. But if it is not possible to establish some kind of regularity, the exercise of power remains within the confines of sporadic effects, operating from one case to another. In the extreme case, one has extracted from the inferior party all that could be extracted. “One cannot any longer put it to any use.” 4. The person who exercises power must be in a position to hang on to the weaker party, to tie it down, to keep it from escaping, from giving notice, from packing its suitcase. All power is bound to a location (or was until now). A condition of more intense power exercise is a limitation imposed on the mobility of the person who is subject to it. Such mobility becomes limited or is surrendered if the person who is subject is personally bound to the power holder, say, by an authority relation, or if he is trapped by certain interests of his, or if he can be prevented from fleeing by means of violence. Agricultural workers, peasants, have always constituted an example of people enchained by the bonds of interest. Their freedom of movement is most particularly limited by their being bound to “real estate.” The activity on which their existence depends keeps them in place even if the powerful do not

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intervene. On this account, also on this account, they can relatively easily be subjugated on a stable basis. There are as many examples of violent limitations of freedom of movement as there are of forms of oppression—from the slaves of the Athenian state, locked for the durations of their lives in the silver mines, all the way to the great territorial prisons of modern states, which keep their inmates from leaving the country. In whatever way dependent people can still be kept, the power holder, if he or she is to get beyond sporadic power, must be able to use some binding force. Power can find its limits in each of the four conditions we have mentioned. However, those conditions are so tightly connected with one another that one can also say: mostly, the person who exercises only sporadic power fulfi lls none of those conditions.

POWER AS A SOURCE OF NORMS

We call norm-making power the second stage. Here, the power holder can not only steer the behavior of the dependents now and then, but also standardize it. When is this possible? It can be easily stated on the basis of considerations advanced so far: it is possible if all four conditions mentioned can be met. Assuming a will-to-power as we have done so far, the power holder will make demands, ask for performances. He or she can impart force to such demands by using or threatening the use of power tools (sanctions) that do not get immediately consumed. He or she also succeeds in imposing similar forms of behavior (regularities of behavior) for similar circumstances. Such standardizations of situational behavior can also assert themselves because those affected do not want to, or cannot, abandon the location of power. In this manner compliance gets fi xated by norms—whether or not those complying with them internally recognize the behavior due from them.

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Power is expanded in such a way that one can count on expected performances. Obedience is calibrated on distinct situations. What used to be here-and-now compliance has become every-time-when compliance. From-case-to-case conformity has become standardized behavior. The advantages of this are most remarkable. First, the amount of resources to be committed in order to direct behavior diminishes. The power holder no longer has to impart new directives for each case; neither does he or she have to be always present. The correct behavior is known; it can be derived from the situation. Power exercise becomes more economical in the sense of being more parsimonious, of reducing the outlay of resources. Also, however, one can make better use of the compliant behavior itself. It is only when the modes of behavior activated by the features of the situation have become predictable that one can integrate them into comprehensive plans, such as the coordination systems typical of larger work organizations. Only performances capable of standardization can be the object of systematic coordination. In this way the exercise of power also becomes more economical in the sense of enhanced effectiveness, of increased returns. Further advantages are the gain deriving from repeated practice, and the chance that habit-based conducts develop. What has become a routine becomes an obvious matter of course. The passage from sporadic power to norm-making power, by the way, does not require giving up all exercise of sporadic power. This would be highly dysfunctional. Every superior not only enacts and verifies norms of conduct, but also pronounces decisions on single cases. He or she would be wholly inflexible without the capability to also direct behavior in the short run. Thus the higher stage of power exercise also encompasses the effectiveness attained in the previous stage. This shall apply generally to the stage model developed here. But how, in what ways, can such norm-making power form itself? Our model suggests a determinate sequence: at first it is a matter of strengthening the power tools and the bonding forces. Once so equipped, a power holder can standardize modes of conduct that previously he or she could impose only from time to time. The every-time-when formula gets, so to speak, superimposed on sporadic compliance. This progression is

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thinkable, but not always viable. Often it is not possible to build up normmaking power unless the person who aspires to it in the first place invents activities that lend themselves to standardization. An example follows. Within a group of youths who hang out on a street corner, practically nothing occurs. One meets others, hangs around, chats a bit. A boy who does not allow others to contradict him stands out to some extent, and occasionally excludes from the group others he does not like. With his ostentatious manner and by means of threats from time to time, he gets the group to stop doing things he does not like. What is required for this boy to push himself forward and become the group’s boss? He must put into being modes of behavior that can be organized, constellations that are open to regulation. In a group that merely hangs around no serious claims for power can stick. Thus he begins to arrange bowling games, gets the others interested in going together to soccer games (group members emerge who specialize in obtaining cheaper tickets), involves group members in deals for hashish (here again, assigning special tasks), and of course first of all promotes some amount of petty hostility toward outsiders, toward the owners of garden plots, toward car drivers, toward the police, and finally toward competing gangs within the neighborhood. The person promotes such activities can likewise organize them. And the person who organizes them successfully will also need to impose the appropriate rules of fairness and quasi-roles. It takes just one more step from this to having one’s rights of control and sanctioning powers recognized. The boss, who controls the behavior of a group via norm-making power, grows out of the one who takes initiatives regarding the very activities that render possible his power. The same connection also holds on a large scale. The immense regulations of rivers in the early River Valley civilizations are unthinkable apart from a new kind of organization of work. Probably here, too, organizational undertakings were at work from which the particular form of domination developed that permanently stabilized such organization of work and, in turn, was stabilized by it. Thus, one can think of diverse itineraries from sporadic to normmaking power, as well as, obviously, of a skipping of the early stage, perhaps through sheer overpowering.

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However, to what extent does this stage of norm-making power constitute the beginning of power institutionalization? Only the first traces of depersonalization reveal themselves. Once ad hoc commands are replaced by rules, the power holder need not intervene all the time, and can prefer to stand back or to delegate his or her own power. The exercise of power gets routinized. The relationship between the powerful and the dependents can become schematic; interchangeability between individuals suggests itself. The formalization of the exercise of power arises from the self-interest of the power holder. If the behavior of the dependents shall be subjected to rules, the powerful, too, must pay a price. In situations for which he or she has set standards for the dependents, he or she cannot want something else to be done from one moment to the next. He or she must subject his or her own will to a scheme—if only to make it possible for those concerned to learn the standard behavior. To this effect, such a scheme will often also comprise, besides material rules, prescribed forms and rituals that represent and specify what power intends. Of course, such self-constraints of the superiors should be considered only as a tendency here. One can by no means insinuate in general, as an equivalent of the exercise of norm-making power, something like a standardization of the exercise of power itself. That would imply that the power holder would have to fear the application of sanctions in the case of his or her own deviations. Such danger indeed does not have to exist. The tendency toward formalization and self-constraint can also develop when the weaker party has no power of its own, as in the relationship between master and slave. The power holder’s self-interest in establishing routines of conformity can remain compatible with fearsome arbitrariness. Finally, along with the transition to norm-making power, the chance of integration into encompassing societal orders increases. The normative standardization of a power relationship renders more calculable its effects not only for those involved, but also for outsiders (for instance, for neighbors and business partners, authorities and legal agencies). What is calculable lends itself more easily to becoming a component of previously existent systems of calculabilities. With a chaotic group,

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whose internal relations appear totally unregulated, one cannot initiate anything, agree on anything, plan anything. Many nonconformist groups have a strong aversion not just to any kind of standardization of power, but to any standardization of their social relations at all. Such aversions arise from the (correct) sense that any internal standardization of the “social order” already puts it on a slippery slope. One starts down the slope—not necessarily regarding the content of the prevailing order, but regarding social order as such. And this, after all, implies that one becomes involved with the same principles of construction that basically underlie the prevailing, despised order. Hence the attempts to keep the group’s existence as much as possible in a state of social innocence. We can broaden these considerations into a general statement. Processes in the direction of greater institutionalization of power, and thus of increasing stability, must in any case tend to render the course of behavior as far as possible repetitive, predictable, regular. But this means that such processes must necessarily pass through the stage of standardization. In terms of the power holder’s interest, all power strives for standardization.

POSITIONALIZATION OF POWER: DOMINATION — THE EMERGENCE OF DOMINATION WITHIN PEASANT CULTURES OF THE NEOLITHIC ERA

Third stage: positionalization of power, domination. Norm-making power develops further into positional power when certain “functions of norm-making power” condense into a “superpersonal power position.” “Superpersonal power position”: within a social structure a particular rank has taken shape, a new status, a position that is transferable and whose occupancy must be taken care of. There are predecessors and successors. A lack of occupancy is seen as a vacancy. Whoever occupies it is expected to carry out particular “functions of norm-making

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power”—such as the interpretation of the will of supernatural forces, the canonic interpretation of tradition, jurisdiction, and conciliation, the organization of collective activity, and binding directives concerning situations of uncertainty. (This does not presuppose any “functionality.” It is an open question whether this consolidation of power is useful, and if so to what purpose.) One can view positionalization as a process. Typically, the effort to positionalize power entails, for example, the attempt by the powerful to confer upon their power a superindividual aura by means of special clothing, attributes, or rituals. Or, more directly: all efforts to distinguish a successor, for instance, by delegating decisions and attributing rights of representation. This is probably the strongest impulse to power positionalization generally: the wish to make power inheritable and thus, somehow, to render one’s own power everlasting. If, as happens in our society, inheritance of power cannot be achieved, that same vital interest finds expression in the ambition to at least choose one’s own successor. Successful positionalization becomes apparent in the first instance simply in the fact that the first power holder who has attained power is followed by a second one who to some extent takes over the same functions. However, often the next step—the imposition of rules of succession—does not succeed even when a first succession has taken place. This is the true threshold of risk in power positionalization. Max Weber has insistently shown that, and at the same time he has described the changes that may occur in the nature of the exercise of power under the pressure of the succession problem. (Transformation of personal charisma into everyday reality by turning it into charisma of office or of kin.) Now, one can observe the formation of domination everywhere and under very different conditions. (In our own society, shaped by domination, one does not even fi nd a club of bridge players without power positionalization being wholly taken for granted. Here, however, we are seeking not to identify general and universal conditions, but rather to pose in historical terms the question: At what point, in the course of social history, has domination emerged?

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In the early stages of cultural evolution, one finds with striking frequency power positions of a particular nature, the main types of which can be characterized as the power respectively of the “patriarch,” the “judge,” and the “military leader” (or, more generally, the leader in situations of danger). These positions often enjoy the prestige of the numinous and are connected with cultic activities. (Here, the figure of the priest is in no way forgotten. But the priest, the shaman, the magician acquire positional power only when their sacred functions are connected with those of the patriarch, the judge, or the military leader.) Now, these three power positions are clearly connected with problems constitutive of sociation, with key questions posed in every society. In every society—in every group closed toward the outside, which at least in part recruits its members within itself biologically and integrates the newborns socially—arises the problem of securing social continuity through successive generations, and thus also against whatever can jeopardize such continuity. The power position of the patriarchal type constitutes an answer to this problem. In every society arises the problem of standardizing social behavior, and thus also of what can jeopardize such standardization. Since there always are violations of norms, which express or engender contrasts of interest between the violators and those affected, every society must see to the task of prevailing against normative conflicts. The power position of the judicial type constitutes an answer to this problem. Every society can be threatened from the outside, exists in the face of a more or less present risk to its own security. It can react to endangerment by getting out of their way, by paying tribute, or by engaging in active defense. But there is no prescription for preventing the problem of being overpowered by superior violence. The power position of the military chief, the leader, is an answer to this problem. When can these positions have come into being, when were those answers given for the first time? It is unlikely that this took place already in the Paleolithic era, in those small groups with presumably strongly fluctuating populations, in which gatherers and hunters lived nomadically. To be sure, the fundamental ordering problems of standardization, of continuity, and of defense already must have been present here. But

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presumably the mobility of individuals and of the group ensured a wide measure of flexibility. It was possible to escape conflicts relatively easily via a split within the group or by moving over from one to another. Condensations of population that went considerably beyond arrangements regarding mothers and small children must barely have developed. Over against this, in the Neolithic era (8000 to 3000 bc), with settled agriculture, emerges a constellation that suggests the start of the formation of domination. For socioecological reasons the key questions we have mentioned must have presented themselves in acute fashion. Durable solutions based on power became more probable.2 Let’s start with positions of the patriarchal type. (We comprise under it a wide range of power positions related to family and kin, including councils of elders and their possible matriarchal variants.) The patriarch acts as the mediator of the connection of the living with the dead. He represents the consciousness of one’s rootedness, the certainty of belonging. In societies structured essentially by bonds of kinship, social location cannot relate only to the actual state of being. (I belong to this group, whose existence I share.) Belonging necessarily also means belonging to a line of descent, to ancestors—belonging to something abiding. Essentially, one is where one comes from. The patriarch is not only the symbol of this bond with the past; in him is also concentrated the decisive knowledge about the shared descent. He knows the rituals and rules according to which the kin has always lived. He hands down the inheritance of the ancestors, passes on experiences, by interpreting contemporary events with reference to ancient ones, thus legitimating or condemning the first. The patriarch’s function is the protection of what will take place as the continuation of what was. The person who knows and hands down the rightful norms is the legislator in traditional societies. This becomes particularly evident when he renders credible that a tradition betrayed must be restored. Undoubtedly the beginning of settled existence saw the formation of larger social units that lived together in villages, and these peasant cultures took care of lines of descent from which derived complex ensembles of kinship relations. In these cultures vital activities were

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permeated with an interest in continuity. The fatigue of work and its returns are widely separated in time. On this account the temporal horizon widens. The peasant must be able to wait. The person who must be able to wait acquires a particular relation to the future as an object of care, as a concern with what requires time. This makes understandable the character trait that to this day we perceive as typical of peasants: the bond with what abides, the resistance against the unknown, the interest in what should be preserved. The hope which rules over all that the peasant does and awaits is the hope that “nothing interferes.” The interest in continuity also gets connected with the claim to cultivated land. Caring for the soil requires a durable presence, at least for those who cultivate cereals. The land that gets cultivated and on which one resides becomes—whatever the forms of property may have looked like—something one possesses and holds on to. Against this background, the lines of descent acquire a significance that determines existence. Children become important as a workforce. Above all, however, ancestors and descendants constitute lines of inheritance. What one has—land, house, farm, cattle, equipment, and stocks of goods—is in its very essence also something handed down. In this way the continuity of vital activities, of work, becomes connected to the bond with the land and furthermore with the continuity of social ties, with generative continuity. One cannot prove it, but very likely this dominant interest in continuity was consolidated, was secured by positions that represented it symbolically, and at the same time increased the certainty of its realization in fact. It is relatively easy to identify rules of succession connected with lines of descent. The position of the judge is also likely to have arisen already in some Neolithic agrarian societies. The judge, in essence, is someone who brings about peace. In deciding whether a norm violation exists and what sanctions are called for, he reduces the ever-present danger that norm violations lead to endless conflicts—even if the acceptance and the likelihood of the execution of his judgment remain uncertain, as long as jurisdiction is not connected

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with an enforcement apparatus. On this account, in some early forms of the judicial function, it is also often difficult to decide what power inheres in them. The figure of the go-between who mediates between the parties by moving back and forth is widely known. Does he operate merely as a messenger, or does what he proposes possess a prestige so significant that it amounts to a decision? Now, there are reasons for assuming that the formation of judicial positions was already well advanced in some Neolithic peasant societies. Here, in comparison with hunters’ societies, the danger of internal conflicts must have increased dramatically. Their whole existence was based on property and claims for possession. The material values available were incomparably more diverse. Besides land and cattle, house and farm, one had to protect several tools and stores. Thus, at any time, the most trivial and until today most frequent of all norm violations suggested itself—theft or a quarrel over presumed theft. Where something is stockpiled, something can also go missing. To this were added, presumably, conflicts over inheritance and hereditary rights. Even adultery and the abduction of women, at this point associated with material interests, acquired greater significance. Possibly, the legitimacy of children also played a role. To these vital sources of conflict corresponded an equally dramatic increase in immobility. One could no longer simply escape from conflicts; people stayed put and did so as a collectivity. Migration surely took place only in extreme emergencies. The need for conflict resolution was correspondingly great. In a society based on conservation, maintenance, and endurance, every successful peacekeeping effort must have impressed people as a great attainment. An instance of this process (though from a later epoch), narrated by Herodotus, is reported by Mumford along these lines: The Medes lived dispersed in villages. Violence and disorder were dominant. In one village a man called Dejoces distinguished himself as judge, because he practiced justice fearlessly and fairly. His reputation grew to such an extent that also the inhabitants of other villages came to him to have their quarrels settled. His services were needed

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more and more frequently. Finally it was decided to make him the ruler. Dejoces, the just judge, had a castle built for himself and began to govern as a despot.3

This is just an example of the possibility of extending prestige through successfully keeping peace. For the period of interest here, probably the old Dejoces would have had to be content to transfer his wisdom to his son and designate him as successor. Subsequently the village community would have lived in the expectation of having available a fi xed address to which it could turn in case of quarrels—and perhaps very soon it had to do so. However, the basis of success, on which such consolidations could grow, certainly would have been not only the fearless righteousness of the one man Herodotus reports on, but also and in the first instance the prestige of authoritative wisdom. The right decision needed legitimation as supernatural will and as protection of the tradition. In addition, power positions of the judicial type will mostly have emerged in connection with sacred functions. Finally, the military leader as a type of domination. The chance of gaining personal power is particularly present in every situation of collective crisis—natural catastrophe, famine, the threat posed by hostile groups. Often the savior in such emergencies acquires an enduring privilege. In a confrontation with the dangers of war, it is particularly likely that all hopes and all trials get focused on one person. Concentrating power on an individual appears obvious already for practical reasons: rapid and univocal decisions are evidently expedient. To this are added fear and the necessity of placing trust in an individual in whom one can believe. The military leader can count on an unusual disposition to submit oneself. He can win “all” in one blow. Now, normally peasant societies tend to be peaceable. Yet with the peasant societies of the Neolithic era, a constellation presented itself for the first time in which a human group had to live in permanent danger of being overpowered in war. To provide for their existence, peasants need stockpiling. Supplies must be set aside if peasants are to survive between one harvest and the next (at any rate, in the case of grain growers) and naturally also in

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order to have seed available. Peasants “have” something—possessions and goods—that needs to be preserved if they are to manage to exist. But such supplies are at the same time an attractive booty. Peasants are predestined victims of robbery. From many manifestations, such as protection walls of different kinds, we know that already in the Neolithic era peasants had to live with this danger. One cannot presume that they always defended themselves with violence on the occasion of attacks from predatory nomads. But one cannot presume that they never did, either. More or less often, confronting armed threats, they saw the need for a military leader; very likely, they were also aware from handed-down experience that such a leader could be necessary at any time. This kind of power was known to them at least as a type. Another infrequent experience, which, however, surely left a strong mark, was the need for leadership in the course of migrations in search of new land. They could be caused by overpopulation—probably a problem already typical for Neolithic peasant cultures—due to deterioration of the soil, climate changes, or flight when confronted with stronger groups. Whoever would successfully lead the often-protracted migrations—one who could safely show the path, the organizer, the triumphant commander—must have made an extraordinary impression. In the later phase of the Neolithic era, such experiences, among others, may have formed the institution of kingship. Whether in the defense of supplies or in the search for new land, within the new conditions of existence the savior in times of danger must have presented a new concept of concentrated power. One can easily understand that such power would be consolidated by becoming identified with a position. Above all, the amassed potential constituted by means of violence, weapons, and weapon carriers will have contributed to this. If the military leader succeeded in gathering around him a soldierly followership, he was able to preserve his power. With the help of this followership, the winner returning home, the prince of war, could establish himself as the prince of peace. These are the reasons for assuming that the patriarch, the judge, and the military leader—connected with sacred functions—constitute the

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archetypes of domination. They answer constitutive problems of every society—discontinuity in the succession of generations, normative conflicts, overpowering by outsiders—and develop the moment that such problems became virulent in a particular type of society.

APPARATUSES OF POWER

The most significant event in the process of the institutionalization of power is positionalization, the condensing of normative functions into superpersonal positions of power. The concept of domination shall denote this watershed. Further stages in institutionalization are to be viewed as the development of positional consolidations. The emergence of positional complexes of domination (“apparatuses of domination”), which form around the central position of a lord, may constitute the fourth stage. Naturally, around the figures of the swashbuckler, the robber chief, the guru possessed by a spirit, a troop, a circle of followers, or even just any group of buddies that assembles rapidly and as rapidly disperses can gather at any time. We can speak of a “followership” when the bond with a lord is supposed to last, that is, as a rule, when there is a chance of continuing provision for the followers. The sheer duration of its existence, the growing experience and routine increase the likelihood that followerships become organized in terms of a division of labor. From the patterns of such divisions of labor can in the end emerge patterns of competences for the administration of domination that can be handed down. Obviously such followerships form themselves above all on the basis of prestructured relations, thus in the first instance within communities of descent. In this way, positional structures of the kind already mentioned undoubtedly also arose within kinship-based groupings. But it has been rightly pointed out that in traditional societies followerships exceptionally available for employment, exceptionally ready and willing to intervene, will precisely not be formed among individuals related by

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kinship.4 The kinship relation limits the claim for power and connects the disposition to subject oneself with particular, traditional models. Followerships particularly suitable as instruments of a radical taking of power develop when human beings confront together extraordinary emergencies, situations of extraordinary social isolation. In traditional societies social isolation is a consequence of crises where ties between relatives break down, one loses the primary solidarity, the first point of reference for people needing assistance. The stragglers, outcasts, refugees, those people viewed as superfluous look for a new bond, for which no model preexists. The greater the necessity of connection, the greater the possibility of organization. The more unusual the situation, the greater the disposition to commit oneself to unusual, unheard-of obligations. The successful military chief we talked about, for example, can gather followers of this kind. The person who succeeds in this finds in his or her hands an unusual instrument for increasing his or her power. Presumably, it is such constellations that have produced those forms of domination that manifest themselves abruptly and without precedent. However, at this point we may suspend the historical viewpoint. In this context, it would take us too far to consider the rise of associations of domination, of city-states, and of great empires. The decisive turn for the fourth stage of our model is the point at which within a followership the division of labor takes the form of ensembles of positions that endure as transferable power locations. The functionaries of domination become replaceable; the function of domination remains. In this way the tendencies to depersonalization, formalization, and integration also develop further. Naturally “depersonalization” does not mean that the lord or his functionaries become “impersonal,” no longer have a face. They can govern while enjoying personal glamour and glory. But the basis of the power itself is no longer bound to individual persons. This manifests itself even more strongly in apparatuses of domination than in the single positions of domination of the third stage. The “incumbency” of power positions becomes the structural principle for the distribution of power and its legitimation. The tendency to formalization is likewise reinforced. Patterns and rules become a necessary principle of administration once power is exercised on the basis of divided labor,

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no matter how undermined by corruption and arbitrariness. Finally domination, as the division of labor increases, becomes more and more strongly integrated into a social order, and adapts it to its own structure. What is valid and what is not is largely determined according to the conditions for the reproduction of the apparatus of domination. At this stage the process of power institutionalization is connected to a particularly visible extent with a different kind of power increase. In general, as the power apparatus develops, the validity and the intensity of power effects also grow. But above all the followership’s supply requirements render necessary the stabilization of the power base. Without the long-term security of that supply, positionalization could not take place. This means—even though exceptionally the expectancy of a share of the common booty could suffice for a while—that the construction of positional ensembles of domination presupposes control over land and over a rural population. Only in this way is it possible to secure a source of continuous economic income for the nonproductive power specialists. Inversely, dominance over larger territories is impossible without the construction of apparatuses of domination. Thus, as a rule the fourth stage in the institutionalization of power is connected with domination over a territory.

STATE DOMINATION: ROUTINIZATION OF CENTRALIZED DOMINATION

Finally, fifth stage: state domination and the routinization of centralized domination. The distinctive quality in the construction of domination specifically by the state seems to me (as to Weber) to lie in the extraordinary effects of the monopolization of centralized territorial domination. A central ensemble of positions succeeds in asserting claims to monopoly, which extend to all three classical normative functions: the positing of norms (legislation, legal norm), jurisdiction (monopolies over sanctions), execution of norms (including the monopoly of vio-

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lence). The assertion of such exclusive rights of decision presupposed and presupposes the exclusion of competing powers, of regional and sectoral potentates of all kinds. It is a product of successful disempowerment. The consequence is the unification of valid norms and of their control. However, one should not forget that in principle the monopolization of norm-making functions by central agencies remains limited. No central unit can posit all norms that gain validity in a society. No central unit can settle all confl icts that emerge or even exercise surveillance over all activities. The unification of valid norms and of their control is never total. Likewise the disempowerment of all nonstate powers is always an incomplete operation. The success in the monopolization of central agencies of domination, as everyone can see, in no way eliminates all nonstate concentrations of powers of an institutional or preinstitutional nature. The boundaries are variable and contested. Many frictions and frustrations typical of state societies manifest themselves precisely at those boundaries, over what is claimed to be the excessive or the insufficient extent to which the state asserts itself. Finally, the success of monopolization can be brought under control by a constitutional policy of institutionalizing counterpowers, and by the separation of powers between sectors of the central positional structure. However the boundaries may be drawn in a single case, the fact that the units of the central agencies are present almost everywhere remains undeniable, as is the obviousness with which they determine what we do or do not do. This is the specific enhancement of power institutionalization that is of interest here—a new level of the institutionalization process that I call the routinization of centralized domination. It is accompanied by the centralized provision of the goods required for the conduct of a civilized existence. In the morning with a look at the clock, we ascertain the centrally set time, we avail ourselves of centrally provided water, light, and heat at (it is to be hoped) centrally controlled prices, we grimly meet at the breakfast table (within the framework of the laws of marriage and family), we in leaving our house slip into the channels of the traffic code, and we are not allowed to take the law into our hands even if someone parks in front of our garage.

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The routinization of centralized domination does not necessarily mean a wholesale increase in conformity. What is new should instead be understood via such concepts as “supremacy of law” or “orientation toward agencies” and the tension between the “disempowerment” and the “relief” of the individual.5 In various circumstances of life, above all in the presence of conflicts between norms, we have lost the right to take the matter into our own hands, but have also acquired an entitlement to have others spare us the attendant risks. In this way, the characteristic tendencies of institutionalization pervade our everyday experience: decisions that determine our existence are being increasingly depersonalized, taken by “incumbents” of positions according to generally binding rules, subsumed as one case among others, and integrated into a system of centralized domination. This tying of each individual into a unitary, comprehensive network of institutionalized power can be further depicted according to one’s preference, in an attitude full of hope or full of anguish, with lesser and lesser effort of imagination. In principle, however, with the everyday assertion of centralized domination, such as we know it today, a final stage in the institutionalization of power is attained.

NOTES

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

Heinrich Popitz, Soziale Normen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), 205. First published in 1953 under the title Der entfremdete Mensch: Zeitkritik und Geschichtsphilosophie des jungen Marx (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft liche Buchgesellschaft, 1980). Heinrich Popitz, “The Concept of Social Role as an Element of Sociological Theory,” in Role (Sociological Studies 4), ed. J.  A. Jackson (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 11–39; Heinrich Popitz, Prozesse der Machtbildung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1976). In an English review of the book Technik und Industriearbeit, the author states that in this study indeed “empiricism has broken through the muffled sound barrier of German sociology.” William N. Parker, “Review of ‘Technik und Industriearbeit,’ ” Journal of Economic History 19, no. 2 (1959): 315–316, 315. A rough impression of these abilities is conveyed in the German editions of two of Popitz’s lectures: Heinrich Popitz, Einführung in die Soziologie (Konstanz: Konstanz University Press, 2010); Heinrich Popitz, Allgemeine Soziologische Theorie (Konstanz: Konstanz University Press, 2011). Renate Mayntz, “Eine sozialwissenschaft liche Karriere im Fächerspagat,” Soziale Welt 11 (1979): 285–293, 286. M. Rainer Lepsius, “Die Entwicklung der Soziologie nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg 1945 bis 1967,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 21 (1979): 25–70, 36ff. Heinrich Popitz et al., Das Gesellschaftsbild des Arbeiters: Soziologische Untersuchungen in der Hüttenindustrie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972); Heinrich Popitz et al., Technik und Industriearbeit: Soziologische Untersuchungen in der Hüttenindustrie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1976).

188 ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U CTI ON

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

Jochen Dreher and Michael K. Walter, “Nachwort,” in Einführung in die Soziologie (Konstanz: Konstanz University Press, 2010), 283–300, 297. Friedrich Pohlmann, “Heinrich Popitz—sein Denken und Werk,” in Popitz, Soziale Normen, ed. Friedrich Pohlmann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), 7–57, 10. Popitz, Einführung in die Soziologie, 17. Heinrich Popitz, Die normative Konstruktion von Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1980); Popitz, Soziale Normen; Heinrich Popitz, Phänomene der Macht: Autorität, Herrschaft, Gewalt, Technik, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1992); Heinrich Popitz, Epochen der Technikgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1989); Heinrich Popitz, Der Aufbruch zur artifiziellen Gesellschaft: Zur Anthropologie der Technik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1995); Heinrich Popitz, Wege der Kreativität (Tübingen: Mohr, 2000). Another important research topic for Popitz is the problem of the social role, on which he wrote an essay that holds a lasting influence on the German debate. Th is is the only one of his writings that is currently available in English. Popitz, “The Concept of Social Role.” His examination of the topic refers significantly to the issues of norms and power and thus can be placed, as it were, between these two pillars. Popitz, Soziale Normen, 63–64. Pohlmann, “Heinrich Popitz,” 43. Popitz, Prozesse der Machtbildung ; Heinrich Popitz, Phänomene der Macht: Autorität, Herrschaft, Gewalt, Technik, 1st ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986). Th is is the explanation attempt presented by Friedrich Pohlmann (“Heinrich Popitz”), who points out the aesthetic motivation behind Popitz’s preference for short, precise statements. “Brevity is the soul of wit” is also Popitz’s mantra. In German: “Sprung von der schlechten Allgemeinheit in die detaillierteste, pedantischste Analyse.” Heinrich Popitz, “Begegnungen mit Theodor Geiger,” in Soziale Normen, 225–228, 225. In an influential essay from 1968, Popitz argues that a small degree of information about the behavior of our fellow men is a constitutive element of sociation in general. Most aspects of the other’s identity are obscured. Witnessing the current rise of big data, however, one may well ask if this precondition will actually still be valid in some years from now and how its potential suspension might change social interaction. Heinrich Popitz, Über die Präventivwirkung des Nichtwissens: Dunkelziffer, Norm und Strafe (Berlin: BWV, 2003). Actually some of the episodes draw from fi rsthand experiences Popitz had himself. David Hume, “Of the First Principles of Government,” in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, vol. 1, ed. Eugene F. Miller, Thomas H. Green, and Thomas H. Grose (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 32–36, 32. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude for a Philosophy of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1:53. Ibid., 212–254. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1958), 200.

1. THE CONCEPT OF POWER189

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

Andreas Anter, Theorien der Macht: Zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2012), 96. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969), 56. Norbert Elias, What Is Sociology? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 74–75. Karl-Otto Apel, Diskurs und Verantwortung: Das Problem des Übergangs zur postkonventionellen Moral (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992); Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon, 1981). Ibid., 117–118. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Random House 1990). Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1991). Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 108–151. Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” Sociological Theory 12, no. 1 (1994): 1–18. Jochen Dreher, “Symbolische Formen des Wissens,” in Handbuch Wissenssoziologie und Wissensforschung, ed. Rainer Schützeichel (Konstanz: UVK, 2007), 463–471, 469. Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” in In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), 123–139, 135. Jochen Dreher, “The Social Construction of Power: Reflections Beyond Berger/Luckmann and Bourdieu,” Cultural Sociology 10, no. 1 (2016): 53–68, 60. Gianfranco Poggi, Forms of Power (Cambridge: Polity, 2001); Gianfranco Poggi, Varieties of Political Experience: Power Phenomena in Modern Society (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014). Ibid., 42–47.

1. THE CONCEPT OF POWER 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Aristotle, Politics, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), bk. 1, chap. 2, 1252b. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Richard Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), bk. 4, chap. 1, 1288b. Plato, “Letters, VIII,” in Complete Works, ed. John Madison Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 354c. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Richard Robinson, bk. 3, chap. 6, 1279a. Thucydides, The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, ed. Jeremy Mynott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 115. Plato, Republic, in Complete Works, bk. 8, 546a. Christian Meier, The Greek Discovery of Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 210. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Dover, 2014), 3.

19 0 1. TH E CO NCEP T O F POWER

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Karl-Georg Faber, “Macht, Gewalt,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhard Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett, 1990), 3:818. See also Helmuth Plessner, “The Emancipation of Power,” Social Research 31, no. 2 (1964): 155–174. Faber, “Macht, Gewalt,” 900. Karl Marx, “Part VIII. The So-Called Primitive Accumulation,” in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, ed. Friedrich Engels (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1909), 795; Laurence Harris, “Forces and Relations of Production,” in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore (Worcester: Blackwell, 1983), 178ff. Friedrich Engels, “The Role of Force in History,” in Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1887), 26:479. Weber, Economy and Society, 1:53. Georg W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 137. See also Horst Guenther, “Freiheit,” in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 2:469. David Williams, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 2. Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 48. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Leipzig: Meiner, 1920), 4:924. (Translated by G. P.) Marx, Selected Writings, 77. By the way, Jacob Burckhardt also did not mean that all power is evil (“power in itself is evil”), but rather—as the context clearly shows—all arbitrary power. Jacob Burckhardt, Refl ections on History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1950), 33ff. Christian Meier, “Macht, Gewalt,” in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 3:821. Ibid., 830, 833. Ibid., 836–837. Karl-Georg Faber, “Macht, Gewalt,” in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 3:836f. Sophocles, “Antigone,” in The Plays and Fragments, ed. Sir Richard Jebb (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1962), lines 334–375: Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy south-wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, doth he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year. And the light-hearted race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the deep, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wilds, who roams

1. TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 1 91

the hills; he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull. And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when ’tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come: only against Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffl ing maladies he hath devised escapes. Cunning beyond fancy’s dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, proudly stands his city: no city hath he who, for his rashness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never think my thoughts, who doth these things! 25.

26.

27.

With the institutionalization of power, the development of “domination” (by connecting power with positions), power gains stability and societal continuity. Yet there develops no new, distinct kind of power exercised beyond those discussed here. Th is does not mean an agreement regarding the construction of concepts. Unlimited extensions of the power concept to include “influences” of all kinds have to be discussed separately anyway. (Th is is done most conveniently in the particular contexts of “instrumental power” and “authoritative power.”) These attempts at extension, which in the end seek to comprise each effect of a human being upon another, are an example of how the problem gets lost in view of apparently consistent formalizations. However, the distinctions proposed otherwise also diverge considerably. For instance, one can split up the instrumental power of threatening and promising into “coercive power” and “reward power.” John R. P. French Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Basis of Social Power,” in Studies in Social Power, ed. Dorwin Cartwright (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), 150–167. One can conceptualize as “internal power” variants of the authority-relation described here (for example, “referend power”; see ibid.) or, as happens often, reduce the authority phenomena to the recognition of prestige. Institutional power (domination) is also occasionally separated out as a distinctive power form, whereas here it is understood as the reinforcement and stabilization of single or combined power forms (see note 25). In the same way I do not consider the legitimation of power as a distinctive power form. In my opinion, legitimation, too, should be understood as an additional stabilizing quality, which each of the power forms distinguished here can attain, separately or in combination. (The insight into the autonomy of the “power of constituting data” has not yet asserted itself.) The abundance of diverse proposals is due, to a considerable extent, to superficial divergences, whose significance one may relatively easily assess if one takes as a point of departure the four fundamental conditions described here. The assumption concerning generalization corresponds with the so-called forceconditioning-model. See it summarized in James G. March, “The Power of Power,”

1921. TH E CO NCEP T O F POWER

28.

in Varieties of Political Theory, ed. David Easton (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1966), 39–70. Peter Weiss, The Leavetaking (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), 27–28.

2. VIOLENCE 1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Talcott Parsons, “Some Reflections on the Role of Force in the Social Process,” in Sociological Theory and Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1967), 266. Probabilities are not in question here. In every society there develop expectations grounded in the fact that in determinate situations one does not have to reckon with violent actions from others. But this assumption is always more or less precarious. For anthropological reasons—this is the theme—there is no constellation that offers complete security from violence. Hans Albert, Traktat ueber rationale Praxis (Tübingen: Mohr, 1978), 87. (Translated by G. P.) Th is indeed applies to a significant argument by Lorenz, but not to the observations he reports on the “accumulation of aggression-specific energy” and the “lowering of the threshold” of aggressive behavior. See Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (London: Routledge, 2002), 52. Thucydides, The Landmark: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, ed. Robert B. Strassler (New York: Free Press, 1996), 199. Eugene Victor Walter, Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969); Elias Canetti, “Macht und Ueberleben,” in Das Gewissen der Worte: Essays (Munich: Hanser, 1983), 23–38; Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Psychogenetic and Sociogenetic Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 161–172. Homer, The Iliad, trans. Samuel Butler (New York: Dover, 1999), 267. Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1963), 151–158. Jacob Burckhardt, Reflections on History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1950), 213. Thucydides, The Landmark, 357. Burckhardt, Reflections on History, 215. Thomas Hobbes, “Chapter I—Liberty,” in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Sir William Molesworth (Aalen: Scientia, 1998), 2:6–7. Georg Simmel, “Domination. A Form of Interaction,” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: Free Press, 1950), 182. Cf. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (London: ARK, 1983), 146. Giorgio Agamben, “Sui limiti della violenza,” quoted from Hannah Arendt, Macht und Gewalt (Munich: Piper, 1970), 35. Walter, Terror and Resistance, 20. Bruno Bettelheim cites the following exchange of letters between Auschwitz and I. G. Farben:

3 . TH RE ATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED1 93

Since we plan experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug, we would be grateful to you for providing a certain number of women. We have received your answer, but we consider excessive the price of 200 marks. We suggest a minimum price of 170 marks per head. If you fi nd this sum acceptable, we will take delivery of the women. We need about 150. We acknowledge your acceptance of the agreement. Prepare for us 150 women in as good as possible health condition; as soon as you let us know that they are ready, we will take over the women. Received the order of 150. In spite of their emaciated condition they were considered acceptable. We will keep you informed about developments relating to this experiment. The experiments have been carried out. All persons died. We will soon turn to you for a new shipment.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

Here, concepts such as indifference or indolence represent only the way of talking about other human beings. They are totally inadequate for characterizing criminal actions such as the activities of the “experimenting” doctors. Herrmann Mueller-Karpe, Geschichte der Steinzeit (Munich: Beck, 1976); Hansjuergen Mueller-Beck, “Der Mensch—ein Techniker: Uranfaenge und Entwicklung der Technik zur menschlichen Lebenssicherung,” in Kindlers Enzyklopaedie (Zurich: Kindler, 1981), 2:147–200. Ulrich Albrecht, “Atomwaffen sind gar keine Waffen,” in Den Atomkrieg fuehrbar und gewinnbar machen?, ed. Alfred Mechtersheimer and Peter Barth (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983), 175. Rolf Sonnemann, Siegfried Richter, and Burchard Brentjes, eds., Geschichte der Technik (Cologne: Aulis Verlag Deubner, 1987), 360ff., 411. Albrecht, “Atomwaffen sind gar keine Waffen,” 175. Recently Hans A. Bethe, “The Technological Imperative,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 41, no. 7 (1985): 34, has argued that “the predominant result has been greater insecurity and impoverished civilian technology.” This generates controversy, as far as I can see, only in the context of discussions about the introduction or the installation of specific new weapons. Generally, however, indeed only a few contest that the overall process of armament increases the danger. Cf. also Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, Wege in der Gefahr: Eine Studie ueber Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Kriegsverguetung (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1976), chaps. 8–11. Erhard Eppler, Die toedliche Utopie der Sicherheit (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983).

3. THREATENING AND BEING THREATENED 1.

See Kenneth E. Boulding, “Toward a Pure Theory of Th reat Systems,” American Economic Review 53, no. 2 (1963): 428; Rainer Paris and Wolfgang Sofsky, “Drohungen:

1 9 4 3. TH RE ATE NING AND BE ING THR EATEN ED

2. 3.

Ueber eine Methode der Interaktionsmacht,” Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 39, no. 1 (1987): 17. Paris and Sofsky, “Drohungen,” 16. Thus also Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 677.

4. THE AUTHORITY BOND 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

Th is treatment is connected with some passages from Heinrich Popitz, “Zum Verstaendnis von Autoritaet,” in Lebenswelt und soziale Probleme: Verhandlungen des 20. Deutschen Soziologentags zu Bremen 1980, ed. Joachim Matthes (Frankfurt: Campus, 1981), 78–87. See, for instance, Hannah Arendt, “What Is Authority?,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking, 1968), chap. 3. She actually asks: What was authority? Alfred Vierkandt, “Sozialpsychologie,” in Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie , ed. Alfred Vierkandt (Stuttgart: Enke, 1959), 548–549. (Translated by G. P.) Cited in Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1961), 86. Max Horkheimer, Gesellschaft im Uebergang: Aufsaetze, Reden und Vortraege 1942– 1970 (Frankfurt: Athenaeum Fischer Taschenbuch, 1972), 24ff. (Translated by G. P.) Cf. Theodor Eschenburg, Ueber Autoritaet (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 209ff. Richard Heinze, “Auctoritas,” in Vom Geist des Roemertums, ed. Erich Burck (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft liche Buchgesellschaft , 1960), 57. (Translated by G. P.) Cf. Eschenburg, Ueber Autoritaet, 14ff. Franz Wieacker, Vom Roemischen Recht: Wirklichkeit und Ueberlieferung (Leipzig: Koehler, 1944), 16. Lewis Leopold, Prestige: A Psychological Study of Social Estimates (London: Unwin, 1913), cited in Heinz Kluth, Sozialprestige und sozialer Status (Stuttgart: Enke, 1957), 10. (Translated by G. P.) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, trans. Eric Blackall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), bk. 5, chap. 3. Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Pure Theory of Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 100, emphasis in original. One can accordingly distinguish between three fundamental bonds: libidinal bond (“wanting to have the other”), bond via identification (“wanting to be like the other”), authority bond (“wanting to be recognized by the other”). In my introductory treatment of the power concept, in explaining the authority phenomenon I have additionally emphasized the significance of “the need for standards.” The connection between this need and that for recognition is evident: the need for recognition is an aspiration to a bond oriented to those representing standards.

6. TECHNICAL ACTION195

13. 14.

15.

George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society: The Definitive Edition, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), passim. René A. Spitz, No and Yes: On the Genesis of Human Communication (New York: International University Press, 1957), 121. Concerning the whole discussion: Heinrich Popitz, “Zur Ontogenese des Selbstbewußtseins: Die Erfahrung der ersten sozialen Negation,” in Wege der Kreativitaet (Tübingen: Mohr, 2000), 11–35. Stan Nadolny, The Discovery of Slowness (Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2005), 119–120.

5. NEEDS FOR AUTHORITY 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

Eric Ambler, The Care of Time (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981), 160. Theodor Eschenburg, Ueber Autoritaet (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 32ff. Personal authority can be connected with institutional authority, constructed on its basis. A patriarch or a priest endowed with authority from the position they occupy can also, thanks to their personal effect, add to it personal authority. Whether this does or does not succeed becomes evident by means of comparison. Ralph Linton, The Study of Man: An Introduction (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1964), 113ff.; Richard B. Lee and Irvin de Vore, eds., Man the Hunter: The First Intensive Survey of a Single, Crucial Stage of Human Development—Man’s Once Universal Hunting Way of Life (Chicago: Aldine, 2009). Th is complements Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1998). V. Gordon Childe, “The Urban Revolution,” Town Planning Review 21, no. 1 (1950): 3–17; Leon Festinger, The Human Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). On the authority effect that can be produced for a public by the public role player, see also pp. 85f. Georg Simmel, “Group Expansion and the Development of Individuality,” in Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 251–293. Georg Simmel, “How Is Society Possible?,” American Journal of Sociology 16, no. 3 (1910): 378. On the individuality pattern, see Popitz, “The Concept of Social Role,” 18–19. Hans Paul Bahrdt, Grossvaterbriefe (Munich: Beck, 1982), 26: “First Principle: The child lives here and now.”

6. TECHNICAL ACTION 1.

On what follows, see Wolfgang Schadewaldt, “Der Begriff ‘Natur’ und ‘Technik’ bei den Griechen,” in Natur, Technik, Kunst (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1960). See also Klaus Zimmermann, “Der Anthropologische Ursprung der Geschichte,” in Kindlers Enzyklopaedie: Der Mensch, vol. 5 (Zurich: Kindler, 1982–1925).

19 6 6 . TECH NIC AL ACTI ON

2. 3. 4.

Konrad Lorenz, Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge (London: Methuen, 1977): 129ff. and 164–165. The capacity for productive detour activities is indeed the most reasonable definition of intelligence. Hunting weapons can also be counted among tools for the production of a desired good, for example, comestible flesh.

7. PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION 1.

2.

3.

Obviously, this group itself may be structured hierarchically, being somehow constituted around a leader. But even then, the recognition process may be carried out in the first instance among the primary interested parties as an internal process. Th is, as regards various aspects, has also been described frequently by Max Weber. About the “shift of anti-domination emotions toward a member of the coercive apparatus,” see Christian Sigrist, Regulierte Anarchie, Untersuchungen zum Fehlen und zur Entstehung politischer Herrschaft in segmentaeren Gesellschaften Afrikas (Berlin: LIT, 2005), 261ff. (“Projection-effect”). In its initial stage a belief in legitimacy can precisely in the case of extremely oppressed groups show some parallels to the self-recognition among the privileged we have described: The extremely oppressed may also possibly begin to recognize the legitimacy of a power order because they recognize themselves. This process may also have taken place in our group within the institution: Six youths have to submit themselves constantly, their docility is again and again extorted and put to the test, their own will is broken, opposition nipped in the bud. But the will broken again and again cannot maintain itself. The opposition against a permanently overwhelming constraint in the end puts into question not the latter, but itself. In this way the premises are laid of a kind of turn: Who is constantly humiliated justifies his or her own docility by reinterpreting it as freely willed, and justifies such free will with reference to the obligatory nature of the order to which he or she submits him- or herself. Such docility is a service that the order requires. In this framework, the relation to those in power can be interpreted differently: Those in power and those subject to power are “constitutionally” different groups who cannot be compared on the same level. (The development of a legend of inferiority analogous to Max Weber’s “legend of domination.”) Alternatively, everyone serves the order in his or her own place, and each performance is necessary for the maintenance of order. (Legend of functional equality.) Finally, everyone is the architect of his or her fortune and on this account must start from the bottom. (Legend of the equality of opportunities.) In all cases the behavior of both groups can be justified as intrinsic to the order: just as the power holders, in the logic of this order, must do what they will, so those subjected will what they must. Thus is fulfi lled the self-recognition of those subjected: the person who subjects him- or herself in this manner is no longer permanently subjected. Here too, in the end, the reciprocal acknowledgment within the group of those subject to

7. P RO C ESS ES O F P OW ER FO RMATI ON 1 97

4. 5.

6.

7.

power—the recognition of the other’s subjection—can obtain some significance for the construction of social certainties. One can even suppose that this self-recognition of those subject to power exercises a suggestive effect of its own on the assurance of their legitimacy on the part of the privileged. We leave out, here, the validity of charismatic legitimation as understood by Max Weber—but not the process of its routinization. On the concept security of order (security of orientation and security of realization), see Theodor Geiger, Vorstudien zu einer Soziologie des Rechts (Neuwied am Rhein: Luchterhand, 1964), 101ff. Neither does it attain the particular content of the “social-eudemonistic” form of legitimacy that Arnold Gehlen describes as the new, currently dominant type. See Gehlen, Studien zur Anthropologie und Soziologie, ed. Heinz Maus and Friedrich Fuerstenberg (Neuwied am Rhein: Luchterhand, 1963), 255ff. See also his review of the article by Johannes Winckelmann: Gehlen, Legalitaet und Legitimitaet in Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1952). See Winckelmann’s reply: Winckelmann, “Die Herrschaftskategorien der politischen Soziologie und die Legitimitaet der Demokratie: Von den strukturbedingten Risiken der Massendemokratie,” Archiv fuer Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (ARSP) 42, no. 3 (1956): 383–401. It may not be wholly harmless to classify the capacity to organize and the possession of economic resources as “means of power,” an expression that suggests some kind of instrumentality. Both social relations could then, at will, be put to use in gaining power or alternatively could be kept out of it and remain in a kind of power-free area. To correct this image, one should remember that the capacity to organize and possession themselves can be considered as power of a different kind, or—to differentiate them linguistically—as a “power of attorney.” The faculties of disposition over goods already constitute a power of attorney conferred by others, insofar as these allow themselves to remain excluded from access to such goods. The group’s capacity to organize is based, to phrase the point with reference to our examples at least, on a power of attorney delegated to the group by each member—delegated insofar as each member inserts him- or herself into the group’s cohesion and contributes his or her own energies to it. To formulate the same idea further, in a more basic manner: the dependency that is part of all social relations as the interdependence of conducts—there are no “power-free” social phenomena—has already consolidated itself if and when the capacity to organize and possession can be put to use as “means of power.” Correspondingly one can obviously view the original sin of the power takeover in those consolidations, in the “emergence of property,” or in the development of particular forms of organization (“division of labor”). The global theories that start from here have opened up new paths along which each analysis of power phenomena accompanies them for a while. To advance from this point, a theory of the emergence of power processes would have to—insofar as it limits itself to endogenous factors—specify the conditions for the interplay of both realms of “means of power.”

1 9 8 7. P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FOR MATI ON

8. POWER AND DOMINATION 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

Weber, Economy and Society, 2:943ff. Here Weber distinguishes first between “domination by virtue of a constellation of interests” and “domination by virtue of authority, i.e., power to command and duty to obey,” but subsequently decides to limit the concept of domination—by excluding the “forms of power [that] are based upon constellations of interests”—to cases of authoritative “power of command.” In this sense he has also taken over the concept of domination among the fundamental concepts of the first part. As an introduction to research on the Neolithic era, see Hermann Mueller-Karpe, Geschichte der Steinzeit (Munich: Beck, 1976). Hans Sachsse, Anthropologie der Technik: Ein Beitrag zur Stellung des Menschen in der Welt (Munich: Beck, 1974). What follows here consists in nothing more than grounded suppositions, and even these must be seen in relative terms. I do not for a moment think that things must have always taken place in the way hypothesized here. If one just considers the variety of climatic and ecological conditions in the Neolithic villages of the “fertile crescent”— from Egypt to Turkey—it becomes absurd to postulate something like a unitary development. One can only hold that before the Bronze era, with its town foundations and its River Valley civilizations, societies have emerged that with some probability have occasionally brought about power positionalizations of a certain duration. Besides, here I limit myself to the reasons of endogenous power formations. Cited in Mumford, The City in History, 60–61. Henner Hess, “Die Entstehung zentraler Herrschaftsinstanzen durch die Bildung klientelaerer Gesellschaft: Zur Diskussion um die Entstehung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften,” Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 29, no. 4 (1977): 762ff. Trutz von Trotha, Recht und Kriminalitaet: Auf der Suche nach Bausteinen fuer eine rechtssoziologische Theorie des abweichenden Verhaltens und der sozialen Kontrolle (Tübingen: Mohr, 1982), 19ff.

INDEX

aggression, 29f., 54, 65f., 124 anticoalition, 64, 149ff., 157 antinomy of the perfection of power, 36ff. apparatus of domination, 182ff. artifacts, 15ff., 32, 46, 112, 117, 122ff. assassin, 36ff. atom bomb, 47ff. auctoritas, 72f., 75f. authoritative power, 15, 17ff., 82f., 90ff., 93, 110 authority, 15, 71ff., 92ff.; anthropological foundations, 80ff.; boundedness by, 15, 73f., 79ff., 92f.; capacity to experience, 82; circle of, 100; conventional concept of, 79; effects of, 14, 71, 73ff., 82ff., 86ff., 92f., 95ff., 132; generative, 95f., 110; of groups, 97, 142f., 110; image of, 84ff.; institutional, 82f., 93ff., 101, 110; of the neighbor, 108f.; personal, 72f., 78ff., 83ff., 97ff.,103, 107ff., 110; persons in, 82ff., 100; of posterity, 88ff.; public, 87, 89, 97, 103f., 110; sacral, 89f., 93ff., 110 authority relation based on reciprocity, 108ff. bourgeoisie, bourgeois society, 4, 76f., 102ff., 109

class confl ict, 7, 69, 133ff., 148ff. compulsion, coercion, constriction, 18, 28f., 73 conformity, compliance, 14, 62, 72f., 74, 78f., 141, 186, 196n3; of attitude, 14, 74; concealed, 62f.; without being observed, 14, 74 container nature of technical artifacts, 123f. control of power, 42, 128 convertibility of means of power, 153, 155ff., 163f. delegation of power functions, 150f., 153f., 168, 182ff. depersonalization, 166ff., 168, 173, 183, 186 detour action, 122f. disposition to confl ict; excessive, 65f. disposition to submit, 13f., 70 divina auctoritas, 94, 95 division of labor, 46, 102, 113, 119ff., 145ff., 182ff.; of equal activities, 146ff.; processual, 119f., 146f.; societal, 102, 119f., 145 domination, 42, 94, 110, 137, 165ff., 174ff., 191nn25–26, 196n3; over a territory, 184

20 0 IND E X

echelons, creation of, 148ff., 154, 162 emancipation, 7f. episteme, 121 equality, 2, 42, 60, 110f., 137 everyday interactions, 4ff., 58ff. fear, power to frighten, 12f., 17, 19, 29, 34, 39f., 52, 56f., 59, 84f., 90, 92f., 124 Federalist Papers, 3 freedom, 3, 6ff., 8, 43 gender relation, 5, 108f., 110f. generalization of the suspicion of power, 5f., 8 genesis of social order, 39ff. heteronomy of power, 38 hopes, 12f., 17f., 19, 52, 67ff., 85, 90 hunters, 100, 119, 176f. idea of the political, 2ff., 8 illusion of neutrality, 151 indifference toward the victim, 42f., 44f., 46, 48f., 50 individualization of social subjectivity, 106ff. influence, 55, 191n26 inherent violence of order, 40ff. instrumental power, 12f., 17ff., 52, 90, 94 interest in continuity, 175f., 178 investment value of order, 159f. judge, 95, 176, 178ff. killing: triumph of, 11, 32ff., 42ff.; of collectivities, 35 kratos, 10 leap into trust, 145 legend: of domination, 196n3; of inferiority, 196n3 legitimacy, legitimation, 8f., 14, 33f., 41f., 73, 94, 115, 139ff., 157ff., 164; basic, 157ff.;

from the principle of reciprocity, 139ff., 158 liberty, liberation. See freedom martyr, 36ff. means of production, 122, 142ff., 163 military leader, 176f., 180f., 181 modeling of hope and fear, 67ff. monopolization, 94, 184f. need for standards, 14f., 17ff., 79f., 84, 194n12 Neolithic, 101, 177f. nobility, nobleman, 5, 33, 68, 77, 94f. noncompliant conduct, 53 normative order, 2, 14, 39ff., 62ff., 173f., 146 norm-making power, 170ff., 174; omnipresence, universality of, 4ff., 8f., 19f.; over nature, 15ff., 119ff.; perfect, 33ff., 38; sporadic, 168ff. obedience. See conformity openness to harm, 11, 19, 25f., 38 ordering value of the existing order, 157ff. organization: capacity for, 61, 119ff., 135ff., 145ff., 157, 162ff., 172, 182f., 197n7 orientation toward agencies, 186 parents and children, 5, 19f., 21ff., 81ff., 95, 109f. patriarch, 14, 99, 176ff., 181 pattern of individuality, 107 peasants, 5, 169, 178ff. performance standards, 62f. personality, 77, 104 personality theory of authority, 72f., 83f. plurality of social subjectivities, 105f., 111 polis, 2f., 6, 42 positional complexes of domination, 182ff. positionalization of power, 174ff., 182 potential, 9f. potestas, 72, 75

INDEX201

power: anthropological foundations of, 1, 9ff., 19ff., 29ff., 80ff., 116ff.; formalization of, 166f., 168, 173, 183, 186; as a general ability to assert oneself, 9f.; institutionalization of, 165ff.; integration of, 166f., 168, 173, 183, 186 power of action, power to harm, 11ff., 17f., 18ff., 25ff.; binding, 28f.; mere, 28, 54, 124 power alternatives, 13f., 53ff. power-based orders as humanly produced, 2ff., 8 power of data constitution, 15ff., 17f.,116f., 127 power of imagination, 31f., 38f., 57, 82, 86ff. power formation, power increase, enhancement,11, 20f., 33, 42f., 46ff., 48f., 50f., 57, 61ff., 67ff., 113, 125ff., 131ff., 165ff., 183 power forms, combination between, 20ff. power relationships, durable, 12ff., 28, 52f., 57, 60f., 126ff., 131ff., 165ff. prestige, 76, 78, 83; of the higher being, 76ff. priest, 14, 94, 96, 99, 176 producing, productive intelligence, 15ff., 46ff., 50f., 112f., 118ff., 121f.; organized, 118ff., 145ff. profitability of threats, 61ff., 67, 69 proletariat, 5,7 promises, 12ff., 17, 52, 58f., 62, 67ff., 90f. property, 4f., 113ff., 133ff., 162ff., 179, 197n7 punishment, 17, 27, 34, 62, 67ff., 72, 90, 150, 154 recognition of individuality, claim for, 104f., 109 recognition of superiority, 15, 79, 82f., 94ff. redistribution system, 155ff., 162 reflexivity, 80ff. release from instinct, 38 removal of limits to the human relation of violence, 29ff., 39, 46 resistance, 34, 37f., 56, 164, 167 revolution, 3, 6f., 64

rewards, 17f., 62ff., 67ff. routinization of centralized domination, 185ff. security of orientation, 158ff. seeing oneself as one is seen by others, 81f. seeking recognition, 15, 17, 19, 22, 79f., 92f., 111, 194n12 self-commitment of the threatener, 55f., 60 self-esteem, self-acceptance, 14f., 17, 79ff., 86ff., 91, 93ff., 97, 101, 104, 106, 196n3 slave, 45, 68ff., 115, 170 social participation, belonging, 11f., 17, 26f., 45, 95, 98ff. social role, 98; achieved, 101ff., 103; ascribed, 100f., 103, 111; public, 103f., 111 social subject, 98, 107, 111 social subjectivity, 92, 97ff., 111 sociation of power, 4, 19, 26 solidarity, 138f., 142ff., 147, 162; speculative, 138 solidary groups, productive superiority of, 144ff. spatially bounded processes of sociation, 132 stabilization of complexes of interest, 131ff., 165ff. standardization of the exercise of power, 42f., 173 state domination, 3f., 42ff., 184ff. suicide, 34, 37f., 48 superiority of small numbers, 47 symbolic objects, 114, 122 techne, 118, 120 technical action, 15ff., 20, 112ff. technical modifying, 15ff., 112f., 116ff., 122 technical products, employing, 16, 48f., 112ff. threats: disguised, 60f.; empty, 57; extendibility of, 61, 77ff., 80; flexibility of, 59ff.; indeterminate, 56; structure of, 12ff., 17f., 22, 28, 52ff., 58ff., 90, 155

202IND EX

vicious circle of the repression of violence, 38ff. violence, 11f., 25ff., 29ff., 34, 39ff., 75, 132, 153ff.; absolute, 33ff., 38, 43; abstaining from, 36, 40; anthropological foundations of, 29ff.; glorification of,

43ff., 48, 50; laying boundaries on, 39ff.; total, 42ff., 48ff. weapons: development of, efficiency of technical means of violence, 11, 32, 43, 46ff., 50f., 124ff.

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES A S E R I E S I N S O C I A L T H O U G H T A N D C U LT U R A L C R I T I C I S M

Lawrence D. Kritzman, Editor Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy David Carroll, The States of “Theory” Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves Alain Finkielkraut, Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust Julia Kristeva, Nations Without Nationalism Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to Literature, vols. 1 and 2 Richard Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy Hugo Ball, Critique of the German Intelligentsia Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production Karl Heinz Bohrer, Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? Alain Finkielkraut, The Defeat of the Mind Jacques LeGoff, History and Memory Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, vols. 1, 2, and 3

Ross Mitchell Guberman, Julia Kristeva Interviews Julia Kristeva, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature Elisabeth Badinter, XY: On Masculine Identity Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972–1990 Julia Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul Norbert Elias, The Germans Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan: His Life and Work Paul Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The Jews: History, Memory, and the Present Karl Löwith, Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past Vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions Vol. 2: Traditions Vol. 3: Symbols Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside Louis Althusser, Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan Claudine Fabre-Vassas, The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig Tahar Ben Jelloun, French Hospitality: Racism and North African Immigrants Alain Finkielkraut, In the Name of Humanity: Reflections on the Twentieth Century Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: Essays on Thinking-of-the-Other

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence Alain Corbin, The Life of an Unknown: The Rediscovered World of a Clog Maker in Nineteenth-Century France Carlo Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric Alain Cabantous, Blasphemy: Impious Speech in the West from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century Julia Kristeva, The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis Kelly Oliver, The Portable Kristeva Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues II Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva, The Feminine and the Sacred Sylviane Agacinski, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia Luce Irigaray, Between East and West: From Singularity to Community Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt Julia Kristeva, Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, vol. 2 Elisabeth Roudinesco, Why Psychoanalysis? Régis Debray, Transmitting Culture Steve Redhead, ed., The Paul Virilio Reader Claudia Benthien, Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World

Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein Roland Barthes, The Neutral: Lecture Course at the Collège de France (1977–1978) Hélène Cixous, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords Julia Kristeva, Colette Gianni Vattimo, Dialogue with Nietzsche Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law Hélène Cixous, Dream I Tell You Steve Redhead, The Jean Baudrillard Reader Jean Starobinski, Enchantment: The Seductress in Opera Jacques Derrida, Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive Hélène Cixous, White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text, and Politics Marta Segarra, ed., The Portable Cixous François Dosse, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives Julia Kristeva, This Incredible Need to Believe François Noudelmann, The Philosopher’s Touch: Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes at the Piano Antoine de Baecque, Camera Historica: The Century in Cinema Julia Kristeva, Hatred and Forgiveness

Roland Barthes, How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, Food: A Culinary History Georges Vigarello, The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity Julia Kristeva, The Severed Head: Capital Visions Eelco Runia, Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time Jacques Le Goff, Must We Divide History Into Periods? Claude Lévi-Strauss, We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays Marc Augé, Everyone Dies Young: Time Without Age