heinrich-popitz-phenomena-of-power-authority-domination-and-violence

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.
X E D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TI ON
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
E D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XI
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.
X IIED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U CTI ON
THE WORK OF HEINRICH POPITZ—TOWARD
A GENERAL SOCIOLOGIC AL 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
ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XI I I
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
X IVE D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U CTI ON
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
ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XV
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
XVIE D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U CTI ON
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
E D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XVI I
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
XVIIIED ITO RS ’ INTRO D UCTI ON
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
ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XI X
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
X X E D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U CTI ON
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
ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XXI
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
X X IIE D ITO RS ’ INTRO D U CTI ON
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
ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XXI I I
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
X X IVE D ITO RS ’ INTRO D UCTI ON
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,
ED ITO RS ’ INTRO D U C TIO N XXV
“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
X XVIED ITO RS ’ INTRO D UCTI ON
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
T
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
T
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
T
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
2TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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-
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 3
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
4TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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-
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 5
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
6 TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 7
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
8TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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.
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 9
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
10 TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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:
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 1 1
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
12TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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.
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 1 3
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
14TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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.”
16 TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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.
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 1 7
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 RELAT IONS
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.
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 1 9
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.
20 TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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.”
TH E CO NCEP T O F P OW ER 21
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
22TH E CO NCEP T O F P OWER
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.”
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.
26 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LENC E29
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,
VIO LENC E31
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
32FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LE NC E33
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
3 4FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
VIOLENCE35
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.
3 6 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LENC E37
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
38 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
VIOLENCE39
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
40 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LENC E41
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.
42FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LE NC E43
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.
44FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LE NC E45
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
46 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LE NC E47
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
48FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
missiles,
in turn, surpass by
hundreds of times
the effectsKulturphilosophie;
of the HiroSozialphilosophie;
Philosophie;
Fanatismus;
Ethik
shima 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
VIO LE NC E49
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
5 0 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
VIO LENC E5 1
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.
3
THREATENING AND BEING
THREATENED
T
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.
THREATENING AND BEING THREATENED53
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
5 4FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
T HREATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED55
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
5 6 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
T H RE ATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED57
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.
5 8FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
THREATENING AND BEING THREATENED59
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
6 0 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
TH REATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED61
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
6 2FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
T HRE ATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED63
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
6 4FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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-
T HREATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED65
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,
6 6 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
T H RE ATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED67
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
6 8 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
T HREATE NING AND BE ING TH REATEN ED69
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
70 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
72FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 73
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.
74FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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.
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 75
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
76 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 77
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
78 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 79
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.
8 0 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 81
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
8 2FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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-
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 83
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
84FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 85
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
86 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 87
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
88 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
THE AUTHORITY BOND89
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.
9 0 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
TH E AU TH O RITY BO ND 91
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
NE EDS FO R AU TH O RITY 93
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
9 4FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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,
NEEDS FOR AUTHORITY95
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
9 6 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
NEEDS FO R AU TH O RITY 97
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
9 8 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
NEEDS FO R AU TH O RITY 99
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.
10 0 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
NEEDS FOR AUTHORITY101
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
102FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
NEEDS FO R AU TH O RITY 1 03
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
10 4FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
NEEDS FO R AU TH O RITY 1 05
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
10 6 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
NE EDS FO R AU TH O RITY 1 07
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
10 8 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
NEEDS FO R AU TH O RITY1 09
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-
110 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
NE EDS FO R AU TH O RITY 1 1 1
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.
TE CH NIC AL ACTIO N 1 1 3
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
114FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
TE CH NIC AL ACTIO N 1 1 5
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
116 FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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
TECH NIC AL ACTIO N 1 1 7
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
118FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
TECH NIC AL ACTIO N 1 1 9
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
120 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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.
TECH NIC AL ACTIO N 1 21
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.
122FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
TE CH NIC AL ACTIO N123
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.
124FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
TE CH NIC AL ACTIO N125
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-
126 FO RM S O F E NFO RC EMEN T
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
TE CH NIC AL ACTIO N127
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
128FO RM S O F ENFO RC EMEN T
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.
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
132FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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.
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 33
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
134FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION135
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
OF THE PRIVILEGED
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
136 FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 37
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.
138 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION139
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 N C I P L E O F R E C I PRO 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
140 FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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.
P RO C ESS ES O F P OW ER FO RMATI ON 1 41
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.
142FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 43
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.
144FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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 DAR 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-
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 45
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
146 FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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-
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 47
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
148 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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 STAB L I S H I NG E C HE 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
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 49
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
15 0 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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-
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RMATI ON 1 51
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
152FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION153
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.
15 4FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 55
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
15 6 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P RO C ESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 57
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
15 8 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
PROCESSES OF POWER FORMATION159
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
16 0 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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-
P RO C ESS ES O F P OW ER FO RMATI ON 1 61
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
16 2FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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).
P RO CESS ES O F P OW ER FO RM ATI ON 1 63
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
16 4FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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
16 6 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 67
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
16 8FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 69
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
170 FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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.
P OW ER AND D O M INATIO N1 7 1
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
172FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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.
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 73
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,
174FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 75
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?
176 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P OW ER AND D O M INATIO N1 77
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
178 FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P OW ER AND D O M INATIO N1 79
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
18 0 FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 81
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
182FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 83
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,
18 4FO RM S O F STABILIZATI ON
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-
P OW E R AND D O M INATIO N1 85
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.
18 6 FO RM S O F STABILIZ ATI ON
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