The Constitution of the Stable Form of Power

Below, about a dozen folks have kindly added comment to and criticism of my most recent entries. Humbly, you have my gratitude. 

Instead of attempting to answer each in my now usual linear and verbose fashion, where I take a small idea and waste a thousand words making it smaller, I thought instead to answer the lot of them collectively, using those comments and critiques as a sound board for the expansion of the premise I have attempted to develop.

First, a recapitulation:

Societies change, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly - but, inexorably. How human persons live together remains relatively fluid, beyond a certain threshold. Some sort of family unit - a mammalian trait, I imagine - defines the interior of that threshold. Beyond the family, which social group itself shows remarkable flexibility, and especially since the development of agriculture, human societies demonstrate an enormous range of potential forms, hybrids and rising and declining types.

Time seems an unforgiving milieu, and the human memory itself variable in the face of the pressures of time. We forget. We rethink memories. We recast old beliefs about our memories - personal and shared, encased in the individual brain, and stored exosomatically - according to new successes, innovations, failures and traumas.

We do not share a common perspective. The same event, seen from different vantages and different epochs, provides a variety of meanings, dependent upon the observers, and the way those observers understand their material conditions.

Human social groupings show every indication of constant flux.

The human power structure does not. The form of power remains almost exclusively stable. Since the parts of the form of power - persons - do not remain stable over time, and in fact live exceedingly brief existences, the form of power does not derive from an external imposition on human behavior, or from some innate tendency to organize thusly. It arises from the material conditions of human and extra-human interaction. And more importantly, it replicates.

People make the form of power, and they continuously remake it according to a surprisingly enduring structure, regardless of place or time.

Persons shape others to assume power. And we cannot really understand power without understanding, at a fundamental level, that it invariably means power over.

The form of power constitutes a way of living which allows a very small number of persons, proportionally, to rule over the larger bodies of their constituent and governed populations. Those governed populations groups present a tremendous range of potential forms, and yet the stable form of power does not tend to vary.

Let us, then, restate this form of power: a small order of ranks, with several adjutants answerable to a primary authority, assisted by a body of councilors and a lesser organ which interacts with the ruled parts symbolically, with enforcement done by members drawn from the population group itself and trained to identify further with power.

And let's remember that persons replicate this form towards a very specific and durable end, namely to force others to labor, converting raw materials into luxury, weapons and controllable territory.

Power has a function. I humbly submit that we cannot understand this stable form of power unless we understand its very material function.

Therefore, when Andromeda writes,

"Until the current (and historical) form or structure of what we call 'power' falls away---or is destroyed from the bottom up by the oppressed---nothing will ever change. As you said, 'You don't get the job unless you want to do the job.'

The very idea of 'power" requires that one or some individuals be elevated over the 'masses.'

I think the only thing that can save us from this endless cycle of 'power' is a shift in paradigms to rule 'power' obsolete in favor or something called 'willful servitude.' "

I can both agree and disagree. I again humbly submit that the constitution of the masses, as masses, misses the point. The shape of the ruled population does not matter, in relation to the form of power. And in societies without the very specific national form of the the masses, a late and modern invention, opposition to power would fail because it would follow from a tactical misunderstanding of the strategic environment. And although I agree, without reservation, that those who live beneath power must first reconceive power in the negative, primarily as a mode of existence which they must reject, in order to oppose it - I imagine that any attempt to instruct those raised to obey power in "willful servitude" will end up reinforcing the replication of power.

Power retains this stable form through replication, towards a clear end.

When fwoan writes that "spreading power dilutes it," and soon on amends the statement to ask, "But this, I think, only includes forms of power commonly seen today whether electoral or dictatorial. What about forms of Demarchy where those who are given power are not given it by campaigning, capturing, or inheritance?"

I must reply by restating the premise that power does not have a solubility in human populations, because the form of power does not require a specific constitution to the governed population. In order to have power, one must do power - and we must remember, towards a very clear end.

We cannot separate the form of power from its material purpose, or from the material conditions over which it repeatedly replicates. If some ruling group of persons wants to get others to labor, and ensure that those who labor derive little or the lesser part of the benefit of that labor, the ruling faction will assume a very specific and stable form of power, since that structure works, has almost always worked, and will continue to work so long as the goal remains the same.

Therefore, when drip writes,

"...In the previous post you ended with [y]ou don't get the job unless you want to do the job. That is true if the job or behavior is inside the realm controlled by power. It is not true outside that realm. There are some real life examples of this. Some of the radical religions that survived the Reformation, operate solely by collective activity relying on dispersed authority. AA, the most successful social therapy of the 20th century operates without leaders or outside assistance. The civil rights movement in India and for a short time here had leaders who lasted only as long as they articulated the needs of the movement...."

I would suggest, with great humility, that the point of our disagreement lies in the use of the word "power." Which brings me almost immediately to accounts of Native American social structure (specifically, Shawnee), as well - where a chief's influence did not exist beyond the willingness of those persons who agreed with him, to continue to agree.

If we discuss the agreement to cooperate, using the terms of power, we have every right to forgive ourselves the confusion. Raised to obey, and to understand the ordering of the world as a natural system of ranks and hierarchies, we ought have no surprise that we often confuse the terms we use, when discussing those ways of living which do not require the stable form of power, because they do not require or preserve its purpose.

In that light, perhaps it might follow that we better understand the stable form of power precisely when comparing it with those human social shapes which do not depend upon the extraction of labor, resources and information from a governed population and territory, by a proportionally smaller class or faction which derives its benefit and enjoyment from the submission of the extracting population.

We ought perhaps describe positions of respect and expertise, in those alternative arrangements, without using the terms of power and authority.

With continuing respect to you each and all,

~ Jack