A framework for conceptualizing power
J. Klein
(This preliminary document was written with help from my colleagues at Covert Action Magazine (http://covertactionmagazine.com/, and is first published here. Apologies —in-text footnote #s are not superscripted.)
This brief guide suggests concepts, vocabulary, and questions useful in researching power, relating to how it is gained, used, and legitimated (made acceptable). This was written to help other writers/researchers/activists with ideas to assist their work directly, or for background knowledge.
1. What is power?
What is a useful way to think about power?
Power is how actors (individuals, groups, and classes) get what they want 1. Power is always held, gained, lost in relation to others, and is dependent on social context. Power can be examined using three levels. Listed in increasing time and space they are action, conjuncture, and structure (Figure 1). These levels help us think about the relation between action (what actors directly do) and structure (social arrangements that promote or limit what they do).
What promotes and limits power?
Power seeking and using involves:
· Motivations: the real reasons actors have for their actions, e.g. greed, nationalism, capital accumulation.
· Opportunity: what allows action, e.g. gaining political office, network connections.
· Social control or constraint: counter-power to obstruct action, e.g. law, public opinion, personal morality adapted from 5, working class struggle against owners.
Examples to illustrate some of these terms:
· US president Reagan’s 1980 election was promoted by a conjuncture influenced by rightwing mobilizations. Reactionary actors backed Reagan, promoting a conjunctural right turn and structural neoliberalism. President Reagan’s personal action was motivated by opportunism uncontrolled by morality. His presidential role gave him the opportunity to make life or death decisions affecting many. But the real power behind Reagan was his administration adjusting its policies in line with prior business group actions, which influenced a right-moving conjuncture in response to profit motivations and capitalist structural requirements adapted from 4.
· Despite president Trump’s support of capitalism and militarism (action influencing and responding to conjuncture, loyal to structure), he is being impeached by some of the powerful (action) in a way that affirms US nationalist and democracy ideology (conjuncture and structure).
· Recent US class war from above, resulting in workers getting less of the economic pie, is an example of a neoliberal structure (roughly 1980 through 2020) overlaid by a new conjuncture (post-2007 deepening of wage repression and “Robin Hood in reverse”) 6.
2. How does power work?
How do we see power?
We are often able to identify at least some of the origin, process and effect of actors acting to get what they want. Yet most power, being conjunctural or structural, is not obvious. Conjunctures are short-term situations with obvious and hidden aspects. Structures are the least visible, most common, undramatic, kind of power.
What are the rules?
Conjuncture and structure center on rules. Formal structures and rules are visible, legally recognized, and official — e.g., licensed organizations’ internally published rules, laws. Informal power involves implicit, unacknowledged, hidden rules and structures. We see informal power when “the rules aren’t really the rules,” or “who you know is what matters.” Informal rules can be inferred from individuals’ rare moments of honesty, behavior patterns, or effects. Power involves more than behavior and overt conflict — it also involves control over the political agenda, hidden conflict 7, which tend to be informal. In Vietnam and in Iraq, the US military claimed it followed international laws of war protecting noncombatants (formal rules), yet troops on the ground quickly learned that the real (informal) rules were more like: “don’t go native 8,” or “anyone not us is the enemy.”
Here is an example of formal and informal conjunctural collusion:
· The NYPD stop and frisk policy was an ineffective, racist, and unconstitutional collusion of police, politicians and the media preying on a large part of the population. This was both legal (following policy and laws) and illegal (racist discretionary practices).
What are the effects of power?
Its helpful to distinguish between power, which has effects, and power attempts, which don’t. This is tricky because an actor can have potential (conjunctural or structural) power, which is power without (obvious) effects.
On the action and conjunctural levels, powerful individuals enjoy extensive cohesion through career networks, think tanks, etc., enhancing their power. On a bigger (structural) scale, the power rules governing world politics take the form of institutions and organizations. Institutions are the underlying codes of behavior for the exercise of informal and formal power 9. Political economic structures influence institutions like the military, the market, or the media. In turn, these institutions influence power by constituting the playing field and rules, the conjuncture, in which organizations exist.
Who obeys and why?
An example of powers’ effect is obedience. Authority is power that is obeyed. There are two kinds of authority: legitimate (motivated by shared attitudes, belief it should be obeyed — soft power) and coercive (obeying due to fear — hard power). Obedience can be driven by specific (mis)perceptions, by broader ideology, by pretended belief in legitimacy, and other things.
Examples to illustrate some of these terms:
· Informal, latent economic and social power was turned into formal legal power during the American Revolution by the white, male, wealthy elite revolutionary leadership, who, distrusting the “mobs” of poor, wooed the armed white population by emphasizing patriotism, liberty, and limited democracy 10. Elite shared unspoken assumptions that they had to protect property meant that the secret 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention debates did not center on class issues 10, making it easier to legitimate power.
· In recent decades, despite formal ownership of capital being spread out, e.g. by pension plan investors, management of property is informally controlled by financial capital 11, the centralization of capital’s power has completely transformed the ruling class from initially based in bourgeois families with a national orientation, into crony plutocratic capitalism adapting itself globally 11.
3. Who or what has power?
The “rotten apple/rotten barrel” problem is deciding whether a group has a few bad apple actors (deviants/criminals, etc.) or has an inherently predatory structure. Claims about a national security state 12, deep state 13, military-industrial complex, or a conspiracy raise similar issues in claiming there is a substructure that acts differently. Substructures exist and matter, but the larger political-economic and cultural structures, though less dramatic, are more powerful
Where are the boundaries of this substructure? How much power does it have? Why, how, where, and when does it act?
Following the money, analyzing networks, and naming names are all important contributions to analyzing and exposing power. An individual actor has power because of his/her/its social position, connections, resources, and legitimacy. Here is an example of nested national power structures:
· The US government responds to the top ten percent of income earners on taxes, economic regulation, and social welfare, while the preferences of the rest of the US population have essentially no impact on policies 1. A substructure within this is the ruling class, roughly 0.5% to 1.0% of the population that owns a huge portion of the productive assets and wealth. A substructure within this is the power elite, comprised of the individuals at the command posts of the major institutional hierarchies 1. A substructure within this is the corporate rich led by the chief executives of large corporations and financial institutions 14. Below is a picture of this simplified power structure model:
How valid and helpful are concepts like national security state, deep state, military-industrial complex, iron triangle, or conspiracy?
These substructure concepts are often well-known and convey power’s concentration, collusion, harm, and secrecy, but may lack validity or precision. A problem with alleged conspiracies and the supposed deep state is that they “explain” power separate from its base in normal oppressive social structures. That is why they are popular across much of the political spectrum from liberal to rightwing.
Here are some definitions and appraisals of a few substructure concepts:
4. How much power does an actor have?
Power is always potential — its helpful to distinguish having power (e.g. an actor’s enabling position or resources) and exercising power (e.g. the actor doing something that has effects). CEO thieves have far more potential power to successfully defend themselves in a law court than petty thieves, but there is a tiny chance that when they exercise power to avoid punishment, they will be surprised — the CEO might get cozy incarceration and the petty thief might get the case dismissed due to police misconduct.
In today’s late capitalism, ethnic, class, sex and other groupings are divided into those with more or less power. But an actor never has total power or none. There is always potential weakness of the powerful, and resistance by the less powerful. There are three ways to measure power relations adapted from 2:
How many comply with power? (Extensiveness.)
How wide is the variety of subjects’ responses to power? (Comprehensiveness.)
How much can power holders’ assert their power while still preserving compliance? (Intensiveness.)
5. Why is power gained and used?
Personal desires, wishes, motives, do not start with individuals, but originate socially 15. What humans or groups want is mostly driven by experience and socialization. Keeping this in mind prevents mistakes like claiming that power is driven by only competition, cruelty or hypocrisy. Actors are personally culpable and influenced by context. We can note that a particular CEO’s exploitation of workers is common among other CEOs while still noting the cruelty and hypocrisy involved. We must be alert to the differences in motivation even within a group. What is reason for one is rationalization for another 15.
Who and what benefits?
Combining action, conjuncture and structure remind us that who benefits (individual) is always also what group benefits (family, corporations, networks, social classes, etc.). Who or what wins and loses and how much can be viewed as probabilities. In today’s neoliberal capitalism, social structure keeps conjunctures in the long run supporting profit and accumulation, and conjunctures keep groups and individuals generally supporting the conjuncture. There is always a small probability of winning in a gambling casino, but until the people take it over, the casino will be the real winner.
6. Where is power?
The smallest physical scale on which we see power is the individual and his/her social position and actions. This includes the individual’s organizational position, which we can define as a repetitive set of behaviors, sometimes occupying a particular physical space and doing physical work, always including practical and ideological conversations 16.
The largest scale of power, the world capitalist system, is a structure in motion, evolving with cycles and patterns, and which despite qualitative changes, continues to be exploitive and oppressive. Some characteristics of this system that are unique to our time adapted from 3 and that affect power today are:
· The change from a world economy linking countries to a global economy linking nations more organically through trans-nationalization of production, finance, and accumulation.
· The rise of a transnational capitalist class attempting to position itself as a global ruling class.
· The rise of a transnational government, a network of transnational organizations and national governments that organize conditions for capital accumulation and facilitate capitalist power.
· Increasing importance of transnational social and class inequalities that transcend traditional boundaries.
Most of social life is now clearly related to global forces and events. An important large power structure today is imperialism:
· We currently are living under “late” imperialism, a period of monopoly-finance capital and stagnation, declining US hegemony and rising world conflict 17. The transfer of value from the peripheral (poor) nations to the core (rich) ones is enforced by a US dollar-oil-Pentagon regime backed by Canada, Europe, and Japan 17.
A US example of intermediate sized (conjunctural) power is the Du Pont family dynasty, a twentieth century family that was a major center of corporate power 18:
· In 1984, the 1,600 or so living Du Ponts had a 250 person inner circle, at the center of which were about 50 who comprised all-powerful inner family core. The 50 shared control over total assets greater than the GNP of most nations, and owned huge or controlling interests in over 100 multi-million-dollar corporations and banks. The Du Ponts owned the state of Delaware and had members in Congress, as secretaries of defense, as directors of the CIA, and as Supreme Court justices.
7. When is power?
What is the duration of the power action or structure?
Being social, power changes constantly. One indicator of how much power an actor has is durability. This ranges from the few moments in which a court judge decides the fate of a defendant (action), to the four years of a US president’s term of office (action and conjuncture) to the five centuries of capitalists dominating society (conjuncture and structure). An example using the conjuncture concept:
· The current conjuncture (2019) is one of authoritarian neoliberalism. After the 2007 financial crisis governments around the world have been more accommodating of business, showering money and contracts on finance and industry, enforced through increasingly repressive rule. This involves the strengthening of the coercive and security apparatuses of the state to sustain capital accumulation 19, increased discipline inflicted on the majority and increased corruption in the form of revolving doors between business, politics, media, and advising organizations 19.
8. How does power protect itself?
Power is always both symbolic and kinetic. Words and gestures are connected to bullying and bullets, however indirectly. Rationalizations for having or using power communicate justifications (claiming legitimacy) or excuses (claiming error). Ideology is power making itself appear reasonable, inevitable, or invulnerable by tradition and normalization. Repression takes the form of coercive authority, counterinsurgency, state terrorism, etc. Repression and legitimation techniques range from hidden to blatant. Repression and surveillance are central to our current conjuncture, making Orwell’s 1984 look quaint.
What kinds of repression are being done or planned? How are they hidden or legitimated?
· Under the war on terror, public relations, secrecy, executive power have been built into an increased elitist neoconservative autocratic rule that supports US imperialism, creating a legal black hole to violate international law, eroding limitations on domestic police, eroding the boundaries between police, military, and intelligence, and between public and private power adapted from 20.
How do powerful actors avoiding being identified as such in people’s minds?
A key technique of power is ideological invisibility. Ideology, unlike explicit doctrines or political programs, tends to be invisible. For example, when parents justify their brutality by blaming it on their children’s disobedience, or corporations justify higher prices in response to higher wages, in both cases the real power is unmentioned.
We see action, conjuncture, and legitimation connected in how powerful individuals communicate. Powerful individuals tend to talk officially in public (action), which enhances their legitimacy (conjuncture) 16, and they have the resources to have more interaction with each other, allowing their negotiations to be more subtle, aiding legitimation.
The following example shows how power promotes and benefits from ideology:
· The building of neoliberalism since about 1980 involved corporate funding, intellectual work, and propagandizing, including one of the Koch brothers contributing to turning right wing ideas into a strategy to save capitalism from democracy 21. One result was the American Legislative Exchange Council producing hundreds of “model laws” each year to devastate labor unions, rewrite tax codes, undo environmental protection, privatize public resources, and require police action against undocumented immigrants 21.
Below is a chart depicting the national US structure and process by which power influences ideology and opinion 22.
(Source: Domhoff GW. The Power Elite, Public Policy, and Public Opinion. In: Manza J, Cook FL, Page BI (eds). Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy. Oxford University Press: New York, 2002, pp 124–137.)
Summing up
Claims about power require empirical and logical support. Journalistic, academic, government, non-profit, and even corporate studies can all be useful. In an unjust society, power is always partly obscured, making it harder to research. Researchers and writers should be honest and clear about how confident they are in their claims about power. Question the obvious, ask disrespectful questions, and assume there is more than meets the eye. We join C. W. Mills in saying: ‘I have tried to be objective. I do not claim to be detached’.
Excellent overviews of power are: Mills CW, The Power Elite 23, Phillips, Giants: The Global Power Elite 24, Derber, The Wilding of America 25, Robinson, Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity, and anything by political scientist Michael Parenti. For references or further assistance, contact Covert Action Magazine.
Many thanks to Paul Mayhew for editing and support!!!
References
(1) Studying the Power Elite: Fifty Years of Who Rules America?; Domhoff, G. W., Ed.; Routledge: New York, 2018.
(2) Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses; Wrong, D., Ed.; Basil Blackwell Publisher: New York, 1979.
(3) Robinson, W. I. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity; Cambridge University Press: New York City, 2014.
(4) Dumenil, G.; Levy, D. The Nature and Contradictions of Neoliberalism. Socialist Register 2002, 38.
(5) Kramer, R. C.; Michalowski, R. J. The Original Formulation. In State-Corporate Crime: Wrongdoing at the Intersection of Business and Government; Michalowski, R. J., Kramer, R. C., Eds.; Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, 2006; pp 18–26.
(6) Magdoff, F.; Foster, J. B. Class War and Labor’s Declining Share. Monthly Review. March 2013.
(7) Lukes, S. Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed.; Palgrave Macmillan: New York, NY, 2005.
(8) Goff, S. Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century; Soft Skull Press: Brooklyn, NY, 2004.
(9) Beck, U. Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy; Polity Press: Cambridge, 2006.
(10) Roper, B. S. The History of Democracy: A Marxist Interpretation; Pluto Press: London, 2013.
(11) Amin, S. The New Imperialist Structure. Monthly Review. July 1, 2019, pp 32–45.
(12) Parenti, M. Dirty Truths; City Lights Books, 1996.
(13) Scott, P. D. The American Deep State: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: Lanham, Maryland, 2017.
(14) Domhoff, G. W. Mills’s The Power Elite 50 Years Later. Contemporary Sociology 2006, 35 (6), 547–550.
(15) Mills, C. W. Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive. American Sociological Review 1940, 5 (6), 904–913. https://doi.org/10.2307/2084524.
(16) Collins, R. Conflict Sociology: A Sociological Classic Updated; Paradigm Publishers: Boulder, 2009.
(17) Foster, J. B. Late Imperialism: Fifty Years After Harry Magdoff’s The Age of Imperialism. Monthly Review. July 1, 2019, pp 1–19.
(18) Colby, G. Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain; Lyle Stuart: Secaucus, N.J, 1984.
(19) Boffo, M.; Saad-Filho, A.; Fine, B. Neoliberal Capitalism: The Authoritarian Turn. Socialist Register 2019: The World Turned Upside Down? 2018, 275–297.
(20) de Lint, W. Neoconservativism and American Counter-Terrorism: Endarkened Policy? In Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Criminological Perspectives; Deflem, M., Ed.; Sociology of Crime Law and Deviance; Elsevier/JAI Press: New York, 2004; Vol. 5, pp 131–154.
(21) MacLean, N. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America; Viking: New York, 2017.
(22) Domhoff, G. W. The Power Elite, Public Policy, and Public Opinion. In Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy; Manza, J., Cook, F. L., Page, B. I., Eds.; Oxford University Press: New York, 2002; pp 124–137.
(23) Mills, C. W. The Power Elite; Oxford University Press, USA: Oxford, 2000.
(24) Phillips, P. Giants: The Global Power Elite; Seven Stories Press: New York, 2018.
(25) Derber, C. The Wilding of America: Money, Mayhem, and the New American Dream, 6 edition.; Worth Publishers: New York, 2015.
