Chapter 6 (pt.5)
INDIVIDUALITY AND SOCIETY
But perhaps there is a paradox in that last statement. Something was done, by each unit, by each side. If the effect of struggle was polarization, if conflict does indeed heighten consciousness then might we not suggest that the inevitability was a result of the conflict? In other words, the options were reduced, the situation clarified, so that each actor would be less likely to decide against his/its interests. We shan't resolve the ambivalence in Marx -- or at least in possible interpretations of Marx. But the discussion has developed an important point. The extent to which options are available for choice varies among social situations. Further, it varies not only as a function of the extent to which stable social determinacy of dependency obtain, but also, in situations of conflict or contradiction, of the extent of polarization. In some ways, of course, this is a special case -- albeit an unstable one -- of determination. We shall argue, however, that this polarization and the power which it engenders are a concomitant of alienation, not of organization overcoming alienation among, say, the proletariat. Before coming back to this, though, and before giving our reasons for assuming partial voluntarism regarding the use of power, let us very briefly review the way in which Parsons has constructed a sociated concept of power (see Giddons, 1968 for a more general discussion).
Parsons sees power as a productive property of social systems. Interestingly, he sees it as productive in much the same way as utilitarian thought sees the role of coercion as necessary in collective decision-making. Specifically, the theory of the firm argues that in a purely competitive market no individual firm (unless very large in its share of the market) will receive a sufficient proportion of collective good from maintaining high prices in order to keep it from competitively underselling its fellows. The immediate individual advantages will outweigh the individual portion of the eventual collective advantages in the firm's decision-making unless some other inducement is provided or larger-unit membership is compulsory or other means of coercion are used (cf. Olson, 1971, p. 16 and passim for a high caliber neo-utilitarian argument of this sort; Olson was in fact a student of Parsons). Compare Parons' definition of power:
Power then is generalized capacity to secure the performance of binding obligations by units in a system of collective organization when the obligations are legitimized with reference to their bearing on collective goals and where in case of recalcitrance there is a presumption of enforcement by negative situational sanctions -- whatever the actual agency of that enforcement. (1963, p. 308)
Note that power is only considered as a capacity to secure obligations and that attention it turned away from the agency of enforcement. The former means that power is assumed to exist only as functional (for some organization) and as sanctioned prior to any manifestation. Regarding this, and the second point, Giddons comments:
Two obvious facts, that authoritative decisions very often do server sectional interests and that the most radical conflicts in society stem from struggles for power, are defined out of consideration -- at least as phenomena connected with 'power'. The conceptualization of power which Parsons offers allows him to shift the entire weight of his analysis away from power as expressing a relation between individuals or groups, toward seeing power as a 'system property'. That collective 'goals', or even the values which lie behind them, may be the outcome of a 'negotiated order' built on conflicts between parties holding differential power is ignored, since for Parsons 'power' assumes the prior existence of collective goals. (1968, p. 265)
Giddons' concept (unfortunately not an uncommon one) of a 'negotiated order' is itself unsatisfactory, particularly for use in connection with power. One could only see such a production of a negotiated order by viewing any example as an abstraction out of time. It is among my prime contentions that power is inherently unstable and that such an order can only be either apparent or simply a single 'event' in a series. In addition, it should be remarked that Giddons tends to abstract to 'parties holding differential power' in an unsatisfactory manner, since no attention is paid to the other commitments of resources which the parties to any given relationship may have made (as per discussion above).
It is correct, however, that an important fault of Parsons' conception of power is its failure to express a relationship. Unlike Marx's writings, Parsons' work does not counterbalance this with any considerable focus on conflict or struggle. Parsons proposes an essentially consensual theory of power, in accord with the assumptions of his overall scheme. The only way in which Parsons can accomplish this is to define power as a system property, and to assume the existence and boundaries of the system. It is only by removing his inquiry from the realm of concretely varying social systems -- which vary in their 'system-ness' -- that he can suggest that power is implicitly functional. It is the merit of Merton's functionalism that is emphasizes not only dysfunctions, but the extent to which given factors, processes or events may be functional or dysfunctional in varying degree for different members of the population, however they may function in achieving overall stasis or equilibrium (cf. Merton, 1957, p. 36), also (following Sorokin):
Some functional analysts have gratuitously assumed that all existing social structures fulfil indispensable social functions. This is sheer faith, mysticism, if you will, rather than the final product of sustained and systematic inquiry . . . . The three postulates of functional unity, universality and indispensability comprise a system of premises which must inevitably lead to a glorification of the existing state of things. (Merton, 1957, p. 39)
And again, advice Parsons clearly did not take:
To speak of "legitimate power" or authority is often to use an elliptical and misleading phrase. Power may be legitimized for some without being legitimized for all groups in a society. (1957, p. 122)
As is often the case, reference to Merton shows that it is not functionalism but particular varieties thereof which we are attacking. Parsons' equation of power and right (1963, p. 318) is clearly untenable.
Parsons' system, like Marx's seems to regard power essentially optimistically, as a force productive of their disparate anticipations: consensual equilibrium and revolutionary change. The similarity of course is limited, but neither sees power as the relation of an actor to other actors. Parsons is clearer on this,as befits his orientation to the status quo, for power is precisely what invalidates it (among other factors). With Marx the matter is arguable. Merton, in fact, has emphasized the interpretation of Marx as acknowledging a certain range of voluntarism, as in Marx' and Engels' descriptions of the roles of ideas and ideologies in history, whether 'religion' as 'opiate of the masses' or the workers' movement as needing to make those in the proletariat 'aware of their own interests' (1957, p. 478). Merton argues that:
The Marx-Engels views on the connectives of ideas and economic substructure hold, then, that the economic structure constitutes the framework which limits the range of ideas which will prove socially effective. (op. cit.)
Proving socially effective is essentially a matter of manifesting a given relation to the distribution of conflicting interests, and the existing power-situation. And, crucially, it depends on correct perception of that situation. Merton (in another essay) indicates a voluntaristic conception of power which is broadly compatible with ours. In one usage, he says of the "relative power of groups":
This refers to the varying capacity of a group to enforce its collective decisions upon (a) its members and (b) its social environment. (1957, p. 324)
Unfortunately, as a definition, this statement overemphasizes both decision and force. It does not treat of the power of groups to shape events through inaction the manipulation of what issues come to the fore and other like variables of what Bachrach and Baratx call "nondecisions" (1963). In speaking of 'capacity' it also treats of an unsatisfactory completely potential power, or power in the abstract, which implies that power can exist outside of its effectuality in social situations. A problem with this which we have noted above is that only in concrete social situations are the manifold and conflicting pressures, demands and options in operation which determine both the intentional exercise and effect of power.
A more satisfactory statement is Lukes':
To use the vocabulary of power in the context of social relationships is to speak of human agents, separately or together, in groups or organizations, through action or inaction, significantly affecting the thoughts or actions of others (specifically, in a manner contrary to their interests). In speaking thus, one assumes that, although the agents operate within structurally determined limits, they nonetheless have a certain relative autonomy and could have acted differently. The future, though it is not entirely open, is not entirely closed either (and, indeed the degree of its openness is itself structurally determined). In short, within a system characterised by total structural determinism , there would be no place for power. (1974, pp. 54-5; emphasis added)
The notion of interests is problematic (see next chapter) and it may be well to limit it here to a version of Lukes' subsequent statement about autonomy. That is, interests are relevant only inasmuch as they refer to what an actor would do had he perfect information and complete autonomy. Any assumption of perfect and unself-contradictory interests would quite unrealistic, as would, however, any assumption that people would not act differently were it not for power. The statement that the South African government does not act in the interests of South African blacks is a meaningful one. Statements of interest lose their meaning when phrased in the absolute or abstract however, as in the 'rights of man' writings or in utilitarian liberalism.
The key statement in the quote from Lukes is the last one. "Within a system characterized by total structural determinism, there would be no place for power." It is this which expresses the core element in a voluntaristic notion of power. Power is essentially imbalance in the social organization. It is the ability of concrete actors to influence events disproportionately; it is the ultimate anticipated determination of events, as opposed to the functional unanticipated consequences of structural determinism. At the same time, it is the necessary inadequacy of such anticipation. In Howard Moss's phrase, "Not to be loved is to crave power" (1975). Where the strength of sociation and the predictability of relationship break down, power is the answering attempt to secure self-beneficial order. Personally -- and socially -- it is the counterpart to alienation. It is particularly the voluntaristic exercise of power (that is, intentional action; its results need not be -- and usually are not -- anticipated) which produces this sort of instability. This is because any social actor necessarily takes into account only a limited number of factors in choosing intentional action. The fewer factors considered, the narrower the perspective, the less representative of the entire organization is the taken action likely to be. I see power thus as diametrically opposed in (dys-)function to what Parsons sees when, in criticizing Mills' much more useful view in The Power Elite (1956), argues that power is not a facility of any group for getting what it wants at the expense of others, but rather
a facility for the performance of function in and on behalf of the society as a system. (1957, p. 139)
The more power there is the more likely to lead to its own increase. This means not that any powerful figure (or class of figures) necessarily becomes more powerful, but that since power is unbalancing it tends towards producing greater imbalance, which involves among other things greater power. Certainly such imbalance may generate reaction, an attempt (to anthropomorphize the system) to restore equilibrium, but it need not, and if it does, the attempt need not be successful. If in walking you stumble and begin to fall over the chances are much increased that you will in fact finish falling over, although the chances are good that you will attempt to avoid this, and may succeed. This assumption of successful reaction is one of the major problems in Parsonian analyses of (or 'theoretical applications' to) social change (cf. especially Smelser, 1959).
A correlate of this instability of power is a tendency toward its centralization. We have already noted the emphasis conservative thought has placed on this (particularly in the 19th century) and on the counterposed role of intermediate associations. Merton has suggested that such a change is resisted by the members of the various intermediate loci of power:
With a shift from the previous structure where limited loci of power are vested in the several fields of human activity to a structure where there is one centralized locus of authority over all phases of behaviour,the representatives of each sphere act to resist such changes and to preserve the original structure of pluralistic authority. (1957, p. 542)
But he also notes, in a discussion of the emergence and functions of machine politics in America that the decentralized power system specifically set up by the framers of the constitution proved frustrating to pressure groups demanding positive action, and led to a new sort of power politics:
The constitutional dispersion of power not only makes for difficulty of effective decision and action but when action does occur it is defined and hemmed in by legalistic considerations . . . Put in more general terms, the functional deficiencies of the official structure generate an alternative (unofficial) structure to fulfil existing needs somewhat more effectively. (1957, p. 73)
We cannot here go into a discussion of why the attempt at dispersion of power should have failed in the United States, but the outlines of such a discussion should be fairly clear from the rest of our argument. The existence of diverse groups not connected to each other through multiplex ties and not included in any effective corporate hierarchy coupled with an increasing atomization and alienation of the population at large and a bureaucratization -- that is impersonalization and abstraction -- of government are all key elements.
Toqueville's analysis of this process is penetrating, and we may cite it as being at once representative of the sort of critique offered in the 19th century, and among the best. Toqueville sees in democracy the atrophy and eventual disappearance of 'secondary powers', the intermediate associations and authorities which mitigate the power of the sovereign among an aristocratic people. Much though he likes the love of political independence which he sees the principle of equality as instilling in people, Toqueville is dubious about its result:
For the principle of equality begets two tendencies; the one leads men straight to independence, and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road, to servitude. (1840, p. 346)
The villain leading democracy along the latter road is the emergent alienated mass:
As the conditions of men become equal amongst a people, individuals seem of less importance, and society of greater dimensions; or rather, every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd, and nothing stands conspicuous but the great and imposing image of the people at large. (p. 348)
This mass is alienated in part because each individual loses touch with the particularity of relationships and associations which would give him the means of identity (see Chapter 5). It is also alienated, in the strictest of Marx's senses, because the product of the individual's labour (and without stretching the point much one may read existence) is lost to him in the symbolic mirage of commodities, in the impenetrable unpredictability of the anarchy of production (and indeed of consumption), and, perhaps most importantly (as above) in the loss of his social existence, even of his family, as he and all others are turned into falsely separate individuals.
The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. It became apparent that the production of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. (Engels, 1880, p. 97)
Engels goes on to express his idea (or hope) that the fact that this advance of the capitalist mode of production was accomplished through the increase in labour power which socialized production brought about, would led to an internal organization among the workers which would produce both revolution and a stable socialist society. The more pessimistic Toqueville may have been more accurate, for alienation still seems to have the step on the sociation of the proletariat.
Toqueville's nightmare is much like Rousseau's dream: all power to the people, no power to anyone:
The Americans hold, that in every state the supreme power ought to emanate from the people; but when once that power is constituted, they can conceive, as it were, no limits to it, and they are ready to admit that it has the right to do whatever it pleases. They have not the slightest notion of peculiar privileges granted to cities, families, or persons: their minds appear never to have foreseen that it might be possible not to apply with strict uniformity the same laws to every part, and to all the inhabitants. (Toqueville, 1840, p. 349)
America has been in the throes of this realization on and off ever since Toqueville wrote, and never more than now. The central power depends on the impotent people and the people are impotent because of their independence from each other - and the imbalance is self-extending:
As in ages of equality no man is compelled to lend his assistance to his fellow-man, and none has any right to expect much support from them, every one is at once independent and powerless . . . His independence fills him with self-reliance and pride amongst his equals; his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of some outward assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them, because they are all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament he naturally turns his eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of universal depression. Of that power his wants and especially his desires continually remind him, until he ultimately views it as the sole and necessary support of his own weakness. (1840, p. 352)
Toqueville goes on to note as a further factor enabling the government's expansion of its centralized power its stability amidst the 'ceaseless stir and transformation' of the population. "Time is on its side" (pp. 352-3).
Of course not only centralized governments can derive power bases from alienated populations. The latter are also susceptible to charismatic leaders and other short-run solutions to alienation which attempt to make power take the place of sociated authority. Indeed (and note here the relation to Marxian theory), alienation makes a population susceptible to radical polarization. Where people are closely tied into ongoing institutions and multiplex social bonds there are likely to be few it any issues which can polarize the population. Not only are people more willing to risk long-term involvements for short-term action (see next chapter) but they are more readily able to identify themselves in terms of a single dimension, and thus to become committed to it. Polarization depends on abstract foci, not on the internal sociation of the two sides.
Power, finally, is destructive of authority, and authority contains (limits) power. The two are not opposites, and where authority is invested in a living individual or group it is likely to be accompanied by power. It is in this sense that it contains (or constrains) power. The occupant of a position of authority is constrained not to exceed the bounds prescribed by that position and systems of authority often work to distinguish the authority of the position from the power of the occupant (see Gluckman's consideration of 'the fraility in authority', 1956, pp. 27-53). Authority is indistinguishable from collective standards of 'right'. As such, however, it depends on the strength of this collective recognition, which in turn depends on the strength of this collective recognition, which in turn depends largely on stable sociation, which is destroyed by power. It is destroyed, more accurately, by power as it becomes a specialized attribute of relations, becomes voluntary in its exercise and focused in the hands of a necessarily fallible segment of the population. It is in some ways the conscious exercise of power which makes history, that is, make change:
Fate is a feature of specific kinds of social structure; the extent to which the mechanics of fate are the mechanics of history-making is itself a historical problem . . . .
In those societies in which the means of power are involuntary and decentralized, history is fate. The innumerable actions of innumerable men modify their local milieus, and thus gradually modify the structure of society as a whole. These modifications -- the course of history -- go on behind men's backs. History is drift, although in total 'men make it'.
But in those societies in which the means of power are enormous in scope and centralized in form a few men may be so placed within the historical structure that by their decisions about the use of these means they modify the structural conditions under which most men live. Nowadays such elites of power make history, 'under circumstances not chosen altogether by themselves', yet compared with other men, and with other periods of human history, these circumstances do seem less overwhelming . . . (Mills, 1959b, pp. 21-2, cited in Lukes, 1974, pp. 54-5)
But still, in the end history is made in part by accident, even accidents resulting from the the unanticipated consequences of intentional actions. Thus in the often-quoted passage from Marx (which is in the background of Mills comments above):
Men make their own history but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. (1850, p. 140)
Further, they are not so clever that they can ever fully comprehend their circumstances, no matter who they are and where placed in history or society. Men act always on circumscribed information, though where they draw the boundaries of relevance or necessity may vary. Men's ends conflict with each other, not only among men, but for each man with himself. It may be possible for men to get what they want sometimes, but never without achieving other things they never planned and of which they may never be aware. It is a characteristic of traditional Tale society that the social order may be upset in this way only to a very minimum extent. The model of social order which we set out in chapter 8 attempts to explain (among other things) the reason for this.