Theses on Power

By Eirik Eiglad

Within libertarian socialist groups and extra-parliamentary movements much confusion exists about the question of power. In reaction to the conventional approaches of state socialism and parliamentary politics, where gaining power (understood as state power and parliamentary control) have been the main objective, the replies from the libertarian Left have too often been dismissals of power as such, when the question of power has not been simply left unanswered.

Still, all politics for empowerment must consistently deal with the question of power. There is an urgent need to reconsider the question of power from a libertarian perspective, and to provide consistent answers in both theory, practice and political visions. Here, I intend to explore it as a social concept, and present some conclusions about the challenges for the libertarian Left today, based on the insight and theories of social ecology and its politics of libertarian municipalism, as developed by Murray Bookchin.

I

Power does exist: it is real and tangible. The expressions of power – that is to say, its various structures, dynamics, and functions – can be clearly defined and analyzed. The institutions and execution of power can be legitimized and consolidated, or they can be challenged and weakened. Still, one can never abolish power, nor dissolve it, only give different forms to it.

II

Power, by necessity, has an institutional foundation. Accordingly, power exists no more in the natural world than does domination or education, but is an eminently social fact. Since the dawn of societies, with the creation of institutions, power has been the collective ability to make decisions about what to do or how to act, as society.

The fact that power is a collective ability in no way suggest that its forms are expressions of a self-conscious human community – or that all constituents of a given human collectivity have an equal share in its formational development – neither in the limited world of prehistoric bands and tribes, or in the increasingly globalized world of our own time.

This collective ability has taken (and still takes) a historical variety of institutional forms. These institutional forms, ranging from despotic thrones and monarchist courts, to republican parliaments or democratic assemblies, are all social expressions of this collective ability, and its specific forms have not been immutable. Indeed, one of the main characteristics of human society, as such, is the mutability of its basic structures, that is, its institutions. Furthermore, the very capacity to consciously change our social environment and its fundamental structures is in itself a defining human feature.

III

Power is neither personal nor interpersonal (unless we speak of representatives of actual institutions), but social. Power is not a mere ‘multiplicity of social forces’, and cannot be reduced to ‘complex strategic situations’ primarily defined by ‘negative relations’. Neither are the forms of power arbitrary, immediate or historically inexplicable. Various manifestations or effects of actual power relations stems from their institutional basis. This produces various expressions in the political, cultural or economic life of a given social system.

Power has never been constituted through a ‘social contract’ – an essentially liberal notion – but through tensions and struggles between various institutional forms and the divergent social interests they represent. Societal self-transformation is the result of historical processes as well as actual power struggles.

IV

Power can, ultimately, reside only in one set of institutions, in one basic structural framework – in what is called a system of government. Although power in society can be distributed between various governmental bodies (of the same institutional framework), power as such is never fragmentary and multifarious: it ultimately resides somewhere, in one organ (or a set of organs) conditioning the other institutions of the governmental system.

This strict focus on these formal aspects of power is not to deny or belittle the importance of institutions of a military, educational, cultural, or economic character, and the fact that these certainly exercise great pressure on the ‘legal’ or ‘political’ system of government. On the contrary, such institutions are so important in social life and in policy-making processes that we should scrutinize and consider to what extent they actually are functioning as an integral part of a given system of government. In every complex society there are a wide range of institutions continuously redefining their relationship to the societal power structure (by integration and exclusion), and, for this reason, the concrete expressions of power often appear blurred or amorphous, obfuscating the real makeup of societal power. The fact that various institutions lay a claim on greater powers for themselves is actually what defines a power struggle.

Although it is possible to make isolated analyzes of ‘power’ in any given social unit, or any imagined community, or even a certain set of social relations, such inquiries actually fall short of explaining power and its various historical manifestations. Power – as a social phenomenon – must be viewed historically, by studying its development and totality, and cannot be reduced to any of the limited or cross-sectional interpretations all too commonplace in our time.

V

Understood in its proper social context, power is neutral. That is to say, in itself, power has no positive or negative qualities, but is (like institutions) characteristical of everything we can call society.

This is not to say that the concrete forms of power are neutral: On the contrary, they never are (although their development may have complex and multifaceted historical effects), but the ability itself is. We must distinguish between the various forms of power and power as such.

Neither can we say that the execution of power or its effects are neutral. Certainly, power can be used for positive or negative ends, by either cultivating freedom and progress or by solidifying oppression and reaction: Society can advance civilization, or descend into barbarism. These libertarian or authoritarian ends are partly conditioned by the very power structures under which they are developed. But there is nothing inherently regressive, authoritarian or hierarchical either in power or in institutions – these concepts are defining features of every organized human community – or in society per se.

Put simply, even a libertarian society demands certain institutional forms for making possible its decision-making processes and its execution of power, merely in order to function. To change society, we must therefore deal with this question about what forms of power and what kind of institutions we need.

VI

In order to counter the present-day destructive social order, we must clarify how power can be used for social creativity and human liberation. According to social ecology, it is necessary to uproot hierarchies from the human condition to create a rational, ecological society: Until we have reharmonized social relationships – by creating a libertarian and egalitarian society – we will not be able to reharmonize the relationship between society and the natural world. It is therefore necessary to understand the distinctions between power and hierarchy.

Power is not hierarchy. By necessity, hierarchies are, like power, institutional. However, neither power nor institutions are necessarily hierarchical. The fact that power has expressed hierarchical relationships and domination is because society has been hierarchically organized, it is not inherent in power (or society) as such. Unlike power, hierarchies are not neutral, but are always based on social systems of command and obedience (and are not merely a ‘graded organization’ of ‘personal relationships’ or ‘general patterns’), whatever concrete expressions these systems may take.

Hierarchies can only be understood as institutionalized relationships between human beings – in fact, only human beings are capable of creating institutions (and therefore hierarchies) – and cannot be reduced to mere instinctive reflexes, nor to idiosyncratic individual behavior, nor to arbitrary discrepancies in interpersonal relationships. Hierarchies are structures of social stratifications, where the dominant part enjoys a privileged and coercive position towards the subordinate part which according to this social logic must subdue their will and obey (however subtly or unconsciously), given their circumscribed options of action. A hierarchy must comprise definable social ranks of privilege, status and means of coercion.

In order to properly discern oppressive social structures, it is imperative to carefully distinguish between the causes, the structures, and the characteristics, as well as the effects of any given hierarchy.

VII

The hierarchies that pervade society do indeed take on a variety of forms, whereas those prevailing today express systematic domination on the basis of gender, culture, ethnicity and class. As systems based on command and obedience, the characteristic features of hierarchy are not only related to uneven access to political, economic and military means, but also in the social differentiations in status, privilege, control and influence.

No hierarchy exists as an isolated societal phenomenon: In fact, every form of hierarchy must interact with other forms of hierarchy and, as a general rule, they mutually consolidate each other, and foments an oppressive cultural context.

Oppressive cultural contexts nurture in turn a hierarchical mentality, which legitimizes and facilitates acceptance of all forms of oppression and exploitation. In this sense, oppression can indeed be internalized (as can sensations of liberation). By contrast, power and resistance cannot. (Contrary to certain anarchist beliefs, it is physically impossible to have institutions or power relations in either our heads or in our bodies.) Hierarchies certainly have deep cultural and psychological dimensions, but these are always rooted in more fundamental social structures. Individual human beings (and social groups) strengthen hierarchical processes through a continual internalization and externalization of oppression and submission, but the hierarchical dynamics of social interaction can never be severed from the relation to their respective institutional bases.

As indicated, hierarchy cannot be reduced to institutionalization as such or a mere power relation, and conversely, neither can power be reduced to mean simply oppression, hierarchy or domination. Ultimately, the question of power comes down to the essential political issues of who decides what – on the level of society – and how these decisions are made. Although this collective ability obviously takes hierarchical forms today, it does not have to be this way, as witnessed by a multitude of non-hierarchical and libertarian social forms throughout history.

VIII

In today’s hierarchical society, various social groups are constantly pitted against each other. Constructed cultural barriers and oppressive mechanisms are working against certain social groups – defined by biological, social, or cultural criterias – based on their position in society’s many hierarchical strata. These oppressed groups stand in a direct relationship to other biological, social or cultural groups in dualistic relationships that may seem antagonistic. A wide range of social problems thus appear as specific for particular social groups (and in the immediate existential sense they certainly are), although they are constituent parts of the present crisis of the human condition, and lie at the core of our ecological dislocations.

In order to legitimate the domination of oppressed strata, a range of myths have been invented historically, explaining a given hierarchy as ‘necessary’ or ‘just’, and even ‘natural’ or ‘eternal’, in all its peculiarity and malleability. Still, all hierarchies have been socially constructed, and have developed throughout history in a dialectics of liberation and domination. No hierarchy can therefore be fully explained ahistorically or isolated: On the contrary, all hierarchies share certain fundamental historical and universal characteristics and, despite the necessity to trace their specificity and existential expressions, hierarchical forms can ultimately be conceived properly only through a generalized analysis.

Hierarchical structures have developed through uneven and combined historical processes, and are today based on complex interrelations and multifaceted expressions, together constituting an intricate hierarchical society. Accordingly, there exists no primary hierarchical form, on which all the other forms are conditioned. The dissolution of class exploitation, gender oppression or ethnic discrimination, or other hierarchical structures – no matter how important they all are – will not automatically dissolve the other hierarchical forms. Abolishing, say, class exploitation will not in itself lead to the end of gender oppression – and conversely, the end of male domination will not in itself fundamentally alter the exploitative economic system. Diminishing or dissolving one hierarchical structure will therefore be woefully insufficient (although absolutely necessary) in our struggle against a social order permeated by hierarchies. Indeed, we must explore and speculate about the historical emergence of hierarchies, as well as defining their peculiarities and discussing the social impact of its various manifestations, without fixating merely on one hierarchical form: Our radical analysis and political approach should consistently be directed against hierarchical society as such.

IX

Significantly, the social system we live under is itself broadening the radical issues we face today, leaving virtually none untouched by its devastating effects on both society and non-human nature. Not only are the complex forms of hierarchy and domination generalizing a wide range of the problems that have hitherto appeared as specific (which, to be sure, in no way implies that these issues have equal impact on all human beings or all social groups; in fact, the contrary is true), but society is also increasingly at odds with the natural world. Indeed, current disruptions in the ecological cycles and stability threaten to gravely intensify an ecological crisis that already is of planetary proportions. In addition, the apocalyptic prospects of a veritable global war are still looming over us, given increased military armament and recurrent armed conflicts. At the same time, processes of political and economic centralization place more power in global oligarchical institutions, while an uncontrolled urbanization seems to erode what remains of political activity and civic self-recognition. Furthermore, the incessant spread of capitalism is standardizing social life to an extent never before witnessed – throughsteadfast homogenization and commodification, continually undermining social cohesion and human values – both in its center and its periphery.

X

This broadening of ‘the social question’ occurs alongside an expansion of cultural cognition due to developments in technologies of communication, transportation, and information, and has contributed greatly to the material and cultural preconditions for human universalism. Still, such a potentiality for universal human recognition is not yet actualized, and is continually countered by a range of privileges and hierarchical stratifications, pitting human against human. Therefore, while the experience of the human condition is particularized (as it is bound to be in a hierarchical society) it is at the same time becoming universalized, not the least because these processes now occurs on all continents and in all cultures.

As a result of this – despite almost omnipresent tendencies of marginalization, discrimination and oppression – the potentiality for social recognition of human rights and political freedoms is expanding, and with this, the scope for social change is also expanding. Thus, out of the vast complex of hierarchical relations there emerges, as a potentiality, an expanded understanding of the need for social universality and basic human recognition. We must nuance our understanding of hierarchical domination, as well as the preconditions for full social freedom – by acknowledging the particular needs and abilities of all members of society – while remaining committed to emancipation and fundamental social change. For all its devastating effects on social life and the natural world, this society clearly gives a different set of preconditions, and different possibilities for social action, than earlier historical epochs – and despite its general regressive character we must be able to distinguish certain progressive aspects of current developments.

XI

Much of current struggle against particular forms of oppression is formulated within a ‘micronationalist’ context, where one’s particular social identity is made the very framework for political agency and social change. Formulated as an ‘identity politics’, in which power (and even ‘politics’) is made relative on an intersubjective level, these struggles are limited in scope and relevance. (Concepts of ‘identity power’ are as obfuscatory as the concept of ‘identity politics’.) Indeed, their exclusivity is the rationale for most approaches of identity politics, which practically (and logically) most often preclude other analysis and approaches. Such an emphasis on particularistic identities represents a negation of politics (understood in its classical sense), as it dissolves ‘the political question’ into mere social relations.

In order to challenge all hierarchical structures as well as hierarchical mentalities, we must seek to arrive at a synthesis that exceeds all individal expressions of social hierarchy – we cannot simply add all the particular forms of oppression and mathematically calculate the sum of hierarchies that must be dissolved. To properly challenge hierarchy as such, we must ‘generalize’ our struggle against oppression and hierarchies, striking at their fundamental essentials as well as their concrete expressions; the focus of our struggle must be directed primarily against hierarchical society and its oppressive cultural contexts. Furthermore, this synthesis must not only unify the specific and general struggle against hierarchies, but also combine this with a new libertarian politics, aiming at a radical redistribution of power.

Still, hierarchies and a range of connected social problems appear as specific for particular social groups. But although specific problems appear as particular, the fundamental solutions are general. This implies that the various forms of oppression must be countered in their specificity, but always from the perspective of human universality. The solutions for a non-hierarchical society must be universal; this counts not only for the guarantee of human recognition and civil rights, but also for political communality and social freedom, a condition based on precisely such a recognition of the ‘equality of unequals’.

XII

Accordingly, the ‘revolutionary subject’ must be embodied in a potentially universal character, and we should look to possible collective identities that are culturally liberatory and politically empowering.

The most basic social identity is our common humanity. In our struggle for social liberation, it is imperative that we always discern and highlight our common humanity beneath – or rather beyond – all the biological and cultural facts that are used to legitimize domination and privilege in present society, whether in its general or in its particular forms. Our humanity is, obviously, what makes us human, not the various particular identities we are culturally assigned, and this is equally true for all human beings.

A necessary complement is the common political identity as citizens. All human beings should be accorded the right to be active participants in a political community; Citizenship, as the political expression of our humanity, is potentially and logically a universal category. Despite its historical limitations, the ideal of citizenship can actualize a renewed, universal – decidedly non-hierarchical – social category that encompass all human beings as potentially liberated individuals in a politicized collective.

XIII

The question of power is linked to hierarchy, but it is also linked to liberation. As indicated before, power is in itself loaded with no more intrinsic social value than is ‘will’, ‘intention’ or ‘capacity’: Power is a neutral fact which society has to give purposeful form and content. We must therefore clarify how we can use power for liberatory purposes, maintaining the necessary unity of ends and means.

The basic power institutions of a libertarian and ecological social order – a rational society – must be non-hierarchical, inclusive and universal, and provide a concrete sphere of action for ‘revolutionary subjects’. Liberatory forms of power must embody human beings, as citizens, in fundamentally civic and libertarian institutions, and these institutions must have the necessary means at their disposal in order to make all important social decisions.

XIV

Forms of power never exist in a social vacuum. It is thus necessary to complement new libertarian institutions with a liberatory material basis. This implies that all potential participants in political institutions – in effect, all human beings – must be guaranteed the necessary material security and free time to be fully engaged in political affairs. Society must control natural resources as well as socially important means of production and distribution, and economic questions should be managed directly by citizens, on the basis of ethical considerations, seeking to avoid the particularistic economic interests that obstructs the material actualization of the social ideal of an equality of unequals. In order to make possible the participation of every citizen, the human collectivity must compensate for personal inequalities following from physical and cultural differences, and thereby create a real and existential social equality.

Further, the transition to a libertarian society requires that new political institutions of power are generally supported by non-hierarchical social relationships and a genuinely liberatory cultural context. (Again, specific attention must be given to traditionally oppressed and marginalized social groups, in order for everyone to participate on an equal footing.) Freedom – in the form of a free society – presupposes self-conscious human collectivities based on the fullest individualization (grounded in rationality and choice), where our particular social identities, instead of splintering the human condition, could create a rich and stimulating cultural mosaic. Through the conscious and directional work of civic education and social consciousness-raising, liberatory cultural dynamics must be nurtured, which in turn will consolidate and enrich the political structures of society.

XV

The municipality, or the commune, provides the necessary basic institutional component of a rational social order. With its communal and democratic dimensions, it is not only the universal cell tissue of a future libertarian society, but even a potential rallying point of political discontent and social reconstruction today.

Municipalities are universal in two senses: First, they exist virtually everywhere, as human communities have increasingly been organized along social lines, and are the most basic institutions outside the private sphere of family and friends. Second, they are potentially open and inclusive institutions, that is to say that all inhabitants can take an active and responsible part in their affairs, and this makes possible the direct control and participation of the citizens through its assemblies and councils.

The municipality, to become a truly political and social human community, must itself be ‘communalized’, both in a political and an economical sense. In fact, the municipality (or the commune) remains the one institution capable of actualizing the fundamental ideals of the democratic and socialist traditions. In order to play such a role, the municipality should be communalized politically, making popular assemblies its basic decision-making institution, and economically, making social and natural resources come under the political control of these municipal assemblies. Municipal power is an essential precondition for citizens' empowerment.

XVI

Popular assemblies in municipalities (or in municipal sections) constitute the framework for the libertarian municipalist organization of power. These popular assemblies are open to all citizens, for collective deliberation, discussion, and decision-making. In these popular assemblies, all citizens – without reservation – should be regarded and treated as equals.

Indeed, popular assemblies by far provide the best forums for underprivileged, oppressed and marginalized social groups. Again, the struggle against a specific form of oppression is also a struggle for citizenship and humanity, a struggle that explicitly threatens – and ultimately undermines – the status, prestige, position, and influence currently enjoyed by privileged segments of society. Popular assemblies are by their very structure public and inclusive, and it is the responsibility of ordinary citizens and their interest groups to fill them with rational and liberatory content.

XVII

Democracy is a libertarian form of power, as decisions are made by the collective, expressed through the will of the majority of citizens.

Consensus, by contrast, is individualist, as minorities (sometimes even a minority of one) can block the will of the civic collective. Consensus has nothing in common with the libertarian aspirations of municipalist democracy, with its high esteem of the concern for the general interest as well as of dissensus.

XVIII

Political decisions about public affairs are made by popular assemblies; they are the basic legislative bodies in a libertarian municipalist democracy.

Confederalism complements this grassroots power with a means of coordination on both a regional and global scale. A defining feature of confederal organization is the conscious distinction between policy-making and administration. While policy-making is the sole privilege of popular assemblies, a range of executive, coordinative and administrative functions can be handed over to delegated councils and committees, under assembly supervision. Confederalism is an institutional means to ensure that power at all times will remain at the grassroots level, in the municipalities.

XIX

The new libertarian system of government must be consolidated in a constitution that defines its proper power center, and its relationship to other administrative, judicial and social bodies.

The development and presentation of this constitution makes it possible to clarify the tension that exists between the republican oligarchies and municipalist democracies, and to actually initiate the contest between the various systems of government.

XX

Every serious radical struggle against the established power structures must aim at building new institutions that can nurture and embody the new revolutionary power. The actual institution of municipal power and of confederalism breaks fundamentally with the state and all forms of centralized power, and it is, as such, a revolutionary aim.

New institutions must group themselves as an emerging dual power that is able to challenge, confront and ultimately replace existing institutions. Latent or simmering power struggles must give way for an explicit dual power struggle where two parallel systems contest for control over the destiny of society. In the end, the new constitution of power must assert itself, and at this moment the new system of government must replace the former. This is clearly a life-and-death struggle between two rival social orders. An open dual power confrontation is a revolutionary situation.

XXI

The institutional bases of popular power must be created and cultivated by the most politically conscious elements within society. Precisely as the struggle for popular power ultimately requires a dual power situation for the new directly-democratic government to fully emerge, this intensified political conflict in turn requires well-organized democratic tendencies consciously working to clarify basic social issues, and foster this dual power tension. To this end, we need not only radical popular movements, but responsible and resolute revolutionary organizations.

Such revolutionary organizations must be organized as popular vanguards providing guidance and leadership for a revolutionary people claiming power. Still,’the people’ is an undefined category that can only be understood in its social framework, that is, through the institutions that empower ‘the people’, and the main demand remains for placing all political power in popular assemblies. Citizens only come into true being through civic institutions, on which their empowerment is entirely based. Again, the question of power can not be one of ‘affirmation’ or ‘dismissal’ related entirely to the exigencies of the status quo, but essentially one of how to structure society and its basic political institutions, so that power is formulated as both a libertarian means and a libertarian end.

Revolutionary political organizations must provide leadership not only in ideas but also in practice, by weakening the legitimacy and functions of existing power structures, and be politically capable of taking power, that is, rather, to help citizens take power by enabling its localization in democratized municipalities.

The fundamental aim of libertarian municipalism is to create the social conditions in which citizens can gain control over society and its development by attaining political power through direct democracy.