A few months ago, I started trying to find the words to express what I think power is. I don’t mean power as in what super heroes have, nor do I mean it in the Marxist sense of ability or capacity (which is conceptualized surprisingly similarly to what super heroes have). I mean social or political power. It’s the kind that comes with wealth, status, dominance, positions in government, and/or the success of social justice movements for those seeking empowerment. I’ll share the definition that I can’t seem to get off my mind.
Power, for most social and political purposes, is the capacity to get people to behave as though they agree with you.
There are a few ways to create this power. Perhaps the means of power we encounter the most is culture. So long as everybody plays the same game of pretend required to believe that a small, green slip of paper with Abraham Lincoln on it is worth five dollars, any item priced at five dollars or less becomes mine when I hand them said paper. This notion of “mine” usually feels objective to anyone living in the society, but it’s culture.
Of course, social constructs like this are largely created and maintained by a different means of power: coercion. While the victim of a mugging doesn’t actually agree with the armed thief that their wallet belongs to the thief, they are compelled to behave as though they do. Likewise, if not for police and prisons, would the people have ever agreed to pay rent? Would they have agreed to be convicted when they couldn’t pay rent?
The inverse of coercion is withholding that upon which others are dependent (or threatening to withhold it). This is the point of boycotts, strikes, and unions.
I worry that we often overlook the means of power that is perhaps most important, which is simply getting people to actually agree with you. It’s worth considering how even the most violent and weaponized world powers spend a great deal of time and effort on real persuasion and on controlling information. This tells me that education, beliefs, and genuine agreement are unavoidable components of social power. The effectiveness of boycotts, strikes, and unions is also, at least in part, contingent on the effectiveness of consciousness raising, although the success of either could feed the other. Wherever there is power, there is, on some level, belief in that power, and it is belief that generates the power.
Please leave a comment below to give persuasion to the people!
by J.D. Hansel
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