RC Series Bundle: Power: A New Social Analysis (Routledge Classics) [Paperback]

 

 

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Russell intended this book to found a new science, of human power, in the societal sense. As Adam Smith (arguably) founded economics. Power meaning 'the production of intended effects'.

Although this book is well worth reading, five stars for breadth of content, there are innumerable difficulties; which I'll try to sketch out... starting from the chapter headings -

I THE IMPULSE TO POWER/ II LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS
These chapters try to synthesise practical needs (e.g. houses have to be built somewhere) with giving and taking orders. 'Some men's characters lead them always to command, others always to obey; between these extremes lie the mass of average human beings..' He regards people as being influenceable in three ways - direct force, economic effects - goodies vs fines - and beliefs. He goes on to look at variations on these themes...

III THE FORMS OF POWER/ IV PRIESTLY POWER/ V KINGLY POWER/ VI NAKED POWER/ VII REVOLUTIONARY POWER/ VIII ECONOMIC POWER/ IX POWER OVER OPINION
Russell identifies 'power' as a central concept, like energy in physics, presumably derived in the same way, by slowly noticing that some phenomena have things in common. Quite often he uses metaphors evidently based on things like kinetic energy, or stored energy. It's never quite clear whether his examples are idiosyncratic, one-off, unrepeatable illustrations which are only used e.g. to show power coalescing into ever-larger units, or whether the processes they illustrate are in principle considered to be capable of recurring. For instance, he says at one point that given a totalitarian state, all the forms of power he's considered become outdated and only of historical interest. He says somewhere else China has 'always been an exception to all rules'.

There's an exception to his idea of 'power' being something that changes its form: he considers military power is prior to economic power - he thinks economics works within a military framework. This is true of Spaniards vs Incas, but one has to wonder whether in fact the two are mutually dependent rather than economics being subsidiary to military power.

His category of 'revolutionary power' was no doubt influenced by the USSR. He includes early Christianity, the Reformation and 'rights of man' revolution, I hope not too optimistically. This category incidentally also shows Russell assumes things will evolve for the better - his whole book shows developments as tending to be beneficial. Thus he says e.g. 'Monarchy consequently remained weak until it had got the better of both the Church and the feudal [i.e. Germanic] nobility'. Russell is weak on the actual physics of the world: he doesn't consider e.g. Europe as subdivided by mountains and other obstacles, and thus packed with 'defensible space', as opposed to say the steppes of Russia or prairies of north America. He is in my view weak on economic power; he regards credit as the ability to transfer a consumable surplus from group A to group B, but doesn't mention the time element - which could be centuries. Incidentally he talks about 'coloured labour': 'Let us consider.. the power of the plutocracy in a democratic country. It has been unable to introduce Asiatic labour in California, except in early days in small numbers...' For some reason, he splits 'power over opinion' from creeds. It's worth noticing this is a Christian outlook, as many 'creeds' are not of a nature that can be separated from actions - Judaism, Islam, Confucianism interlock with their followers' habits.

X CREEDS AS SOURCES OF POWER/ XI THE BIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS/ XII POWERS AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT/ XIII ORGANIZATIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL
Russell considers 'The classic example of power through fanaticism is the rise of Islam' which added nothing to Arabic economic power or technique, but nevertheless 'won'. It's a typical example from history taken from these not very satisfactory chapters. Russell was trying to decide whether fanaticism is likely to succeed, and come up with the classic liberal denial of this possibility: 'the cases in which fanaticism has brought nothing but disaster are much more numerous than those in which it has brought even temporary success. It ruined Jerusalem in the time of Titus, and Constantinople in 1453 ... It brought about the decay of Spain.. through the expulsion of the Jews and Moors ... the most successful nations, throughout modern times, have been those least addicted to the persecution of heretics. ... it is necessary to find a compromise between two opposite truisms. The first.. is: men who agree in their beliefs can co-operate more whole-heartedly than men who disagree. The second is: men whose beliefs are in accordance with fact are more likely to succeed than men whose beliefs are mistaken. ..'

On organisations, Russell regards law and medicine purely as professions with internal rules, but is not aware of the possibilities of legal frauds and corruption and medical frauds. In Britain in the 1930s, they were unthinkable, or at least unspeakable.

XIV COMPETITION/ XV POWER AND MORAL CODES/ XVI POWER PHILOSOPHIES/ XVII THE ETHICS OF POWER
Four more chapters dealing with (roughly) peoples' attitudes to power. 'Competition for power is of two sorts: between organizations, and between individuals for leadership within an organization. Competition .. only arises when they have objects which are more or less similar, but incompatible'.

Much of this material is 1930s-specific: Spanish Civil War, Stalin, Italy, and so on. Russell always takes the conventional 'western' side, which sits uneasily with philosophical objectivity. Thus there's a section on Mussolini fire-bombing in Abyssinia - but not on the British bombing Iraq at the same time, 'cricket with blood'. His comments re Jews are completely conventional (and yet he had seen for himself Jewish groups taking over and inventing the USSR). Hitler and Stalin are regarded as worshipping Wotan and Dialectical Materialism (in this way Russell is spared the examination of their actual deeds). 'It would be a mistake to suppose that big business, under Fascism, controls the State more than it does in England, France, or America. On the contrary, in Italy and Germany the State has used the fear of Communism to make itself supreme over big business as over everything else.' He loathes the German philosopher Fichte, and yet many British 'thinkers' had essentially similar ideas.

XVIII THE TAMING OF POWER
Russell has four preconditions - political, economic, and propaganda (shouldn't one of these be force?); and the psychological condition of people.

Russell had some mathematical skill, so it surprises me he didn't to find try some method of predicting quarrels and perhaps countering them. If group A has power measures as 100 units, and B has 75, and if A fights B, the relative and absolute power balances are likely to change. There's scope for group C to benefit, too. The great advantage of history as a guide is that the events did actually happen - if it's reliable history. Nobody uses a theoretical model of human behaviour to guess.

Starts the mind bouncing, and has wide-ranging examples from all periods of history. But - like Adam Smith - there's plenty of scope for disagreement, and future work.

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