Power is the ability to make people do what you want.
Where does power come from?
As far as I can tell, the formalists believe that power comes from military force, and is often unitary.
I believe that power now comes primarily from economics, significantly from persuasion/moral issues, and the idea of unitary power doesn't pass the laugh test, nor has it ever, in any society, for all of recorded history.
In slave times (Athens, Rome, or US 1850), some slaves were given more power/authority by their masters than most free men. Why? Because the slaves had a scarce skill that the master needed more than the slave needed anything the master could give/withhold.
If you have a notion that enough military force can get you what you want...you're talking about a South American dictator, or Stalin....both of whom were simply balancing the other dozen power interests against one another more effectively than anyone else was. Power is an economic balance...or more accurately a MORAL balance.
Tiananmen Square happened only after the Chinese Central authorities replaced the troops with folks from the provinces who were thoroughly indoctrinated with a central-command approved vision of reality. They knew that they couldn't rely (Chinese government is strong?) on the local troops to fire on their compatriots.
The colonial times succeeded in their order-keeping brutalities because they were able to assign sub- to semi- human status to their subjects. Until you succeed in assigning sub-human status to the objector, the central authority loses morally.
Heck, $10 (I'm poor) says that in 15 years (I like the year 2025), the ability of the Chinese government to force their wishes will have fallen substantially. The protesters would win Tiananmen Square, or its 2025 equivalent. And it will have fallen because as the people have become richer, the power of the central government (comparatively) has waned...and the balance of power, entirely economic, and entirely outside the control of the planners, has shifted.
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Thomas Jefferson said (to John Adams): "For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."
You need look no further for the source of power.
Power exists because peoples' abilities are different.
I'm about 80% of the way there with you...except for two items.
The market sets what virtues and talents are rewarded. And power as it's understood now exists because of agriculture/fixed property. There was nothing that even resembled the modern notion of power in a forager tribe.
That's an absurd statement.
Tribes kicked out members, for example.
At a more basic level, tribes had to decide where to go, decide whether to fight over resources, decide how to allocate resources, etc. All of these decisions had to be made.
What is your theory of how these decisions were made?
It's pretty obvious that certain members had more influence on these decisions than others.
How would group decision-making even be possible if no one had power (assuming the decisions were conscious)? There would have be some collective mind - to which everyone had equal input - making decisions.
I am sure that someone had more influence on some decisions than others, but ... after Robin Hanson's several months of study on the topic, I'm not so convinced.
Here's Chris Boehm, from one post of Robin's:
As members of bands or tribes, humans can be quite egalitarian … Individuals who otherwise would be subordinated are clever enough to form a large and united political coalition. … Because the united subordinates are constantly putting down the more assertive alpha types in their midst, egalitarianism is in effect a bizarre type of political hierarchy: the weak combine forces to actively dominate the strong. … They must continue such domination if they are to remain autonomous and equal, and prehistorically we shall see that they appear to have done so very predictably as long as hunting bands remained mobile. … The egalitarian political lifestyle of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers could have profoundly affected our evolving social nature.
Here's Robin somewhat later:
It seems that our distant forager ancestors beat wives but not kids, and weren’t remotely monogamous. They had huge inequalities in status and sex, but low material inequality, due to generous sharing and few durable goods. They had little overt dominance or positions of power, and valued trust and honesty greatly. Justice was personal, with personal violence and suicide rare.
Leaders are unnatural in humankind. ..and it is only property and agriculture (invented recently in our species history) that have led to this screwed up situation where leaders even really exist.
Of course, as is often the case, I may be misreading your positoin?
Read the first excerpt from Boehm that you quoted again.
What does that sound like if not a political system? Key words include: "subordinated" "political coalition" "putting down" "political hierarchy" "combine forces" "domination" "autonomous and equal"
Power in this system is not destroyed it is merely balanced - i.e. it's a human political system. This proves my point. An egalitarian system is not - in this case or in any other case - caused by an elimination of power.
It seems I misunderstand, then. I seek a system that is in some ways much like that of the foragers, where anyone who presumes to command others is summarily shot, preferably for witchcraft. I prefer power devolved, as with foragers to the level of the individual. I had (mis-?) understood you to say that it wasn't possible for power to inhere in the individual, but rather only in a power structure like government.
"where anyone who presumes to command others is summarily shot"
You might not choose to call the body that does the shooting "government" and to pretend that such a body does not operate under a (unwritten) "constitution" by I fail to see much of a difference.
Foseti,
As I understand it, it's mostly the whole tribe, collectively that has the power...The whole tribe is the legislative body for itself...it is its own government?
I'd call that stretching the definition of "government" to the breaking point. I'd call it a bunch of individuals all in a community, where no one person gets to tell anyone else what to do...though the weight of public opinion falls heavily and often fatally on those who try.
But thank you. I am still struggling to understand the formalist position...and I always appreciate the help.
he whole tribe is the legislative body for itself...it is its own government? ... I'd call that stretching the definition of "government" to the breaking point.
You're just reinventing the word "direct democracy" or more derogatively, Ochlocracy, a well known form of government since Greek days.
In reality - there is the Iron Law of Oligarchy to contend with. Believers in "rule by the people" fall pretty to the myth of uniform power distribution. In your scheme, the tribe/mob as a whole exercises power. But invariably, all members will not have equal power. Some will be leaders, either via building friendships and alliances, or by having a silver tongue, by birth, or by prowess at fighting. In a small tribe that leadership may be tacit or informal. In a larger group, that leadership is better formalized, because informal rule usually leads to violence.
The idea that power is unitary is actually that, for any decision, there is one person upon whom the decision rests.
This person is, in democratic times, either an opinion leader or a tie-breaking vote.
For example, my wallet. While the decision of what to do with my wallet and the contents thereof nominally rests with me, there's a whole hierarchy of people who could override my decisions...and, at some point, there is someone whose decision cannot be overridden.
I suspect this person is the person to whom the majority of Supreme Court justices listen. They basically have arbitrary control of my wallet. (Although it is not personally profitable for them to focus on this detail.) Alternatively, it's some permanent staffer in the currently dominant bureaucracy.
Yes, in practice, that person will have some limits on the decisions they can make.
There's a second part to the unitary power idea.
The military, or rather the commander of the largest coherent division thereof, has the physical power to override all other decisions in their territory.
Whether they will in fact choose to do so is not relevant at this level.
(But essentially, every extra-military decision can only be made because that commander decided, when they got up this morning, not to take it from you.)
(The formalist favours military control because the military has control whether they realize it or exercise it or not. Eventually, some military will wake up and realize they have this power, and it would be nice to a formal system for handling it.)
Indeed, the person with ultimate power over my wallet may not be able to pull off things like confiscating my wallet so they can set it on fire and then brand someone on television, and certainly can't pull that off without major sacrifices.
But the very fact I have to go that far to be relatively sure they can't, means that it's not likely any actual goal they have for my wallet is going to be limited. (They also can't start nuclear fusion in my wallet.) They have reasonably arbitrary control of my wallet.
The formalist simply wishes to A: formalize and B: uncomplicate these power hierarchies, because if one person has power over my wallet, and another person has power over the contents, there is uncertainty over what will happen with my wallet, hence conflict, hence violence.
Right now, the power is almost entirely informal. While the arbitrary control is there, the controller would have to lie to several people to exercise the control. It's just that these lies are nigh-riskless. (Ref: Chicago police force.)
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