Political Power

Neumann's article on political power presents itself as a mere survey of approaches to the topic “for younger students,” rather than a new theory, although the conjunction with the ambitious statement on freedom in the sequel calls this modest description into question. The character of the enterprise is better seen through Neumann's initial footnote, attached to the curt statement, “Political power is an elusive concept.” Neumann quotes a passage from Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning. Bacon built on a passage from Virgil to identify power with the force that “is diffused throughout the living parts of nature [and] activates the whole mass.” The Bacon passage goes on to decry the futility of rebellion: the ruled need/ cannot know about government, but the rulers must know everything about the governed, Bacon maintains. As will be seen later, Neumann counters this inference from the inescapability of power with a different calculus, which is not, however, offered as a refutation.

In his development of the concept of political power, Neumann surprisingly asserts that it “embraces […] control over nature [as well as] control over man,” although he quickly adds that the former is a “mere intellectual power,” serving productivity through knowledge of nature's laws, as well obedience to them, drawing once again on Bacon. Unlike this “powerless power,” political power in the narrower sense is “control over men.” In a more detailed characterization, however, Neumann explains, “Political power is social power focused on the state. It involves control of other men for the purpose of influencing the behavior of the state, its legislative, administrative and social activities.” And such control, according to Neumann, differs fundamentally from power over nature inasmuch as both parties in political power relations have the capacity for voluntary actions, even if the capacity for rational choice, as is normally the case, is not activated in the one subjected to control:

Neumann then expands on this formula to include relations of “simple violence, ultimately to liquidation” among the modalities of the power interplay. The somewhat curious notion that control can be secured through liquidation is made less mysterious as Neumann develops his analysis.