Further thoughts on the balance of power

The concepts need further definition, Economic and Consciousness particularly.

Economic power is the capacity of a social actor to provide the goods it requires. At it’s most basic, capitalism relies on the economic weakness of the non-capitalists; the bulk of the population can only get the goods they need through wage labour. This is the basic principle behind the offensive strategy of the lock-out (on the part of the capitalists) and the union strike fund. If one’s opponent is starving, then it is easy to dictate to them the terms by which they can get food.

Other goods are also crucial, of course. The Spanish situation indicated that economic power is the cornerstone of all other power. With the gold reserves of the Madrid bank, the Spanish revolutionaries could have purchased arms rather than relying on the USSR, which had a hostile agenda.

But economic power is not simply money, it is the capacity to supply oneself with necessary goods. If a revolution was successful in one state, but did not spread, it would need to protect itself from imperialist counter-revolution, i.e., it would need to arm itself. But if this hypothetical country does not have the productive capacity to produce arms, it must buy them, which means it relies on the willingness of corporations to sell and of other nations to allow their corporations to sell. So this is obviously a major vulnerability.

In a less dramatic example, any mass movement in contemporary Western society would have the priority of developing its political and moral power. It would need, respectively, the capacity to make its own decisions, to act as a unified body and it would need moral power, it would only be effective if its individual members saw themselves as part of it, united by the movement. Political power requires a political infrastructure; meeting halls, communications, etc. Moral power has similar requirements; media, social gatherings and so on. All of these rely on real goods and services. A labour movement would need to acquire these both through purchasing power and voluntary labour. Either way, this is economic power, it is the capacity of the movement to provide for itself the goods and services it needs to survive and develop.

Moral power is similarly crucial and similarly underlies the other types of power. We can think about moral power as legitimacy and support. The moral power of a movement is its capacity to call on the support of its members. If people see unions as alien they are unlikely to do the needed; attend meetings, respect picket-lines, protect demonstrations from attack.

So what we see is that each type of power connects to others. We should use this analysis not only for the power blocs that we support, but also those we oppose. That way we can develop strategies for furthering the power of popular movements and disrupting and reducing the power of reactionary forces.

The Balance of Power - Arenas of Social Control

This is an attempt to develop an analytic toolbox for assessing the balance of social power, whether contemporary or historical. It is developed for the purpose of revolutionary strategy, i.e., assessing and identifying the relative strengths and weaknesses of progressive and reactionary actors. It should be tested for its utility with reference to historical struggles.

The Four Arenas of Social Power

1. Military/physical force

2. Political/decision-making

3. Economic/production

4. Consciousness/moral

Trying out the Assessment - Haitian Lavalas
(I need to do more research on this movement, this is an sketch to indicate the potential of the model.)

Military
Haitian Lavalas movement had massively inferior military strength than the dictatorship, the bourgeoisie and their allies. Some use of force was employed for movement self-defence (necklacing, most infamously), but these became less favoured. Once in political power, Aristide was able to disband the army and decrease the disadvantage somewhat. This was undermined by the reactionary infiltration of the Haiti National Police, the under-resourcing of the HNP, the imperial support for brutal raids along the Dominican border, etc.

Economic
The movement had inferior economic strength due to the parlous state of the Haitian economy and high unemployment. It achieved some strength in factory and peasant organisation, but not much. Dependence on international aid meant that donor nations could exert political power through this economic weakness.(Not sure about this, mainly a guess)

Political
The movement used its massive support to gain political power through the various elections. This was hampered by the economic power of the bourgeoisie and the US (through its agencies) and the threat of military force, which disrupted the capacity for taking effective political action.

Consciousness
The movement had massive legitimacy and support in popular consciousness. This was transformed into political power through the Lavalas parties (OPL & then Fanmi Lavalas). Consciousness was affected through popular radio stations, sermons, etc., which spread the Lavalas message. The bourgeoisie made little attempt until the coup (and especially the 2000 coup) to fight for support among the people.

Conclusion
Ultimately the movement made a pragmatic decision to limit fighting where it was massively inferior and try to increase its strength through political action. This latter was insufficient, as the opposition were quite happy to disrupt the democratic process and maintain military dominance through other means. Both economic and military weakness are a legacy of imperialism, and cannot be solved easily.

Machiavelli

For this reason a republic has a fuller life and enjoys good fortune for a longer time than a principality, since it is better able to adapt itself to diverse circumstances owing to the diversity found among its citiens than a prince can do. Fo a man who is accustomed to act in one particular way, never changes, as we have said. Hence when times change and no longer suit his ways, he is inevitably ruined.

Permanent Bases of Power

We always maintain that the core bases of working class power are the workplace and the community. But we should be careful not to fall into the positivist mindset where we see the revitalisation of organisation in these bases as being restricted to them and their existing organisations. We should bear in mind that movements that restore energy to these bases may arise externally to them, i.e. they may arise as external social movements whcih then invest themselves in the core bases. This could be particularly relevant in the confluence of anenvironmentalist agenda with community-based organisation, as the latter would provide the former with a set of specific sites of struggle, foundation of the agenda in daily life etc.

Strategically, our emphasis in social movements should, where possible, be to aim for their directed engagement in such core and permanent bases.

What is important about these two core sectors is:
1) They take up most of the average person's daily environment.
2) These environments are widely shared among the class - everyone has a workplace and a neighbourhood, not everyone has a local environmental group or whatever.
3) As they involve inequal allocation of power, they are necessarily a site of class conflict.
4) The fact that they have this power, means that they are potentially a site of class power.
This, especially 4) indicates that social movements need to orient themselves to such bases in order to be sustainable. Much of the problems of activism, after all, seem to stem from the lack of any viable base of power.

Warwick Fox's Systems Ethics

Just reading a bit of Warwick Fox in the library today. He's an Australian philosopher who comes froma deep ecology background but has apparently since distanced himself from that sorta thing. Either way, his book, A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature and the Built Environment aims to develop a General Theory of Everything for ethics. From the brief bit I had time to read, tt's an interesting approach, not that nicely written, but quite powerful.

The basis is his distinction between three different types of relationships - fixed cohesion, responsive cohesion and discohesion.

Responsive Cohesion

“the relational quality of responsive cohesion may be said to exist whenever the elements or salient features of things can be things can be characterised in terms of interacting (either literally or metaphorically) with each other in mutually modifying ways such that these mutually modifying interactions serve (at least functionally if not intentionally) to generate or maintain an overall cohesive order” pp72

“responsive cohesion is cohesion that arises through the mutual responsiveness of the elements or salient features of the matter under consideration.” pp72

So this sort of mutually modifying relationship, to me, indicates that determining power is diffused among the various elements of the system (there is no necessary equality of power though), but maintains their interdependence. This is in contrast to fixed cohesion and discohesion.

“fixed forms of cohesion can also shatter or collapse into their apparent opposite, that is, discohesion. We see this in the domain of politics, for example, every time a dictatorship is overcome by a revolutionary movement that initiates a period of chaos and lawlessness. In fact we see it when any rigid structure is overwhelmed by internal or externally imposed forces and shatters into pieces. Thus, rather than representing any kind of “move in the direction of” discohestion, this kind of change from fixed cohesion to discohesion is typically abrupt...Equally, order can forcefully be imposed upon a chaotic situation, as, say, when a new dictatorial regime emerges from civil chaos and imposes a strict order overnight.” pp82-3

So fixed cohesion distributes power unequally, so that a strong hierarchy emerges, whereas discohesion disperses it, but via independence, creating a situation of anarchy.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea, but I think the divisions are mainly only useful conceptually. In reality, especially in social systems, there is always a form of responsive cohesion, but the distributions and methods of mediating this response differ. The state, though it would appear to be a classic fixed cohesion, exhibits responsive cohesion, both internally and externally. It must respond to the pressure of interest groups in order to maintain its legitimacy, although it does, on occasion, ignore these groups altogether (a la Balir in the Iraq War).In fact, the limited responsive cohesion of the state could be seen as the defining principle of its hegemony.

Self-Organisation and Emergence

Been looking over a few articles on modularity this evening (and being distracted from my work) and found one article with two particularly interesting definitions. I'll finish the article tomorrow and maybe write up some more. For now, here are my thoughts on the definitions.

Emergence

Emergence is a classical concept in systems theory, where it denotes the principle that the global properties defining higher order systems or "wholes" (e.g. boundaries, organization, control, ...) can in general not be reduced to the properties of the lower order subsystems or "parts". Such irreducible properties are called emergent.

Self-Organisation

Self-organization may be defined as a spontaneous (i.e. not steered or directed by an external system) process of organization, i.e. of the development of an organized structure. The spontaneous creation of an "organized whole" out of a "disordered" collection of interacting parts, as witnessed in self-organizing systems in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology ..., is a basic part of dynamical emergence.

So, now I'm thinking of writing a sci-fi novel where the revolution is referred to as The Emergence. It's even better than the Singularity!

But anyway, the second definition is particularly useful. If we see the capitalist system as a whole, and do not conceptualise the working class as a discrete, identifiable (i.e. ordered) element within this system, we can see the development of a socialist society as a process of organisation.

In this process, the working class moves from a "'disordered' collection of interacting parts" which share basic characteristics, to a highly ordered group. This group then engulfs particular elements of the system as a whole while discarding or destroying others, so that we can say that a new society emerges.

The role of the revolutionary organisation then becomes guiding this process of self-organisation in such a way that the new society can emerge.

Elements of a thriller

The thriller has a broadened scope to its forebear, the detective novel. This means more elements in play; a more complex system, therefore requiring more mental juggling on the part of the reader. This can be made easier by maintaining strict sequentiality in narrative lines, so that characters' actions (and illustrative description, side-story etc.) follow the plot trajectory as closely as possible. In this way, each action automatically references the last, and the integrity of the overall sequences can be maintained in the reader's mind.