Patrick Hayden
In conventional discourse, the term “power” is often used with negative connotations. Only the ambitious, the devious, the corrupt, or the wholly self-interested, it is thought, concern themselves with power, which is perceived as a means to attain status and command the weak. Reversing this received wisdom, Hannah Arendt locates the phenomenon of power at the heart of her attempt to reinvigorate politics as “sheer human togetherness.”1 Arendt’s analysis of power counters three widely held views. First, she argues against the view that power is a product of individual wills. Herein, power is seen as the ability of one person to impose his or her will on another. The chief exponent of this view is Max Weber, who defines power as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance.”2 The Weberian model is expressed as “power over”: A has power over B to the extent to which A can get B to do something which B would not otherwise do. Second, Arendt also argues against the notion that power is a “thing” that one can possess. This understanding, developed most notably by C. Wright Mills, portrays power as a given capacity or substance sought and held by agents, lending it the character of a known property that is competed for and possessed in the same way as material objects.3 Within this vision, power is conceived as a zero-sum: the more that one person gets, the less another can have. Finally, Arendt opposes the Marxist view that power is a manifestation of socioeconomic class antagonisms. In this vein, power is located in the structure of asymmetrical economic relations and embodied in the struggle to control the instruments of state and modes of production. Here, the practice of power entails the ability of one class to advance and reproduce its own interests, thereby securing class domination.4
What, then, are the features of power as envisaged by Arendt? Power, Arendt argues, corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is “in power” we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.5
Arendt’s approach here is more phenomenologically descriptive than definitional, tracing how power exists through its contingent appearance rather than positing its essential nature. Her consideration of power pivots around four inextricably connected elements: first, power is a relational activity within the condition of plurality rather than a singular possession or structure; second, power is irreducibly collective and exists only in and through the fabric of joint interactions; third, power is an immanent potential that never materializes completely insofar as it arises when people come together as a group and “vanishes the moment they disperse”;6 and fourth, the aspect of power understood as empowerment or the generalized “power to” make something happen on behalf of others is established by the support of that group and disestablished when support is withdrawn.
In the space of politics, these interlinked elements constitute two broad modalities of power. On the one hand, power is generated and transmitted through the spontaneous process of people coming together at specific moments to pursue specific shared interests; this constituent enactment of power characterizes a performative modality of initiating something new that Arendt identifies as “living power.”7 On the other hand, power is itself vested in concrete political orders that play a role in constituting the bodies and rules through which public sites for politics are built and preserved. Arendt refers to this historically constituted modality as “organized and institutionalized power” that composes a durable world.8 For Arendt, “living” and “organized” power are always intertwined within a lasting political community. This point leads us to the normative dimension of Arendt’s analysis. For Arendt, power is not merely “action in concert”; it is collective action that establishes and sustains a free, equitable, and inclusive political community through participatory processes. The collective action that establishes the political community as a founding event thereby initiates the beginning of the public space through which agreement and consent, as well as disagreement and dissent, can make their appearance. For this reason Arendt contends that power and the public realm must be regarded as concomitant, insofar as the public realm is the space where it is possible for interaction to occur on the basis of the free exchange of diverse beliefs and opinions between individuals as equal political actors. Indeed, it is the initial foundational act of creating the public realm—in which people freely act with one another as equals—that gives power its legitimacy.9 Arendt suggests that power does not require justification, since the very act of bringing a political community into existence confirms the consent of a group of people. Yet it does require legitimation, and for this reason the institutions, laws, and policies of the political order must demonstrate continuously their fidelity to the practice of political freedom at the heart of popular empowerment.
Arendt believes, then, that power gives rise to the principles of free participation, dialogue, and debate among political equals according to which authority is to be recognized and legitimately exercised. While power appears with the event of a new beginning or founding of community initiated through collective action, without being institutionalized in the law that the community gives itself, power cannot guarantee that the free political order will endure. According to Arendt, the role of political authority is to provide the stability and order needed for the continued existence of a public realm within which people meet to speak and act together. For Arendt, the authority of government is vested in persons or offices by those “who are asked to obey.”10 In other words, authority has a political, rather than a natural or divine source, insofar as it rests upon the collective endeavor of a people to perpetuate their founding principles and institutions through time. While the key trait of political authority is the recognition of the right to govern, it is also the case that this recognition is freely given by the members of the polity as a sign of “respect for the person or office.”11 Legitimate authority thus helps to maintain the public space within which the exchange of differing political opinions and views can continue to flourish. Without the legitimacy bestowed by the normative regard of the people, authority and political continuity cannot be sustained. Consequently, respect for authority resides in the power that underlies it—making this respect quite different from obedience that is compelled or coerced—and legitimate authority helps to renew and preserve power in an enduring body politic. Moreover, as envisioned by Arendt, legitimate authority can be considered as the stabilization of power and action in the (constitutional) rule of law. According to this formulation, “the rule of law, resting on the power of the people, would put an end to the rule of man over man.”12 Here Arendt’s definition of an “antiauthoritarian” conception of authority is expressed in the idea of “no-rule” (isonomy), where all are equal before the law such that there is no “division between ruler and ruled” and the “principle of rulership,” of domination and submission, is precluded.13 Importantly, if a sufficient degree of public support is lost or respect erodes due to abuses of authority, then the transient vitality of “living” power is redirected from consent into dissent, as happens in times of civil disobedience and revolution.14
Two critical implications arise from Arendt’s depiction of power. First, she asserts, power and violence are distinct. As we have seen, Arendt believes that power is created by individuals coming together to establish a shared public realm dedicated to free debate and interaction among political equals. Power is actualized in the relationship of speaking and acting with other people, and is sustained through continuing engagement with and inclusion of others in their plurality. Violence, however, is precisely what the Weberian tradition defined as power “over,” that is, it consists in imposing one’s “own will against the resistance of others.” Arendt claims that one of the great errors of modern political thought is the belief that violence is the essence of political power, while the normative and empirical distinction between the two has become lost. In the Weberian paradigm, for example, state power exists as a legitimate form of violence: while the state functions to shield individuals from nonstate sources of violence, the state itself is not exempt since the capacity for violence must remain at its disposal.15 In the Weberian logic, power is conceived as a hegemonic relation of command-obedience, and political authority is understood simply as domination, that is, “the power of man over man” or the capacity to compel others to submit.16 On this conception, the power of the state compels submission to its rule because of the fear aroused by threat of direct or indirect sanctions. Arendt wryly points out though that if “the essence of power is the effectiveness of command, then there is no greater power than that which grows out of the barrel of a gun.”17 The conflation of violence with power assumes not only that violence is an extreme form of power but also that political power is, in the end, based strictly on the capacity for violence. In the political realm, violence often is viewed as an effective means for the realization of desired objectives, through the use of instruments for the purpose of physically dominating, violating, or killing individuals or groups.18 Instrumentality is essential to violence; weapons technology, for instance, allows one or a few individuals to increase their force exponentially and use it against others. Yet just as domination depends upon instruments that make violence against others possible, at the same time, it diminishes reliance upon support provided by inclusive and equal forms of voluntary collective action. The net result is that violence divides and destroys the ability of people to freely constitute their manner of living together through political participation as an end in itself. Human togetherness and public freedom are lost where violence reigns; it is thus decidedly anti-political. Arendt concludes, in short, that power and violence “are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.”19
A second implication to note about violence in Arendt’s analysis is a seeming contradiction. While Arendt believes that power and violence are opposites, she does not believe that all power is positive or that all violence is negative. On the one hand, Arendt acknowledges that power relationships can assume the form of “power over” that implies domination and coercion. In a democratic state without a constitution, for instance, the hegemonic power of a majority may pose a threat to the rights and dissenting opinions of minority groups.20 Similarly, totalitarian and repressive regimes always depend on at least some degree of support from segments of the population, since the repressive power wielded by such systems would never materialize without a “power basis,” no matter h ow restricted.21 On the other hand, the fact that repressive regimes routinely resort to violence as a means to achieve their political goals indicates their relative powerlessness. If they enjoy little public support and violence is needed to reinforce compliance, then their assertion of authority is in fact undermined. Such regimes may be dismantled if enough people are willing to act in concert, first in popular revolt against repressive power and then in joint creation of a free political realm. In this respect Arendt opens the door, if only slightly, to the entry of violence in transformative resistance. Although Arendt’s primary emphasis is on the living power of nonviolent civil disobedience, she nonetheless concedes that resorting to violence may be the “only appropriate remedy” when a defenseless individual or group is confronted with destruction.22 Arendt, then, is no pacifist, since violence may be justifiable in certain circumstances. Yet because its consequences can never be reliably predicted and its devastating effects can easily spiral out of control, she insists that violence can be neither glorified nor legitimized in advance. What seems to be a contradiction, therefore, is really a paradox: power is imbricated in violence, and violence marks the limits of power.
In sum, the experience of power at the heart of Arendt’s understanding of politics not only presupposes the conditions of freedom and plurality but can also foster freedom and plurality within the framework of an inclusive political community. Politics, she argues, consists of open-ended interactions between distinct people, the discussion and questioning of different viewpoints and opinions that empowers interlocutors as political equals. The more freedom and plurality there is, the more power that can be potentially actualized when acting in concert. Yet she makes clear that participatory politics is a fragile activity; violence annuls action and speech as the bases of free political interaction, just as it banishes plurality from the political space of appearance. Arendt’s point is that power is kept alive in the boundless potential for acting together rather than in having power over another. For this reason, political power both enables ways of speaking and acting together that enhance freedom and plurality, and protects freedom and plurality from the threat of erasure by violence.
Notes
1 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 180.
2 Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 53.
3 C. W. Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956).
4 Jeffrey C. Isaac, Power and Marxist Theory: A Realist Approach (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).
5 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1970), 44.
6 Arendt, Human Condition, 200.
7 Arendt, On Violence, 41.
8 Ibid., 51.
9 Ibid., 52.
10 Ibid., 45.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 40.
13 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), 30.
14 Hannah Arendt, “Civil Disobedience,” in Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1972), 49–102.
15 Max Weber, Political Writings, ed. P. Lassman and R. Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 311.
16 Arendt, On Violence, 37.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 46.
19 Ibid., 56.
20 Ibid., 42.
21 Ibid., 50.
22 Ibid., 63.