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Notes on the Process of Acquiring Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Barrington Moore Jr
Barrington Moore Jr
Affiliation:
Harvard's Russian Research Center
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Extract

HUNDREDS of books have been written to describe the ways in which particular groups or individuals have come to exercise domination over large numbers of their fellows. Despite this tempting wealth of factual material, or perhaps because of it, modern social science has very largely avoided any attempt to discover and explain, within a strictly empirical framework, what recurring patterns there may be in these myriads of events. The following pages represent a very modest effort in this direction.

If there is indeed a distinguishable process of acquiring power, or, as is more likely, a series of such processes, the attempt to distinguish them must be formulated in terms of a time sequence. It should indicate the conditions in the society as a whole that lead to a concentration of power. In addition, it should indicate the sequence of stages through which the concentration takes place.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , October 1955 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1955

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References

1 The support of the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, in this inquiry, is acknowledged with pleasure. My friends and colleagues, Professors Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Eckstein, Robert L. Wolff, and David M. Schneider, have given me the benefit of critical comments.

2 See Kaplan, A. D. H., Big Business in a Competitive System, Washington, D.C., 1954, pp. 234–41.Google Scholar

3 Bodde, Derk, China's First Unifier, Leiden, 1938, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

4 Some sociologists might object to this formulation, since they regard a built-in set of expectations as an essential part of any institution. Unless we know what to expect from other people, there can be no regularity and predictability in human behavior, they assert. Granting this point, I still think that people may change their ideas before they change the structure of their institutions, as well of course as after-ward. Thus there were many changes in ideas and expectations before the collapse of the ancien régime in the French and Russian revolutions. Hence the two are separable, not only theoretically but also empirically.

5 Toynbee, Arnold J., A Study of History, abridgment by Somervell, D. C., New York, 1947, pp. 190, 336–49.Google Scholar

6 Sorokin, P. A., Social and Cultural Dynamics, New York, 1937, III, pp. 196–208.Google Scholar See also pp. 185–96 for a more general analysis of political centralization.

7 Hintze, Hedwig, Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und in der Revolution, Berlin and Leipzig, 1928.Google Scholar

8 Beloff, Max, The Age of Absolutism, 1660–1815, London, 1954, pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

9 See Rawlinson, H. G., India: A Short Cultural History, 4th ed., London, 1952Google Scholar, Chap. XIX.

10 See Adorno, T. W., et al., The Authoritarian Personality, New York, 1950, pp. 675–85.Google Scholar

11 For these developments in Christianity, I have found the following sources to be the most helpful: Heiler, F., Altkirchliche Autonomie und Päpstlicher Zentralismus, Munich, 1941Google Scholar; Lea, Henry C., Studies in Church History, Philadelphia, 1869Google Scholar; Haller, J., Das Papsttum: Idee und Wirklichkeit, 2nd revised ed., Basle, 1951–1953, 5 vols.Google Scholar All references to Haller, Das Papsttum, are to this edition unless otherwise noted.

12 Lea, , Studies in Church History, pp. 232–35.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 240–43.

14 At the height of papal authority, its arbitrary nature reached the point where the “popes sometimes, in virtue of their supreme authority, granted as a special privilege the right not to be excommunicated without cause” (ibid., p. 403).

15 The entry under “forgeries” in the index of Lea, Studies in Church History, oc cupies a full column of fine print. Concerning the most famous of these, known as the Pseudo-Isidore, which greatly strengthened the power of the Pope, Haller remarks that they were “the biggest, the boldest, and the most fateful in their consequences, of any forgeries that have ever been attempted.” See his discussion in Das Papsttum, 11, pp. 54–62. It seems likely that the development of printing may have made this type of deception less easy to perpetrate on a wide scale. On the other hand, it aids in the rapid and widespread dissemination of lies about contemporary events.

16 I take the distinction between the internal and the external environment from Homans, George C., The Human Group, New York, 1950, p. 90.Google Scholar

17 Haller, , Das Papsttum, I, pp. 47–136Google Scholar; Lea, , Studies in Church History, pp. 104–53.Google Scholar

18 Cf. Hintze, Otto, “Wesen und Verbreitung des Feudalismus,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1929), p. 323.Google Scholar As the author puts it, feudalism is characterized by a division of state power according to its objects, that is, land and people, instead of according to its functions, as in the modern state.

19 Such behavior was characteristic of the Papacy at the height of its power. See Haller, , Das Papsttum, 1st ed., Stuttgart, 1939, II2, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

20 Lea, Henry C., History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, 3rd ed., New York, 1907, 2 vols.Google Scholar

21 This point is argued much more fully and on the basis of a concrete case in my Terror and Progress USSR, Cambridge, Mass., 1954.

22 The most persuasive exposition known to me is Marcuse, Herbert, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, New York, 1941.Google Scholar

23 Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth, New York, 1910, pp. 325–28.Google Scholar

24 See particularly Hilferding, Rudolf, Finanzkapital, Vienna, 1910Google Scholar, Part v, for a penetrating analysis of the factors behind the transition from liberal society to a Structure resembling modern totalitarianism.