Every once in a while, there comes along an exception to G.W.F. Hegel’s dictum “The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.” While the observation that theory is able to express the essence of an age only after it has entered its decline generally holds true, there is such a thing as genuine philosophical foresight. A case in point is French political theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel’s classic book, On Power. First published in 1942, it can be read today as a helpful guide to some key aspects of contemporary politics. In particular, as we continue to cope with a steady succession of political irregularities in both the domestic and international spheres, it pays to reexamine the nature of power in the modern state. But studying power is not only helpful for understanding what has happened in the “advanced” democracies of the past several years. It may also help us to understand (and perhaps avoid) certain dangers latent in the structure of liberal democratic governments.
Jouvenel’s thesis is simple: the coercive force of the modern state has grown steadily since the Middle Ages. Contrary to the popular myth that we have emerged from the “Dark Ages” into a democratic age of ever-expanding autonomous freedom, Jouvenel argues that we are (as we have always been) dealing with what he calls “the Minotaur.” This is best described as an impersonal force at work in history, always acting through persons, but somehow transcending them. Also called simply “Power,” the Minotaur is more like a scientific law than a god or transcendent power, something to which we are beholden, yet which would not exist without us. For Jouvenel, the Minotaur is the root cause of the evils of the twentieth century that he witnessed in their darkest fury even as he wrote. Indeed, for Jouvenel, Hitler himself is only a “bad tenant” of this Power apparatus, ever increasing over the last millennium.
He begins the book with an examination of what he calls “the miracle of civil obedience”: what is it that drives people to obey civil authorities despite such widespread discontent? Force alone cannot explain why most everyone, broadly speaking, does what they are supposed to do day in and day out. Ultimately, for Jouvenel, the one unified explanatory principle of Power must be the divine will, but the various theoretical approaches have had great influence in Power’s growth, especially since the eighteenth century. Theories of sovereignty and the organic state, for example, have played important roles in shaping how we understand politics historically speaking. However, these are ultimately unsatisfying for Jouvenel: they cannot, on their own, explain the miracle of obedience.
In spinning out his own theory of Power, Jouvenel employs an idiosyncratic reading of history combined with an almost geometrically lapidary prose style. For him, political “science” is an articulation of more general truths reasoned from certain axioms with a healthy dose of historical examples. Power, for Jouvenel, is defined as “l’ensemble des éléments gouvernementaux,” the totality of governmental elements. Another of the axioms from which Jouvenel reasons is that the essence of Power is its capacity to command obedience. The extent to which Power can do this and the number of areas of life over which it exerts influence are important dimensions or axes along which Power can be measured. This allows him to treat his subject almost mathematically.
For Jouvenel, the one day every four years on which the citizens vote is a sad pittance indeed for the sacrifice of liberty to Power.
Yet this is most definitely not the whole picture. Indeed, Jouvenel’s reading of the past is as important as his quasi-mathematical method. The book includes a succession of fascinating anecdotes that Jouvenel employs to support his thesis. This deft combination of axiomatic theory and historical anecdote allows him to bring social, economic, political, and (crucially) spiritual analyses to bear on the problem of Power’s growth. In this way he avoids the errors of contemporary historiography that would rigidly separate these spheres into distinct analyses.
We now are prepared to examine Jouvenel’s theory of Power proper. He begins with an examination of the “magic” of Power that took root in the earliest human societies. According to Jouvenel, in its primitive form, Power resembled a “black mass” more than a deliberative council. Out of these misty beginnings, marked by fear of powers outside of man’s control, emerged the warrior culture in which individual clan leaders arose who dared to transgress the taboos of early tribal life. From the beginning, these chieftains aimed at forming alliances, but these were usually insecure and ephemeral. However, sooner or later, one chieftain was able to rise to prominence and form a lasting alliance around his person. Yet this more lasting alliance was never quite able to ignore the possibility of a threat from a group of adversarial chieftains. This primordial rivalry between the chieftains and the king heralds one of the defining features of Power through the rest of history. The interests of the chieftains constitute the res publica, the complex of interests of the “people,” broadly speaking, while the king becomes “the man who is above all and rules all,” Power in its earliest form. Under such a Power, the people become subjects “possessed in common” rather than persons “associated in common.”
Yet it is not a simple story of kings always dominating alliances of barons. If this were the case, we would not have the Magna Charta. There is a back-and-forth movement, wherein sometimes the barons are ascendant, while at other times the king predominates. This “dialectic of command” constitutes the history of Power: the interests of the chieftains, barons, or aristocracy assert their interests against the prerogative of the king and vice-versa. Power moves between “parasitism” and “symbiosis” as the aristocracy and the monarchy jostle to assert their rights. From this dialectic emerges true liberty: for Jouvenel, “liberty” means nothing if not the assertion of ancient rights and privileges owed to a person based on his or her position within the whole. It depends on law only in the most fundamental sense, in its ancient and perhaps unwritten form.
However, over time, the monarchy slowly starts winning out by becoming “egotistical,” that is, it joins itself to the causes of society as a whole, championing the downtrodden masses and thereby undercutting the aristocracy. By promising to address societal issues that concern “the people,” the king expands Power while undercutting the aristocracy. As Jouvenel never fails to remind his readers, this is precisely what happened in the French Revolution: what began as a noble proclamation of universal equality for all quickly devolved into a radical dismantling of the aristocratic practices of the ancien régime, resulting in a horrific breakdown of order.
Out of all this, however, Power emerged unscathed, indeed, greatly expanded: within 10 years, the French had imposed conscription on the public, a feat that would have had that most absolute of monarchs, Louis XIV, practically salivating with delight. In other words, precisely the moment when the cause of freedom is supposed to have taken its greatest leap forward is when Power reached new heights of dominance. Jouvenel sees a similar pattern in the British Interregnum as much as in the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No sooner did Charles I lose his head than Britain became effectively a military dictatorship (this drastically expanded Power eventually passed to Parliament alone), while the New Deal drastically accelerated Power’s growth in America.
As we gallop through history with Jouvenel, he shows how Power has been able to extend its reach into vastly greater areas of life: after legal equality is won, economic equality is demanded; after economic equality is won, social equality is demanded; in this struggle virtually no aspect of life is left untouched. This leads to what Jouvenel calls “totalitarian democracy” where the supposed sovereignty of the people results in a Power unlike any heretofore dreamt of in history. Here we broach another insight from Jouvenel’s analysis: Power that can right any type of injustice can inflict a host of similar injustices in its turn. As the organs of Power crusade against all and sundry forms of injustice, the liberty (in Jouvenel’s sense) of the various other interests falls by the wayside. In their place rises a meaningless form of egalitarianism, in which all are equally powerless before Leviathan. For Jouvenel, the one day every four years on which the citizens vote is a sad pittance indeed for the sacrifice of liberty to Power.
What is to be done? Jouvenel is not optimistic. One gets the sense that he is deeply worried that Hitler and Stalin are only a foretaste of yet more awful things to come. However, he does examine a few possible remedies: the rule of law, institutional checks and balances, and “folkways.” But by far the most compelling and perhaps the most heartening for Americans reading this book today comes in Jouvenel’s analysis of the late Roman republic. Rather than any large-scale property redistribution, the great populist reformer Tiberius Gracchus (assassinated by a group of Senators in 133 B.C.) aimed at creating a large class of middling landholders. That is, he tried to create a new and interested middle class, which for Jouvenel hits at the “hidden secret” of liberty. In other words, it is in the clash of genuinely held interests within society at large that true liberty can be preserved. A large middle class engaged in protecting its interests against encroachments from other quarters of society is essential. The lower classes, trade unions, the bureaucracy, the executive, the aristocracy can all take part in this dialogue, but the important thing is that something like a give-and-take negotiation between these elements takes place, that none of them ever controls Power unquestioned. The contrast with “interest group democracy,” or a “politics of difference,” will be obvious to his readers. Jouvenel means that large and internally diverse segments of society must consciously, constantly, and (to a greater or lesser extent) effectively work at defending their interests throughout all levels of government and civil society. Yet they still retain a sense of the whole, despite the back and forth nature (not to say adversarial) nature of the negotiation. The dialogue between large, engaged segments of society is what matters. It is our best hope to check Power and preserve liberty.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of Jouvenel’s analysis is that he notices but doesn’t emphasize how, in whatever stunted and unsatisfying manner, American politics is marked by just such a back and forth between broad-based “interests.” Of course, this is always under threat, and it is often well-nigh impossible to tell whether this or that group really represents a broad segment of society as Jouvenel demands, but we do have our moments where such a dialogue or negotiation is taking place. Perhaps a few examples might show that, in an admittedly qualified way, America is different.
For example, consider how differently we engaged with the Covid epidemic here in the United States than in many European countries. Despite a smattering of attempts by the government to snuff out certain scientifically plausible viewpoints, to exclude those who refused the vaccine, or to silence parents worried about the pernicious effects of school closings on their children’s well-being, there was meaningful resistance to such policies, a resistance found in other eras of American politics, like Vietnam.
We might forgive Jouvenel for writing before such events as the pandemic or, if you like, the revolt against the Vietnam-era draft. But he largely bypasses important ways in which America might be different than Europe. He rightly points out the unique role our Court system plays in our constitutional order but fails to analyze how it contradicts his theory of the inexorable growth of Power. Further, he does not analyze the ways in which the unique constitutional and cultural resources (“folkways”) of the United States might be brought to bear in the struggle against Power.
Perhaps Jouvenel would retort that these are insignificant green shoots poking out of what, taken as a whole, is more like a desolate wasteland. He might remind us to ponder what resources Power will levy against those who might happen to disagree with the dominant orthodoxy on, say, climate change. But, at least for now, Americans of all political stripes ought to be thankful for our protections against an overweening state: the unique institutional role of the Senate, the filibuster, judicial review, and the legal limitations on Executive Orders, to name just a few. To be sure, all these institutions are under fire by legions of politicians from both parties, but there is little doubt that they have curbed at least a few of the worst excesses of Power in this country.
But this slight shortcoming doesn’t come close to overshadowing the immense value of Jouvenel’s book. Despite having been written over 70 years ago, it remains thought-provoking. But more than that, it provides a step back from the noise of day-to-day politics, reminding all of us that in our post-totalitarian age, whether or not my favored policy wins out is never the most important factor. What matters is that there is a true conversation of interests happening, where no group’s grasp of Power is ever secure enough to dominate the whole. Only out of some such “dialogue” can any semblance of true liberty remain.
