A Broader, Subtler View of Power.

• Author: Ryn, Claes G.
• Position: Dialogue on Power - Response to article by Paul Gottfried in this issue, p. 96

Professor Gottfried's response (1) to my article on power is useful in that it clarifies his position and confirms the philosophical differences between us. I am glad to know that he does not think that I have distorted his position. What is more disappointing is that I seem not to have gotten the gist of my own argument about power across, though a certain evasiveness on Professor Gottfried's part makes me wonder if he has grasped more of it than he lets on. His text appears to me not really responsive to my central thesis. It also simplifies or distorts my meaning.

Professor Gottfried presents me as criticizing him for "a preoccupation with power-relations" (PIC, 96). This is not the case. My own article is called "Dimensions of Power" and deals with power-relations. (2) What I argue is that Professor Gottfried and others who think along similar lines should be more attentive to power-relations--but as they are in real life rather than as they appear in reductionistic theory. I advocate more realism and nuance in the study of power and in identifying the central problems of American and Western society. Gottfried's governm1ent-oriented conception of power is too narrow and vague, which blocks a better understanding of the existing political and cultural situation and of what might bring real change. What he is correct about is that I object to the overly abstract, ahistorical nature of his key terms, including "power" and "managerial elite," a weakness that I relate to his naturalistic propensities.

Professor Gottfried contends that instead of raising moral and cultural questions and drawing attention to the element of give-and-take in power-relationships I should be asking "why the populations of Western democracies submit to having their lives and morals reconstructed for them by the managerial-therapeutic state" (PIC, 97). But that is precisely the kind of question I do ask and try to answer, only I find Gottfried's particular answer insufficient. He is content to think that populations are the way they are because they are under the thumb of managerial elites who are also buying them off with "entitlements" (PIC, 97-98). What he misses is that this type of government is symptomatic of broad moral and cultural changes in America and the West that have affected all and that have made such government seem appropriate. The problems he bemoans therefore could not be solved by pinning the blame on the present political elites and kicking them out, which is in any event a highly unlikely prospect for the fo reseeable future. Real and lasting political change would require a change in the moral, intellectual, aesthetical life of the West, causing new elites to form, first of all outside of politics, so that eventually different political arrangements will start to seem preferable.

My own approach to power pays close attention to the moral and cultural constituents of power-relations and to the corresponding element of mutuality between leaders and followers. Professor Gottfried's disinterest in these factors is exemplified by the following statement: It is not important, he writes, "to attribute [the] managerial process of control to the defective imaginations or wills of those who endorsed it in the beginning. They were, after all, people of little learning" (PIC, 98). That is to say, Gottfried rejects my broader interpretation of power-relations because of what he takes to be the limited moral and cultural resources of those who supported the rise of the managerial regime. I argue, in contrast, that to study the moral, imaginative and intellectual inclinations of a people and its elites is to study their general outlook and preferences. It is to explore what shapes also their political attitudes and what makes them attracted to one type of government and power rather than another. St udying these origins of modern government helps us...