Power Is Coercion: A Response to Claes Ryn.

• Author: Gottfried, Paul
• Position: Dialogue on Power - Regarding the book "After Liberalism"

Claes Ryn's article "Dimensions of Power" (1) includes a thoughtful and closely argued commentary on my book After Liberalism, and it behooves me to respond in the same serious way in which he presents his position. Ryn does not distort my arguments; and though he stresses those aspects of my latest work and of my biography of Carl Schmitt that seem to support his reading, he does so quite justifiably, to demonstrate thematic continuity in my books. He is correct to underline our philosophic and interpretive differences, particularly given the fact that we are often lumped together as exponents of "conservative historicism." In a monograph by the Italian philosopher Germana Paraboschi, the two of us are depicted as fellow critics of and the main American alternative to Straussian thought. Such a cosmological affinity does exist between us, together with a longtime personal friendship, but none of this gainsays our genuine conceptual differences.

In Professor Ryn's view, my historicism is excessively naturalistic and marked by a preoccupation with power-relations, that is, with the question of who dominates whom. There is supposedly a Hobbesian grid that frames my work, and when I turn to historical particularities, it is usually for the purpose of looking at who wields control. Ryn suggests three problems with taking this approach, if it is indeed the one that I inevitably favor. One, I am obsessed with governmental power and therefore do not consider other sources of influence, e.g., the persuasiveness of beautiful language. Two, my reasoning is sometimes circular and thus I land up contending that "managerial elites ... are 'powerful' because they are in 'government"' without looking further, at "the highly complex reality" that put them there. Three, discourses about "power," including my work, incline too much toward "abstraction." They engage in a kind of shorthand for telling us that people in particular situations move in one direction rather than another: "In order for an individual to move in a certain direction, his own inclination must propel him. Nobody can act against his will. A person may choose to die rather than do as another would like" (16).

I assume that what Professor Ryn means when he says "for a person to exercise power, ... he must gain the assent, the approval of another person," is that all power rests on the achievement of consensus. Otherwise it could not long be exercised. It is of course unnecessary to tell us...