Power: A New Social Analysis — Chapter-by-Chapter Outline

Author: Bertrand Russell

First published: 1938

Edition covered: Routledge Classics, 2004 (ISBN 978-0-415-32507-3, 288 pp., with a preface by Samuel Brittan and an introduction by Kirk Willis). The Routledge text follows the 1938 first edition published by George Allen & Unwin, London (328 pp.), whose printed table of contents was verified directly against a scan of the first impression. Note that the 1938 London first edition prints American spellings in some chapter titles ("The Biology of Organizations", "Organizations and the Individual"), while the Routledge Classics table of contents uses British spellings ("Organisations"); the chapter order and wording are otherwise identical. The book's 18 chapters were cross-verified against the Routledge table of contents, the Internet Archive catalog record for the 1962 Allen & Unwin / Barnes & Noble edition, and the contents page of the 1938 first edition itself.

Central thesis

Power: A New Social Analysis argues that the fundamental concept for understanding society is power, not wealth. Russell opens the book's most famous analogy: power stands to social science as energy stands to physics. Just as energy continuously changes from one form into another (kinetic into heat, into electricity), so power passes between its forms — military force, wealth, civil authority, influence over opinion — and no one form is the source from which the others are derived. The orthodox economists and Marx alike erred in treating economic self-interest as the fundamental motive of social life; when a moderate level of comfort is assured, individuals and communities pursue power rather than wealth. The love of power is an essential and boundless element of human nature, and social science must study the "laws of social dynamics" — laws that can only be stated in terms of power and its transformations.

The book is also a work of political ethics written on the eve of the Second World War. Russell wants to understand why the civilized world was sliding into dictatorship and war, and to show what could be done about it. His answer is that arbitrary power can never be abolished — the impulse to power is ineradicable — but it can be tamed: made less concentrated, less arbitrary, more answerable to those who live under it. The taming of power requires democracy (political, and as far as possible economic), the diffusion of power rather than its concentration, freedom of propaganda, the prevention of war, and an education that produces citizens who are neither slaves nor rebels.

Russell's method is historical and psychological rather than abstractly political. He classifies the forms of power (traditional, revolutionary, naked), traces priestly and kingly power through their histories, studies revolutionary movements from early Christianity to the Russian Revolution, treats organizations as organisms with a "biology," and examines the moral codes and philosophies that power generates and that in turn restrain it.

Why has power, rather than wealth or class, to be made the central concept of social science, and how can the arbitrary power that now threatens civilization be tamed without abolishing the power that makes organized life possible?

Chapter 1 — The Impulse to Power

Central question

What is the fundamental motive in social affairs, and why do economics and Marxism fail to capture it?

Main argument

Boundless desire and the animal comparison. Russell begins by contrasting human beings with animals. The boa constrictor sleeps after his meal; animal activities are inspired by the primary needs of survival and reproduction. Humans, once their primary needs are satisfied, continue to be restless. Xerxes did not lack food or wives when he invaded Greece; Newton wrote the Principia only after his material comfort was assured; St. Francis and Ignatius Loyola did not found orders to escape want. Imagination is "the seed" that forces human beings into restless exertion after their primary needs are satisfied. The desires for power and glory are insatiable and infinite, "and only in the infinitude of God could they find repose."

Every man would like to be God. Russell's formulation of the human condition is direct: "Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility." These few are men framed after the model of Milton's Satan — Titanic combinations of nobility with impiety, in the sense of refusing to admit the limitations of individual human power. Some element of this is to be found in all men, and it is what makes social co-operation difficult: each of us wants to conceive of co-operation after the pattern of the co-operation between God and His worshippers, with ourselves in the place of God. Hence competition, the need of compromise and government, the impulse to rebellion, with instability and periodic violence — "and hence the need of morality to restrain anarchic self-assertion."

Power versus wealth. Russell attacks the assumption he attributes to both orthodox economists and Marx: that economic self-interest is the fundamental motive. The desire for commodities, separated from power and glory, is finite and can be fully satisfied by a moderate competence. The really expensive desires — a legislature rendered subservient by corruption, a private picture gallery of Old Masters selected by experts — are sought for the sake of power or glory, not as affording comfortable places in which to sit. When a moderate degree of comfort is assured, individuals and communities pursue power rather than wealth; where they seek wealth it is as a means to power, and in either case the fundamental motive is not economic. This error is not merely theoretical: "It is only by realizing that love of power is the cause of the activities that are important in social affairs that history, whether ancient or modern, can be rightly interpreted."

Power as the fundamental concept. The central methodological claim follows: power is to social science what energy is to physics. Like energy, power has forms — wealth, armaments, civil authority, influence on opinion — and no one of these can be regarded as subordinate to any other; none is derivative from the rest. The attempt to treat one form of power, say wealth, in isolation, can only be partially successful. The "laws of social dynamics" are laws which can only be stated in terms of power, not in terms of this or that form of power. Historically, some have treated military power as fundamental (the purely military historians), some economic power (Marx and the economists), some propaganda ("magna est veritas et praevalebit" and "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"). Each view has about the same measure of truth and falsehood: propaganda can generate an irresistible power, but those who have military or economic control can, if they choose, use it for the purpose of propaganda. Power, like energy, must be regarded as continually passing from any one of its forms into any other, and it should be the business of social science to seek the laws of such transformations.

The uneven distribution of the love of power. Love of power, though one of the strongest of human motives, is very unevenly distributed, and is limited by various other motives — love of ease, of pleasure, and sometimes of approval. It is disguised, among the more timid, as an impulse of submission to leadership, which increases the scope of the power-impulses of bold men. Where no social institution (aristocracy, hereditary monarchy) limits who may hold power, those who most desire power are broadly those most likely to acquire it; the men who cause social changes are, as a rule, men who strongly desire to do so. We should be mistaken if we regarded love of power as the sole human motive, "but this mistake would not lead us so much astray as might be expected in the search for causal laws in social science, since love of power is the chief motive producing the changes which social science has to study."

The twofold purpose. Russell states the book's twofold purpose: to suggest a more adequate analysis of social changes in general than that taught by the economists, and to make the present and probable near future more intelligible than it can be to imaginations dominated by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — for "we seem to be now returning, in a number of respects, to forms of life and thought which were prevalent in earlier ages."

Key ideas

• Human desires, unlike animal needs, are boundless; imagination drives restlessness beyond satiety.
• The desires for power and glory are insatiable and closely allied; for most practical purposes they may be regarded as one.
• "Every man would like to be God" — the refusal to admit the limits of individual power is the source of both the difficulty and the machinery of social life.
• Power, not wealth, is the fundamental concept of social science, analogous to energy in physics.
• Power has multiple forms (wealth, armaments, civil authority, influence on opinion), none derivative from another, continually transforming into each other.
• Economic determinism, whether orthodox or Marxist, misunderstands history because the really expensive desires are desires for power and glory.
• Love of power is unevenly distributed and is the chief motive of the men who cause social change.

Key takeaway

Social science must be rebuilt around power — the production of intended effects — because the love of power is the boundless, unevenly distributed motive that drives the changes history has to explain.

Chapter 2 — Leaders and Followers

Central question

What is the psychology of the relation between those who command and those who obey, and why do followers willingly submit?

Main argument

Explicit and implicit power. The power impulse has two forms: explicit, in leaders, and implicit, in their followers. When men willingly follow a leader, they do so with a view to the acquisition of power by the group which he commands, and they feel that his triumphs are theirs. Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Russell turns this against Nietzsche: if Christianity is a slave-morality, then every soldier of fortune who endures the rigours of a campaign, and every rank-and-file politician who works hard at electioneering, is to be accounted a slave. But in fact, "in every genuinely cooperative enterprise, the follower is psychologically no more a slave than the leader." It is this vicarious participation that makes endurable "the inequalities of power which organization makes inevitable, and which tend to increase rather than diminish as society grows more organic."

Submission is rooted in fear. The impulse of submission, which is just as real and just as common as the impulse to command, has its roots in fear. The most unruly gang of children ever imagined will become completely amenable to the orders of a competent adult in an alarming situation, such as a fire; when the War came, the pacifists made their peace with Lloyd George. When war breaks out, people have similar feelings towards the Government. Russell pushes the point into religion: "All submissiveness is rooted in fear, whether the leader to whom we submit be human or divine" — hence the hymns of refuge ("Rock of Ages, cleft for me", "Jesu, lover of my soul"), which express the sense of ultimate safety in submission to the Divine Will.

Aggressiveness and self-confidence. Russell rejects the Freudian theory that aggressiveness is rooted in fear, at least so far as great leaders are concerned. "I greatly doubt whether the men who become pirate chiefs are those who are filled with retrospective terror of their fathers, or whether Napoleon, at Austerlitz, really felt that he was getting even with Madame Mère. I know nothing of the mother of Attila, but I rather suspect that she spoilt the little darling, who subsequently found the world irritating because it sometimes resisted his whims." The great leaders have an exceptional self-confidence "which is not only on the surface, but penetrates deep into the subconscious." The self-confidence needed by a leader may come from a hereditary position of command (the speeches of Queen Elizabeth in moments of crisis show the monarch over-riding the woman), from the meritocratic selection of a body like the medieval Church, or from revolutionary situations: Cromwell, Napoleon, and Lenin all dominated their countries with boundless energy and self-confidence combined with sound judgment at crucial moments.

The soldier of fortune and the divine conqueror. Cromwell and Lenin were men of profound religious faith, believing themselves to be the appointed ministers of a non-human purpose; their power-impulses seemed to themselves indubitably righteous. Napoleon, by contrast, is the supreme example of the soldier of fortune: the Revolution suited him since it made his opportunity, but otherwise he was indifferent to it; France, like the Revolution, was to him merely an opportunity. "His success was due, not so much to any exceptional qualities of character, as to his technical skill in war." Psychologically, Hitler must be classed with Cromwell and Lenin, Mussolini with Napoleon. The soldier of fortune, or pirate chief, is a type of more importance in history than "scientific" historians think: Alexander's Macedonians, the Roman generals of the late Republic, Cecil Rhodes's troopers offered nakedly pecuniary inducements for the conquest of Matabeleland. "Organized greed, with little or no disguise, has played a very large part in the world's wars."

The three types: command, obedience, withdrawal. Besides those who command and those who obey, there is a third type: those who withdraw. Some have the courage to refuse submission without having the imperiousness that causes the wish to command — the early Christians, the American pioneers, hermits, monks, the melancholy Jacques. The genuine solitary differs from the frustrated power-seeker who becomes a saint or founder of a sect (Tolstoy and his followers illustrate the latter pattern). Among the timid, organization is promoted not only by submission to a leader but by "the reassurance which is felt in being one of a crowd who all feel alike": collective excitement is a delicious intoxication, in which sanity, humanity, and even self-preservation are easily forgotten, and in which atrocious massacres and heroic martyrdom are equally possible; it leads in the end to apathy and weariness, and to the need for a stronger and stronger stimulus.

The orator and his crowd. The words of an orator are the easiest and most usual method of inducing collective excitement, and this pleasure is an important element in the power of leaders. The skilful orator produces in his audience two layers of belief: "a superficial layer, in which the power of the enemy is magnified so as to make great courage seem necessary, and a deeper layer, in which there is a firm conviction of victory" — both embodied in the slogan "right will prevail over might." The leader will prefer a mob "more given to emotion than to reflection, one filled with fears and consequent hatreds."

Mechanical power and the new oligarch. Power-loving individuals are not all of the orator type; some have been fed by control over mechanism. Russell cites Bruno Mussolini's account of bombing Abyssinians from the air ("It was all most diverting. I thought of the animals: God, how they ran"). It would now be feasible for a technically trained oligarchy, by controlling aeroplanes, navies, power stations, and motor transport, to establish a dictatorship demanding almost no conciliation of subjects, viewing human material as they have learnt to view their own machines — "a cold inhumanity surpassing anything known in previous tyrannies." Mechanical power, Russell concludes, tends to generate a new mentality: "The man who has vast mechanical power at his command is likely, if uncontrolled, to feel himself a god — not a Christian God of Love, but a pagan Thor or Vulcan." Leopardi's description of what volcanic action achieved on the slopes of Vesuvius — "These results can now be achieved by men" — leads to the chapter's famous conclusion: "In former days, men sold themselves to the Devil to acquire magical powers. Nowadays they acquire these powers from science, and find themselves compelled to become devils. There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race... for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die."

Key ideas

• Power is explicit in leaders, implicit in followers, who feel the leader's triumphs as their own; this makes inequalities of power endurable.
• The impulse of submission is as real as the impulse to command and is rooted in fear, including metaphysical fear.
• Great leaders possess exceptional deep-seated self-confidence; Napoleon-type soldiers of fortune differ from Cromwell/Lenin-type believers in a cosmic purpose.
• There are three temperamental types: imperious, submissive, and withdrawn (the hermit, the pioneer).
• Collective excitement, engineered by the orator, is an intoxication that produces both massacres and martyrdoms and ends in apathy.
• Mechanical power creates a new type of power-lover and threatens a cold, inhuman technocratic tyranny.
• "There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed" — the book's programmatic sentence.

Key takeaway

Leadership and obedience are rooted in human psychology — self-confidence in the few, fear and vicarious triumph in the many — and modern mechanical power threatens to make this ancient relation inhumanly absolute.

Chapter 3 — The Forms of Power

Central question

How is power to be defined and classified, and what are the main ways in which one human being can influence another?

Main argument

Definition and quantification. Power may be defined as "the production of intended effects." It is thus a quantitative concept: given two men with similar desires, if one achieves all the desires that the other achieves, and also others, he has more power than the other. Where desires differ — two artists, of whom one wishes to paint good pictures and become rich, and one succeeds in painting good pictures while the other succeeds in becoming rich — there is no way of estimating which has the more power. Nevertheless, it is easy to say, roughly, that A has more power than B if A achieves many intended effects and B only a few.

Three ways of influencing an individual. Power over human beings may be classified by the manner of influencing individuals, or by the type of organization involved. An individual may be influenced: (A) by direct physical power over his body, e.g. when he is imprisoned or killed; (B) by rewards and punishments — inducements, e.g. in giving or withholding employment; (C) by influence on opinion, i.e. propaganda in its broadest sense, including the creation of opinions and habits in others, as by military drill. Russell illustrates the three forms with animals: the pig hoisted squealing aboard a ship by a rope round its belly exemplifies direct physical power (military and police power); the performing animal trained by rewards and punishments exemplifies the power of "education"; the donkey following the carrot exemplifies the power of propaganda; the sheep following their unwilling leader, dragged aboard by force, exemplify party politics, "whenever, as is usual, a revered leader is in bondage to a clique or to party bosses." He applies the Aesopian scheme to the rise of Hitler: the carrot was the Nazi programme (involving, e.g., the abolition of interest); the donkey was the lower middle class; the sheep and their leader were the Social Democrats and Hindenburg; the pigs — so far as their misfortunes are concerned — were the victims in concentration camps; the performing animals were the millions who make the Nazi salute.

Traditional, revolutionary, and naked power. Russell introduces "a very necessary distinction" between traditional power and newly acquired power. Traditional power has on its side the force of habit: it does not have to justify itself at every moment, and it is almost invariably associated with religious or quasi-religious beliefs purporting to show that resistance is wicked. Because it feels secure, it is likely to avoid much active political tyranny; but where ancient institutions persist, the injustices to which holders of power are always prone have the sanction of immemorial custom — the corvée illustrates the tyranny of traditional power, the Reign of Terror the tyranny of revolutionary power. Power not based on tradition or assent Russell calls "naked" power. Naked power is usually military, either internal tyranny or foreign conquest; "conquest by force of arms has had more to do with the spread of civilization than any other single agency" — Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar altered the whole course of history (but for the former the Gospels would not have been written in Greek; but for the latter the French would not speak a language derived from Latin). Yet military power is, in most cases, based upon some other form of power, such as wealth, technical knowledge, or fanaticism.

The psychology of the distinction. The distinction between traditional, revolutionary, and naked power is psychological, not historical. Power is not traditional merely because it has ancient forms; it must also command respect which is partly due to custom, and as this respect decays, traditional power gradually passes over into naked power — as in Russia in the gradual growth of the revolutionary movement up to the moment of its victory in 1917. Power is revolutionary when it depends upon "a large group united by a new creed, programme, or sentiment, such as Protestantism, Communism, or desire for national independence." Power is naked when it results merely from the power-loving impulses of individuals or groups, and wins from its subjects only submission through fear, not active co-operation. The nakedness of power is a matter of degree: in a democratic country, the government's power is not naked in relation to opposing political parties, but is naked in relation to a convinced anarchist; where persecution exists, the Church's power is naked in relation to heretics, but not in relation to orthodox sinners.

The kinds of men that forms of power produce. Different forms of power produce different types of eminent men. Hereditary power has given rise to the gentleman, whose typical virtue is honour. Power through learning or wisdom, real or supposed, produces the sage — its two most important historical examples are traditional China and the Catholic Church; the respect accorded to men of learning was never bestowed for genuine knowledge, but for the supposed possession of magical powers, and science, by destroying the belief in magic, destroyed the respect for the intellectual. Large economic organizations produce the economic magnate, who commands respect in equals and confidence in subordinates. Political power in a democracy tends to belong to men who can win the confidence of the machine and then arouse enthusiasm in the electorate; the qualities needed differ in quiet times (solidity, sound judgment) and excited times (determination, passion, boldness). "The most successful democratic politicians are those who succeed in abolishing democracy and becoming dictators" — Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler owed their rise to democracy. Finally, there is power behind the throne — courtiers, intriguers, spies, and wire-pullers, men who love power more than glory; their influence is greatest where nominal power is hereditary, and least where it is the reward of personal skill and energy.

Key ideas

• Power is "the production of intended effects," a quantitative concept without exact means of comparing across different desires.
• Three ways of influencing people: direct power over the body, rewards and punishments, influence on opinion — illustrated by pig, performing animal, donkey, and sheep.
• Traditional power rests on habit and quasi-religious sanction; revolutionary power on a new creed; naked power on fear alone.
• The distinction is psychological and a matter of degree; a government may be naked in relation to some subjects but not others.
• Naked power is usually military and has spread civilization, but rests in turn on other forms of power.
• Different forms of power select and shape different human types: gentleman, sage, magnate, democratic politician, wire-puller.
• Organizations differ by the kind of power they chiefly exert — army and police coerce, economic organizations induce, schools and churches influence opinion.

Key takeaway

Power has one definition (production of intended effects) but many forms — physical, economic, opinion-based, traditional, revolutionary, naked — which pass into one another and shape the kinds of men who rise to prominence.

Chapter 4 — Priestly Power

Central question

How did priestly power arise, how was it exercised at its height, and why did it decay?

Main argument

The medicine-man as prototype. Priests and kings are the two great forms of traditional power, both now somewhat in eclipse. The primitive prototype of the priest is the medicine-man, whose powers are of two kinds, religious (depending on the assistance of superhuman beings) and magical (supposed to be natural); for Russell's purposes the distinction is not important. What matters is that the medicine-man is thought able to do good or harm to other people, and that his powers are not shared by all and sundry. The medicine-man acquires his art by a process of initiation or instruction, and knowledge "has always to be paid for": complete instruction in any branch of medico-magical art is of no avail to the pupil until money has passed from himself to his instructor. From this it is easy to imagine the development of a definite priestly caste with a monopoly of the more important magical and religious arts — and consequently great authority. In Egypt and Babylonia the priests' power at times exceeded that of the king: they defeated Ikhnaton, and they seem to have helped Cyrus to conquer Babylon.

The decline of oracles. Greece was peculiar in antiquity for its almost complete freedom from priestly power; such religious power as existed was chiefly concentrated in the oracles, especially Delphi, where the Pythoness was supposed to fall into a trance and give answers inspired by Apollo. Russell recounts (via Herodotus and Aristotle) how the Alcmaeonidae, an Athenian family exiled by Peisistratus, corruptly procured the support of Delphi against his sons — the Pythoness was bribed to tell the Spartans, whenever they consulted the oracle, that they must free Athens from the tyranny of the Peisistratidae. The narrative's remarkable feature is that the bribery became public knowledge without immediately destroying the oracle's prestige, and control of the oracle remained so important as to cause a serious war, called, from its connection with religion, the "Sacred" War. In the long run, the open recognition that the oracle was open to political corruption encouraged the spread of free thought. "It is the fate of most religious institutions, sooner or later, to be used by bold men for secular purposes, and thereby to forfeit the reverence upon which their power depends."

Founders and innovators. The religions derived from founders — Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed are the historically important examples — superseded the immemorial religions. The power of their followers was at first revolutionary, and only gradually traditional; in the process they usually assimilated much of the old tradition which they had overthrown. Russell's generalization: "Both religious and secular innovators — at any rate those who have had most lasting success — have appealed, as far as they could, to tradition, and have done whatever lay in their power to minimize the elements of novelty in their system." The usual plan is to appeal to a more or less fictitious past: the priests "found" the Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah (2 Kings xxii); the New Testament appealed to the Prophets; the Anabaptists appealed to the New Testament; the English Puritans appealed to the supposed institutions of the Conquest; the Japanese "restored" the power of the Mikado in A.D. 645 and the constitution of 645 in 1868; Napoleon III, in the 18 Brumaire, "restored" the institutions of Rome.

The Catholic Church at its height. The greatest and most important of all priestly organizations known to history has been the Catholic Church. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Church had the good fortune to represent two traditions — Christianity and Rome — and was "the sole organization that extended throughout Western Europe." Russell takes the period from the accession of Gregory VII (1073) to Clement V's establishment of the Papacy at Avignon (1308) as the age of priestly power. Its victories during this period were won by "spiritual" weapons — superstition, not force of arms: Gregory VII humbled the Emperor Henry IV at Canossa; the power of the keys was not questioned even by the Emperor Frederick II at the height of his struggle with the Papacy. The reform movement that culminated in Gregory VII — against simony and the marriage of priests, for the election of Popes by the Cardinals (decree of 1059) — separated the clergy from the feudal nobility, imposed clerical celibacy (the decree that sons of priests could not be ordained prevented the priesthood from becoming hereditary), and greatly increased lay reverence for the Church. Russell draws the general moral: "For an organization which has ideal ends, and offers an excuse for love of power, a reputation for virtue is dangerous, and is sure, in the long run, to be a superiority only in unscrupulousness" — St. Francis, by preaching brotherly love, supplied the enthusiasm required for the victorious prosecution of a long and atrocious war.

The moral decay and fall. The Papacy declined morally from within: the Avignon captivity, participation in the atrocities against the Templars, the Great Schism, and the Renaissance Popes (Alexander VI, Leo X). Machiavelli's account of ecclesiastical principalities in The Prince, chapter XI — principalities "exalted and maintained by God" — was written during the pontificate of Leo X, in which the Reformation began; to pious Germans it became impossible to believe that the ruthless nepotism of Alexander VI, or the financial rapacity of Leo, could be "exalted and maintained by God." Luther, a "presumptuous and rash man," supplied the theology (a new doctrine of justification) that made it possible for lay princes to despoil the Church without fear of damnation. The motives of self-interest had existed for centuries; what made them effective was the moral revolt caused by the Church's abuse of its power: "It was only because the Popes had, for a long time, so abused their authority as to cause a moral revolt, that revolt became possible." Russell's summary judgment: "Except when due to foreign conquest, the collapse of traditional power is always the result of its abuse by men who believe, as Machiavelli believed, that its hold on men's minds is too firm to be shaken even by the grossest crimes." He closes with a modern parallel: in the United States, the reverence which the Greeks gave to oracles and the Middle Ages to the Pope is given to the Supreme Court.

Key ideas

• The priest descends from the medicine-man; his power rests on a monopoly of magical and religious arts.
• Religious institutions are sooner or later used for secular purposes and thereby forfeit the reverence on which their power depends.
• Successful innovators appeal to tradition and minimize their novelty — "the usual plan is to appeal to a more or less fictitious past."
• The Catholic Church's medieval power was won by superstition and organization, not force; its strengths were non-hereditary leadership and impersonal continuity.
• A reputation for virtue is dangerous to an organization with ideal ends: moral capital is spent in the pursuit of power.
• The Reformation succeeded because the Renaissance Papacy had destroyed its own moral authority, allowing self-interest to attach to the new creed.
• The American Supreme Court is offered as a modern parallel: a quasi-priestly body whose official interpretation is reverenced like an oracle.

Key takeaway

Priestly power arises from a monopoly of the arts of healing and cursing, grows through organization and the prestige of sanctity, and collapses when its holders abuse the reverence that sustains it.

Chapter 5 — Kingly Power

Central question

How did kingship arise, how did it come to dominate Europe, and what caused its decline?

Main argument

The origins of kingship. The origin of kings, like that of priests, is prehistoric, and the early stages can only be conjectured from what still exists among the most backward savages. In its full development the king is a man who leads his tribe or nation in war, decides when to make war and peace, often makes the laws, is more or less hereditary, and is a sacred person — "if not himself a god, he is at least the Lord's anointed." But this presupposes a long evolution: even the savage chief as most Europeans imagine him is not found in really primitive societies, where the "chief" may have only religious and ceremonial functions, may be too sacred to be looked upon (his mana prevents him from public business), and cannot make the laws since they are decided by custom. Migration and foreign invasion are powerful forces in the destruction of custom, and war must have played a great part in the power of kings, since in war the utility of a ruler is obvious. Every royal family begins with a usurper or conqueror, and religion is usually called in to sanctify the dynasty: priestly power becomes an essential support of royal prestige — "No Bishop, no King," as Charles I said, and the analogue of this maxim has been true in all ages in which kings have existed.

Absolute kingship in antiquity. The process of the primitive chief developing into the historical king was already complete in Egypt and Babylonia at the earliest period of which records exist: the Great Pyramid, considered to have been built before 3000 B.C., would only have been possible for a monarch possessed of immense power over his subjects. Hammurabi (2123–2081 B.C.) did all the things a king should do — soldier, engineer, legislator (his code of laws was given to him by the sun-god, and shows that he succeeded in subordinating ecclesiastical to civil courts). Kingship as an institution reached its utmost limits of completeness in Egypt at the time of the Pyramids and in Babylonia at the time of Hammurabi. The Roman Empire was never a monarchy in the full sense: the Emperor's origin was extra-legal, he depended always upon the army, the Empire was not hereditary, and "the real power was always the army, and the Emperor was merely its nominee for the time being."

Feudalism and the rise of the national monarchies. The Barbarian invasion reintroduced monarchy, but the new kings were chiefs of Germanic tribes whose power was not absolute, depending always on the co-operation of a Council of Elders; their most important companions became nobles with a certain measure of independence, and hence arose the feudal system, which left the monarchs of Western Europe at the mercy of turbulent barons. Monarchy remained weak until it had got the better of both the Church and the feudal nobility. In England and France, after the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses, ordinary citizens were compelled to put their faith in a strong king: Edward IV became victorious by the help of the City of London; Louis XI, the enemy of the feudal nobility, was the friend of the higher bourgeoisie. The new monarchies' power depended upon the support of nationalism and commerce — "The Tudors were useful in both respects, but the Stuarts hampered commerce and allowed nationalism to be dragged at the chariot wheels of France."

The uneasy alliance with commerce. Commerce, though it supported kings against feudal anarchy, "has always been republican when it has felt sufficiently strong" — in antiquity, in the North Italian and Hanseatic cities of the Middle Ages, and in Holland during its greatest days. Kings appealed to "divine right" and sought, as far as possible, to make their power traditional and quasi-religious: the execution of Charles I was felt to be an impiety, not merely an ordinary crime. The alliance of commerce and nationalism, which began with the Lombard League in the time of Frederick Barbarossa, gradually spread over Europe, "achieving its last and briefest triumph in the Russian February Revolution." Wherever it won power it contended against hereditary power based on land, first in alliance with the monarchy, and then in opposition to it; in the end, kings everywhere were abolished or reduced to figure-heads. Now, Russell observes, nationalism and commerce have parted company: in Italy, Germany, and Russia, nationalism has triumphed — "The liberal movement, begun in Milan in the twelfth century, has run its course."

The decline of traditional power. Traditional power, when not destroyed from without, almost always passes through a certain development: emboldened by the respect which it inspires, it becomes careless as regards the general welfare, and by sloth, folly, or cruelty gradually forces men to become sceptical of its claims to divine authority. A new creed, useful to the rebels, takes the place of the old one. Rebels often carry over part of the authority of the old regime: Augustus absorbed into himself the traditional dignity of the Senate; Protestants transferred reverence from the Catholic Church to the Bible; the English Parliament gradually acquired the power of the monarchy without destroying the respect for monarchy. Sudden substitution of the republican form for hereditary monarchy usually leads to trouble, since "a new constitution has no hold over mental habits"; ambitious men will seek to become dictators, and the United States is almost the only example of a new republic which has been stable from the beginning. The chief revolutionary movement of Russell's own time — the attack of Socialism and Communism upon the economic power of private persons — shows, he promises, the common characteristics of such movements, as exemplified in the rise of Christianity, of Protestantism, and of political democracy.

Key ideas

• Kingship developed from the sacred chief; war is the great promoter of kingly power, and religion sanctifies dynasties.
• Absolute monarchy was complete in Egypt and Babylonia at the dawn of history; the Roman Emperor was never a true king.
• The feudal system left Western monarchs weak until they subdued both the Church and the nobility.
• The new monarchies rested on nationalism and commerce, an alliance that turned against monarchy in the end.
• Commerce is naturally republican; kingship became a quasi-religious institution whose violation (regicide) was felt as impiety.
• Traditional power decays through the abuse of its own security — sloth, folly, cruelty — into scepticism and revolution.
• Republican constitutions need time to acquire a hold over mental habits; sudden republics breed dictators.

Key takeaway

Kingly power grew with war and sanctity, was carried by the alliance of monarchy with nationalism and commerce, and fell when that alliance dissolved and traditional respect decayed into scepticism.

Chapter 6 — Naked Power

Central question

What is naked power, when does it arise, and how does it end?

Main argument

Definition and the three phases. Naked power is power that involves no acquiescence on the part of the subject: "the power of the butcher over the sheep, of an invading army over a vanquished nation, of the police over detected conspirators." The Catholic Church's power over persecuted heretics is naked; the State's power over loyal citizens is traditional. Organizations that acquire power pass, as a rule, through three phases: first, that of fanatical but not traditional enthusiasm leading to conquest; then, that of general acquiescence in the new power, which rapidly becomes traditional; and finally, that in which power over those who reject the tradition is naked. Military conquest is stable only when followed by psychological conquest — the provinces conquered by the Romans, the Christian countries conquered by the Mohammedans, Wales under English rule all acquiesced; Ireland did not.

When naked power arises at home. Naked power in the internal government of a community not lately submitted to foreign conquest arises in two sets of circumstances: first, where two or more fanatical creeds are contending for mastery (deferred to the next chapter, under the head of revolutionary power); second, where all traditional beliefs have decayed without being succeeded by new ones, so that there are no limitations to personal ambition. The most complete examples are the later Greek tyrannies and some of the States of Renaissance Italy. Greek history affords "as in a laboratory" small-scale experiments: the first age of tyranny (the greater part of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.) was an age of economic power — the tyrants were rich men who bought their way to power, and the introduction of coinage had the same kind of effect in increasing the power of commerce as credit has had in recent times. So long as it was possible for everybody to be prosperous, the weakening of tradition did more good than harm, producing the freedom of Greek art, science, and philosophy — "the most rapid advance in civilization that has ever occurred" — but the social structure had not the toughness required to resist misfortune.

The tyrants of Syracuse. The Syracusan tyrannies are among the most perfect examples of naked power, and they influenced Plato, who quarrelled with the elder Dionysius and endeavoured to educate a pupil of the younger. Russell recounts in detail (following Grote, based on Diodorus) the rise of Agathocles, son of a potter: becoming the favourite of a rich Syracusan named Demas, distinguishing himself in war, being exiled and ordered murdered, escaping by changing clothes with a poor man who was killed in his place, raising an army in the interior of Sicily, being readmitted under oath in the temple of Ceres, then — espousing the cause of the poor against the council of six hundred oligarchs — rousing the soldiers to murder the forty in council, leading the army to plunder the six hundred, and massacring his way to the tyranny ("There was no safety even to them that fled to the temples under the shelter of the gods"). His African adventures (burning his ships, murdering Ophelas of Cyrene, binding three hundred Utican prisoners to the front of his siege engines), his family's disasters, and his death by poisoned toothpick complete the picture; "we are told that democracy was restored." Renaissance Italy presents a very close parallel: Cesare Borgia had to rely on naked power, and Creighton's comment on the arrest and death of Cardinal Orsini shows how completely his conduct was judged by its success — "Cesare's conduct was judged by its success." In both ages a very high level of civilization coexisted with a very low level of morals: "the scoundrels and the men of genius are by no means antagonistic to each other" — Leonardo erected fortifications for Cesare Borgia; some of the pupils of Socrates were among the worst of the Thirty Tyrants.

The three endings of naked power. Periods of naked power are usually brief. They end, as a rule, in one of three ways: foreign conquest, as in the cases of Greece and Italy; the establishment of a stable dictatorship which soon becomes traditional, of which the most notable example is the empire of Augustus after the period of civil wars from Marius to the defeat of Antony; or the rise of a new religion, in the broad sense — the obvious instance is the way in which Mohammed united the previously anarchic Arabia. Where power is naked, the ruthlessness of rulers is far greater: Machiavelli's laudatory account of Cesare Borgia's four ways of preparing for the death of his father shows the theory appropriate to naked power, which Plato had put in the mouth of Thrasymachus in the first book of the Republic: "justice is simply the interest of the stronger." A British Prime Minister could not hope to consolidate his position by murdering the Leader of the Opposition; "but where power is naked such restraints become inoperative."

The economic sphere. Naked power in the economic sphere is at least equally important. Marx regarded all economic relations under capitalism as entirely governed by naked power. The late Élie Halévy once maintained that what a man is paid for his work is what he himself believes it to be worth; Russell dissents (he always found, in his own case, that the more he thought a book was worth, the less he was paid for it) but finds a kernel of truth: in a stable community there must be no considerable class with a burning sense of injustice. Economic power is traditional when custom is accepted; it becomes naked when old customs are upset or become objects of criticism. In the infancy of industrialism, with no accepted standards of wages and unorganized employees, the relation of employer and employed "was a matter of naked power"; trade unions, which immeasurably increased the bargaining power of wage-earners, could only survive where wage-earners had votes. Russell's moral arithmetic: "every increase of socialistic opinion makes the power of the capitalist more naked," since the socialist wage-earner feels it unjust that his income is less than his employer's — "the case is analogous to that of heresy and the power of the Catholic Church." His catalogue of the abominations of naked power includes slavery and the slave trade, the horrors of early industrialism, cruelty to children, judicial torture, prisons and workhouses, religious persecution, "the atrocious treatment of political opponents in Germany and Russia at the present day."

The moral. There must be power, either that of governments or of anarchic adventurers; there must even be naked power so long as there are rebels against authority or ordinary criminals. "But if human life is to be, for the mass of mankind, anything better than a dull misery punctuated with moments of sharp horror, there must be as little as possible" — power must be hedged round by safeguards of law and custom, permitted only after due deliberation, and entrusted to men closely supervised in the interests of those who are subjected to it. It is useless to trust in the virtue of individuals: "The philosopher king was dismissed long ago as an idle dream, but the philosopher party, though equally fallacious, is hailed as a great discovery."

Key ideas

• Naked power involves no acquiescence; it is the power of the butcher over the sheep.
• The three phases of power: fanaticism and conquest, acquiescence becoming tradition, naked power over dissenters.
• Naked power arises at home where creeds contend or where all traditional beliefs have decayed.
• Greek Sicily and Renaissance Italy are the laboratory cases; Agathocles and Cesare Borgia are the archetypal tyrants.
• Periods of naked power end by foreign conquest, by a stable dictatorship becoming traditional, or by a new religion.
• The theory of naked power is Thrasymachus's: justice is the interest of the stronger.
• Economic power is naked where custom no longer legitimates inequality; socialism makes capitalist power more naked, not less.
• The philosopher king is a dream; the philosopher party is equally fallacious.

Key takeaway

Naked power — power resting on fear alone — is a recurrent phase of social life whose ruthlessness must be minimized, because no party or individual can be trusted to exercise it benignly.

Chapter 7 — Revolutionary Power

Central question

What is revolutionary power, and what do the great revolutions — early Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution — have in common?

Main argument

The nature of revolutionary power. A traditional system may break up in two ways: its creeds and mental habits may decay into mere scepticism, in which case cohesion can only be preserved by the exercise of naked power; or a new creed may acquire a hold over men and at last become strong enough to substitute a government in harmony with the new convictions. In the latter case revolutionary power has characteristics different from both traditional and naked power. If the revolution succeeds, the system it establishes soon becomes traditional; if the struggle is severe and prolonged, it often degenerates into a struggle for naked power. But the adherents of a new creed are psychologically very different from ambitious adventurers — they are apt to be both more important and more permanent. Russell studies four examples: (I) early Christianity; (II) the Reformation; (III) the French Revolution and nationalism; (IV) socialism and the Russian Revolution.

I. Early Christianity. Christianity was in its earliest days entirely unpolitical (its best representatives in our time are the Christadelphians, who believe the end of the world imminent). As the Church grew more powerful, a desire to influence the State grew up; Diocletian's persecution must have strengthened this desire, and the motives of Constantine's conversion, evidently mainly political, imply that the Church had become politically influential. "The difference between the teachings of the Church and the traditional doctrines of the Roman State was so vast that the revolution which took place at the time of Constantine must be reckoned the most important in known history." In relation to power, the most important of Christian doctrines was "We ought to obey God rather than man" — a precept to which nothing analogous had previously existed, except among the Jews; pagans were willing to acquiesce in the cult of the Emperor even when they regarded his claim to divinity as a harmless fiction. This precept has been interpreted in two ways — God's commands conveyed directly to the conscience, or through the medium of the Church — and either way involves a weakening of the State. The contest of the Empress Justina and St. Ambrose of Milan (385) shows how the Church's independent power was established; its victory was due partly to almsgiving, partly to organization, "but mainly to the fact that no vigorous creed or sentiment was opposed to it." Every successful revolution shakes authority and makes social cohesion more difficult, and the individualism of early Christianity remained a dangerous source of both theological and secular rebellion. "This difficulty is inherent in every authority that owes its origin to revolution. It must maintain that the original revolution was justified, and it cannot, logically, contend that all subsequent revolutions must be wicked."

II. The Reformation. From the point of view of power, the Reformation has two aspects: its theological anarchism broke the Church, and by weakening the Church it strengthened the State. Luther, in order to succeed against the Church and the extremists, was obliged to rely upon the support of secular princes; the Peasants' War, with its touching appeal to the Gospel and its catastrophe, terrified Luther into preaching submission to princes, and the Lutheran Church never, until the time of Hitler, showed any disloyalty to governments that were not Catholic. Henry VIII, by declaring himself Head of the Church of England, "set to work to make religion secular and national," altering dogmas as he chose through subservient Parliaments, executing those who resisted, dissolving the monasteries; "Henry was a pioneer who first showed the world what, in the eclipse of the Church, the power of the State could be." The Independents rejected the State and the Church equally as theological authorities and claimed the right of private judgment with the corollary of religious toleration — and from this point of view revolt against secular despotism followed. "Hence the doctrine of the Rights of Man, carried across the Atlantic by the followers of Cromwell, embodied by Jefferson in the American Constitution, and brought back to Europe by the French Revolution."

III. The French Revolution and nationalism. From the Reformation until 1848, the Western world was undergoing "the Rights-of-Man Revolution"; in 1848 this movement began to transform itself into nationalism east of the Rhine. The doctrine of the Rights of Man, philosophically indefensible, was "historically and pragmatically... useful, and we enjoy many freedoms which it helped to win." Liberalism, which asserted its doctrines in the intellectual sphere, acquired power in the political: like early Christianity, it is concerned with the individual — Kant's principle that each man is an end in himself is derived from Christian teaching. When a revolutionary and a traditional creed contend for mastery, as in the French Revolution, the power of the victors over the vanquished is naked power; the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars exhibited "a combination of the propagandist power of a new creed with naked power on a larger scale than had been seen before in Europe." Fanaticism, victory, despotism, collapse, and reaction — the history of the French Revolution repeats the history of the Commonwealth in England; "even in these two most favourable instances, the success of the fanatics was short-lived." In Latin America, the revolt against Spain, led by Liberals and democrats, ended in most cases in unstable military dictatorships separated by mutinies; only where the revolutionary faith is deep and widespread, and victory is not too long delayed, can the habit of co-operation survive the shock of revolution.

IV. The Russian Revolution. Like early Christianity, it preaches doctrines which are international and even anti-national; like Islam, but unlike Christianity, it is essentially political. The only part of its creed which has so far proved effective is the challenge to Liberalism. The Soviet Government, when it seized power, "reverted to the teaching of the Catholic Church in its great days: that it is the business of Authority to propagate Truth, both by positive teaching and by the suppression of all rival doctrines." What was new was the amalgamation of political and economic power, which made possible an enormous increase of governmental control. The rejection of Liberalism has had extraordinary success from the Rhine to the Pacific: Italy first, and then Germany, adopted the political technique of the Bolsheviks; even in democratic countries the Liberal faith has lost its fervour. The result of such doctrines is "to transform all power, first, into revolutionary power, and then, by inevitable gradations, into naked power." The decay of Liberalism has causes in the technique of war, the technique of production, increased facilities for propaganda, and nationalism. Russell closes the chapter with the book's central liberal judgment: "A modern community, just as much as one of the eighteenth century, requires, if it is to be happy and prosperous, a sphere for individual initiative, but this sphere must be defined afresh, by new methods."

Key ideas

• Revolutionary power rests on a new creed held by a group, not on habit or on fear alone.
• A revolutionary authority cannot logically condemn all subsequent revolutions — the original revolution was justified by its own doctrine.
• Early Christianity weakened the State by "We ought to obey God rather than man"; the Church then became a revolutionary-turned-traditional power.
• The Reformation destroyed the international Church and enormously strengthened the State.
• The Rights-of-Man movement, from Cromwell's Independents to 1848, produced liberalism, which then transformed into nationalism.
• The French Revolution showed revolutionary propaganda combined with naked power on a continental scale.
• The Russian Revolution revived the Catholic formula — authority must propagate truth and suppress rivals — adding the amalgamation of political and economic power.
• The modern problem is to define afresh a sphere of individual initiative: "this sphere must be defined afresh, by new methods."

Key takeaway

Revolutionary power is the power of a new creed, which by its own logic licenses further revolution and tends to pass, through naked power or tradition, into something other than itself.

Chapter 8 — Economic Power

Central question

What is economic power ultimately based on, and is the Marxist or liberal view of it adequate?

Main argument

Economic power is derivative. Economic power, unlike military power, is not primary but derivative: within one State it depends on law; in international dealings it depends on war or the threat of war. Russell's central reduction: apart from the economic power of labour, all other economic power ultimately consists in "being able to decide, by the use of armed force if necessary, who shall be allowed to stand upon a given piece of land and to put things into it and take things from it." The oil of Southern Persia belongs to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company because the British Government has decreed that no one else shall have access to it and has been strong enough to enforce its will; Rhodesian goldfields belong to certain rich men because the British democracy thought it worth while to go to war with Lobengula; the Indians, to whom the oil regions of the United States originally belonged, have no legal title because they were defeated in war; the iron ore of Lorraine belongs to the citizens of France or Germany according to which has been victor in the most recent war. The power of the industrialist rests, in the last analysis, upon the lock-out — the fact that the owner of a factory can call upon the forces of the State to prevent persons from entering it; when stay-in strikes are tolerated, ownership begins to be shared with the employees.

The state of nature reduced to order. Russell constructs a gold-rush parable: in a state of complete anarchy, gold would only be safe to a man quick enough with his revolver, and would be merely a pleasant object to contemplate, since he could satisfy his needs by the threat of murder. Agriculture is impossible unless there are means of preventing robbery and the theft of crops. An anarchic community of civilized individuals will evolve a government — a committee of Vigilantes — which may sell protection in return for a percentage of earnings; "this is called Income tax." Once there are rules determining the giving of protection, "the reign of military force is disguised as the reign of law, and anarchy has ceased to exist. But the ultimate basis of law and of economic relations is still the military power of the Vigilantes." In international economic relations we have not yet reached even the stage of the committee of Vigilantes: "the stronger nations, individually, each still extract money from the weaker by the threat of death" — illustrated by the Reparation Clauses of the Versailles Treaty.

Economic power rests on opinion too. The rules made by the State are only effective when supported by public opinion: property rests ultimately on opinion, namely "the moral condemnation of theft, together with the sentiment which allows theft to be defined by the law." Where sentiment is weak or non-existent, property is endangered: "Stalin, for instance, began his career as a virtuous bandit practising his vocation in the name of communism." The power of the Pope to release men from the moral obligation of the eighth commandment enabled him to control the Italian bankers in the thirteenth century.

The limits of plutocracy and union power. Economic power, though derived from law and opinion, easily acquires a certain independence: it can influence law by corruption and public opinion by propaganda, put politicians under obligations, and threaten financial crises. But there are very definite limits. Caesar was helped to power by his creditors, and when he had it, defied them; Charles V borrowed from the Fuggers the money to buy the position of Emperor, and when he had it snapped his fingers at them; Thyssen helped to put Hitler into power. In a democracy the plutocracy has been unable to introduce Asiatic labour into California or Australia, unable to destroy trade unionism, unable to avoid heavy taxation of the rich, unable to prevent socialist propaganda; but it can prevent Socialist governments from introducing Socialism, and can bring about their downfall by engineering a crisis and by propaganda. Trade unions, conversely, can keep out coloured labour, prevent their own extinction, secure heavy death duties, and preserve their propaganda — but have never brought about Socialism. "Democracy, where it exists, has more reality than many opponents of capitalism are willing to admit."

Ownership versus control. In a modern large corporation, ownership and power are by no means necessarily combined. Russell draws on Berle and Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932): although ownership is centrifugal, economic power is centripetal; two thousand individuals control half the industry of the United States; the modern executive is analogous to the kings and Popes of former times. In feudal times the men who owned the land had the power; with industrialism, credit has become stronger than ownership of land, and where law is respected and enforced, the borrower has to go on paying interest until he is ruined — "the economic power derived from landed property passes from the borrower to the lender," usually a bank. The tendency for economic power to become concentrated in few hands is a commonplace, "but this tendency applies to power in general, not only to economic power."

Economic versus military power. The two forms pass into each other. Under primitive conditions military power is usually the source of other kinds (Alexander was not as rich as the Persians; the Romans were not as rich as the Carthaginians; the Mohammedans were poorer than the Byzantines). Commercial States acquired military power from wealth — the Greek maritime cities, Carthage, the Italian republics, Holland, England — though commercial power based on mere geography declined with Spain in the seventeenth century. In the modern world, the important form of economic power in international relations is the possession of raw materials and food — "the most important raw materials are those required in war" — so that "military and economic power have become scarcely distinguishable": a country cannot fight without oil, and cannot own oil unless it is able to fight. There is a general tendency towards "the combination of all forms of power in a single organization, which must necessarily be the State."

The critique of Marxism. Russell examines the view, made familiar by Marxism, that capitalism tends to generate a class war that will ultimately dominate all other forms of conflict. The view that all economic power belongs to landowners and capitalists has important limitations: landlords and capitalists are helpless without labour, and strikes, when sufficiently determined, can secure labour a share of economic power; prudent capitalists do not exploit to the uttermost, for fear of just such consequences as Marx foresaw (the skilled workers of the United States are on the whole Conservative); the assumption that the proletariat are the majority is very questionable — untrue in agricultural countries where peasant proprietorship prevails, and many proletarians are politically on the side of the rich because their employment depends on the demand for luxuries; and, most importantly, "most people, at a crisis, feel more loyalty to their nation than to their class" — "there is as yet no sign of any change since 1914, when almost all nominal internationalists became patriotic and bellicose." Even the Spanish Civil War is not proof of the dominance of the class war: Germany and Italy have nationalistic grounds for siding with Franco, England and France for opposing him. The chapter ends with its verdict: "Economics as a separate science is unrealistic, and misleading if taken as a guide in practice. It is one element — a very important element, it is true — in a wider study, the science of power."

Key ideas

• Economic power is derivative: within a State it depends on law, between States on war or the threat of war.
• All economic power ultimately rests on deciding who may use a given piece of land, enforced by armed force if necessary.
• The ultimate basis of law and economic relations is military power; income tax is protection money regularized.
• Property also rests on opinion — the moral condemnation of theft and the legitimacy of the law that defines it.
• Both plutocracy and trade unions are limited by public opinion and democracy; each can block, neither can dictate.
• Ownership and control have separated: control is centripetal, concentrated in few hands (Berle and Means).
• Military and economic power have become scarcely distinguishable in an age of mechanized war and raw-material empires.
• The Marxist class-war theory fails: the proletariat may not be a majority, capitalists are often prudent, and national loyalty overrides class loyalty.
• Economics is an element in the wider science of power, not a self-sufficient science.

Key takeaway

Economic power is a form of power derived from law, opinion, and military force — not the primary source of all other power, as Marxism holds, nor an independent domain, as economics assumes.

Chapter 9 — Power over Opinion

Central question

Is all power ultimately power over opinion, or does force generate opinion? What are the real limits of propaganda?

Main argument

The case that opinion is omnipotent. It is easy to make out a case for the view that opinion is omnipotent, and that all other forms of power are derived from it. Armies are useless unless the soldiers believe in the cause for which they are fighting; law is impotent unless it is generally respected; economic institutions depend upon respect for the law (what would happen to banking if the average citizen had no horror of forgery?); if a large majority were in favour of Socialism, capitalism would become unworkable.

The case for force. But this would be only a half-truth, since it ignores the forces which cause opinion. While it is true that opinion is an essential element in military force, it is equally true that military force may generate opinion: almost every European country has the religion which was that of its government in the late sixteenth century, attributable mainly to the control of persecution and propaganda by means of the armed forces. "It is traditional to regard the spread of religions as due to mental causes, but this is only true of the immediate causes; in the background there is usually force in the service of some creed." Yet a creed never has force at its command to begin with — the first steps in the production of a widespread opinion must be taken by means of persuasion alone. Hence the see-saw: "first, pure persuasion leading to the conversion of a minority; then force exerted to secure that the rest of the community shall be exposed to the right propaganda; and finally a genuine belief on the part of the great majority, which makes the use of force again unnecessary." The Society of Friends has never got beyond persuasion; the other nonconformists acquired the forces of the State in the time of Cromwell, but failed in their propaganda after they had seized power; the Catholic Church, after three centuries of persuasion, captured the State in the time of Constantine, and then, by force, established a system of propaganda which converted almost all the pagans; the Marxist creed has reached the second stage in Russia, and the first elsewhere.

The rise of science. The most notable instance of influence on opinion without the aid of force at any stage is the rise of science. Galileo was made to recant, Newton was made Master of the Mint, Lavoisier was guillotined ("la République n'a pas besoin de savants"). Yet the men of science were the makers of the modern world, "their effect upon social life has been greater than that of any others known to history, not excluding Christ and Aristotle." Science prevailed over prejudice because it provided means of realizing existing purposes and because the proof that it did so was overwhelming: Copernican astronomy was useful in navigation, Galileo's theory of falling bodies made it possible to calculate the trajectory of a cannon-ball, geology was useful in mining. The lesson for the power of Reason in general: "Reason alone cannot determine the ends of life" — if, in the name of Reason, you summon a man to alter his fundamental purposes to pursue the general happiness rather than his own power, you will fail, and deserve to fail. But if you can prove, by evidence convincing to every sane man who takes the trouble to examine it, that you possess a means of facilitating the satisfaction of existing desires, men will ultimately believe what you say — "with the proviso that the existing desires which you can satisfy are those of men who have power or are capable of acquiring it."

Belief as desire plus evidence plus iteration. The founders of religions illustrate a non-rational form of unforceful persuasion. Reduced to its bare formula: "if a certain proposition is true, I shall be able to realize my desires; therefore I wish this proposition to be true; therefore, unless I have exceptional self-control, I believe it to be true." Advertisement comes under the same head: it is pleasant to believe in so-and-so's pills, since it gives you hope of better health, and you will believe in them if you find their excellence very frequently and emphatically asserted. Belief, when it is not simply traditional, "is a product of several factors: desire, evidence, and iteration." When either the desire or the evidence is nil, there will be no belief; when there is no outside assertion, belief will only arise in exceptional characters — "founders of religions, scientific discoverers, and lunatics." To produce a mass belief, all three elements must exist in some degree; more propaganda is necessary to cause acceptance of a belief for which there is little evidence than of one for which the evidence is strong.

Official propaganda and its limits. Through the potency of iteration, the holders of power acquire their capacity of influencing belief: the King's head on coins, coronations and jubilees, the spectacular aspects of the army and navy — and, far more potent, the modern methods of education, the press, the cinema, the radio. Propaganda is only successful when it is in harmony with something in the patient — his desire for an immortal soul, for health, for the greatness of his nation; where there is no such fundamental reason for acquiescence, the assertions of authority are viewed with cynical scepticism. State propaganda is powerless when opposed to national feeling, as in Austria-Hungary before the War, in Ireland until 1922, and in India. Russell's surprising conclusion is that a State monopoly of propaganda has consequences less dire than one might expect: a true monopoly leads to careless arrogance among rulers, indifference to the well-being of the governed, and the loss of credulity among the governed. Its net effect is "to delay revolution, but to make it more violent when it comes": when only one doctrine is officially allowed, men get no practice in thinking or in weighing alternatives; only a great wave of passionate revolt can dethrone orthodoxy, and the revolt will deny "even what was true in governmental dogma." By contrast, the shrewd propagandist allows disagreement — "Lies need competition if they are to retain their vigour." In the long run, those who possess the power are likely to become too flagrantly indifferent to the interests of the common man, as the Popes were in the time of Luther; "sooner or later, some new Luther will challenge the authority of the State, and, like his predecessor, be so quickly successful that it will be impossible to suppress him."

Key ideas

• Opinion seems omnipotent — armies, law, and economic institutions depend on it — but force causes opinion in turn.
• The see-saw: persuasion converts a minority, force exposes the rest to propaganda, and majority belief then makes force unnecessary.
• Science is the great example of persuasion without force: it won by ministering to existing desires for wealth and military prowess.
• Reason has power only when it supplies means for realizing existing purposes; it cannot determine ends.
• Belief = desire + evidence + iteration; propaganda must appeal to desire and repeat itself.
• State propaganda fails against nationalism; it is only successful when in harmony with something in the patient.
• A monopoly of propaganda delays revolution but makes it more violent; "Lies need competition if they are to retain their vigour."

Key takeaway

Power over opinion is real but not ultimate: it depends on desire, evidence, and iteration, is generated by force as often as it generates force, and a propaganda monopoly breeds the violent revolution it was meant to prevent.

Chapter 10 — Creeds as Sources of Power

Central question

Is a fanatical creed — a nation of united fanatics — a genuine source of military and political strength?

Main argument

The classic case: Islam. The power of a community depends not only upon its numbers, economic resources, and technical capacity, but also upon its beliefs. A fanatical creed, held by all the members of a community, often greatly increases its power; sometimes, however, it diminishes it. The classic example of power through fanaticism is the rise of Islam: Mohammed added nothing to the knowledge or material resources of the Arabs, yet within a few years of his death they had acquired a large empire by defeating their most powerful neighbours. Gibbon's account shows fanaticism uniting the Arab nation, giving it confidence in battle, and promoting courage by the promise of Paradise to those who fell fighting the infidels ("Hell is much hotter," said the indignant prophet). But Russell is careful: although fanaticism inspired the first attempts, "it was to other causes that they owed their prolonged career of victory" — the Byzantine and Persian Empires were weakened by long and indecisive wars, Roman armies were weak against cavalry, and the Arab horsemen were incredibly mobile and inured to hardships. Moreover, fanaticism was soon dethroned by government: the Caliphate passed to the family of Ommiyah, Mohammed's bitterest opponents, and was distinguished by free-thinking latitudinarianism while the Christians remained fanatical; the Mohammedans' tolerance of conquered Christians, in strong contrast to the persecuting zeal of the Catholic Church, was mainly responsible for the ease of their conquest and the stability of their Empire.

The failures of fanaticism. The cases in which fanaticism has led to success are naturally better known than those in which it has led to failure. Cromwell's Independents won largely because Parliament held London and the Eastern Counties, with man-power and economic resources far exceeding the King's; Cromwell himself turned out to be a practical politician, and the fanaticism of his followers was so unpopular as to lead to the complete downfall of his party. "Even in these two most favourable instances, the success of the fanatics was short-lived." The cases of disaster are far more numerous: fanaticism ruined Jerusalem in the time of Titus, and Constantinople in 1453, when the West was rebuffed on account of minute doctrinal differences between the Eastern and Western Churches; it brought about the decay of Spain, first through the expulsion of the Jews and Moors, and then by causing rebellion in the Netherlands and the long exhaustion of the Wars of Religion. "On the other hand, the most powerful nations, throughout modern times, have been those least addicted to the persecution of heretics." Russell's satirical illustrations: the Tibetans advanced boldly in 1905 because the Lamas had given them magic charms against bullets — until the bullets proved to be nickel-pointed, whereupon the Lamas explained that the charms were only effective against lead; Bela Kun and Kurt Eisner were confident that Dialectical Materialism was fighting for them.

Two truisms. To arrive at the truth, Russell finds a compromise between two opposite truisms. First: men who agree in their beliefs can co-operate more whole-heartedly than men who disagree — the civil war in Spain shows co-operation made difficult between anarchists, communists, and Basque nationalists, though all desired the defeat of Franco (and Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War, admired Napoleon and disliked Wellington, yet fought the French as competently as if he had been a high Tory). Second: men whose beliefs are in accordance with fact are more likely to succeed than men whose beliefs are mistaken. The uniformity which is needed to give power to a nation, a religion, or a party is "a uniformity in practice, depending upon sentiment and habit"; where this exists, intellectual convictions can be tolerated. Truth is only directly advantageous in a limited class of beliefs — technical matters, such as the properties of high explosives, and matters concerning the relative strengths of the opposing forces — and even as regards these, it may be desirable that only governments and military chiefs should know the facts. But "if human affairs were as calculable as chess, and politicians and generals as clever as good chess players, there might be some truth in this view"; in fact governments miscalculate, because "hysteria and megalomania are catching, and governments have no immunity." An attitude of obedience, when exacted from subordinates, is inimical to intelligence: "in a community in which men have to accept, at least outwardly, some obviously absurd doctrine, the best must become either stupid or disaffected." The Nazis have exiled most of the ablest Germans, and this must, sooner or later, have disastrous effects upon their military technique; "insistence on doctrinal uniformity, even in matters quite remote from war, is ultimately fatal to military efficiency in a scientific age."

The practical synthesis. Social cohesion demands a creed, or a code of behaviour, or a prevailing sentiment — without something of the kind, a community disintegrates and becomes subject to a tyrant or a foreign conqueror. But if this means of cohesion is to be effective, it must be very deeply felt; it may be imposed by force upon a small minority, but "it must be genuine and spontaneous in the great majority." Loyalty to a leader, national pride, and religious fervour have proved the best means of securing cohesion; with the decay of hereditary sovereignty and the spread of free thought, national pride is left, and has become relatively more important than in former times. Since the holders of power are biased by their power-impulses, "the amount of interference with freedom that conduces most to national power will always be less than governments are inclined to believe; therefore a diffused sentiment against interference, provided it does not go so far as to lead to anarchy, is likely to add to the national strength." And the long-term effects of a fanatical creed are quite different from the immediate: intense propaganda produces great efforts, efforts produce weariness, and weariness produces scepticism — "not, at first, definite disbelief, which is an energetic frame of mind, but mere absence of strong belief." Creeds which are used too intensively are transitory in their effects: the Pope, the Emperor, and the Sultan dominated the thirteenth century; the Catholic-Protestant wars ended with ultimate victory to neither party, "but to those who thought the issues between them unimportant." Swift satirized the conflict in the wars of Big-Endians and Little-Endians; Voltaire's Huron found it equally silly to demand his recantation and to refuse it. "If the world, in the near future, becomes divided between Communists and Fascists, the final victory will go to neither, but to those who shrug their shoulders and say, like Candide, cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin. The ultimate limit to the power of creeds is set by boredom, weariness, and love of ease."

Key ideas

• A fanatical creed can greatly increase a community's power — Islam is the classic case — but the success was due to other causes too.
• Fanaticism's failures are more numerous than its successes; the most powerful nations have been least addicted to persecuting heretics.
• Co-operation needs agreement in practice (sentiment and habit), not uniformity of intellectual conviction.
• Truth matters mainly in technical matters and estimates of relative strength; concealment breeds hysteria in rulers and revolution in subjects.
• Forced obedience lowers the intellectual level and is ultimately fatal to military efficiency in a scientific age.
• A creed is a source of strength only if genuinely and deeply felt by the majority; censorship makes men out of touch with reality.
• Governments always overestimate the amount of interference with freedom that helps national power.
• Creeds used too intensively are transitory: weariness breeds scepticism; the ultimate limit to the power of creeds is boredom.

Key takeaway

United fanaticism can win battles but loses wars in the long run: a creed strengthens a community only when genuinely held, never when imposed, and its intensive use ends in weariness and scepticism.

Chapter 11 — The Biology of Organizations

Central question

What laws govern organizations considered as organisms with a life of their own — their growth, competition, and decay?

Main argument

Organizations as organisms. The previous chapters considered the psychological sources of power — tradition (respect for priests and kings), fear and personal ambition (naked power), the substitution of a new creed for an old one (revolutionary power). This chapter studies the organizations through which power is exercised, considered "as far as possible without regard to their purposes, in the way in which men are considered in anatomy and biochemistry." An organization is also an organism, with a life of its own, and a tendency to growth and decay; competition between organizations is analogous to competition between individual animals and plants and can be viewed in a more or less Darwinian manner. But this analogy, like others, "must not be pressed too far; it may serve to suggest and to illuminate, but not to demonstrate" — we must not assume that decay is inevitable where social organizations are concerned.

Definition and the redistribution of power. An organization is "a set of people who are combined in virtue of activities directed to common ends." It may be purely voluntary (a club), a natural biological group (a family or a clan), compulsory (a State), or a complicated mixture (a railway company). Every organization, whatever its character and purpose, involves some redistribution of power: there must be a government, which takes decisions in the name of the whole body, and has more power than the single members. Combination always involves some surrender of independence: "we acquire increased power over others, but they also acquire power over us." Even a completely democratic government involves a redistribution of power — if a million members each have an equal voice, every man has a millionth part of the power over the whole million, instead of complete power over himself. Every increase in the size of organizations increases inequalities of power, simultaneously diminishing the independence of ordinary members and enlarging the scope of the government's initiative. "The average man submits because much more can be achieved co-operatively than singly; the exceptionally power-loving man rejoices, since it provides his opportunity."

Size and density of power. Organizations differ in two important respects: size, and "density of power" — the degree of control which they exert over their members. Owing to the love of power in those who acquire governmental posts, every organization will, in the absence of counteracting forces, tend to grow both in size and in density of power (an international chess club is the exceptional case where growth is intrinsically limited). The most obvious example is the State: every State which is sufficiently powerful aims at foreign conquest; "the broad rule is that a State conquers what it can," stopping only when it reaches a frontier at which some other State or States can exert a pressure as strong as its own (Great Britain has not acquired Afghanistan, because Russia is as powerful there; Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States because it was impossible for him to defend it). So far as intrinsic forces are concerned, every State tends to become world-wide; the power of a State radiates from a centre and grows less as the distance increases. Small States exist by the jealousies of large ones — Belgium exists because its existence is convenient for England and France; Portugal has large colonies because the Great Powers cannot agree about how to divide them. The United States is not an exception to the principle: the Southern States' imperialism found an outlet in the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War of 1898 gave vent to a fresh impulse, and the Monroe Doctrine, a virtual protectorate over Latin America, is more satisfactory to the dominant interests than annexation would be.

Communication and mobility as limits. In antiquity, the chief limit on governmental power was lack of rapid mobility. Herodotus describes the great royal road from Sardis to Susa — 111 stations, a journey of ninety days for an army — which made an extended empire possible but did not enable the King to exercise any detailed control over the satraps of distant provinces; when the Ionians revolted against Persia, they had a number of months at their disposal. The Roman Empire learnt from the Persians: imperial messengers could travel at an average rate of ten miles an hour, but in each province the imperial post was controlled by the military commander, so that the swiftness of the legions and the tardiness of news often resulted in advantage to rebels. Gibbon's contrast of Constantine's march with Hannibal's shows how roads decided history: "The result was that Maxentius was defeated and Christianity became the religion of the State. The history of the world might have been different if the Romans had had worse roads or a swifter means of transmitting news." Steamships, railways, and aeroplanes have made it possible for governments to exercise power quickly at great distances; messages travel faster than human beings, so that escape is more difficult and governments stronger. "A World State is now a technical possibility, and might be established by a victor in some really serious world-war, or, more probably, by the most powerful of the neutrals."

Density and the equilibrium of power. The State, in every civilized country, is far more active now than at any former time; in Russia, Germany, and Italy it interferes in almost all human concerns. The love of power in officials and the love of independence in citizens will, when organization reaches a certain intensity, be in at least temporary equilibrium — but many forces conspire to make for uniformity in modern communities (schools, newspapers, cinema, radio, drill), and the position of equilibrium "tends, under modern conditions, to shift further and further in the direction of power, thus facilitating the creation and success of totalitarian States. By education love of independence can be weakened to an extent to which, at present, no limits are known."

Churches, parties, corporations, and secret societies. Churches aim at being world-wide and regulate the most intimate concerns of their members; nationalism has greatly diminished their power and has transferred to the State many emotions which formerly found their outlet in religion. Political parties have greatly increased their density: in the nineteenth century Members of Parliament frequently voted against their party leaders; now men are pledged to orthodoxy, the programme is decided in a manner nominally democratic but very much influenced by a small number of wire-pullers, and "it is this system that has given to leaders the power to thwart their rank-and-file supporters." Communist, Fascist, and Nazi parties are a development, historically and psychologically, not of the political party, but of the secret society: under an autocratic government, men who aim at radical change are driven to secrecy, and fear of treachery leads to a very strict discipline — "the risk, the secrecy, the present suffering, and the hope of future triumph, produce a quasi-religious exaltation." When their leaders acquired the government, "they ruled the State in the same spirit in which they had formerly ruled their parties."

Coalescence and decay. When two organizations with different but not incompatible objects coalesce, the result is more powerful than either: the L.N.E.R. railway, running all the way from London to Edinburgh, is obviously stronger than the three companies put together. The logical outcome of this process is for the most powerful organization, usually the State, to absorb all others; the same tendency would lead in time to the creation of one World-State, if the purposes of different States were not incompatible — but since national power, not the wealth or happiness of citizens, is the purpose of States, their purposes conflict. A World-State is only to be expected through the conquest of the world by some one national State, or through the universal adoption of some creed transcending nationalism. Organizations whose appeal rests on pride, envy, hate, contempt, or pleasure in contest cannot fulfil their purpose if they are world-wide: "In a world where such passions are strong, an organization which becomes world-wide is pretty sure to break up, since it will have lost its motive force." As to decay: "what makes an organization grow old is habit based upon success; when new circumstances arise, the habit is too strong to be shaken off" — the Chinese Empire before the revolution of 1911 is the best example. Kings become too sacred to lead in battle, cannot be told unpalatable truths, and "some day people wake up to the fact that they symbolize nothing of any value." But there is no inherent reason for organizational mortality: the American Constitution does not invest any man with the kind of reverence that leads to ignorance and impotence, nor does it lend itself to the accumulation of habits which prevent adaptation. "At this point, the biological analogy, if pressed, becomes misleading."

Key ideas

• An organization is an organism with a life of its own; the Darwinian analogy illuminates but must not be pressed to prove inevitable decay.
• Every organization involves a redistribution of power: combination surrenders independence and enlarges government.
• Organizations tend to grow in size and density of power; the State conquers what it can until it meets equal pressure.
• Communication and mobility set the limits of empire: roads, railways, telegraph, and aircraft have made a World State technically possible.
• Love of independence in citizens and love of power in officials reach a shifting equilibrium, moved by education toward power.
• Communist, Fascist, and Nazi parties descend from the secret society, not the parliamentary party.
• Organizations appealing to pride or hate cannot be world-wide without losing their motive force.
• Organizations die of habit based on success (the Chinese Empire), but mortality is not inevitable — the American Constitution is the counter-example.

Key takeaway

Organizations behave like organisms — growing in size and density, competing, coalescing, decaying by habit — so that the direction of social change is set by the biology of organizations even more than by their stated purposes.

Chapter 12 — Powers and Forms of Governments

Central question

What powers do organizations have over members and non-members, and what are the merits and defects of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy?

Main argument

The powers of organizations. Apart from the purpose of an organization, its most important characteristics are (1) size, (2) power over members, (3) power over non-members, and (4) form of government. Organizations other than the State have powers over their members strictly limited by law: a barrister may be disbarred, a solicitor struck off the rolls, a medical man disqualified, an owner of racehorses warned off the turf; all these punishments involve disgrace, but your colleagues cannot legally do more than prevent you from practising your profession. The powers of the State over its citizens are, on the contrary, unlimited, except in so far as constitutional provisions forbid arbitrary arrest or spoliation: in England the legislature is omnipotent — it can pass an Act to the effect that Mr. John Smith is to be put to death without the necessity of establishing that he has committed a crime (in the form of Acts of Attainder, this power was one of the means by which Parliament acquired control of the government); in India and totalitarian States this power belongs to the executive. The powers of a State over foreigners depend upon war and the threat of war — even tariffs and immigration laws in China were regulated by treaties accepted as a result of military defeat; "nothing but lack of military force limits the power of one State over another" (the Book of Joshua, the Babylonian captivity, the confinement of North American Indians to reservations). The external powers of private organizations are largely extra-legal — boycott and intimidation: in Ireland, assassination brought about the downfall of the landlords and then of English domination; the Nazis won their way by acts of illegal violence. "In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them."

Absolute monarchy. One-man rule is the oldest, simplest, and most wide-spread of the constitutions known in historical times, prevailing in Asia from the beginning of Babylonian records through the Persian monarchy, the Macedonian and Roman domination, and the Caliphate, to the days of the Great Mogul; "at the present day, though absolute monarchy is supposed to be in decline, something very like it prevails in Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and Japan. It is evident that this form of government is one which men find natural." Its psychological merits are clear: the ruler leads some tribe or sect to conquest, and his followers feel themselves partakers in his glory — Cyrus led the Persians in revolt against the Medes; Alexander gave power and wealth to his Macedonians; Napoleon brought victory to the armies of the Revolution; the relations of Lenin and Hitler to their parties were of the same sort. No political training, no habit of compromise is required. Voluntary federation of States, by contrast, is almost unknown: there are innumerable instances of small States growing into great empires by conquest, "but hardly any of voluntary federation" — Greece in the time of Philip, Renaissance Italy, and Europe today could not unite even when it was a matter of life or death. The only genuine "social contract" is Hobbes's, not Rousseau's: a contract which the citizens (or pirates) make with each other when there are great possibilities of plunder or conquest. "The 'social contract,' in the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, is a contract among conquerors, which loses its raison d'être if they are deprived of the benefits of conquest"; for the majority of subjects, "fear, rather than consent, is the original cause of submission to a king whose power extends beyond a single tribe."

Monarchy has, however, very great disadvantages. If hereditary, it is unlikely that the rulers will continue to be able, and dynastic civil wars follow uncertainty about the succession (the wars of succession of the Great Moguls; the Wars of the Roses); if not hereditary, there is even more likelihood of civil war (the Roman Empire from the death of Commodus to the accession of Constantine) — the only really successful solution ever devised is the method by which the Pope is elected, and even that failed in the Great Schism. A still more serious disadvantage is that the monarch is usually indifferent to the interests of subjects, except where they are identical with those of the king; kings are led astray by pride and by reliance upon an inner group whose power has declined (Charles I and Louis XVI fell because the middle class was opposed to them, though the aristocracy supported them). "Sooner or later, if there is no external conquest, there is revolution, and the monarchy is either abolished or shorn of its power."

Oligarchy. The natural successor to absolute monarchy is oligarchy, which may take many forms — hereditary aristocracy, the rich, a Church or political party — producing very different results. A hereditary landed aristocracy "is apt to be conservative, proud, stupid, and rather brutal," and is always worsted in a struggle with the higher bourgeoisie. A government of the rich prevailed in all the free cities of the Middle Ages and survived in Venice until Napoleon extinguished it; such governments have been "on the whole, more enlightened and astute than any others known to history" — money made in commerce is made by cleverness which is not dictatorial. The modern industrial magnate is a totally different type, dealing largely with the technical manipulation of materials and with an army of employees rather than with equals who must be persuaded. Government by a Church or political party — what Russell calls a theocracy, a form of oligarchy which has assumed a new importance in recent years — had an older form (the Patrimony of St. Peter, the Jesuit regime in Paraguay), a modern form beginning with Calvin's rule in Geneva and the Rule of the Saints in New England, and was revived by Lenin and adopted in Italy, Germany, and China. Its merits: believers form a nucleus for social cohesion after revolution and can easily co-operate because they agree on fundamentals; the Party is a minority not of birth or wealth, to which power can be entrusted where democracy must fail; the believers are more energetic and politically conscious than the average. Its demerits: inevitable severe ideological censorship, which either kills the free exercise of intelligence or promotes hypocrisy; and the psychology of the fanatical rulers — "being fanatics, they will be severe; being severe, they will be opposed; being opposed, they will become more severe... Hence the rack, the stake, the Gestapo, the Cheka."

Democracy. Democracy, when firmly established, is a safeguard against the instability of monarchy and oligarchy, since civil war is unlikely to give victory to a minority: "since civil war is a very grave evil, a form of government which makes it unlikely is to be commended." "Apart from brute force, the principal factors on the government side are tradition, religion, fear of foreign enemies, and the natural desire of most men to follow a leader. For the protection of the governed, only one method has been hitherto discovered which is in any degree effective, namely, democracy." Democracy has essential limitations: some decisions must be speedy and others require expert knowledge (the abandonment of the gold standard in 1931; war, where "it is possible to consult Parliament or Congress... but it is impossible to consult the electorate"). It demands a readiness for compromise: "the beaten party must not consider that a principle is involved of such importance as to make it pusillanimous to yield." It can be thwarted by a Parliament that relies on a preponderance of force in a revolutionary situation. And in a great modern State, the voter has so little sense of power that he often does not think it worth while to use his vote: "The Greek City State, with its demagogues, tyrants, body-guards, and exiles, has revived because its methods of propaganda have again become available." Russell notes the economic parallel: in an industrial undertaking, the investors are the "citizens" and the employees the "slaves"; corporations exhibit a great variety of oligarchical constitutions, and by means of the proxy committee "the management can virtually dictate their own successors" — in the United States Steel Corporation the directors collectively own only 1.4 per cent of the shares, "yet the economic power is wholly theirs" (Berle and Means). The two great influences against democracy in the past have been wealth and war — the Medici and Napoleon illustrate them; the German and Italian democracies fell "not because a majority was tired of democracy, but because the preponderance of armed force was not on the side of the numerical majority." Democracy, when new, is unstable — "Cromwell, Napoleon, and Hitler appeared in the early days of democracy in their respective countries" — but where it has lasted long enough to become traditional, it is stable, and "nothing gives a nation such strength in war as the wide diffusion of education and patriotism."

Key ideas

• The State's power over members is legally unlimited; other organizations can only expel or disgrace.
• A State's power over non-members is war and the threat of war; private organizations exert extra-legal terrorism, economic organizations by the threat of starvation.
• Monarchy is natural and cohesive but breeds civil war, hereditary incompetence, and indifference to subjects; the social contract is a contract among conquerors.
• Oligarchy has many forms: the landed aristocracy, the astute commercial rich (Venice), and the theocracy of a party or Church.
• Theocracies cohere but inevitably impose censorship: fanaticism, severity, opposition, more severity — the rack, the stake, the Gestapo, the Cheka.
• Democracy is the only method yet discovered for protecting the governed, but it is limited by the need for speed and expertise.
• Democracy needs habitual practice and compromise to become stable; new democracies breed Cromwells, Napoleons, and Hitlers.
• In corporations, the employees are the "slaves" and the management a self-perpetuating oligarchy; wealth and war are the historic enemies of democracy.

Key takeaway

Of the forms of government, democracy is the only one that gives the governed protection against the power of the government — but it is stable only where habitual, and is threatened by wealth, war, and the revival of the Greek city-state's propaganda techniques.

Chapter 13 — Organizations and the Individual

Central question

How do organizations shape the whole life of the individual, and do they on balance increase or diminish his liberty and happiness?

Main argument

The life-course of the individual. Human beings find it profitable to live in communities, but their desires, unlike those of bees in a hive, remain largely individual; hence arises the difficulty of social life and the need of government. Government is necessary — without it, only a very small percentage of the population of civilized countries could hope to survive, and that in a state of pitiable destitution — but it involves inequalities of power, and those who have most power will use it to further their own desires. "Thus anarchy and despotism are alike disastrous, and some compromise is necessary if human beings are to be happy." Organizations affect an individual in two ways: those designed to facilitate the realization of his own wishes (education, health) and those intended to prevent him from thwarting the legitimate interests of others (the police, the criminal law). The distinction is not clear-cut — the police exist to further the interests of honest men as well as to thwart burglars.

Russell then walks through a human life: birth, where the services of a doctor or midwife are considered essential; infancy and childhood, where health is to some extent the concern of the State; at five or six the child comes under the education authorities, and "at the end of this process, in the majority of cases, most opinions and mental habits are fixed for life"; the child imbibes a moral code — precepts of three sorts: those which must be really obeyed on pain of general obloquy, those which must not be disobeyed, and those regarded as counsels of perfection only to be obeyed by saints; then economic organizations, the trade union, the State's tariffs and government orders, which can decide whether a man's chosen trade shall prosper; marriage and duties to children, bringing relations with the law and a moral code mainly derived from the Church; the old age pension; and death, "carefully supervised by the law and the medical profession, to make sure that it has not occurred by his own wish or by any one else's." What remains to personal initiative: a man can marry to please himself, choose his livelihood in youth, spend his leisure as he chooses — "What he can do is to choose among ready-made alternatives."

The comparison with the Chinese peasant. So far, the effect of the organizations characteristic of civilized societies is to increase a man's liberty as compared with (say) a peasant in a comparatively undeveloped community. The Chinese peasant: as a child he has not to go to school, but from a very early age he has to work; he is more likely than not to die in early childhood; if he survives, custom deprives him of all but a minimum of freedom as to marriage; he lives always on the margin of subsistence, and in times of famine a large part of his family is likely to die of hunger; "even the most depressed of the unemployed, in England, have a life which is almost a paradise in comparison with that of the average Chinese peasant."

Police and the danger of gangsterism. The police and the criminal law, in so far as they interfere with crimes of violence, "increase the freedom and happiness of all but a small minority of exceptionally ferocious individuals"; without them, gangs of marauders quickly establish a reign of terror. There is a danger that the police themselves become gangsters, or establish some form of tyranny; there is also the danger that the police are used by the holders of power to obstruct desirable reforms — "It is a part of the fundamental difficulty that the measures which are necessary to prevent anarchy are such as make it more difficult to change the status quo when it ought to be changed."

War and self-preservation. War and revolution, or the fear of them, involve the State's instinct of self-preservation and lead to the most drastic forms of control over individual lives: compulsory military service, the direction of labour, the death penalty for activities helpful to the enemy. Where the government has a monopoly not only of physical coercion but of moral and economic persuasion, it can go further in disregard of citizens, since revolutionary sentiment is less easy to propagate and organize; "it is therefore to be expected that, in so far as the State is distinct from the body of the citizens, every increase in its power will make it more indifferent to their welfare."

The balance. "In the main, the effects of organizations, apart from those resulting from governmental self-preservation, are such as to increase individual happiness and well-being." Education, health, productivity of labour, provision against destitution all depend upon a very high degree of organization. The measures intended to prevent revolution or defeat in war are different: however necessary they may be deemed, their effects are unpleasant, and can only be defended on the ground that revolution or defeat would be still more unpleasant. The difference between vaccination and war-preparedness is "so great as to amount almost to a difference in kind": the unpleasantness of peaceful progress need not be more than temporary — smallpox could be stamped out, and vaccination would then become unnecessary — "but every technical advance makes war more painful and more destructive, and the prevention of revolution by totalitarian methods more disastrous to humanity and intelligence."

The four relations to organizations. An individual stands to organizations as customer, voluntary member, involuntary member, or enemy. As customer, the organizations must be thought to minister to his comforts — even the useless pills give hope, amusement, and a sense of personal initiative ("the prospect of buying a new car gives a man something to think and talk about"). As voluntary member (political parties, Churches, clubs), he gains a sense of drama and an outlet for power impulses: "the battles between opposing organizations, when compelled by the authorities to be bloodless, afford, on the whole, a useful outlet for the feelings of pugnacity and love of power which are likely, otherwise, to seek more sinister forms of satisfaction." The most important organization of which a man is an involuntary member is the State; the principle of nationality has made membership usually in accordance with the will of the citizen, and "nothing has done more to strengthen the State than the success of the principle of nationality." Loyalty to the State has positive and negative motives — love of home and family, reinforced by the twin motives of love of power and fear of foreign aggression. And here is the tragic synthesis: "No other organization rouses anything like the loyalty aroused by the national State. And the chief activity of the State is preparation for large-scale homicide. It is loyalty to this organization for death that causes men to endure the totalitarian State, and to risk the destruction of home and children and our whole civilization rather than submit to alien rule." The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby shocked the civilized world, "but such acts, on a vast scale, are to be the commonplaces of the next war, for which we are all preparing." "Individual psychology and governmental organization have effected a tragic synthesis, from which we and our children must suffer if we continue powerless to find an issue except through disaster."

Key ideas

• Government is necessary but involves inequalities of power; anarchy and despotism are alike disastrous.
• Organizations facilitate or restrain the individual at every stage from birth to death; most opinions and habits are fixed by education.
• Civilization's organizations increase liberty compared with the peasant's life, despite their constraints.
• The police prevent gangsterism but may become gangsters; measures against anarchy make change harder.
• War and governmental self-preservation are the sources of the most drastic control, and increase indifference to citizens' welfare.
• Effects of organizations apart from self-preservation increase happiness; war-preparedness is a difference in kind.
• The individual is customer, voluntary member, involuntary member, or enemy; voluntary contests provide a useful outlet for pugnacity.
• The State is the supreme involuntary organization, and its chief activity is preparation for large-scale homicide.

Key takeaway

Organizations — above all the national State — increase the individual's freedom and well-being in almost every department of life, except the one that now dominates: preparation for war, to which the State commands a loyalty no other organization can match.

Chapter 14 — Competition

Central question

In what kinds of cases is competition technically wasteful, and in what cases is it desirable on non-technical grounds?

Main argument

The nineteenth century's favourite device. The nineteenth century, keenly aware of the dangers of arbitrary power, had a favourite device for avoiding them: competition. The evils of monopoly were familiar from tradition — the Stuarts and even Elizabeth granted profitable monopolies to courtiers, the objection to which was one of the causes of the Civil War; in feudal times lords of the manor insisted upon grain being ground in their mills. In England, landowners and capitalists, on the whole, agreed in advocating laissez-faire; from 1815 to 1848, Church and State over the whole of the Continent were united in opposing the ideas of the French Revolution, and the censorship was at once severe and ridiculous — Heine made fun of it in a chapter consisting of the words "The German Censors ............ idiots." In these circumstances liberalism "was the natural expression of energies that were hampered in their legitimate activities." The freedoms desired by liberals were achieved in America at independence, in England from 1824 to 1846, in France in 1871, in Germany by stages from 1848 to 1918, in Italy in the Risorgimento. "But the result was not quite what liberals intended; in industry, it bore more resemblance to the hostile prophecies of Marx": America, with the longest liberal tradition, was the first to enter the stage of trusts — monopolies not granted by the State but resulting from the natural operation of competition. "It was discovered that competition, unless artificially maintained, brings about its own extinction by leading to the complete victory of some one among the competitors."

Technical wastefulness. This is not true of all forms of competition; it is true, broadly speaking, where increase in the size of an organization means increase of efficiency. There remain, therefore, two questions: "First, in what kinds of cases is competition technically wasteful? Secondly, in what cases is it desirable on non-technical grounds?" Technical considerations have led to an increase in the optimum size of organizations: roads are dealt with by County Councils rather than parishes; electricity is best utilized by an authority controlling a considerable area (Niagara); irrigation may demand a work like the Aswan dam; elementary education could be improved by broadcast lessons from the B.B.C.; civil aviation is crippled by not being international; and "no State can adequately fulfil the primary purpose of protecting the lives of its citizens unless it is world-wide." Against the advantages of large areas must be set the advantages of small: less red tape, quicker decisions, adaptation to local needs and customs — hence local government with defined powers, controlled on large issues by the central authority. As to competition itself, its importance is at least as great in regard to armed force and propaganda as in the economic sphere. The Liberal view was that there should be free competition in business and propaganda, but not in armed force; the Italian Fascists and German Nazis proclaimed the diametrically opposite opinion — competition is always bad except where it takes the form of national war, "in which case it is the noblest of human activities"; Marxists decry competition except in the form of the class war.

Competition between States. In the sphere of production, competition between a multitude of small firms has given place, in the most important branches, to competition between trusts, each coextensive with at least one State; the only important international trust is the armament industry, which is exceptional in that orders to one firm are a cause of orders to another. "Competition in business still exists, but it is now merged in the competition between nations, in which war is the ultimate arbiter of success. The good or evil of modern business competition, therefore, is the same as that of rivalry between States." Competition for jobs remains as fierce as ever — a man would rather act the part of Hamlet than that of the First Sailor — and can be mitigated but cannot be wholly abolished; the two conditions to be observed are that the unsuccessful should suffer no avoidable hardship, and that success should, as far as possible, be the reward of genuine merit. The most important form of competition, at the present day, is between States, and it has become totalitarian — "for power, for wealth, for control over men's beliefs, but above all for life itself, since the infliction of the death penalty is the principal means to victory." The only way of ending this competition is the abolition of national sovereignty and national armed forces, "the substitution of a single international government with a monopoly of armed force. The alternative to this measure is the death of a large percentage of the population of civilized countries, and the reduction of the remainder to destitution and semi-barbarism. At present, a vast majority prefer this alternative."

Competition in propaganda. Competition in propaganda has become connected with the competition between armed States: if you preach Fascism, your most important effect is to strengthen Germany and Italy; if you preach Communism, you may help Russia to win the next war; if you urge democracy, you lend support to a military alliance with France. Russell examines freedom of propaganda from four standpoints, beginning with a critique of Mill. The doctrine of On Liberty "was far less extreme than is often supposed": Mill allowed restraint when others were involved, so that "the right of free speech is nugatory unless it includes the right to say things that may have unpleasant consequences to certain individuals or classes" — almost any opinion worth either advocating or combating is sure to affect some one adversely; a stronger principle is needed. From the standpoint of the government: if the government is itself recent and revolutionary, freedom is almost sure to bring further revolution (France in 1793, Russia in 1918, Germany in 1933); if the government is traditional, freedom acts as a safety-valve and tends to diminish discontent. A government should never allow propaganda urging the assassination of a particular person (the Weimar Republic was too lax), but should not prohibit an agitation for making a class legally liable to the death penalty; and "the State should not regard itself as the guardian of the Truth in science, metaphysics, or morals." From the standpoint of the average citizen: he takes very little interest in freedom of propaganda except in pre-revolutionary situations, where the real issue is the right to choose the government — "the right to achieve peacefully what would otherwise be achieved by revolution." From the standpoint of the ardent innovator: the Christian before Constantine, the Protestant in the time of Luther, the Communist at the present day — "such men have seldom been believers in free speech. They have been willing themselves to suffer martyrdom, but have been equally willing to inflict it." The millenarian is a conservative about the future: "In opposition he is a terrorist; in government, a persecutor." Gentler millenarians (the Society of Friends) hold that what is best in a man must come from within; the evolutionary innovator (Sorel in his syndicalist days) holds that progress is continuous and unpredictable, so all innovations must be encouraged — "the historically important innovators have believed in taking the kingdom of heaven by storm; they have often achieved their kingdom, but it has proved to be not the kingdom of heaven." From the standpoint of the philosopher: Gibbon's tolerant spirit of antiquity — the various modes of worship considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, by the magistrate as equally useful — is the model. The philosopher must contend that the useful purpose of propaganda is "that of promoting judgment, rational doubt, and the power of weighing opposing considerations; and this purpose it can only serve if there is competition among propagandas"; he will compare the public to a judge who listens to counsel on either side, and will advocate a single newspaper in which all parties are represented (as the B.B.C. allows controversy within a single organization). "Freedom of propaganda is possible when the differences are not such as to make peaceable co-operation under one government impossible."

Key ideas

• The nineteenth century trusted competition as the antidote to arbitrary power; competition in business produced trusts and its own extinction.
• Technical considerations favour large organizations for roads, electricity, irrigation, and the prevention of war; small areas favour adaptability.
• Business competition is now merged in competition between States, with war as the ultimate arbiter; the armament industry is the one international trust.
• Competition between States is totalitarian — for power, wealth, belief, and life itself — and only a world government with a monopoly of armed force can end it.
• Mill's defense of free speech is insufficient: almost any opinion worth advocating harms someone; a stronger principle is needed.
• Freedom of propaganda is a safety-valve for traditional governments but impossible for revolutionary ones.
• The millenarian innovator is a terrorist in opposition and a persecutor in power; only gentler millenarians and evolutionists value freedom.
• The philosopher's case for competition among propagandas: judgment, rational doubt, and weighing opposing considerations — the public as judge.

Key takeaway

Competition, once the liberal remedy for arbitrary power, has extinguished itself in economics and migrated into the totalitarian competition between States; only competition among propagandas, under a stable framework, now serves liberty.

Chapter 15 — Power and Moral Codes

Central question

How do moral codes serve power, and can morality be grounded in anything other than the interests of the powerful?

Main argument

Positive and personal morality. Morality, at any rate since the days of the Hebrew prophets, has had two divergent aspects: as a social institution analogous to law, and as a matter for the individual conscience. In the former aspect it is "part of the apparatus of power"; in the latter it is often revolutionary. The kind analogous to law is called "positive" morality; the other may be called "personal" morality. Positive morality is older than personal morality, probably older than law and government: it consists originally of tribal customs, out of which law gradually develops — the extraordinarily elaborate marriage rules of primitive savages have the same moral compulsive force as our rules against incest. "One of the purposes usually in large part unconscious of a traditional morality is to make the existing social system work," more cheaply and effectively than a police force.

The morality of obedience. The most obvious example of power-morality is the inculcation of obedience: children to parents, wives to husbands, servants to masters, subjects to princes, and (in religious matters) laymen to priests. Russell treats filial piety with characteristic irony: there are savages at the present day who, when their parents grow too old for work, sell them to be eaten; at some stage in the development of civilization, "it must have occurred to some man of unusual forethought that he could, while his children were still young, produce in them a state of mind which would lead them to keep him alive in old age" — "Probably there was at the moment some emaciated but unusually wise elder, whose advice was felt to be more valuable than his flesh." The Ten Commandments' promise that honouring your parents prolongs your days, the Romans' horror of parricide, and Confucius making filial piety the very basis of morality are all devices, "however instinctive and unconscious, for prolonging parental power." The subjection of women is "much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality": St. Paul's "the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man." The basis of the difference between morality for men and morality for women "was obviously the superior power of men"; originally only physical, it extended to economics, politics, and religion. "The great advantage of morality over the police appears very clearly in this case, for women, until quite recently, genuinely believed the moral precepts which embodied male domination and therefore required much less compulsion than would otherwise have been necessary." The code of Hammurabi shows the unimportance of women in the legislator's eyes: if a man strikes the daughter of a gentleman when she is pregnant and she dies, the striker's daughter shall be put to death — "The daughters had no rights because they had no power."

Kingship and priests. Kings were objects of veneration: "There's such divinity doth hedge a king, that treason can but peep the thing it would." Bagehot's English Constitution shows the use of the Queen in a dignified capacity — "the mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say that they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations." Where hereditary monarchy has been abolished it has usually been succeeded, after a longer or shorter time, by some other form of one-man rule: tyranny in Greece, the Empire in Rome, Cromwell in England, the Napoleons in France, "Stalin and Hitler in our own day," who inherit a part of the feelings formerly attached to royalty. Kingship's most useful function has been "the creation of a widely diffused sentiment favourable to social cohesion"; against this merit must be set the demerit of perpetuating ancient evils. The power of priests is more obviously connected with morals than any other form of power: in Christian countries, virtue consists in obedience to the will of God, and it is priests who know what the will of God commands. In the case of the Church, the relation between power and morals is to some extent the opposite of what it is elsewhere: positive morality enjoins submission to parents, husbands, and kings because they are powerful, "but the Church is powerful because of its moral authority" — though where the Church is secure, a morality of submission to the Church grows up in turn, and heresy and schism become essential elements in revolutionary programmes.

The power-morality thesis is not wholly true. The thesis that the moral code is an expression of power is not wholly true: from the exogamous rules of savages onward, there are, at all stages of civilization, ethical principles with no visible relation to power — among ourselves, the condemnation of homosexuality may serve as an example. "The Marxist thesis, that the moral code is an expression of economic power, is even less adequate than the thesis that it is an expression of power in general. Nevertheless, the Marxist thesis is true in a very great many instances": in the Middle Ages, when the most powerful of the laity were landowners and the only investors of money were Jews, the Church unhesitatingly condemned usury — "This was a debtors morality"; with the rise of the rich merchant class the prohibition was relaxed, first by Calvin, whose clientele was mainly urban and prosperous, then by the other Protestants, and last of all by the Catholic Church — "Creditor's morality became the fashion, and non-payment of debts a heinous sin."

Morality toward enemies. The moral code towards enemies is a matter as to which different ages have differed greatly, largely because the profitable uses of power have differed: the Old Testament commands the utter destruction of the seven nations of Canaan ("Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth"), while towards "cities which are very far off from thee" it is permissible to be more merciful — the women, little ones, cattle, and spoil are to be taken as plunder. Saul's sparing of Agag cost him the kingdom: "What meaneth then this bleating of sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of oxen which I hear?" "The vanquished, having no power, had no claim to mercy." Euripides in the Trojan Women tried to create a sentiment against this practice, without success; this view was not abandoned, even in theory, until the coming of Christianity. Clemency was recognized as a virtue in antiquity only when it was successful — when it turned enemies into friends; no mercy was shown to the Albigenses, and Russell's own day shows almost equal ferocity in the white terrors of Finland, Hungary, Germany, and Spain, and the terror in Russia, condoned by most of the Left. "Now, as in the days of the Old Testament, no duty to enemies is acknowledged in practice when they are sufficiently formidable to arouse fear. Positive morality, in effect, is still only operative within the social group concerned, and is therefore still, in effect, a department of government. Nothing short of a world government will cause people of pugnacious disposition to admit, except as a counsel of perfection, that moral obligations are not confined to a section of the human race."

Personal morality and its testing. Personal morality is historically prior: Mohammed's prohibition of images, the Mosaic law of the hare, were private morality before they were accepted into positive morality. In the form familiar to us, morality is not primitive, but appears to have a number of independent sources — Chinese sages, Indian Buddhists, Hebrew prophets, Greek philosophers — all of whom were "rebels in their day" and have come to be honoured. From this it follows "that it cannot always be wrong for an individual to set himself up in moral questions, even against the judgment of all mankind up to his day." But how are ethical doctrines to be tested? Deuteronomy proposes success in prediction — the same test as is often held conclusive in science — but "the modern mind can hardly accept this test of an ethical doctrine." Russell states his own position: "all acts ought to be judged by their effects; but as this is difficult and uncertain and takes time, it is desirable, in practice, that some kinds of acts should be condemned and others praised without waiting to investigate consequences." He records his own refusal: "I find that, at this point, I cannot acquiesce in the use of such means" — the gassing of immense numbers of children for the sake of democracy. Ethics reduces to the definition of "good" and "bad" as ends; and "there are no facts of ethics": a judgment of intrinsic value is to be interpreted as an expression of desire concerning the desires of mankind — "When I say 'hatred is bad,' I am really saying: 'Would that no one felt hatred.'"

The great moralists and the future. The great ethical innovators have not been men who felt more than others, but men whose desires were more impersonal and of larger scope than those of average men: "All great moralists, from Buddha and the Stoics down to recent times, treated the good as something to be, if possible, enjoyed by all men equally." Sympathy is the universalizing force in ethics — "Sympathy is in some degree instinctive; a child may be made unhappy by another child's cry" — but limitations of sympathy are also natural: "The cat has no sympathy for the mouse; the Romans had no sympathy for any animals except elephants; the Nazis have none for Jews, and Stalin had none for kulaks." Where sympathy is limited, the good becomes something to be enjoyed only by the magnanimous man, the superman, the Aryan, the proletarian, the Christadelphian — "All these are cat-and-mouse ethics," imposed on the mouse by naked power. Ethical contests are ordinary contests for power — "Power is the means, in ethical contests as in those of politics. But with the ethical systems that have had most influence in the past, power is not the end." "Although men hate one another, exploit one another, and torture one another, they have, until recently, given their reverence to those who preached a different way of life." The chapter's conclusion: "Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable. The man who refuses to obey authority has, therefore, in certain circumstances, a legitimate function, provided his disobedience has motives which are social rather than personal. But the matter is one as to which, by its very nature, it is impossible to lay down rules."

Key ideas

• Positive morality is part of the apparatus of power; personal morality is often revolutionary.
• The morality of obedience — filial piety, wifely submission, loyalty to kings — is a device for prolonging the power of parents, men, and rulers.
• The Church is powerful because of its moral authority, but positive morality grows up around it in turn.
• The moral code is an expression of power in general, but not wholly; the Marxist thesis that it expresses economic power is even less adequate — yet usury shows it operating.
• No duty to enemies is acknowledged in practice when they arouse fear; positive morality is a department of government.
• Ethical innovators were rebels in their day; it cannot always be wrong to set oneself up against the judgment of all mankind.
• "There are no facts of ethics": value judgments express desires about the desires of mankind.
• The great moralists universalized sympathy; cat-and-mouse ethics are imposed by naked power.
• Rebellion with social (not merely personal) motives is legitimate; no rules can be laid down.

Key takeaway

Moral codes are largely instruments of power — the obedience-morality of parents, husbands, kings, and priests — but personal morality, born of universal sympathy and rebellion, is the only source of moral progress and can be tested only by its effects.

Chapter 16 — Power Philosophies

Central question

What are the philosophies inspired mainly by love of power, and why are they self-refuting?

Main argument

Philosophies as expressions of desire. Russell's purpose is to consider certain philosophies "which are inspired mainly by love of power" — not philosophies whose subject-matter is power, but philosophies in which love of power is the philosopher's conscious or unconscious motive in his metaphysics and ethical judgments. Our beliefs result from the combination, in varying degrees, of desire with observation; what can be strictly established by empirical evidence is very little, and when beliefs go beyond this, desire plays a part. Philosophies are more unified than life: a philosophy is usually inspired by some one dominant desire which gives it coherence — the desire to know, the desire for happiness, for virtue, for salvation, for union with God, "and finally, the desire for power." The power philosophies of modern times arose largely as a reaction against "Manchesterism" — the philosophy of Bentham and the Manchester School, which considers pleasure the end and wealth the principal means, an aim condemned as both too fragmentary and insufficiently active. "Human life being a perpetual interaction between volition and uncontrollable facts, the philosopher who is guided by his power impulses seeks to minimize or decry the part played by facts that are not the result of our own will." Russell has in mind not merely men who glorify naked power, like Machiavelli and Thrasymachus, but "men who invent theories which veil their own love of power beneath a garment of metaphysics or ethics."

Fichte. The first of such philosophers in modern times, and the most thorough-going, is Fichte. His philosophy starts from the ego as the sole existent in the world: the ego exists because it posits itself; one day it gets a little knock (ein kleiner Anstoss), as a result of which it posits the non-ego, and then proceeds to various emanations, not unlike those of Gnostic theology — but whereas the Gnostics thought humbly of themselves, "Fichte considers the distinction between God and the ego unnecessary." When the ego has done with metaphysics, it proceeds to posit that the Germans are good and the French are bad, and that it is therefore the duty of the Germans to fight Napoleon. "Alexander and Augustus asserted that they were gods, and compelled others to pretend agreement; Fichte, not being in control of the government, lost his job on a charge of atheism, since he could not well proclaim his own divinity." A solipsistic metaphysic leaves no place for social duties; the only imaginable ethic is that of self-development — with the illogical corollary that one's family and nation are more intimately part of the ego than other human beings. "Belief in race and nationalism is thus a psychologically natural outcome of a solipsistic philosophy." All this is known as "idealism," and is considered morally nobler than a philosophy which admits the reality of the external world.

Idealism, pragmatism, Bergson. The reality of what is independent of my own will is embodied, for philosophy, in the conception of "truth": if I believe that Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March, what makes my belief true lies wholly outside the power of my will — a situation the power-philosopher finds unpleasant. Hegelians maintain that truth does not consist in agreement with fact but in the mutual consistency of the whole system of beliefs: "there is, in fact, no difference between truth for the novelist and truth for the historian." Pragmatism, in some of its forms, is a power-philosophy: a belief is "true" if its consequences are pleasant; where there is effective persecution, the official creed is "true" in the pragmatist sense, so that "the pragmatist philosophy gives to those in power a metaphysical omnipotence which a more pedestrian philosophy would deny to them." Bergson's Creative Evolution is a power-philosophy: the intellect is condemned as unduly passive and merely contemplative — "we only see truly during vigorous action such as a cavalry charge"; animals acquired eyes because they felt that it would be pleasant to be able to see; all evolution is due to desire, and there is no limit to what can be achieved if desire is sufficiently passionate. "It follows that men should be passionate and irrational; fortunately for Bergson's happiness, they usually are."

Nietzsche. Some philosophers do not allow their power impulses to dominate their metaphysics, but give them free rein in ethics; of these, the most important is Nietzsche, who rejects Christian morality as that of slaves and supplies in its place a morality suitable to heroic rulers. "In his view, the herd have no value on their own account, but only as means to the greatness of the hero, who has a right to inflict injury upon them if thereby he can further his own self-development." God must be dethroned to make room for earthly tyrants. Russell's judgment is famous: "The love of power is a part of normal human nature, but power-philosophies are, in a certain precise sense, insane. The existence of the external world, both that of matter and that of other human beings, is a datum, which may be humiliating to a certain kind of pride, but can only be denied by a madman." Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another the King, another God. "Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach. The success of insanity, in literature, in philosophy, and in politics, is one of the peculiarities of our age, and the successful form of insanity proceeds almost entirely from impulses towards power."

The social consequences are self-refuting. Solipsism, when general, becomes the basis for a certain kind of social life: a collection of lunatics, each of whom thinks he is God, may learn to behave politely to one another — but only so long as each God's omnipotence is not thwarted by any of the other divinities, and when thwarted, "Mr. A. will perceive that Mr. B. is Satan or one of his ministers... Each will form a party, and there will be war — theological war, bitter, cruel, and mad. For 'Mr. A.' read Hitler, for 'Mr. B.' read Stalin, and you have a picture of the modern world. 'I am Wotan!' says Hitler. 'I am Dialectical Materialism!' says Stalin. And since the claim of each is supported by vast resources in the way of armies, aeroplanes, poison gases, and innocent enthusiasts, the madness of both remains unnoticed." Nietzsche's cult of the hero: the admiring reader is, of course, convinced that he himself is a hero, whereas that rascal who has got ahead of him is one of the bungled and botched; if so-and-so also admires the philosophy, "obviously only by war" can it be decided which is the hero — and "the cult of heroism will end by producing a nation of trembling poltroons." Pragmatism: "Belief in Stalin is pleasant for him but unpleasant for Trotsky"; nothing but naked force can decide who is to enjoy the pleasant consequences. "Power philosophies, when account is taken of their social consequences, are self-refuting. The belief that I am God, if no one shares it, leads to my being shut up; if others share it, it leads to a war in which I probably perish. The cult of the hero produces a nation of cowards. Belief in pragmatism, if widespread, leads to the rule of naked force, which is unpleasant; therefore, by its own criterion, belief in pragmatism is false. If social life is to satisfy social desires, it must be based upon some philosophy not derived from the love of power."

Key ideas

• Power philosophies are not philosophies about power, but philosophies whose motive is love of power.
• Belief = desire + observation; when evidence is thin, desire fills the gap, and philosophy unifies life under a dominant desire.
• Fichte's solipsism makes the ego the sole reality; its natural outcome is race and nationalism.
• Hegelian coherence, pragmatist truth-by-consequences, and Bergson's intuitionism all minimize the reality of facts independent of the will.
• Nietzsche's hero-ethic makes the herd a means to the hero.
• Power philosophies are "in a certain precise sense, insane": they deny the external world, a datum only a madman denies.
• Certified lunatics are shut up; the uncertified variety control armies — the success of insanity in our age proceeds from impulses toward power.
• Power philosophies are socially self-refuting: solipsism ends in theological war, heroism in poltroonery, pragmatism in naked force.

Key takeaway

Philosophies inspired by the love of power — Fichte's idealism, pragmatism, Bergson's evolutionism, Nietzsche's heroism — deny the reality of anything outside the will, and their social consequences refute them: social life requires a philosophy not derived from the love of power.

Chapter 17 — The Ethics of Power

Central question

Can love of power be ethically acceptable, and under what conditions is the pursuit of power beneficent?

Main argument

The ascetic conclusion rejected. After so much about the evils connected with power, an ascetic conclusion may seem natural: complete renunciation of all attempts to influence others, whether for good or evil. Since Lao-Tse this view has had advocates both eloquent and wise — mystics, quietists, those who valued personal holiness conceived as a state of mind. Russell cannot agree: although some of them have been highly beneficent, "they have been so because, though they believed that they had renounced power, they had, in fact, renounced it only in certain forms; if they had renounced it completely, they would not have proclaimed their doctrines." They renounced coercive power, but not the power that rests upon persuasion.

Power as means and as end. Love of power in its widest sense is "the desire to be able to produce intended effects upon the outer world, whether human or non-human." It is an essential part of human nature, and in energetic men a very large and important part; every desire, if it cannot be instantly gratified, brings about a wish for the ability to gratify it, and therefore some form of the love of power. "This is true of the best desires as well as the worst. If you love your neighbour, you will wish for power to make him happy. To condemn all love of power, therefore, is to condemn love of your neighbour." The distinction that matters is between power desired as a means and power desired as an end in itself. Christ's third temptation in the wilderness — offered all the kingdoms of the earth if He will fall down and worship Satan — is the paradigm: power offered to achieve certain objects, but not those that He had in view. The Socialist who accepts a position on a Conservative newspaper, or who becomes a Communist because he thinks that will achieve something, rather than because he wants it, is worshipping Satan in a subtle form. "Love of power, if it is to be beneficent, must be bound up with some end other than power."

Three conditions for beneficent power. First, love of power must be bound up with some end other than power — the desire for that end must be so strong that power is unsatisfying unless it ministers to it. Second, the purpose must be one which, if achieved, will help to satisfy the desires of others — discovery, artistic creation, the invention of a labour-saving machine, the reconciliation of groups hitherto at enmity. Third, the means of realizing the purpose must not be such as will incidentally have bad effects outweighing the excellence of the end: "Violence and injustice breed violence and injustice, both in those who inflict them and in their victims... Victory by force produces ruthlessness and contempt for the vanquished, however exalted may have been the original motives for war." Force is, nevertheless, unavoidable: "The existence of civilized communities... is impossible without some element of force, since there are criminals and men of anti-social ambitions"; where force is unavoidable, it should be exerted by the constituted authority in accordance with the will of the community as expressed in the criminal law. The two difficulties — force between States where there is no common government, and the government's power to tyrannize — are deferred to the next chapter.

The shaping of the power-impulse. The forms a man's love of power will take depend upon his temperament, his opportunities, and his skill; temperament is largely moulded by circumstances. Cruel impulses arise from an unfortunate childhood, from experiences of civil war, or from "absence of any legitimate outlet for energy in adolescence and early youth": "I believe that few men are cruel if they have had a wise early education, have not lived among scenes of violence, and have not had undue difficulty in finding a career." Opportunity must not include the career of pirate, brigand, or dictator: "There must be a strong government, to prevent crime, and a wise economic system, both to prevent the possibility of legal forms of brigandage, and to offer attractive careers to as many young people as possible. This is much easier in a community which is growing richer than in one which is growing poorer. Nothing improves the moral level of a community as much as an increase of wealth, nothing lowers it so much as a diminution of wealth." Skill matters: "Destruction, broadly speaking, apart from certain forms of modern war, requires very little skill, whereas construction always requires some, and in the highest forms requires a great deal"; the man who has learnt to combat yellow fever will prefer this to the work of an army surgeon in war time.

Persuasion is partly force. "It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion — even many of which everybody approves — are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it is flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion.' Instead of this we say: 'The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds." Hence the ethics of power cannot consist in distinguishing some kinds of power as legitimate and others as illegitimate: almost everybody would approve of physical violence, even killing, in easily imagined conditions — suppose you had come upon Guy Fawkes in the very act of firing the train, and could only have prevented the disaster by shooting him. "The attempt to deal with the question by abstract principles, praising acts of one type and blaming acts of another, is futile; we must judge the effects of power by its effects, and we must therefore first make up our minds as to what effects we desire."

The democratic ethic. Russell rejects any undemocratic ethic — "one which singles out a certain portion of mankind and says 'these men are to enjoy the good things, and the rest are merely to minister to them'" — both because it is unjust and because, as the last chapter showed, it is self-refuting: the supermen will not be able to live the kind of life the aristocratic theorist imagines for them. Some objects of desire are such as can, logically, be enjoyed by all — adequate material well-being, health, intelligence, and every form of happiness which does not consist in superiority to others; the forms of happiness which consist of victory in a competition cannot be universal. "Unfriendly feeling can wholly inhibit the rational pursuit of happiness." The conclusion: "The ultimate aim of those who have power (and we all have some) should be to promote co-operation — not in one group as against another, but in the whole human race." The chief obstacles are "the existence of feelings of unfriendliness and desire for superiority," which can be diminished directly by religion and morality, or indirectly by removing the political and economic circumstances which at present stimulate them — notably the competition for power between States and the connected competition for wealth between large national industries. "Both methods are needed: they are not alternatives, but supplement each other."

The four great men. The Great War, and its aftermath of dictatorships, has caused many to underestimate all forms of power except military and governmental force. "This is a short-sighted and unhistorical view. If I had to select four men who have had more power than any others, I should mention Buddha and Christ, Pythagoras and Galileo. No one of these four had the support of the State until after his propaganda had achieved a great measure of success. No one of the four had much success in his own lifetime. No one of the four would have affected human life as he has done if power had been his primary object." None sought the kind of power that enslaves others, but the kind that sets them free. "It is not ultimately by violence that men are ruled, but by the wisdom of those who appeal to the common desires of mankind, for happiness, for inward and outward peace, and for the understanding of the world in which, by no choice of our own, we have to live."

Key ideas

• The quietist renunciation of power is self-defeating: its proponents renounced coercive power but not persuasion.
• Love of power is essential to human nature — to condemn it all is to condemn love of your neighbour.
• Power desired as a means is good; power desired as an end is the Satanic temptation.
• Three conditions for beneficent power: an end other than power, an end harmonizing with others' desires, and means not outweighing the end in evil.
• Circumstances, opportunity, and skill shape the power-impulse; cruel careers must be made unavailable, constructive skill cultivated.
• Persuasion is partly force (the children and the round earth); the ethics of power must judge effects, not kinds.
• The only defensible ethic is democratic: some goods are universal, the pleasures of superiority are not.
• The aim of power should be co-operation in the whole human race, promoted by both moral and institutional means.
• The most powerful men in history — Buddha, Christ, Pythagoras, Galileo — never made power their primary object.

Key takeaway

Love of power is not to be renounced or condemned but directed: it is beneficent when it serves ends other than itself, in harmony with the desires of others, achieved by means that do not corrupt the end — and the greatest historical power has always been of this kind.

Chapter 18 — The Taming of Power

Central question

How can government be made "less terrible than tigers" — how can arbitrary power be minimized?

Main argument

The ancient problem. Russell opens with Confucius: passing by the side of Mount Thai, he came on a woman weeping bitterly by a grave — her husband's father, her husband, and her son had all been killed by tigers there; asked why she did not leave the place, she answered, "there is no oppressive government here." "The Master then said, 'Remember this, my children: oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.'" The Taoists thought the problem insoluble and advocated anarchism; the Confucians trusted to an ethical and governmental training which should turn the holders of power into sages endowed with moderation and benevolence; at the same period in Greece, democracy was intended to check the power of rulers but was perpetually defeating itself by falling victim to the popularity of some demagogue; Plato, like Confucius, sought the solution in a government of men trained to wisdom — a view revived by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, who admire an oligarchy in which power is confined to those who have the "vocation of leadership." In the interval the world has tried military autocracy, theocracy, hereditary monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and the Rule of the Saints — the last revived in Russell's own day by Lenin and Hitler. "All this suggests that our problem has not yet been solved." The subject of the chapter is the problem of insuring that government shall be less terrible than tigers, divided into four parts: (I) political conditions, (II) economic conditions, (III) propaganda conditions, and (IV) psychological and educational conditions.

I. Political conditions. Democracy, while not a complete solution, is an essential part of the solution. Its merits are negative: "it does not insure good government, but it prevents certain evils." Until women took part in political affairs, married women had no control over their own property or earnings; the oligarchical Parliament of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries used its legislative power to increase the wealth of the rich by depressing the condition of rural and urban labour; only democracy prevented the law from making trade unionism impossible. "All history shows that, as might be expected, minorities cannot be trusted to care for the interests of majorities." Russell rejects the "good men" theory of oligarchy — "The oligarchy of Tsarist aristocrats was 'bad,' but that of the Communist Party is 'good'" — as nursery psychology: a child is "good" when it obeys orders, and a grown-up political leader retains the ideas of the nursery, defining the "good" as those who obey its orders. "Such a point of view, if taken seriously, makes social life impossible... Social life, if it is to be anything better than tyranny, demands a certain impartiality. But since, in many matters, collective action is necessary, the only practicable form of impartiality, in such matters, is the rule of the majority." Democracy alone is not enough: a majority may exercise a brutal and wholly unnecessary tyranny over a minority — in the period from 1885 to 1922, the government of the United Kingdom was democratic, but that did not prevent the oppression of Ireland. "The safeguarding of minorities, so far as is compatible with orderly government, is an essential part of the taming of power." Collective decision is imperative for questions that are essentially geographical — roads, railways, sewers, gas mains, sanitary precautions, war; where there is no technical reason for a collective decision, "there should be some strong reason connected with public order if freedom is to be interfered with." Where a minority is geographically concentrated (the Irish before 1922), devolution solves many problems; toleration of propaganda not involving incitement to break the law should be the rule.

As to the size of governmental units, there is a dilemma: "democracy gives a man the feeling that he has an effective share in political power when the group concerned is small, but not when it is large; on the other hand, the group is likely to strike him as important when the group concerned is large, but not when it is small." The best solution would probably be an extension of the method of the trade-union official, elected to represent a certain interest: "Democracy, if it is to exist psychologically as well as politically, demands organization of the various interests, and their representation, in political bargaining, by men who enjoy whatever influence is justified by the numbers and enthusiasm of their constituents." A federal system is desirable whenever the local interests and sentiments of the constituent units are stronger than the interests connected with the federation; "if there were ever an international government, it would obviously have to be a federation of national governments, with strictly defined powers." Very large governmental areas are unavoidable in the modern world; for the most important purposes, especially peace and war, "the whole world is the only area." The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century methods of preventing arbitrary power — Montesquieu's separation of powers, checks and balances, Bentham's doctrines — no longer suit the demand for efficiency; new methods are needed, including "a certain political balance in every important branch of the public service" (average opinion in the police and the air force is far more reactionary than in the country at large). Russell offers two police reforms: first, that "a confession shall never, in any circumstances, be accepted as evidence," to remove the incentive for torture (the evils are set forth in Ernest Jerome Hopkins's Our Lawless Police); second, that there be two police forces and two Scotland Yards — "one designed, as at present, to prove guilt, the other to prove innocence," with a public defender of equal legal eminence alongside the public prosecutor.

II. Economic conditions. Political democracy does not by any means solve the whole problem. Marx pointed out that there could be no real equalization of power through politics alone while economic power remained monarchical or oligarchic; it followed that economic power must be in the hands of the State, and that the State must be democratic. "Those who profess, at the present day, to be Marx's followers, have kept only the half of his doctrine, and have thrown over the demand that the State should be democratic." Old-fashioned democracy failed because it was only political; new-fashioned Marxism fails because it is only economic; "without a combination of both, nothing approaching to a solution of the problem is possible." The technical arguments for State ownership of land and the large economic organizations are strong — electricity and water power (the Tennessee Valley Authority) cause even Conservative governments to introduce socialistic measures; the movement towards the unification of economic and political power "has the irresistible impersonal character which Marx attributed to the development that he prophesied. But it has nothing to do with the class war or the wrongs of the proletariat." Russell considers the socialist argument for collective ownership "valid, provided it is adequately safeguarded and amplified" — but "in the absence of such safeguarding and amplifying I consider it very dangerous, and likely to mislead those who seek liberation from economic tyranny so completely that they will find they have inadvertently established a new tyranny at once economic and political, more drastic and more terrible than any previously known." The reason is that "ownership" is not the same thing as "control": if a railway is owned by the State, the average citizen will not have any more control over it than the average shareholder of a large corporation — "A battleship is public property, but if, on this ground, you try to exercise rights of ownership, you will be soon put in your place." Economic power is now "a matter of government rather than ownership": if the United States Steel Corporation were taken over by the government, it would still need men to manage it, and "the attitude which they now have towards the shareholders they would then have towards the citizens." "Under any form of socialism which is not democratic, those who control economic power can, without 'owning' anything, have palatial official residences, the use of the best cars, a princely entertainment allowance." Hence: "public ownership and control of all large-scale industry and finance is a necessary condition for the taming of power, it is far from being a sufficient condition. It needs to be supplemented by a democracy more thorough-going, more carefully safeguarded against official tyranny, with more deliberate provision for freedom of propaganda, than any purely political democracy that has ever existed." The dangers are illustrated by the U.S.S.R., where the testimony of former enthusiasts (Russell quotes Eugene Lyons's Assignment in Utopia) is increasingly convincing: "Absolutism at the top implies hundreds of thousands, even millions, of large and small autocrats in a state that monopolizes all means of life and expression, work and pleasure, rewards and punishments... Where there is only one employer, namely, the State, meekness is the first law of economic survival." And Russell cites the Soviet law under which a peasant on a collective farm who takes any portion of the grain that he has himself grown is liable to the death penalty — a law made "at a time when millions of peasants were dying of hunger."

III. Propaganda conditions. Publicity for grievances must be possible; agitation must be free provided it does not incite to breaches of the law; there must be ways of impeaching those who exceed or abuse their powers. "The government of the day must not be in a position to secure its own permanence by intimidation, falsification of the register of electors, or any similar method." Much of this is at present secured by party government in democratic countries, which makes the politicians in power "objects of hostile criticism by nearly half the nation," and thus makes it impossible for them to commit many crimes. All this is more important when the State has a monopoly of economic power than under capitalism: under State Socialism, newspapers, printing presses, and halls would all belong to the government — take the case of women employed in the public service, whose grievance about unequal pay could be made known legitimately under capitalism but would lose its channels under Socialism "unless express provision were made for just such cases." "Unless careful provision were made for the express purpose of safeguarding political liberty, no method would exist of making grievances known, and the government, when once elected, would be as omnipotent as Hitler, and could easily arrange for its own re-election to the end of time." To suppose that irresponsible power, just because it is called Socialist or Communist, will be freed miraculously from the bad qualities of all arbitrary power in the past "is mere childish nursery psychology: the wicked prince is ousted by the good prince, and all is well. If a prince is to be trusted, it must be not because he is 'good,' but because it is against his interest to be 'bad.'" The B.B.C. is a State institution which shows what is possible in combining freedom of propaganda with a government monopoly — at ordinary times it represents different points of view in proportion to their numerical strength. Russell suggests that instead of different newspapers with different points of view, it might be found desirable to have only one newspaper with different pages allocated to different parties: "This would have the advantage that readers would see all opinions, and would tend to be less dogmatic than those who, at present, never see in a newspaper anything with which they disagree." In art and science — and, so far as public order allows, party politics — uniformity is not necessary or even desirable: "These are the legitimate sphere of competition."

IV. Psychological and educational conditions. Fear, rage, and all kinds of violent collective excitement tend to make men blindly follow a leader who, in most cases, takes advantage of their trust to establish himself as a tyrant; it is therefore important, if democracy is to be preserved, both to avoid the circumstances that produce general excitement and to educate a population "little prone to moods of this sort." Revivalist enthusiasm, such as that of the Nazis, involves indifference to pain and even to death; "where it exists, liberty is impossible." Russell remembers a Bolshevik in Peking in 1920, marching up and down the room exclaiming with complete truth: "If vee do not keel zem, zey vill keel us!" — and the mood on one side generates the same mood on the other, with a fight to a finish in which everything is subordinated to victory. "Enthusiasm, while it can achieve certain results, can hardly ever achieve those that it hopes for. To admire collective enthusiasm is irresponsible, for its fruits are fierceness, war, and slavery." War is "the chief promoter of despotism, the greatest obstacle to the establishment of a society in which irresponsible power is avoided as far as possible": "I believe that, if once the world were freed from the fear of war, under no matter what form of government or what economic system, it would in time find ways of curbing the ferocity of its rulers." Democracy, if it is to succeed, needs "a wide diffusion of two qualities which seem, at first sight, to tend in opposite directions": on the one hand, self-reliance and a willingness to back one's own judgment; on the other, willingness to submit to the decision of the majority when it goes against one. Either condition may fail: "the population may be too submissive, and may follow a vigorous leader into dictatorship: or each party may be too self-assertive, with the result that the nation falls into anarchy."

Education has two tasks: character and the emotions, and instruction. The attempt to teach children complete obedience "is almost bound to produce either a slave or a rebel, neither of which is what is wanted in a democracy" — and Russell notes that the dictators of Europe have all suppressed freedom in schools and gone back to drill and the teacher as a miniature Führer or Duce: "The dictators, we may infer, all regard a certain degree of freedom in school as the proper training for democracy, and autocracy in school as the natural prelude to autocracy in the State." Every man and woman in a democracy should be "neither a slave nor a rebel, but a citizen." Much talk about "principle," "self-sacrifice," "heroic devotion to a cause" should be scanned sceptically: "The warlike patriot, who is willing and even anxious to fight for his country, may reasonably be suspected of a certain pleasure in killing." Fanaticism "needs to be combatted by the kind of happiness that makes men kindly, and the kind of intelligence that produces a scientific habit of mind": "The temper required to make a success of democracy is, in the practical life, exactly what the scientific temper is in the intellectual life; it is a half-way house between scepticism and dogmatism." Russell's curriculum for immunity to propaganda: let the most vehement and eloquent advocates on all sides of every topical question speak to the schools from the B.B.C., and let the children afterwards weigh the arguments and learn "that eloquence is inversely proportional to solid reason"; in the infant school, two classes of sweets — one very nice, recommended by a coldly accurate statement as to its ingredients; the other very nasty, recommended by the utmost skill of the best advertisers; for a country holiday, a nice place recommended by a contour map and an ugly place recommended by magnificent posters; the teaching of history should include the masters of eloquence who defended witchcraft and slavery, and the comparison of the newspapers at crucial moments during the Great War with the subsequent official history — "you should warn them that all of them, unless they are very careful to cultivate a balanced and cautious judgment, may fall overnight into a similar madness at the first touch of government incitement to terror and blood lust."

The liberal creed and the ending. Wisdom is not merely intellectual: "intellect may guide and direct, but does not generate the force that leads to action. The force must be derived from the emotions." Religion once nourished the better emotions; for those to whom traditional religion is no longer possible, there are music, poetry, astronomy — "when we are liberated by this negative emotion, we are able to realize more fully... that the really valuable things in human life are individual, not such things as happen on a battlefield or in the clash of politics or in the regimented march of masses of men towards an externally imposed goal." "The organized life of the community is necessary, but it is necessary as mechanism, not something to be valued on its own account." This is "the essential difference between the liberal outlook and that of the totalitarian State": the former regards the welfare of the State as residing ultimately in the welfare of the individual; the latter regards the State as the end and individuals merely as indispensable ingredients — "a mystical totality which is a cloak for the interest of the rulers." Against Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, which demands "a complete annihilation of the freedom of the will in the territory that it undertook to deal with," the liberal educator will aim at strengthening individual judgment, making beliefs "tentative and responsive to evidence"; "Love of power is the chief danger of the educator, as of the politician." The book ends with its famous peroration: "Fichte and the powerful men who have inherited his ideals, when they see children, think: 'Here is material that I can manipulate'... All this, to any person with natural affection for the young, is horrible; just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics, and to this end we should seek to produce independence of mind, somewhat sceptical and wholly scientific, and to preserve, as far as possible, the instinctive joy of life that is natural to healthy children. This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve."

Key ideas

• "Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers" — the problem is as old as Confucius, and neither anarchism nor the sage-king solves it.
• Democracy is an essential but not sufficient part of the solution; its merits are negative — it prevents evils.
• "Good men" theories of oligarchy are nursery psychology; only the rule of the majority is a practicable impartiality.
• Collective action is justified for geographical questions and public order; otherwise freedom should not be interfered with.
• A confession should never be accepted as evidence; there should be two police forces — one to prove guilt, one to prove innocence.
• State ownership is necessary but not sufficient: ownership is not control, and a non-democratic socialism concentrates power into a worse tyranny.
• Freedom of propaganda, publicity for grievances, and means of impeachment are essential, especially where the State is the sole employer.
• If a prince is to be trusted, it must be because it is against his interest to be bad, not because he is good.
• War is the chief promoter of despotism; the prevention of war is the essential part of the problem.
• Education must produce citizens who are neither slaves nor rebels, immune to eloquence and collective hysteria.
• The liberal outlook values the individual; the totalitarian outlook worships the State as a cloak for its rulers.

Key takeaway

Arbitrary power cannot be abolished — the impulse to power is ineradicable — but it can be tamed by democracy in politics and economics, freedom of propaganda, the prevention of war, and an education that makes men immune to the intoxication of crowds and the manipulation of rulers.

The book's overall argument

1. Chapter 1 (The Impulse to Power) — establishes that human desires are boundless, that love of power is the chief motive in social affairs, and that power, like energy in physics, must be the fundamental concept of social science.
2. Chapter 2 (Leaders and Followers) — establishes the psychology of command and obedience: explicit power in leaders, implicit power in followers, submission rooted in fear, and the new threat of mechanical power.
3. Chapter 3 (The Forms of Power) — establishes the definition of power as the production of intended effects and classifies its forms: physical, economic, opinion-based, traditional, revolutionary, and naked.
4. Chapter 4 (Priestly Power) — traces the first traditional form: priestly power from the medicine-man through the Catholic Church's medieval height to its decay through abuse of reverence.
5. Chapter 5 (Kingly Power) — traces the second traditional form: kingly power from the sacred chief through feudalism and the national monarchies to its eclipse by commerce and nationalism.
6. Chapter 6 (Naked Power) — establishes that power resting on fear alone arises when creeds decay or contend, is exemplified by Greek Sicily and Renaissance Italy, and ends in conquest, tradition, or a new religion.
7. Chapter 7 (Revolutionary Power) — establishes that power resting on a new creed — Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution — licenses further revolution and tends to pass into naked power or tradition.
8. Chapter 8 (Economic Power) — establishes that economic power is derivative — from law, opinion, and military force — and that neither Marxism nor orthodox economics can serve as the fundamental social science.
9. Chapter 9 (Power over Opinion) — establishes that opinion and force generate each other in a see-saw, that belief is desire plus evidence plus iteration, and that propaganda monopolies breed violent revolutions.
10. Chapter 10 (Creeds as Sources of Power) — establishes that fanaticism is a weaker source of power than it appears, that true beliefs and genuine popular sentiment beat imposed uniformity, and that intensive creeds end in weariness.
11. Chapter 11 (The Biology of Organizations) — establishes that organizations grow in size and density of power, compete and coalesce like organisms, are limited by communication and sentiment, and die of habit unless adaptable.
12. Chapter 12 (Powers and Forms of Governments) — establishes the powers of organizations over members and non-members and the comparative merits of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, with democracy as the only effective protection of the governed.
13. Chapter 13 (Organizations and the Individual) — establishes that organizations increase individual welfare in almost every department, but that the State's self-preservation — preparation for war — is the great exception.
14. Chapter 14 (Competition) — establishes that competition extinguishes itself in economics, merges into the totalitarian competition between States, and can be justified for propaganda only within a stable framework.
15. Chapter 15 (Power and Moral Codes) — establishes that positive morality is an instrument of power, that personal morality is the source of moral progress, and that ethical disputes are contests for power which power cannot ultimately decide.
16. Chapter 16 (Power Philosophies) — establishes that philosophies inspired by love of power — Fichte, Hegel, pragmatism, Bergson, Nietzsche — are insane in a precise sense and socially self-refuting.
17. Chapter 17 (The Ethics of Power) — establishes that love of power is not to be renounced but directed: it is beneficent under three conditions, and the greatest historical power was exercised by those for whom power was not the object.
18. Chapter 18 (The Taming of Power) — establishes the book's program: democracy in politics and economics, checks on police and propaganda, prevention of war, and an education for citizenship that makes men immune to fanaticism.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The book is a defence of power-seeking or of "might makes right."

Russell analyzes power as a scientist and a liberal; his conclusion is that arbitrary power must be tamed, that minorities cannot be trusted with power, and that power philosophies are "insane." The book's sympathies are with Buddha, Christ, Pythagoras, and Galileo — men for whom power was not the object.

Misunderstanding: Russell believes the love of power is the only human motive.

He explicitly says it is not the sole motive, only that treating it as such "would not lead us so much astray as might be expected," because it is the chief motive producing the changes social science studies.

Misunderstanding: The book is a work of economics or a Marxist text.

The book is a refutation of both Marx and the classical economists "on the fundamental assumptions that they shared": power, not wealth, is the basic concept. But Russell also warns that socialism without democracy produces a worse tyranny than capitalism, because ownership is not control.

Misunderstanding: "The Love of Power" and "Raw Power" are chapter titles.

The verified titles are "The Impulse to Power" (Chapter 1) and "Naked Power" (Chapter 6). "Naked" is Russell's term for power without acquiescence — the power of the butcher over the sheep.

Misunderstanding: Democracy is the whole solution.

Russell repeatedly says democracy is "an essential part of the solution" but not sufficient: it needs economic democracy, safeguards against official tyranny, freedom of propaganda, the safeguarding of minorities, and an education for citizenship. A majority can tyrannize a minority.

Misunderstanding: Russell is a pacifist or quietist in this book.

He rejects the quietist renunciation of power as self-deception (they kept persuasion) and allows that shooting Guy Fawkes in the act would be right; force is unavoidable, but must be exercised by constituted authority under the criminal law.

Misunderstanding: The book predicts or welcomes revolution.

Russell treats revolution as a recurring historical mechanism and a necessary engine of moral progress, but his prescriptions — checks on police, freedom of propaganda, world government, education — are aimed at making revolution and war unnecessary. "Lies need competition if they are to retain their vigour" is an argument against propaganda monopolies, not a celebration of lies.

Misunderstanding: The taming of power means abolishing power.

The central paradox is that power cannot be abolished — "there must be power, either that of governments, or of anarchic adventurers" — and the love of power is ineradicable. It can only be diffused, hedged with safeguards, and directed to ends other than itself.

Central paradox / key insight

The book's most counterintuitive idea is that power can never be abolished, only tamed — and that the attempt to abolish or monopolize it makes it worse. Because the love of power is a part of human nature, every scheme to eliminate power (anarchism, the sage-king, the "good" oligarchy, the party that promises to wither away) merely concentrates it in new hands. The only practicable path is not the abolition of power but its diffusion: democracy in politics and economics, competition among propagandas, safeguards around police and officials, the prevention of war, and an education that makes men immune to the intoxication of crowds. Equally paradoxical is the claim that power philosophies are self-refuting — the belief that one is God ends in being shut up or in war; the cult of the hero produces a nation of poltroons; pragmatism, by its own criterion, is false — so that a philosophy of power cannot even justify itself, while the men who have wielded the most lasting power (Buddha, Christ, Pythagoras, Galileo) are precisely those who did not make power their object.

"There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, fascist and communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die."

Important concepts

The love of power (the impulse to power)

The boundless human desire to produce intended effects, especially over other people; the chief motive in social affairs, unevenly distributed, explicit in leaders and implicit in followers.

Power

"The production of intended effects" — a quantitative concept; the fundamental concept of social science, analogous to energy in physics, passing continually from one form into another.

Forms of power

The kinds of power (wealth, armaments, civil authority, influence on opinion) and the ways of influencing an individual (direct power over the body, rewards and punishments, influence on opinion).

Traditional power

Power resting on habit and quasi-religious sanction; it need not justify itself at every moment and is associated with beliefs that resistance is wicked. Priestly and kingly power are its two great historical forms.

Naked power

Power involving no acquiescence on the part of the subject — the power of the butcher over the sheep; it arises where creeds contend or where all traditional beliefs have decayed, and ends by conquest, by a stable dictatorship becoming traditional, or by a new religion.

Revolutionary power

Power depending on a large group united by a new creed, programme, or sentiment; it cannot logically condemn subsequent revolutions and tends to pass into naked power or tradition.

Conventional versus naked power

Russell's distinction between power that wins acquiescence (traditional or revolutionary) and power that wins only submission through fear; the nakedness of power is a matter of degree and of psychology, not of history.

Creed

A belief or sentiment that unites a group and serves as a source of power; effective creeds are genuinely and deeply felt, and their intensive use ends in weariness and scepticism.

Organization

"A set of people who are combined in virtue of activities directed to common ends"; every organization involves a redistribution of power and tends to grow in size and density of power.

The biology of organizations

The study of organizations as organisms with a life of their own — growth, competition, coalescence, decay — conducted as far as possible without regard to their purposes.

The rule of three phases

The career of organizations that acquire power: fanatical enthusiasm leading to conquest, acquiescence becoming traditional, then naked power over those who reject the tradition.

The social contract

In the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, "a contract among conquerors"; for the mass of subjects, fear rather than consent is the original cause of submission.

Theocracy

Russell's term for rule by a Church or political party (including Stalinist Russia and the Fascist and Nazi states); it coheres but inevitably imposes ideological censorship.

Positive morality

The moral code as a social institution analogous to law — "part of the apparatus of power," serving the powers that be, operating only within the group.

Personal morality

Morality as a matter for the individual conscience — the source of moral progress through prophets and sages; there are no facts of ethics, and value judgments express desires about the desires of mankind.

Power philosophy

A philosophy inspired mainly by the love of power — Fichte's idealism, Hegelianism, pragmatism, Bergson's evolutionism, Nietzsche's heroism; "in a certain precise sense, insane" and socially self-refuting.

The taming of power

The book's program for minimizing arbitrary power: political and economic democracy, safeguards against official tyranny and police abuse, freedom of propaganda, the prevention of war, and an education that produces citizens immune to collective hysteria.

References and Web Links

Primary texts and editions

• Bertrand Russell. Power: A New Social Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938 (first edition, 328 pp.).
  • Internet Archive scan of the 1938 first edition, whose full text and contents page were used to verify the chapter list and chapter arguments
  • Internet Archive record for the 1962 Allen & Unwin / Barnes & Noble edition, whose catalog description lists all 18 chapter titles
  • Open Library record for the 1969 Norton edition (The Norton Library)

Edition information

• Routledge Classics edition (2004) product page, with the publisher's table of contents listing all 18 chapters and details of the Samuel Brittan preface and Kirk Willis introduction

Overview and background

• Wikipedia article on Power: A New Social Analysis, with its analysis of the book's themes, historical context, and critical reception

Supplementary study resources

These are secondary summaries and should be used alongside, rather than instead of, the original book.

• The Wikipedia article above includes a detailed section-by-section account of the book's content, quotes from the text, and discussion of its reception by contemporaries including George Orwell's review in The Adelphi.
• Samuel Brittan's preface and Kirk Willis's introduction to the Routledge Classics edition (2004) provide scholarly context on the book's reception; both are discussed in the Wikipedia article and are part of the print edition linked above.