THREE FACES OF POWER

                                               Ronald J. Glossop

                        1st Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, 3 February 2002


  I.  Introduction
   A.  This morning I intend to basically give you a book review.
  B.  The book is THREE FACES OF POWER by Kenneth E. Boulding, a wide-ranging and penetrating exploration of a key concept in human relations, both at the inter-personal level and at the inter-group level.  It was published by Sage Publications, a major publisher of social science literature of all kinds, in 1990, just a few years before his death in 1993 at age 83.
  C.  Kenneth Boulding was an Oxford-educated British often unorthodox economist who came to the U.S. in 1932.  In 1949 he began teaching at the University of Michigan, and in 1967 he went to the University of Colorado in Boulder where he retired in 1980 but stayed as Distinguised Emeritus Professor until his death in 1993.
     D.  Boulding was a Quaker, and his religious views often influenced his thinking and actions as evident in his concern with peace and the resolving of conflicts nonviolently as well as his writing of spiritual poetry
        E.  Boulding authored more than 30 books plus hundreds of articles, pamphlets, and chapters in books.  He served as president of six major scholarly societies and received more than 30 honorary degrees.
      F.  We could go on at length about Boulding himself without ever getting to this particular book, but let me at least quote the first paragraph of an authoritative biography.  "Kenneth Ewart Boulding--economist, man of letters, ardent peace activist--made his contribution to the body of economic knowledge with a combination of humanistic values and technical proficiency.  Reading his papers, written from the early 1940s to the 1990s, one sees a mastery and creativity not only of economics but of all the social sciences and ethics as well."
       G.  Here is but one example of Boulding's capacity to express important insights in a witty way:  "The spurt [of growth] from the 1930s to the 1960s bears some resemblance to human adolescence, even to the production of a slightly pimply youth culture."

 II.  The three faces of power or three kinds of influence noted by Boulding are the destructive, the economic, and the integrative.
       A.  Destructive power refers to the capacity to destroy something or someone.  It can sometimes be used constructively to get rid of something unwanted in order to make room for something wanted, but it is often used to enforce some kind of threat which has been ignored.  This use of theats, either explicit or implicit, to try to keep others from doing something we don't want them to do is the main focus of Boulding's discussion of this first kind of power.
   B.  Economic power refers to the capacity to get what one wants by giving something else in exchange.  The more that one has that can be given to someone else, the more economic power one has.  Boulding is thinking here not only of the material possessions one owns but also of any talents and skills that others might want to have.  Thus one can exchange one's labor or services for money or other goods.
   C.  Integrative power refers to the capacity to get others to act in order to please you because they care for you or respect you or identify with you in some way.  Integrative power involves love and admiration and loyalty.

III.  Power can be exercised by individuals to get what they want or by groups of people to get what they want, but even unconscious nature can exercise power over us such as when disease destroys part of our body or an earthquake destroys part of a community or instinctive desire causes us to want to please or take care of someone.  Animals can also exercise or be influenced by these various kinds of power.  Nevertheless, Boulding's main interest is in how humans exercise power in relation to one another, especially in terms of the social structures of power.  He notes that any kind of power can be used either positively or negatively, that is, either for good ends or for bad ends.

        A.  In this connection, it should be noted that Boulding does not pay much attention to the ends for which power might be used.  His focus is on power as a means of getting what is wanted and describing how it in fact is used, not deliberating about how it should be used.
        B.  Unfortunately Boulding also does not pay much attention to freedom and its relation to power, but I think that that relation is crucial.  We feel free when we have power to accomplish our ends as well when we have knowledge to intelligently choose our ends.  On the other hand, when others threaten to use their power, especially their destructive power, to keep us from doing what we want to do, we feel unfree.  That is why we resent it.  We will also resent it if we see others using their economic power to get things we would like to have but can't afford.
   C.  I think that much of the resentment in the world against Americans is due to their lack of freedom as the result of our military power and our economic power.

IV.  Boulding notes that in groups the social structure of power tends to be hierarchical with the fewer people at the top having more influence in decision-making while the much larger number not at the top tend to be more aware of information about what is happening within the social structure or coming into it from outside.
      A.  The power of those at the top must always be legitimated or supported by those not at the top.  "Authority is in some sense always granted from below" [p. 44].
     B.  One of Boulding's main points is that threat power is not enduring.  It may work for a short period of time, but it can't be maintained, especially if it is not supported by the other two kinds of power.  Threat power tends to arouse resentment.  Trying to maintain overwhelming military power can deplete a society economically and the resentment it produces usually will undermine any integrative power.
       C.  Economic power can be acquired temporarily by taking things away from others, but ultimately one needs to be able to produce more. This is why the increased productivity resulting from the industrial revolution promises a more peaceful world.
  D.  The role of integrative power (things such as loyalty and empathy) in maintaining social structures is both the most important and the least recognized or understood.
              1.  One often hears about the stick (threat) and the carrot (economic power) when trying to influence (control) the behavior of others, but how often does one hear about the hug or appealing to feelings of respect and loyalty (integrative power)?
          2.  Is this a deficiency when dealing with our children and international relations?
    E.  Part of the overall problem is that "there is something dramatic and sudden about the exercise of destructive power [while] both productive power and integrative power take time and patience." . . . . The fact that destructive power is often easier than either productive or integrative power increases the the temptation to indulge in it" [pp. 82-83].
    F.  The gist of Boulding's message in THREE FACES OF POWER is clear from the words of Adam Smith that he places at the front of the book.  "Though management and persuasion are always the easiest and safest instruments of government, as force and violence are the worst and the most dangerous, yet such, it seems, is the natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one."
       G.  To relate this point to President Bush's "State of the Union" speech last Tuesday, most of it both time-wise and money-wise was dedicated to the use of threat and the building up of our destructive military power to use against anyone who dares to ignore our threat.  Near the end we saw a minimal attempt to appeal to integrative power through the notion that we should build up the Peace Corps and reach out to help people in other parts of the world, but that seemed to be an after-thought and not particularly related to enhancing our security.  The focus on integrative power, and even economic power, was minimal compared with the focus on the use of our financial resources to build up the destructive power we will be able to use against our enemies.

 V.  I do want to say a word about the organization of this book.
       A.  Boulding begins by defining key terms and discussing key concepts.
          1.  He says that power means "the ability to get what one wants" in the case of individuals or "the ability to achieve common ends" [p.15] for groups.
          2.  There are physical limits on our power (for example, we cannot immediately be at some distant place), but there are also other limits such as the "taboo boundary" (things which we could do such as taking off all our clothes in public which people in all societies--except in nudist camps--nevertheless refrain from doing).
          3.  The notion of getting what one wants is not a simple one since each of us wants many different things, and what we want can be different under different conditions.
                4.  Conflict often centers on the development of boundaries between individual persons or between groups of persons within which power can be exercised without being challenged.  Such conflicts can often be resolved through the institution of laws by a government, but sometimes the conflict is over who controls the government.
                5.  Power both of individuals and of groups is difficult to measure, though there can be little doubt that the power of humankind collectively has been greatly expanded both by the development of agriculture and by the development of machinery.
            6.  The distribution of power within human society has evolved from a situation where a very small group of families controlled the community to a more democratic sharing of decision-making power in some communities, but the distribution of power within the whole world is still very unequal with perhaps 25% being quite powerless.
             7.  The three basic kinds of power are destructive or threat power (exercised by law-makers, the police, and the military), economic or exchange power (exercised by those who are rich), and integrative or social power (exercised by those who are objects of loyalty and those who are admired or loved or respected).
              8.  The sources of power are physical, chemical, and genetic (which involves knowledge, information, and communication) with the third source becoming more important as we move from destructive power to productive and integrative power.
    B.  Boulding goes on to discuss the social structures of power, the kinds of things we seek to have power over (other people, nature, the desire for power for its own sake), and the pathologies of power (war, revolution, and how power tends to corrupt those who have it).  "The tough tend to rely on destructive and threat power and usually do not go a long way.  The tender rely on integrative power and usually go a long way. . . . It is the softies who are adaptable" [p. 78].
C.  Four chapters are devoted to a discussion of the power of individuals with one focusing on the varying power of persons at various stages in their lives.  Here he notes that infants and very old people have very little destructive power, and infants have no economic power.  Yet both groups have a great deal of integrative power (influence).
      D.  The next chapters focus on organizational power.  Boulding gives many examples of the cost of threat systems and the superiority of integrative power.  He notes that integrative power in the form of an expanded sense of community is the key to creating and broadening peace.
  E.  The final chapters are devoted to a discussion of power in evolution in which he argues that biological and social progress has been much more the result of cooperation than competition.  With regard to human history he notes that despite the historians "fascination with war and strife" at least 90% of human activity even during the threat-emphasizing agrarian period has been peaceful.  The industrialized period is focused much more on exchange, and the proportion of the gross world product going to the military is now down to less than 3 per cent.

VI.  I do want to give you just a small sample of Boulding's great quips found in this book.
      A.  Here is one paragraph:  "In regard to personal power, threat or destructive power is of rather minor importance.  Very few people get promoted by winning a fist fight with the boss.  Muscularity rarely leads to economic power unless it is allied with complex integrative structures, as in sport.  Even in the gun-happy United States, people without guns probably have a higher expectation of life than people who have them.  What guns mostly convey is an illusion of power, except in very rare and special instances.  Threat power is sometimes confused with willpower, which is something much broader.  It is not the macho guy who gets promoted, but the one who is skilled at integrative relationships.  Tough guys, like tough meat, may not get eaten, but neither do they taste very good nor will they be in much demand.  The attempt to create strength through threat often produces integrative weakness.  Integrative weakness is the capacity to lose friends and alienate people.  This comes largely out of a blind self-centeredness; as the old saw goes, 'To be wrapped up in oneself is to make a very small parcel'" [pp. 138-39].

        B.  In the next paragraph he observes, "One of the problems of the modern world is that our ideologies move us more toward preventing and curing disease than they do toward creating and spreading health.  The pathologies of personal power, which are very real, are more likely to develop when the prevailing ideology, or view of the world, is one of preventing evil rather than of promoting good" [p.139].

VII.  Conclusion
   A.  We should focus on how to improve the world rather than how to eliminate what we regard as evil.
    B.  With regard to our children, we should focus more on how to help them grow and and have worthwhile goals and develop good relationships with other people and less on preventing them from doing "bad things" or wanting "evil things" or on keeping them away from "bad company."
  C.  The United States economy, which has enjoyed a spurt since the end of Cold War military spending, can afford to spend a great deal on the military for the moment, but in the long run pulling so many resources out of our domestic economy will hurt both our continued economic growth and the quality of life in this country, especially in terms of education and health care for our poorer citizens.  Despite our robust economy of the past 10 years, there are still many wealthy and even middle-class Americans who are finding it more satisfying to live in other parts of the world where the quality of life seems better.  One must wonder how many of our poorer people would leave for other countries if they could manage it.
  D.  At present the United States has taken on the role of being the World's Policeman and Judge and Jailer--in short, of being a virtual world government.  But this strategy is creating resentment toward us and will be economically disastrous in the long run.
     E  It would make a great deal more sense to strengthen and make the U.N. more democratic so that it could govern the world on the basis of what is good for the whole world community and not just the U.S.  Such a move is also needed to protect the environment and to address the problem of the growing disparities of wealth in the world.