加尔布雷斯: 权力的解剖

恒甫按: 好好地看一下这两页摘录和两位读者评论. 它们都可在网上查到. 加尔布雷斯的此书算是最好懂得了. 要时刻记住的还是那几句老话. 但要深刻地理解它们却要耗尽多少年的心血. 权力和真正的学术是水火不相容的.现代社会里,组织和通过组织来发挥作用的物质财富是权力的主要来源.

(1) Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. --- Lord Acton.

(2) Power is evil in itself. --- Jacob Burckhardt

(3) Behind every great fortune there is a crime. ---Honore de Balzac

The Anatomy of Power, by John Kenneth Galbraith

Power is defined as by Max Weber the German sociologist and political scientist (1864-1920): “the possibility of imposing one’s will upon the behavior of other persons”.

The will to impose is reflected by:  threat of physical punishment, promise of reward, exercise of persuasion, or a deeper moral/cultural force that causes a person or persons subject to the exercise of power to abandon their own preferences and accept those of others. 

Typology of Power:

CONDIGN Power:  “Wins submission by the ability to impose an alternative to the preferences of the individual or group that is sufficiently unpleasant or painful so that these preferences are abandoned.  There is an overtone of punishment.  The expected rebuke is usually too harsh, so the individual will endure, submit, or give into the power from fear or threat.  The individual is aware of the submission via compulsion.”(Galbraith, page 4,5) 

COMPENSATORY Power: “Wins submission by the offer of affirmative reward – by the giving of something of value to the individual so submitting.  Payments, share, praise, money for services.  The individual is aware of the submission for a reward.” (Galbraith, page 5) 

CONDITIONED Power:  “Wins submission by changing beliefs.  Persuasion, education, habituation, social commitment to what seems natural, proper, right causes the individual to submit to the will of another or others.  Submission reflects the preferred course; the fact of submission is not recognized.  Conditioned power is central to the functioning of the modern economy and polity, and in capitalist and socialist countries alike.” (Galbraith, page 5,6) 

THE THREE SOURCES OF POWER: 

Personality, Property, and Organization 

PERSONALITY:  “leadership in the common reference, a quality of mind, physique, speech, moral certainty or personal trait that gives access to instruments of power.  The ability to persuade or create a belief.” (Galbraith, page 6) 

PROPERTY:  “wealthy, an aspect of authority, a certainty of purpose inviting conditioned submission.  Property, income, wealth provides the wherewithal to purchase submission.” (Galbraith, page 6) 

ORGANIZATION:  “the most important source of power in modern society, taken for granted, and required.  Persuasion and submission to the purposes of the organization.” (Galbraith, page 6,7)

October 4, 1983

(1) No Headline

By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

THE ANATOMY OF POWER. By John Kenneth Galbraith. 206 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $15.95.

''WHAT a dreadful thing it is,'' wrote Horace Walpole to William Mason in 1778, ''for such a wicked little imp as man to have absolute power!'' According to John Kenneth Galbraith's latest book, however, the source of power in the present age is no longer man, or ''personality,'' as Professor Galbraith calls it. Nor does power, whose definition he borrows from Max Weber (''the possibility of imposing one's will upon the behavior of other persons''), any longer lie predominantly in property, as it did, for example, at the zenith of the age of mercantile capitalism.

Professor Galbraith's theory of power holds that it is ''men'' not ''man'' who hold the key to power, by which he means of course that the source of power today lies in organizations. ''The management-controlled corporation,'' he writes, ''the trade union, the modern bureaucratic state, groups of farmers and oil producers working in close alliance with governments, trade associations, and lobbies - all are manifestations of the age of organization.''

Similarly, among the three instruments of power - which Professor Galbraith defines as ''condign'' (meaning the power to coerce), ''compensatory'' (meaning the power to reward) and ''conditioned'' (meaning the power to change belief) - ''conditioned power, more than condign or compensatory power, is central'' ''to the functioning of the modern economy and polity, and in capitalist and socialist countries alike.''

Thus, where in preindustrial society condign power might often flow unambiguously from the tip of the lash, in post-industrial society it tends to spread from the organization - be it state, corporation or trade union - often enough by means of a form of conditioning that tends to distort reality. ''And herein lies one of the problems of social conditioning as an instrument of power,'' the author goes on: ''it is accepted as the reality by those who employ it, but then, as underlying circumstances change, the conditioning does not. Since it is considered the reality, it conceals the new reality.''

By now the tendency of Professor Galbraith's argument in ''The Anatomy of Power'' should be getting familiar to readers of such books of his as ''The Affluent Society,'' where he described the power of organized conditioning to make consumers want what they don't need, or ''The New Industrial State,'' where he explained how the reality of modern capitalism had changed while the myth of the classic market economy lived on. Yet such instances of power's uses and abuses are raised only by way of examples in Professor Galbraith's latest book. It is not his purpose here to ride old hobbyhorses, except maybe his anxiety over the growth of America's military establishment, his wonder at the rise of the synthetic personality and his disdain for economics textbooks that continue to celebrate the viability of the market's invisible hand.

Instead, his hope in writing ''The Anatomy of Power'' is that ''the reader will emerge from these pages with a reasonably solid sense of the nature and structure of power.'' Thus he offers us his handy triad of condign, compensatory and conditioned power and their three primary sources - personality, property and organization. Thus he seeks to avoid the ''dense complexity'' and ''deep subjectivity'' to which theories of power typically fall prey. After all, as he puts it, ''All conclusions on power can be tested against generally acceptable historical evidence and most of them against everyday observation and uncomplicated common sense.''

The result is so intricately yet neatly put together that you can almost hear it ticking. And just as Professor Galbraith hoped would be the case, one of its chief fascinations lies in the number of windows it opens on everyday life. You can see its principles at work in the broad sweep of history: for instance, it is in the author's observation that great concentrations of power tend to produce countervailing forces that one may understand why it took a Hitler to produce a Churchill and Roosevelt and why today great bureaucracies have taken the place of great men. And of almost equal interest is his corollary that some of the most successful countervailing forces have been asymmetrical ones, such as Gandhi's use of satyagraha or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent resistance. Yet one can just as easily employ Professor Galbraith's rules to figure out why the dog won't obey.

One curious omission in ''The Anatomy of Power'' is Professor Galbraith's neglect of the power of truth, particularly that of words written by individual thinkers. He writes at length about the power of the sword, but the only thing he considers mightier than the sword seems to be the Pentagon. Perhaps the reason for his silence is that he subsumes all writers under the category of the media, whose practioners, he remarks, have a deplorable tendency to confuse their personal power with that of the message they are conveying, the source of whose power really lies in organizations beyond their influence.

On the other hand, it may be that he is merely being modest. After all, like many of his previous books, ''The Anatomy of Power,'' by organizing a complex set of data into what appears to be self-evident truth, is a thing in its own right of considerable power.

(2) On the Nature of Power

On reserve in the library is a book by J. K. Galbraith on The Anatomy of Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983). Power in general Galbraith understands simply to be "the possibility of imposing one's will upon the behavior of other persons." (P. 2) But on this simple account of the general concept, Galbraith builds a very enlightening and useful analysis of the forms (or instruments) of power and of the sources of power.

The forms of power Galbraith divides into three: (i) condign, (ii) compensatory, and (iii) conditioned power.

(i) "Condign power," he says, "wins submission by the ability to impose an alternative to the preferences of the individual or group that is sufficiently unpleasant or painful so that these preferences are abandoned." Or again: "Condign power wins submission by inflicting or threatening appropriately adverse consequences." (Pp. 4, 5.)

(ii) "Compensatory power, in contrast, wins submission by the offer of affirmative reward--by the giving of something of value to the person so submitting....in the modern economy, the most important expression of compensatory power is, of course, pecuniary reward--the payment of money for services rendered, which is to say for submission to the economic or personal purposes of others." (P. 5.)

(iii) "Conditioned power, in contrast [to condign and compensatory power], is exercised by changing belief. Persuasion, education, or the social commitment to what seems natural, proper, or right causes the individual to submit to the will of another or of others. The submission reflects the preferred course; the fact of submission is not recognized. Conditioned power, more than condign or compensatory power, is central...to the functioning of the modern economy and polity, and in capitalist and socialist countries alike." (Pp. 5-6.) (It seems to me that "conditioning power" might be a more apt term than "conditioned power.")

From the forms of power, or equivalently the instruments by which it is exercised, Galbraith turns to the sources of power: "the attributes or institutions that differentiate those who wield power from those who submit to it." These too are three in number: (i) personality, (ii) property (including disposable income), and (iii) organization.

(i) By personality Galbraith means "the quality of physique, mind, speech, moral certainty, or other personal trait that gives access to one or more of the instruments of power" (the sort of thing commonly called "leadership"). To illustrate: "In primitive societies this access is through physical strength to condign power; it is a source of power still retained in some households or youthful communities by the larger, more muscular male. However, personality in modern times has its primary association with conditioned power--with the ability to persuade or create belief." (P. 6)

(ii) Property. The "principle association [of property or wealth], quite obviously, is with compensatory power. Property--income--provides the wherewithal to purchase submission." But there is a secondary association with conditioned power too; for "wealth accords an aspect of authority...and this can invite conditioned submission." (P. 6.)

(iii) "Organization, the most important source of power in modern societies, has its foremost relationship with conditioned power. It is taken for granted that when an exercise of power is sought or needed, organization is required. From the organization, then, come the requisite persuasion and the resulting submission to the purposes of the organization." The state, however, is a notable example of an organization that also has access to condign power--"to diverse forms of punishment." Then too "organized groups [also] have greater or lesser access to compensatory power through the property of which they are possessed." (Pp. 6-7.)

In subsequent chapters Galbraith expands upon this initial characterization of the forms and sources of power and, most instructively, analyzes a number of historical episodes in which the sources and forms of power combine, or recombine, in various ways. A simple, illustrative example (pp. 7-8) will have to suffice here:

In earliest Christian days, power originated with the compelling personality of the Savior. Almost immediately an organization, the Apostles, came into being, and in time the Church as an organization became the most influential and durable in all the world. Not the least of its sources of power was its property and the income thus disposed. From the combination of personality (those of the Heavenly Presence and a long line of religious leaders), the property, and above all, the unique organization came the conditioned belief, the benefices or compensation, and the threat of condign punishment either in this world or the next that, in the aggregate, constituted the religious power. Such is the complex of factors incorporated in and, in great measure, concealed by that term. Political power, economic power, corporate power, military power, and other such references similarly and deeply conceal an equally diverse interrelationship. When they are mentioned, their inner nature is not pursued. My present concern is with what is so often kept hidden.

And that is the well-executed aim of The Anatomy of Power.

In case after case Galbraith explains how a person or group will increase its power by resorting to further instruments of power, sometimes gaining access to other sources of power for the purpose. Corporations, e.g., are organizations primarily possessed of property and hence of compensatory power, but they often extend their power by resort to conditioned power--public relations, advertising, lobbying. The talent in public relations, advertising, and lobbying is generally for hire--that is, for purchase. The modern corporation through an exercise of compensatory power can thus acquire the means to conditioned power, and where this comprises lobbying government officials on matters of legislation or regulation, the corporation stands to win the condign power of the state to its purposes.

One of the principal virtues of The Anatomy of Power is that it singles out conditioned power for separate attention. This is often overlooked or anyhow not kept in clear focus as a form or instrument of power. Once it is so seen, one is able to see its pervasive presence. One is able to see why it is not idle to question the power of the media to condition belief by controlling the flow of information and in particular by shaping the context of interpretation of the information provided. In a democracy powerful elite groups exercise internal control not by violence or torture but by conditioning belief; and this conditioning they achieve, in part, through propaganda in the mass media. If people can be persuaded to adopt the "right" views, they will submit willingly, without force: they will vote in the ways desired by powerful groups and they will approve the policies pursued by them.

Let us be clear. Persuasion, or the effort to persuade, is not, in itself, something to criticise; propaganda is. Propaganda is persuasion that resorts to deception and manipulation to induce belief. It is propaganda that elites often use to persuade the rest of us of the rightness of their views and actions, and this is deserving of criticism.