ABSTRACT
Social power, then, is power to command. In contemporary democracies, it is usually either bought, or assigned by some process which legitimizes the assignment. Economic power competes and merges with political and military power, and the power to disseminate ideas. These distinct kinds of power, as Michael Mann points out, do not always coincide.2 The power of the Vatican to control Catholic doctrine; the power of a firm to control its assets; the power of a national government or an army are differently structured and have different ranges. But they all represent hierarchies of command. And we tend to measure the extent of that commanding power in terms of the assets it controls-number of believers, capital, blocks of votes, stockpiles of weapons. In modern capitalist societies, where, as Marx pointed out, ideas are produced and spread largely as marketable commodities, and political parties and candidates depend for survival on raising campaign funds, control over resources becomes the predominant conception of the power to command. ‘Common sense and historical experience combine to suggest a simple but compelling view of the roots of power in any society’, write Frances Piven and Richard Cloward, at the beginning of their analysis of poor peoples’ movements. ‘Crudely but clearly stated, those who control the means of physical coercion, and those who control the means of producing wealth, have power over those who do not.’3
