ABSTRACT
Imbalances of obligations incurred in social transactions produce differences in power. Power depends on people's needs for the benefits those in power have to offer. Dependence on the benefits a person can supply does not make others subject to his power but gives him only potential power over them. Differentiation of power arises in the course of competition for scarce goods. In informal groups, the initial competition is for participation time, which is scarce, and which is needed to obtain any social reward from group membership. In class structures of communities, the exchange relations between members of different classes or substrata complement and support their respective competitive struggles for social status. The power of accumulated obligations is depleted by asking others to repay their debts, because doing so transforms, at least in part, the power relations into exchange relations, which presume relative equality of status.
