ABSTRACT
A common approach to power is to enumerate the bases or resources that make possible its exercise. There are significant differences in the liquidity of individual and collective resources. Individuals may possess power resources without using them at all or, more commonly, using them only to pursue non-political goals. The secret miser and gun-owner are idiosyncratic examples of the former. The most obvious collective resources are those created by the pooling of individual resources for employment in the service of a common aim. The most important collective resources are unambiguously classifiable as non-reducible or global properties of groups: namely, solidarity and organization. A small group, the members of which are able to pool large amounts of individual resources, can wield greater power than larger groups with members who are poorer in resources. Collective resources provide a basis for possible power in a much more qualified and ambiguous sense.
