Power and the Structure of Society.

Abstract

Contemporary Sociology 4(1) (January 1975):21—23. “Power to the People” is a curious slogan. It seems to embody a special kind of hubris——one that would deny even species membership to one’s political opponents. It’s not a slogan that has ever moved me, even when I’ve been allied with those who use it. But listen again; it can be heard another way. Besides the “people,” there is another kind of person—— a corporate person. This isn’t what the law calls a “natural person” like you or me or Aunt Sadie, but a “juristic person” like General Motors or the United States Government. A lot of us, Coleman included, are not too sure that such persons belong in the family of man. Coleman’s argument centers on the distinction between these two kinds of actors. He is willing to give corporate actors their due; they are highly useful creatures, able to accomplish many important tasks that elude the ability of us natural persons. But no love is lost between us and them; they prefer each other and so do we. Much social friction arises in the cross-species interaction, as any of us can testify from our own personal experiences with bureaucracies. Coleman is partly concerned with how we learn to live with these creatures but mainly he is concerned with our regaining the upper hand. We natural persons, he observes, are not doing well in the power struggle with those corporate actors. The aggregate power of natural persons has been systematically declining as corporate actors have bloated. Thus, there is a subjective experience of loss of power, widely shared even by those who, relative to other natural persons, seem to be doing very well. Although they may have morepowerthanmostofus,theystill feel completely outmatched in an arena dominated by the big corporate actors. Restitution is in order and Coleman explores a number of possible paths to this end. “Power to the natural persons” is what he is after, a less catchy slogan than the more familiar one above but stemming from the same impulse. This book, consisting of a series of four lectures which Coleman delivered as part of the Fels Lectures on Public Policy Analysis, continues the explorations begun in his American Sociological Review article, “Loss of Power” (1973). It has the characteristic virtue of Coleman’s thought. An idea, apparently quite simple and stark, is taken down a road that leads to many complex and subtle byways. There is a disarming lack of pretension and self consciousness as Coleman skips along through precincts occupied by several centuries’ worth of the world’s greatest moral and political philosophers. Although Coleman’s deliberations have a kinship with earlier traditions——especially with anarchist thought——there is a freshness about them. He makes us see anew many aspects of the control of power. The socialist alternative, for example, becomes one special case of restitution by transferring power from many unaccountable corporate actors to a single one, the State. But this

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Affiliated Institutions

• University of Michigan US

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