I. Rethinking Power as a Universal Human Condition
Throughout history, power has been defined in very different ways. For Aristotle[i], it was the potential oriented toward a natural end: every being tends to realize its telos. Hobbes[ii] conceived it as the capacity to impose one’s own will upon others, the foundation of the social contract, and the sovereign State. Kant[iii] linked it to rational duty, as a condition for organizing coexistence under universal principles. In the twentieth century, Foucault[iv] described it as an inevitable network that permeates all social relations, while Derrida[v] reduced it to an endless play of meanings and masks.
Each of these visions illuminated important aspects of the notion of power, but also left unresolved problems: Aristotelian teleology confines power to rigid ends; Hobbes confuses it with domination; Kant abstracts it into a transcendental duty difficult to apply; and postmodernism dissolves it into a nihilism that denies all legitimacy and ultimately frustrates any aspiration for collective human development.
That is why I consider it necessary to rethink the concept. Power is not, in reality, a privilege of a few nor merely the imposition of will: it is rather a universal condition of every rational individual, always present as the capacity to transform their environment. In the process of interaction and social integration, the individual power of the human being becomes collectivized, in one way or another, giving rise to the different human social structures. The history of humanity could thus be understood as the history of the organization of collective power.
Power, in its purest form, is individual, but its historical destiny is always collective. To understand how that power is organized and legitimized, we must now turn to the notion of authority.
II. The Gregarious Origin of Social Organization
Human beings are gregarious entities. From the earliest groups of hunter-gatherers to complex societies, we have sought to live in community. Social organization arises from the need to coordinate efforts, distribute tasks, and guarantee the survival of the group.
In this context, individual power becomes collective power as a sum of wills that mutually recognize each other. Since that accumulation requires direction, communities have historically transferred part of their power to individuals with specific qualities, real or supposed: courage, wisdom, capacity for mediation, or charisma.
If we take Mesoamerica as an example, we will see that tribal councils (collective authority) chose chiefs (individual authority) according to the context of the moment. In times of war, the most skilled in combat was favored; in times of peace, the wisest in deliberation.
Authority is not, or should not be considered, then, a fixed attribute, but rather a form of human relationship toward a figure that fulfills a social function recognized by the community: guaranteeing the survival of the group.
III. Intercultural Comparison
This pattern of the transfer of power and the establishment of authority is repeated in multiple cultures:
- Traditional Africa: clans chose chiefs or elder counselors whose authority depended on their ability to mediate conflicts and maintain cohesion. Obedience was voluntary, sustained by respect for experience.
- Classical Greece: in the polis, authority was distributed among magistrates and assemblies. Collective power was organized through the recognition of common rules and the election of temporary leaders.
- Germanic societies: councils of warriors chose chieftains based on their military capacity. Authority was contextual and could be withdrawn if the leader lost prestige.
- Ancient China: the notion of the “Mandate of Heaven” legitimized emperors, but depended on the obedience of the people. When calamities were interpreted as a loss of the mandate, authority collapsed.
- Medieval Islamic world: caliphs and sultans received obedience insofar as they guaranteed justice and protection. Authority was sustained by the voluntary submission of the believing community.
In all these cultures, authority arises as a mechanism for organizing collective power. It is not an innate attribute of the leader, an expression of his power, but the result of the recognition of the subjects. We can also observe that legitimate authority must maintain its link with the notion of collective survival, which is, ultimately, the reason for its existence.
IV. From Contextual Authority to the Institutionalization of Power
Having clarified that authority does not depend on the intrinsic power of the leader, but on the voluntary obedience of the subjects, we can say that in every process of social organization, there exists an explicit or tacit contract in which the individuals of a group decide to cede part of their power to another(s) and recognize them as authority. Hannah Arendt[vi] defined it precisely: “Authority implies an obedience in which men retain their freedom” (Between Past and Future, 1961). One obeys because one recognizes, not because one fears. Max Weber, for his part, distinguished between traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational authority (Economy and Society, 1922). All of them share the same foundation: the belief in the validity of order.
As we have seen, in the original communities of diverse cultures, this transfer was contextual and flexible: the wisest was recognized in times of peace, the bravest in times of war, the most just in times of conflict. Authority existed to fulfill a social function; it was not a fixed attribute. However, over time, this dynamic became institutionalized and elites emerged. What had been voluntary recognition was transformed into rigid structures: hereditary monarchies, state bureaucracies, impersonal legal systems. Authority ceased to be a mechanism of collective survival and became a permanent privilege.
And it is here that criticism of power also arises: not against its original notion—universal condition for survival—but against its deviation. Power is distorted when those who were recognized as authorities take advantage of that position to perpetuate themselves, accumulate privileges, and detach themselves from the vital function that gave them legitimacy. Institutionalization fixes what was once dynamic and opens the door for rather mediocre individuals to become powerful historical figures, thanks to mass obedience. As Ian Kershaw wrote about Hitler: “Without the acquiescence of millions, Hitler would have been a marginal politician” (Hubris, 1998). The monster is not born solely from the will of the empowered individual, but from the social energy ceded.
Another historically recent example illustrates this logic: the dissolution of the Soviet Union[viii]. In 1991, the majority of the Soviet population did not wish for the disappearance of the State that guaranteed their collective survival; however, the elites of the time found it more profitable to dismantle it, appropriating resources and power for their own benefit. The institutionalization of power, detached from its original function, allowed a decision contrary to the popular will to be imposed as a historical fact.
In sum, what is criticized about power is not its root—the human capacity to organize for survival—but its deviation: the transformation of authority into a fixed privilege and the manipulation of collective obedience by elites who forget the reason for their existence. But criticism of power cannot remain focused on the elites: it must also include the people who obey without discernment. Illegitimate authority feeds on uncritical obedience, and therefore, the historical responsibility for human social failure is shared:
- In Germany, Hitler’s discourse on living space seduced the population because it appealed to the need to survive, but uncritical obedience allowed that narrative to be transformed into expansion and extermination.
- In the USSR, the population did not want dissolution, but neither did it exercise sufficient resistance against the elites who decided to dismantle the system. Passive obedience facilitated the collapse.
V. The Evolution of Human Societies (Hegelian Dialectics, Marxism, and Foucault’s Network)
The Hegelian tradition understood history as a dialectical process: thesis and antithesis confronting each other until producing a higher synthesis. However, it is worth qualifying this reading: in Hegel, the opposites are not absolute enemies, but complementary moments that need each other to realize freedom. Individual and community, for example, are not contraries, but dimensions that mutually recognize each other in the State, conceived by Hegel as “the reality of the ethical idea.”
The Marxist reading of Hegel radicalized this logic and turned dialectics into a struggle of irreconcilable opposites: bourgeoisie against proletariat, capital against labor. History came to be interpreted as class warfare, where one pole had to destroy the other. From there derives the contemporary confusion that reduces politics to the confrontation of left versus right, communists versus capitalists, as if they were blocks in conflict and the existence of one depended on the extinction of the other.
Michel Foucault, for his part, shifted the perspective: power is not a thing that one possesses, but a network of relations that permeates all spheres of social life. That is why he affirmed that “where there is power, there is resistance.” Resistance is not external, but a constitutive part of power, revealing its limits and possibilities. At another moment, he emphasized that we cannot imagine a space outside of power: “Here we are, always with the same inability to cross the line, to pass to the other side.” There is no pure “outside”; every social practice is permeated by relations of power.
Foucault’s power is productive and relational, and resistance is inseparable from it. Foucault was right to show that power has no “outside” and that resistance is part of it, but he left incomplete the explanation of how networks are formed. Complementing Foucault’s vision, we can say that:
- Power circulates in social relations, but those relations are built under the notion of authority, understood as the partial transfer of individual power.
- Collective power is not a mystery: it is the accumulation of individual powers channeled by authority.
- The network of power exists, but it is organized because individuals decide to obey.
Thus, every human social structure, and the very history of humanity, can be read as processes of distribution and redistribution of obedience and as organization and reorganization of authority. Revolutionary processes do not destroy power, but withdraw obedience from certain authorities and transfer it to others. Every political regime is sustained as long as people obey; they fall when that obedience breaks. In the economy, companies prosper as long as consumers recognize their authority; they fail when trust is withdrawn. In everyday life, toxic or abusive relationships end when individuals (victims) decide not to submit any longer.
The evolution of human societies is not explained as the product of a permanent struggle of opposites, but as a redistribution of obedience and reorganization of authority. At bottom, political debate is not about left versus right nor communists versus capitalists: it is about how people decide to obey and whom, and whether that obedience sustains a collective ideal of survival or deviates toward the satisfaction of privileges and particular ambitions.
VI. The Problem of Modern Individualism
Power, as we have seen, is a universal condition of the individual and multiplies when it is organized collectively. However, in modernity, excessive individualism has eroded the source of collective power. Each person retains their capacity to decide and act, but by not channeling it toward a common project, power becomes atomized and loses strength. Authority, which depends on obedience and recognition, weakens when individuals refuse to cede part of their power. The result is paradoxical: larger societies with more resources seem less capable of organizing themselves than ancient communities that were more cohesive.
Historically, tribal or communal peoples managed to balance power and authority because obedience was distributed and recognized in collective councils. Mesoamerican chiefs, African elders, or Germanic chieftains were chosen according to the context, and their authority depended on the will of the community. In contrast, modern societies, fragmented by individualism, leave the field open for organized minorities to channel obedience and become disproportionate authorities.
Examples abound: small political parties that manage to lead disorganized masses and destabilize peaceful coexistence; corporations that concentrate economic power because consumers act in isolation; or digital leaders who accumulate millions of followers while each individual believes they are exercising their freedom alone. In all cases, collective power is weakened because the dispersed majority fails to articulate its obedience.
Ultimately, the problem is not power, nor even the people who exercise it, but passive obedience: the lack of conscious and voluntary participation in social processes, which legitimizes the abuses of organized groups. The historical task would then be to overcome atomizing individualism and cultivate active, conscious, disciplined, and gregarious obedience that keeps power at the service of collective survival.
Thus posed, we can precisely distinguish two forms of obedience: passive, exercised without critical awareness and legitimizing abuses of power through inertia or fear; and active, granted consciously, in a disciplined and gregarious manner. It is also worth clarifying that active obedience is not in itself a guarantee of legitimacy in a positive or beneficial sense: fanaticisms and sectarianisms exercise conscious and disciplined obedience, but are oriented toward destructive ends.
For this reason, the historical task is not only to cultivate active obedience but to ensure that it is directed toward survival, human dignity, and collective justice. Legitimate active obedience is that which recognizes authorities based on their service to the common good and withdraws when they deviate toward privilege or abuse. This distinction is fundamental to understanding how societies sustain or erode authority, and prepares the ground for thinking and developing a deontology of power.
VII. Power as Vital Energy: Toward a Deontology of Power
Power and authority are complementary elements of social organization. Power is a universal condition of the individual; collective power arises from the accumulation of individual powers; authority organizes that accumulation through recognition and obedience, which we know as legitimacy. Ultimately, the source of both resides in the subjects: without obedience, power remains latent, as energy without a channel.
Power can also be understood as vital energy: it is not created nor destroyed, it is channeled and exercised. Each individual carries a share of that energy, which can disperse or concentrate in solid collective structures. Authority is the channel that organizes that energy, transforming individual potential into common action. When obedience is withdrawn, power does not disappear: it fragments and becomes chaotic, like the ronin who wandered without a lord in feudal Japan. The contemporary problem is that excessive individualism erodes the source of collective power: the majority does not lack power in the face of elites; it lacks cohesion.
While the majority disperses in its autonomy, organized minorities manage to channel obedience and become disproportionate authorities. This paradox explains the troubled evolution of human societies: it is not that power fails, but that vital energy is poorly distributed, generating imbalances that have engendered historical monsters.
Power is like the current of a river: it can stagnate in swamps or be channeled to sustain life. That river is nothing other than the vital energy of humanity, which we must learn to guide toward dignity and survival. As Jürgen Habermas[ix] emphasized, political legitimacy can only be founded on processes of rational communication and democratic participation. This perspective reinforces the idea that power requires normative channels that orient it toward collective ends.
The task is not to demonize power, to fight against it, but to relearn how to organize it collectively, to build and respect its limits, recognizing that our gregarious condition is the only guarantee of survival. Today we must continue transferring power to those who seem most apt to guide the group, but with critical awareness, so that this vital energy does not deviate toward elitist privileges, but sustains the common ideal of human survival and dignity. As Paul Ricoeur[x] said, the good life can only be realized with and for others, in just institutions (The Just, 1992), reminding us that power finds its legitimacy when it is oriented toward shared justice.
Ultimately, power is neither a privilege nor a curse, but the vital energy that every human being carries and that, when organized collectively, becomes the force that sustains history. The historical responsibility of each individual is to abandon passive obedience and exercise conscious participation that legitimizes authorities at the service of shared life.
[i] The term “power” does not appear in his work with the modern political meaning. Aristotle distinguishes between dynamis (potential) and energeia (act), linked to the realization of each being’s telos. The extrapolation to the concept of power is a contemporary interpretation.
[ii] In Leviathan (chap. X), Hobbes defines power as “the present means to obtain a future good.” The reduction to “imposition of will” is valid in the political sphere, but his original definition is broader and encompasses resources, capacities, and advantages.
[iii] Kant does not develop an explicit theory of power. His reflection focuses on moral law and right. Political power appears in his philosophy of law as “legitimate authority” derived from practical reason. The link to rational duty is a derived reading.
[iv] For Foucault, power is not a thing that is possessed, but a productive relation that permeates all social practices. His famous statement “where there is power, there is resistance” implies that resistance is constitutive of power, not external to it.
[v] Derrida does not offer a systematic theory of political power. His deconstructive approach focuses on différance and the instability of meaning. The reading of power as a “play of masks” is a postmodern extrapolation rather than a literal definition.
[vi] In Between Past and Future (1961), Arendt defines authority as an obedience in which men retain their freedom. For her, legitimate authority is not sustained by violence or persuasion, but by the free recognition of those who obey.
[vii] The British historian points out that “without the acquiescence of millions, Hitler would have been a marginal politician” (Hitler: Hubris, 1998). The quote underscores that the absolute power the Führer came to wield depended on mass obedience, not only on his individual will. This does not negate the fact that Hitler was already an influential politician when he came to power in 1933; Kershaw’s observation emphasizes that his leadership was consolidated thanks to social legitimization.
[viii] In the March 1991 referendum, around 76% of voters supported maintaining the Soviet Union. However, the economic crisis, nationalist tensions, and decisions of regional elites precipitated its dissolution. The passive obedience of the population facilitated the imposition of a decision contrary to the majority, although it was not the only factor in the collapse.
[ix] Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Suhrkamp, 1981.
[x] Paul Ricoeur, The Just I (1992): “The good life, with and for others, in just institutions.” Ricoeur understands power as the capacity to act together, whose legitimacy depends on institutions channeling that energy toward justice and mutual recognition.