Democracy and the Politics of Power

Power is an overwhelming concept which pervades everything so intricately that it creates web around human existence and essence as well. The normative essence of power caters to the lusty needs of some and snatches the very essence of human lives for the others. The others are led to sacrifice themselves at the altar of the almighty. The almighty are the some who wield their absolute power from within and without over the lesser others to revolve around their orbital space and the others are destined not to escape the centrifugal force of that orbital power.

Bertrand Russel has provided a remarkable perception of power in his book 'Power : A New Social Analysis'. He said, "Power may be defined as the production of intended effects. The fundamental concept of social science is power, in the same sense in which energy is the fundamental concept in physics. Like energy, power has many forms." Russel's 'production of intended effects' is the political ideology of power which is socially reclaimed in all spheres of human psychosis.

That psychosis creates a labyrinth from which grows the fear of freedom. The fear psychosis benumbs the critical consciousness of the feared. The feared bemoans the befallen catastrophe over their existence and essence but fear to challenge the absoluteness of power. Their benumbed souls remain as inert as ever. That inertia is the outcome of the production of intended effects of power and the intended effects loom large over horizontal spheres of the feared human beings who are less powerful or absolutely powerless. But it is not that the powerless has no power to wield. The feared too have the power but not enough to overcome their fear.

When we say power, we generally mean political power. Power is politically distributed among the various cross-sections of people. In that sense power is both vertically and horizontally divided and the vertices culminate in a pyramidical superstructure. On the top of the pyramid rests the fearful and on its base writhe the feared ones at the mercy of the most powerful ones. Those with the absolute power at their disposal are the supreme authority to wield their all ammunitions of political power with indulgence and insistence of violence. And violence is not only the metaphor of political power but also the categorical pronouncement and praxis of politics of power.

And, yes, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. No, it is not just a catchword of Mao's politics. It is the catchword of politics and political power of all hues. Nobody can deny that those who wield the gun, wield the power and vice versa. Power is a manifestation of violence authored and perpetrated perpetually by the authority or that the power-that-be consisting of a handful. It is because that the fearful only have all the power to enthrone themselves to the seat of power, be it democratic or otherwise.

Democracy too does cohere the most fearful and most powerful as democracy without power is like a king without his fangless sceptre. Without power at the base how can the juggernaut of democracy roll on? The powerful are 'the democrat' and the powerless are 'the democratised' in the long course of history of changing hands of power among the most powerful. The democratised have never been democrats and they do not have any affordable power to 'democratise' the democrats in democratic nuances. It is power of democratic politics that eternalises democracy and reserves power for the powerful.

Power is power over the powerless people to dominate over them and to enjoy unbridled authority over them. And ordinary people have got no power to wield the gun, so they have no power of authority and no power over the authority or the powerful power-that-be to dominate over them. Those who do not wield power to dominate are destined to be dominated and be ruled. So, people are ruled, the ruled and people are destined to be the ruled as having no power of wielding gun and wielding power.