The Nature of Social Power

It appears that explaining the nature of social power as a concept irrespective of a certain culture, society, bureaucracy, small group, or individual might be a starting point. The question itself requires an extensive answer, and no doubt any answer will not adequately cover all aspects of the concept.

Social power, of course, is constructed by persons to establish order and predictability in social relationships, interactions, and expectations. An individual's social status within a social system is associated with power, and defines the degree of power each participant or player maintains at a given time within the system. Roles played by each participant in each circumstance in the social system have a impact on power. Roles can change as a person moves from one environment to another, and therefore, power differentials change, as players change in each circumstance. Informal and formal social power must also be considered as individuals are either placed in or may achieve specific social statuses within systems, both large and small.

Social power can dictate people's access to opportunity and capacity to participate in certain aspects of life, ensuring little social and economic movement. Economic and political systems, along with an individual need to perhaps remain in a one-up-man ship relationship with perceived subordinates, through informal and formal identifiable attributes (ascribed and/or achieved), are in play via a variety of forces in which social power is primary. We all learn the importance of social power in the roles we play, and we make decisions whether we want to remain in the group at hand and attempt to change or maintain our social position and therefore social powerl; engage in denial or perhaps fight to gain more power; alter some attribute/s we possess to change position vis-a-vis others; find peace within ourselves with other positive aspect to the group and the greater structure that is defining our social reality and therefore our identity and potentially self and social concept; leave the group, employer, community, or other defining and potentially limiting entity; create another group with similar objectives but without the inequalities and the resultant power differentials within the group; or attempt to organize a movement to change the greater social structure and essentially topple the power elite within the group or social construct.

It is noteworthy that social power is a product of and is exerted toward or against others within a socially stratified society with inequality and unequal treatment between classes defined by race, sex, education, and many other traits that have a fluid quality, including the present-day, informal or perhaps formal discrimination of overweight persons. Even legitimately recognized power, which includes coercive power to carry out objectives, instituted by governmental processes (e.g. legislation or judicial decision), care accepted at a certain level by the populace even if the it has a de facto unjust result. Most of the United States social power apparatus/construct is accepted, and therefore the class statuses and power differentials are accepted due to a focus on individual achievement and achieved status (and therefore the belief that each person is capable of moving to or from a certain socio-economic status), and that the system has a more fluid nature to it for each person in comparison to societies that emphasize ascribed status and familial lineage to define status and social power. I have met and worked in more than one profession with individuals who readily accept others' acqisition of material items, even in extravigant (i.e. conspicuous consumption) quantities and qualities. Quotes included, "You deserve it, you earned it." These were persons with a sporadic work history, little formal education, prison incarcerations of moderate duration (i.e. two years), a family history of prison incarcerations, substance abuse histories, and other stressors not as commonly experienced in middle class society.

The following paragraph is a summary of Karl Marx's explanation or understanding of social power found in "WageLabour and Capital". First, he maintains that "instruments of labour", or the class of labourers, is a segment or part of capital. (This, in itself, explains how the reader can understandably conclude that labor has little social power.) These instruments of labour, along with raw materials and means of subsistence of all kinds, produce raw materials. The worker, an instrument of labour, becomes capital only when the worker assumes the role of a laborer vis-a-vis a capitalist. Outside of this relationship, the human is not part of capital. However, within the production process, the worker produces through cooperation of some sort, developing relationships in order to produce. Each change in the instruments of production changes social relations between labourers as they have altered activities. Material means of production change over time (e.g. industrially applied technological advancements), defining social relations of production within the work environment and a society as a whole. When this phenomenon (means of production change) occurs it creates a definitive point in history and establishes a new and distinctive society with unique social relationships and production relationships. Accordingly, capital is realized through production and accumulated via labour, in the context of social conditions and circumstances, and according to specific social relations. It is this social context that produces capital. Capital also has exchange value, and the exchange value in a society, giving capital a social nature. Marx has stipulated that a product is a commodity with an exchange value or a price in a social and economic sense. Commodities, products with exchange value, are part of capital and are exchanged and produced via living labour power, and therefore, those with only their labour to offer in exchange for meeting their needs to sustain life have but little social power while those with capital have great social power. Commodities become capital, by virtue of their exchange value, and this capital a form of social power, and this social power subordinates those who must produce the commodities to exist.