Power -- Transcript and Video

In the book Walden, Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that “there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” And this is no accident. The structure of society, far from being easily interpretable, is purposely made opaque to us. Many veils are laid over the complex foundations of tyranny, many justifications which go unnoticed are marshalled to great success in confusing and distracting the people.

Philosophical ideas are the mental scaffolding that hold entire orders in place. The detours into philosophical analysis seen throughout political theory are not idle meanderings; they are the natural procession of political questions taken to their extent. This is why, early on in his Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, Abdullah Ocalan says that “mighty social struggles are fought beneath the surface.” Enduring systems of thought and meaning silently underlie society’s functioning, giving it justification, forming its basic assumptions, and organizing the lives of the people that populate it under a paradigm.

This essay will discuss a great behemoth that lays just underneath the surface, often glimpsed, but rarely inspected in depth. It is what we actually discuss every time our conversations wander to the topics of suppression and revolt, conformity and autonomy, anarchism and authority. In these we are summarizing a much deeper structure, skirting an issue which subsumes all these common ideas. Let us lay out a theory of power.