Introduction
Max Weber described “Power” as the possibility that one participant in a period lasting would be capable of carrying out his wishes amid opposition, irrespective of the basis on which such likelihood is predicated. Thomas Hobbes described power as compared to the control one may exhibit over a splinter by hammering it (Odzuck, 2019, p. 30). Hannah Arendt says power is the capacity not simply to strike but to behave in concert (Whelan, 2019, p. 40). According to Talcott Parsons, power is a mechanism functioning to bring about changes in the interactions of individuals (Sciortino, 2021, p. 160). From these definitions from various authors, it is evident that fear, power, and violence relate. When individuals or administrations wrongly use their power, they may cause violence among themselves, causing fear among citizens.
Fear, Power, and Violence
Individuals might cause political fear among others to gain political or professional goals through inherent bias. The incident is similarly known as the “climate of fear” or “culture of fear.” Although fear can influence people’s attitudes, understanding how it is intentionally and strategically used to manipulate us might assist in mitigating its consequences (Ecker et al., 2022, p. 20). A strategy that depends on the innate need to feel safer in large groups is using fear, for instance, to sway voters in favor of a specific candidate or party. Campaigns often employ fear to turn voters against their political rivals. This tactic could entail making accurate or false comments about the shortcomings of the rival candidate or making dire predictions about what would happen if the rival candidate won the race. When a politician questions a contender’s health—either physically or mentally—the intention is frequently to instill dread in the fans, leading them to question the candidate’s competence.
The formal authority granted to an individual within a company is legitimate power. Since real power stems from a position or title at work, privilege is a form of positional power. Complete authority is the official power given to a person inside a corporation. Because it originates from a post or job designation, legitimate authority is available to power. Legitimate authority figures frequently take on a “parental” role within a business. They are in charge of making decisions and implementing plans that improve the business. Experience demonstrates that domination never voluntarily confines itself to the justification of financial, affective, or ideal objectives. Three categories of legal dominance exist, including logical, conventional, or charismatic arguments, which may support legitimacy claims (Körösényi, 2019, p. 290). If validity is asserted for power and believed in due to the reverence of centuries-old laws and authorities, the authority will be considered traditional. Based on the existence and application of charismatic personal attributes, the social interactions immediately engaged are personal.
According to the frequent use of phrases like “power,” “influence,” “dominance and obedience,” “status,” and “authority,” it is clear that many people understand the value of power. There is much misunderstanding surrounding these ideas. In power-dependence relationships, the practice of cost-cutting manifests itself in various ways. Lower costs are a procedure that involves a change in values and lessens the discomfort associated with satisfying the expectations of another solid. Any estimate of dependency must take the costs of alternatives into account. Social relationships frequently involve bonds of interdependent dependency between the participants (Han et al., 2020, p. 930). The idea of reciprocity in power-dependent relationships raises the issue of whether the power in the relationship is equal or unequal.
From a causative and explanatory perspective, power is the most critical factor in the triangle. The first of the two governing principles of the distributive process, need, is relatively straightforward and presents just a few significant or challenging issues. Greater decentralization of authority typically occurs when the rule of right replaces the rule of might. The difference between power and control is one of the fundamental divisions under the category of established power. Private property ownership is one base on which institutionalized authority frequently rests (Murtazashvili, 2021, p. 153). Assets possession is frequently separated from holding a particular position or duty. Good owners have control over a resource that individuals can use to affect the behavior of others since it is valuable and in short supply.
Power can be a human resource exploited by leaders to increase human freedom in a true democracy, but this possibility is obscured by the association of power with dominance. It has long been understood that power means controlling others, especially in times of scarcity. Because there is no hereditary nobility and significant individual vertical mobility, it has historically been far more straightforward to associate organized power in the United States with institutions than with the social structure of American society. Accordingly, liberal democracy tends to tackle the power problem by quantitatively restricting its use (Dixon and Landau, 2021, P. 23). The generating source of organized power in any society is inherent in the social structure of the society. It attempts to regulate the use of power by pinpointing the source at the institutional level, however instantly feasible this may seem, miss the point. Men engage in specific social production relationships that are necessary and autonomous of their will; these production relationships are related to a specific point in the growth of their physical forces of construction.
Production relations make up the economic fabric of the government’s loyal base, on which a political and legal superstructure is built and to which specific social awareness forms are correlated. The form of production determines the broad social, political, and cognitive life processes in material existence (Huertas-Valdivia et al., 2020, p. 1). Contrary to popular belief, men’s social being determines their consciousness, not their consciousness determining their being. The material services of manufacture in society finally clash with the established production relations or, in what is essentially the same thing, with the class structures in which they have previously operated. These interactions change into constraints because the services’ expansion processes fuel production. The entirety of the enormous superstructure is, in general, quickly updated with the change in the economic underpinning. The physiological adaptations to the socioeconomic circumstances of production, which natural science can anticipate with accuracy, must be distinguished from the ideological forms.
People cannot evaluate an individual based on their perception of themselves, nor can they evaluate a period of developing or developed consciousness. The contradictions of daily existence, notably the continual conflict between the participants of creativity and the production forces, must be used to explain this consciousness instead. No communal system ever vanishes earlier than the creative services for which it has a place have been generated (Williamson and Eynon, 2020, p. 230). New, more excellent production relations never emerge before the substantial foundations for their creation have developed. A closer look at the situation reveals that humanity always assigns itself only those problems it can address. The issue does not arise until the necessary material circumstances are already there or at least developing.
The evolution of the economic foundation of society can be observed to have taken place at several epochs during the Oriental, Ancient, Caste systems, and Medieval Bourgeois modes of production. The bourgeois relations of production are the last stage of the conflict in the social stage of manufacture; this conflict is not one between people but originates in their social environments. Karl Marx focuses political attention on the proletariat, the agent of historical change (Comninel, 2019, p. 224). He makes the case—using data, theories, and catchphrases—that the most significant trend in capitalist society is the emerging link between human agency and implicit aim. The main drive inside the capitalist sphere of necessity is the historical creation of the proletariat. Marx maintains the main focus on the rise of the proletariat and its deed of revolution (Shoikhedbrod, 2022, p. 360). Therefore, the striking coherence of Marx’s system and the close resemblance of its components are primarily a result of his consistency.
There are numerous assumptions from various authors about political revolution. Marx believed that the revolution would be brought about by the expanding material forces of production clashing with the relations of production (Femia, 2019, p. 100). The fight between the classes would then bring about this revolution. Marx thought that everything in reality, including capitalist society, is constantly changing and changing into its opposite. The central issue impacting the power revolution has always been the analysis of capitalism (Øversveen, 2022, p. 441). From such a materialist perspective, concepts are grounded in history’s temporal context rather than existing independently of it. Even if a Marxist historian’s interpretations are insufficient or just incorrect, at least the critical mission is now openly apparent rather than being allowed to have an unacknowledged influence.
The people’s self-government by the will of people’s assemblies is the practical aim of democracy. A Freudian analysis of behavior has infused much “non-Freudian” psychology, just as a materialist view of history (Krishna, 2022). In contrast, a quest for conflicts within the historical process has infused some aspects of Marxism into traditional historiography (Krishna, 2022). Sovereign masses are entirely unable to make the most critical decisions. Both the effectiveness of indirect democracy and the ineffectiveness of direct democracy is a direct result of the influence of numbers. The mass expresses deep gratitude for its leaders and sees showing appreciation as a spiritual duty. Regular re-election of party leaders who have earned their position well typically reflects the feeling of appreciation, leading to permanent leadership (Smith, 2021, p. 225). Therefore, holding elections frequently is a fundamental safeguard taken by democracy against the oligarchy virus.
The only scientific theory that can successfully refute any theory, regardless of how ancient or new, affirms the Marxist theory’s claim that the “political class” is inescapably required to remain forever. According to Aristotle, there are three different sorts of rule: rule by the few, rule by the many, and rule by the one, each of which has a degenerate form—tyranny, oligarchy, and mobocracy (Abat I Ninet, 2021, p. 1). The elite set the social objectives, which are carried out at their command. A theory of social change is included in the radical perspective. Their conflict leads to social transformation, especially when the downtrodden band together to confront the rapacious rulers. The rulers and the ruled influence the general social order differently, with the former making a significantly more significant contribution. Elitists are occasionally attacked for lacking a social transformation philosophy. Such elites frequently exploit the custom, the masses’ demand for tried-and-true leadership, their socialized reverence for existing leadership, and appeals to experience, irreplaceability, and accomplishments.
The Relationship
According to Arendt, communication practices are what create and sustain power. She contends that because violence can only destroy these practices—not build them—it is “antithetical” to power. In contrast, Foucault’s theory openly permits violence to be a fundamental part of creating power. While Arendt is correct to assert that violence and power are not the same, this does not imply that violence cannot play any part in forming power (Menge, 2022, p. 770). Arendt is not only asserting that “violence” and “power” have distinct meanings or that their objects of reference are not the same. She asserts more forcefully that power and violence are, by nature, incompatible or, at the very least, at odds with one another. Since violence cannot produce power by its very nature, power is fundamentally nonviolent.
Power, according to Arendt, is the human ability to not only act but to act in concert. Despite the fundamental assumptions that support this possibility, Max Weber designated power as “the probability that one actor within a social interaction will be in a position to carry out his own will” (Weber, 2019, p. 40). Almost every view of power describes it as a relationship between dominant and subordinate people that could be adversarial, even though Weber’s notion of authority is not universally accepted. The first component is understanding power as a manifestation of people’s capacities and wills. Regarding a conflict of interest between people, the second is a distinction between power ties and other social connections. The majority of social scientists agree with Weber’s concept.
Weber’s definition links people and their interactions with one another with power in organizations and systems. That is, it appears to be consistent with methodological individualism and, as a result, appears to be in line with the general opinion regarding what constitutes an explanation. Weber’s definition, however, has normative implications for liberal-democratic politics. Social ties fail to discriminate between power and other types of social interactions. Hence, the definitions of power that are so broad as to encompass all social ties—such as those offered by Nietzsche and Foucault—seem to devalue rights and protections (Hofmeyr, 2022, p. 107). It can be helpful to identify social ties that individuals may seek to structure by applying political rights and protections. Recognizing communal ties eliminates power interactions from other kinds of social relationships, such as cooperative and consenting ones.
When al-Qaeda used fear and violence to fight the government, the management employed its powers to ensure the citizens were protected. Al-Qaeda, which Osama bin Laden established in the late 1980s, was a wide-ranging militant Islamist group. Al-founders Qaeda recruited followers from around the Islamic world to help Muslims battling the Russian Empire in the Afghan War. The organization broke dissolved when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Still, its founders never gave up fighting against corrupt Islamic regimes and outside involvement in Islamic nations. Al-Qaeda’s headquarters were initially in Sudan in the early nineties but eventually relocated to Afghanistan in about 1996 (Seliktar and Rezaei, 2020, p. 100). After many of them were murdered or jailed, including numerous notable personalities, most of the insurgents and their commanders were forced into hiding. The Afghan invasion in 2001 damaged the financial, logistical, and information ties between al-Qaeda management and its fighters. It jeopardized Afghanistan’s continued use as a sanctuary and training ground for the organization. However, these realities did not severely weaken al-Qaeda; instead, they caused a structural shift and increased franchising.
Conclusion
In conclusion, fear induces obedience through violence and power. Even if those who use violence may succeed in momentarily imposing their will, their rule is always shaky since people will obey the rules even less when the violence stops or the prospect of it reduces. Constant attention is needed while using violence to exert control. The violence used too much or too little might lead to an uprising. People with little power frequently use violence to control or influence others. Power rarely arises through violence. In actuality, violent groups or individuals frequently discover that their acts undermine the authority they do possess. Government-opposing groups frequently use violence to compensate for their alleged lack of authority. Such savagery increases the status of the nation. Therefore, whenever a terrorist bombs up a structure or assassinates a politician, the government has an excuse to limit individual freedom and consolidate its control. When governments believe their hold on power is eroding, they resort to violence.
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