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Understanding the Course of Social RealityThe Planetary Political System of Dunatopian Society

Understanding the Course of Social Reality: The Planetary Political System of Dunatopian Society [Further deepening of our reflections on the question of power must primarily concern political power, the supreme form of power entitled to use a binding force to impose the respect of law. Only elementary and primitive societies may dispense with this supreme command power and trust in the guiding power of tradition, the so called ‘power of society’. Those philosophies proclaiming the extinction of state power are senseless. The real problem we face stems from the need to control political power. To this end, we need to consider state power from the perspective of the transformation of rude forms of domination-power to service-power; a transformation that, as far as I am aware, has never been properly considered by social thought. For social thought has at most predicated the abolition of power—a statement that, due to its impossibility, has represented in practice the best possible intellectual defense of domination-power, the hegemony of which is reinforced by the observational methodology that induces people to accept domination-power under the strength of the observation of the continual presence of such a power in history. A substantial way of controlling political power seems to be offered by the notion of ‘popular sovereignty’ as the expression of a so called ‘general will’. But to give strength to such a notion it is necessary to define in a scientific (objective) way the content of the presumed general will. This is possible if we take recourse to the notion of organizational necessities, as expressed by functional imperatives and the associated social order. Note that such idea of the political power is something different from the notion of democracy. Democratic procedures concern choice possibility, not organizational necessity, which latter is rather a matter of science. The assertion that consensus facit iustum may cause great equivocations: the dominant classes can persuade people to give consent to the violation of important organizational necessities if they contradict the interests of those classes. This chapter continues with the presentation of an organizational design that concerns political order and process, government action, legislation, and vigilance as to the coherence of the whole institutional order.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Understanding the Course of Social RealityThe Planetary Political System of Dunatopian Society

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References (2)

Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2016
ISBN
978-3-319-43070-6
Pages
49 –63
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-43071-3_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Further deepening of our reflections on the question of power must primarily concern political power, the supreme form of power entitled to use a binding force to impose the respect of law. Only elementary and primitive societies may dispense with this supreme command power and trust in the guiding power of tradition, the so called ‘power of society’. Those philosophies proclaiming the extinction of state power are senseless. The real problem we face stems from the need to control political power. To this end, we need to consider state power from the perspective of the transformation of rude forms of domination-power to service-power; a transformation that, as far as I am aware, has never been properly considered by social thought. For social thought has at most predicated the abolition of power—a statement that, due to its impossibility, has represented in practice the best possible intellectual defense of domination-power, the hegemony of which is reinforced by the observational methodology that induces people to accept domination-power under the strength of the observation of the continual presence of such a power in history. A substantial way of controlling political power seems to be offered by the notion of ‘popular sovereignty’ as the expression of a so called ‘general will’. But to give strength to such a notion it is necessary to define in a scientific (objective) way the content of the presumed general will. This is possible if we take recourse to the notion of organizational necessities, as expressed by functional imperatives and the associated social order. Note that such idea of the political power is something different from the notion of democracy. Democratic procedures concern choice possibility, not organizational necessity, which latter is rather a matter of science. The assertion that consensus facit iustum may cause great equivocations: the dominant classes can persuade people to give consent to the violation of important organizational necessities if they contradict the interests of those classes. This chapter continues with the presentation of an organizational design that concerns political order and process, government action, legislation, and vigilance as to the coherence of the whole institutional order.]

Published: Aug 28, 2016

Keywords: Political power; Power of society; State power; Popular sovereignty; General will; Democracy; Political order and process; Government action; Legislation

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