Some Reflections on the Moral Reality of Social Power

Abstract

Power is often understood as the sheer use of force in social relations. While power is frequently expressed and experienced in these terms, it is also necessary for the generation, sustenance, and enhancement of life in all its forms. This means that, in a very basic way, power is constitutive of personhood and society. Understood and exercised in this way, power affirms the dignity of individual persons and promotes bonding between and among persons. Therefore, ethically, social power must be viewed as essentially relational and intended to be reciprocal, community building, and accountable. Contrarily understood and exercised, power gives rise to bondage through denial of the responsibility in its constitutive and relational character. Here, the emphasis on domination and power becomes alienating and irresponsible. The purpose of this article as a whole is to undertake an ethical analysis of social power that furthers exploration of the principles and implications of nonviolent strategies for the exercise of social power.

Probably the best known and most widely used definition of social power is that provided by Max Weber:

By power is meant that opportunity existing within a social relationship which permits one to carry out one’s own will even against resistance and regardless of the basis on which this opportunity rests.

(Weber 1963, p. 117)

The understanding expressed in his definition has led to the tendency among most political and social scientists to view power solely from the vantage point of domination, setting up a powerful/powerless dialectic as the defining description of power relations. This understanding of power as such constricts too narrowly, I believe, the field of investigation of social power. It also creates a language barrier in discussing the phenomenon of power for those seeking to do power analysis from the underside of power imbalances.

A further consequence of the domination theory of power is a misplaced debate concerning whether, in ethical terms, power should be regarded as essentially immoral or amoral. The former view arises in critical analyses of unjust economic and political power arrangements. The injustice of these structures is treated as a property of the power wielded within them, such that it becomes an intrinsic factor of that power itself, implying that the sheer exercise of power is inherently unjust and, therefore, immoral.

This understanding is, necessarily, countered by realists who view power as inherent in social life and capable of being employed for moral purposes as well as often fostering negative consequences for the poor and disinherited classes within societies.

Those who hold this view maintain that, where used at all with respect to power, moral categories apply to specific exercises of power rather than to power itself.

My contention in this article is that the domination theory of power does not take account of the fact that power imbalance1 does not mean that only dominant forces have power in the relationship. I further contend that the moral measures commended in this article are intrinsic to the nature of power itself, rather than externally imposed, which is implied in both the immoral and amoral understandings of the nature of power.

1. Ontological Aspects: Human Being Actualized Through Self-Affirmation and Social Bonding

It is significant that Weber’s definition essentially describes one form of power relations and delineates the conditions necessary for that form to exist, implying that, unless one participant in a power relation is dominant, no one in the relation has power. Even granting an imbalance such that one side in the exchange has more leverage than the other, the condition of carrying out “one’s own will even against resistance” is not met if the weaker side is able to prevent the stronger from achieving desired goals, even though the stronger maintains its advantage in the relationship.

Moreover, the definition offers no way of understanding the relation itself as a power relation except as a contest for dominance. Thus, Weber’s definition cannot be accepted as answering the question of the nature of power itself, although it gives a sufficient description of power as domination.

Overcoming the problem presented by Weber’s widely accepted definition requires undertaking an ontological analysis of power, defining power in terms of the primary structures and processes of being qua being rather than, secondarily, as a condition of structural relations among human beings. As Paul Tillich points out, ontology raises the prior question to those ordinarily addressed in physical and social science research:

Ontology does not try to describe the nature of beings, either in their universal, generic qualities, or in their individual, historical manifestations. It does not ask about events and those who act within these events. This is the task of scientific analysis and historical description. But ontology asks the simple and infinitely difficult question: What does it mean to be? What are the structures, common to everything that is, to everything that participates in being?

(Tillich 1954, p. 19)

From the vantage point of this inquiry, the basic question is what does being have to do with power and, vice versa, what does power have to do with being? My response to these questions is that power is the basic condition of being; put negatively, without power there is no being. Power is necessary for the generation, sustenance, and enhancement of life in all its forms.

Although not using Tillich’s existentialist language with respect to non-being, this perspective does agree with his basic understanding that “Being is the power of being” (Tillich 1954, p. 37)2. Power is one of the basic “structures, common to everything that… participates in being” (Tillich 1954, p. 19).

However, in Tillich’s view, human being is not fulfilled in mere existence; it must be actualized through personal self-affirmation. Thus, Tillich writes the following:

Every being affirms its own being. Its life is its self-affirmation- even if its self-affirmation has the form of self-surrender. Every being resists the negation against itself.

(Tillich 1954, p. 39)

The form that self-affirmation takes in Tillich’s analysis needs further comment.

Considering the paradigm proposed in this section of the article has made me acutely aware that the analysis undertaken here draws its methodology and data from the Western (Euro-American) cultural context within which Weber’s definition, and my own scholarship and research interests, have been formed. Thus, as an ontology, it is particularly relative3 to the Western socio-cultural context and cannot claim to be universal, i.e., an analysis of human being wherever humans are found.

Contrary to the claims of ontologists, such as Tillich, Heidegger, Sartre et al., the conflict structures of human existence that they explore are not universal. They are products of the ontologists native socio-cultural context, and the challenges they pose to the achievement of the ontologists’ understandings of authentic existence are features of their context.

Significantly, the ontological findings of these religious and secular philosophers correlate with Erik Erikson’s finding of the need to resolve a structural “identity crisis” in human psychosocial development (Mcleod 2024). Erikson’s theory is based on a psycho-biographical study of young Martin Luther, in which Luther’s growth to responsible adulthood required overcoming an intense authority conflict with his father, grounded in the broad cultural shift from feudal to industrialized societies and from tradition-directed to inner-directed (authoritarian) normative personality structures (Reisman and Glazer 1961, p. 427).

The point of the preceding discussion is not to deny that the affirmation of being is necessary to actualize a person’s power of being but to emphasize the relative character of the content of affirmation. Clearly, it makes a difference in that content whether the context prioritizes the individual, as American society does, or the community, as is characteristic of many indigenous African societies. This point needs to be made because the content of personal and group self-affirmation is particularly significant for social bonding as an essential component of power as a social reality. The reference here is not simply to power as an aspect of social interaction but to collective social expressions of power.

Affirmation of one’s personal power of being is necessary, but, alone, it is not a sufficient condition for social power in the collective sense to exist. That existence, minimally, requires that self-affirmation be joined to affirmation of the power of being of one’s social group, inclusive of but separate from one’s individual power of being. As such, social power is a unique quality of the group as a whole and not simply a sum total of the power of being of the individuals in the group. From this vantage point, the existentialists understanding of self-affirmation as the end point in actualization of the power of being fails to resolve the issue of positive relations to “the other”, and to others, thereby negating and ignoring the power of being of “the other” and of social realities.

In a curious way, without sharing the presuppositions of existentialist ontology, the understanding of power in American society duplicates the negation and neglect expressed in the existentialist focus on self-affirmation. The breakdown occurs largely, as a result of taking the individual-in isolation, or a de-personalized model of society, as the starting point for defining, analyzing, and acting toward social reality. Thus, in the American context, ideological individualism and deep-seated anti-societal attitudes make it difficult to accept the social bonding necessary to positive expressions of social power.

For this reason, American activists and mainline social theorists affirm Weber’s domination model as the understanding of power as such rather than, as I have suggested, the description and specification of conditions for a particular form of social power to exist. The prevalence of this understanding among activists is highly visible in public discourse in the United States both in political circles and in the media. Thus, in the Congress, domination theory “all or nothing” strategies are employed as means to sheer political advantage, suspending all meaningful action on a plethora of vital policy issues pending seizure of control of the policy-making apparatus.

Taking this approach in understanding and action denies the intrinsically social foundations buried within an individual’s power of being, along with the hidden structural advantages underlying the success of privileged groups and power elites. It also makes power essentially anti-social, having maximum effect in the subjection of persons outside the dominant group to that group’s effective will, denying both the dignity of subordinated persons and the implicit claims of human solidarity (social unity) on the dominant group’s actions.

This situation makes clear that affirmation of one’s personal power of being must be joined to affirmation of the power of being of one’s social group and the power of being of humanity as a whole to fulfill the ontological and ethical conditions for social power. Its optimal form of being is “power with” rather than “power over”. The prevalence of the latter understanding in established social theory and most fields of human action obscure and undermine strategies based on the moral reality of power.

Contrarily, the position taken in this article is that power is not simply a personal ontological phenomenon. Social development and the broadest social exercise of power, as described above, are its optimal expressions. Domination resists, at best, and prevents, at worst, power’s optimal expression. This opposition results in attitudes and actions that contradict power’s moral reality.

I believe that the understanding of power should begin, not with structured power relations as Weber does, but with appreciation for power’s essentially relational character (Lee 1995, pp. 169–202)4. This means understanding that power is constitutive of personhood and society and, being so, affirms the dignity of individual persons while promoting bonding between and among persons. In this context, power is reciprocal, community building, and accountable. Contrarily, within the context of domination, power gives rise to bondage through denial of the responsibility intrinsic to its constitutive and relational character, thus becoming irresponsible and alienating.

2. Antithetical Correlates: Violence and Force

Further evidence of the moral reality of power is in the recognition that violence and force are antithetical correlates to power, although both are generally recognized as primary instruments in exercising power and, often, are regarded as primary forms of power as such. Indeed, in the domination theory, violence and force are viewed as maximal forms of the power relation.

However, in her treatise On Violence, the social philosopher Hannah Arendt distinguishes power from violence in conceptual terms:

Power is indeed the essence of all government, but violence is not. Violence is by nature instrumental; like all means, it always stands in need of guidance and justification through the end it pursues. And what needs justification by something else cannot be the essence of anything.

(Arendt 1969, p. 51)

She then goes on to describe violence as the opposite of power and as an instrument of force that destroys power:

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance… Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

(Arendt 1969, p. 56)

Arendt concludes that resorting to violence by any parties in a power relation results from a sense of impotence rather than a conviction of potency:

We know, or should know, that every decrease in power is an open invitation to violence—if only because those who hold power and feel it slipping from their hands, be they the government or be they the governed, have always found it difficult to resist the temptation to substitute violence for it.

(Arendt 1969, p. 87)

The implications of Arendt’s analysis confirm the antithetical relationship of violence to power in terms of a negative relationship between violence and power. Violence is not the antithesis to power in the Hegelian sense because violence contravenes the interactive processes intrinsic to power struggles. Violence resolves the issues and values at stake in power conflict in terms of which participant is able to achieve physical, political, or military dominance in the relationship.

Arendt’s analysis also suggests that there are practical as well as ethical limitations to the use of force in exercising power. Her conclusion regarding reasons for resorting to violence implies that reliance on sheer force in power relations is to take a “slippery slope” toward impotence.

This does not mean that there is no element of force in power. Compulsion and coercion are important relational aspects in the dynamic processes of social power. However, implementing coercion and compulsion strategies in power relations is not the same as relying on force.

3. Power Dynamics: Toward a Relational Theory of Power

Having worked through the ontological analysis of power and having considered violence and force as antithetical correlates of power, it occurs to me that referring to Weber’s definition as stating a domination theory of power is no mere incidental comment. As previously indicated, Weber’s definition implies equivalence between domination and power such that the two may be regarded as one and the same. Focus on “power over” in the definition accords with the tendency toward hierarchy in most prevailing social power arrangements. Domination, however, explicitly expressed in the defining condition of “the opportunity… to carry out one’s own will even against resistance”, is not a universal characteristic of hierarchical forms of social power.

Thus, domination is a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition of hierarchical power. This means that Weber’s definition does not, in fact, account for all forms of social power and, applying it as if it does so is to employ an inadequate theory of power.

I believe that beginning with an understanding that all forms of social power are essentially relational in character can yield an alternative, and more adequate, theory of power than the domination theory based on Weber’s definition (and conventional wisdom).

Social power is essentially relational because all social power is in relation to others who are part of a social interaction. There is no social power that is not actualized in social relationships (Weber 1963, p. 117)5. Being relational, power is a dynamic rather than a static reality. Although power arrangements—as social structures—may be relatively stable, social power is actualized through social interactions that are always occurring.

Moreover, the stability of particular power structures is, from time to time, disrupted by conflicts that must be resolved in some way for the power structure as a whole to be re-stabilized. This means that social conflict, though often disruptive, performs a very important role in maintaining the effectiveness and order achieved and sustained in social power arrangements. Thus, social conflict must be considered a very important form of social power relations and not just an aberrant event within social power interactions. Its potential, and real, destabilizing effects do not disqualify its concrete manifestation of social power interaction. A more adequate, relational, theory of power must take account of the dynamic role of social conflict as a form of social power relations.

Combining these insights with the preceding ontological analysis yields a triad of relational forms of social power that comprise the core of a relational theory of power: hierarchy, conflict, and co-operation. Hierarchy focuses on the structural characteristics of most social power arrangements. It describes and fulfills the criterion of order achieved in social power arrangements but does not always consider the correlated criterion of effectiveness (Weber 1963)6.

The purpose of social power arrangements is not merely to establish power elites but also to foster effectiveness in sustaining society’s order by fulfilling the requirements for the well-being of the society as a whole. Inequality of human dignity, economic injustice, and competition for societal goods often evoke social conflict within societies aimed at resolving the conditions that are the sources of tensions causing conflict. Often, however, that aim is either not stated explicitly, nor expressed through programmatic implementation strategies7, or it is diverted into a contest for dominance, causing the opportunities for social reform to be missed. If, notwithstanding, strategies for implementation of programmatic remedies are effectively negotiated, the third form, co-operation, becomes manifest.

This triad will be more thoroughly explored in subsequent writing and research on the subject of this article. I must confess that it is a surprising finding, resulting from the analysis arguing the case for the moral reality of power; so, I was not prepared from the outset to delve further into this topic. I do feel that the finding helps to clarify and guide further work on the project8.

4. Responsibility: Norm and Ethical Criterion of Power Relations

The foregoing analysis of the relational nature of power infers an ethical norm that appropriately takes account of its inherently social character. Indeed, Weber’s definition, while placing primary emphasis on the dominant(s) in power relations, implies that power would not exist if there were not another, or some others, to be dominated. Thus, power is not a possession, though some participants in the interactions may have more resources for influence than others possess. Rather, power is the consequence of interactions within a social system that yields results based on the ability of dominants or other actors to essentially determine the outcome of the interactions.

In this regard, the Christian social ethicist Walter G. Muelder offers the following extended definition of power:

Power is an ambiguous term. Like the Greek word dynamis it may mean moving, determining energy, as in the natural sciences. It may refer to the actual ability of a person to determine a course of action from among various alternatives. Being is power. Ultimately being is divinely personal power. Abstractly considered power is morally neutral, but it enters as a constituent in every moral situation. No one can be morally obligated to do what he cannot do. Duty implies ability. The ethical is always the possible. On the other hand, power also refers to the actual ability of a person or persons to determine the will of another person either through persuasion, or response to love and the good, or through manipulation. Here ethical issues of respect for personality are deeply involved. Power also may refer to the ability of a person to require obedience to his imperative demands by threat or fear. The fact of obedience by others constitutes power. In concrete historical situations physical, political, and moral meanings of power interfuse.

(Muelder 1959, p. 108)

That power “enters as a constituent in every moral situation” is due to its relational nature, particularly since power affects the dignity, welfare, and well-being of persons. Thus, with reference to political power, Muelder further states the following:

The moral and legitimately political use of power always refers to a norm, never simply to private wish or the interests of a power group. Political power properly defined rests on obedience by free rational beings and refers to the ends for which the group exists and the law under which power is controlled and criticized. Political power in this sense is responsible to rightful authority and presupposes the communitarian interdependence of its members, their mutual duties and rights. True political power is contradictory to power politics.

(Muelder 1959, 108f)

Thus, social power intrinsically involves responsibility as a condition of its legitimacy in every form that it takes, political, social, economic, or interpersonal. In his discussion of the meaning of responsibility, H. Richard Niebuhr describes it as “a relatively late-born child… in the family of words in which duty, law, virtue, goodness, and morality are its much older siblings”:

The word responsibility and cognate terms are widely used in our time when men (sic) speak about that phase of human existence to which they customarily referred in the past with the aid of such signs as moral and good. The responsible citizen, the responsible society, the responsibilities of our office and similar phrases are often on our lips. This meaning of responsibility is of relatively recent origin. There was a time when responsible meant correspondent as in the statement ‘The mouth large but not responsible to so large a body.’ But its use in sentences such as ‘The great God has treated us as responsible beings,’ seems to have become common only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

(Muelder 1959, p. 47)

Niebuhr’s reference to the responsible society relates to the middle axiom adopted by the World Council of Churches at its First Assembly in 1948, which also served as the touchstone for Muelder’s writing. This action by the World Council was prompted by an awareness on the part of delegates to the Assembly that, at that time, the Churches had to

“learn afresh to speak boldly in Christ’s name both to those in power and to the people, to oppose terror, cruelty and race discrimination, to stand by the outcast, the prisoner and the refugee [and] …. to make of the Church in every place a voice for those who have no voice, and a home where every man (sic) will be at home”.

(Muelder 1959, 18f)

This concern gave rise to the following presuppositions and definition of “the responsible society:

Man (sic) is created and called to be a free being, responsible to God and his (sic) neighbor Any tendencies in State and society depriving man (sic) of the rt from Paul and… God’s work of salvation. A responsible society is one where freedom is the freedom of men (sic) who acknowledge responsibility to justice and public order, and where those who hold political authority or economic power are responsible for its exercise to God and the people whose welfare is affected by it.

(Muelder 1959)

This statement is clearly dated, as the lack of inclusive language and the omission of gender and sex discrimination—among other contemporary concerns—make clear. Also, as subsequent debate in the World Council proved, responsibility to public order should not be taken as a limiting condition inhibiting revolution against unjust regimes. Nevertheless, the accountability of power at both the human and the ultimate level of responsibility to God is needed as much today as it was in the previous century. The norm of responsibility makes its demand on and provides a basis of critique of every concrete expression of social power.

5. Some Theological Considerations

Apart from Paul Tillich’s lectures on love, power, and justice (Tillich 1954), social power had not been a primary topic of theological inquiry until James Cone’s groundbreaking analysis in his magnum opus book Black Theology and Black Power (Cone 1969). Unlike Tillich, Cone was not simply concerned with power as an ontological phenomenon but with the social movement implied in the cry “black power” that erupted in the civil rights movement during the March Against Fear initiated by James Meredith in 1966.

Careful reading of Cone’s analysis, however, makes clear that Cone was not writing about the actual social movement, that was very diverse and of limited effectiveness, but about black power as a concept portending effective physical opposition to the forces of white oppression. Cone did not engage in social power analysis or strategic reflection. Rather, he described black power as an appropriate and potentially effective strategic response to white racism and certified it as ethically and theologically warranted.

Thus, Cone’s analysis is not specifically relevant to the social power analysis undertaken in this article, though its ethical and theological norms are relevant to the strategic reflections that follow.

However, Walter Wink’s three volume study based on the language of power in the New Testament provides a theological analysis that is directly relevant to the issues raised in this article (Wink 1984). On the other hand, in this article, my concern has been to challenge the prevailing social science point of view that exercises of social power, as such, should not be subject to ethical analysis and critique, though it is acknowledged that the consequence of such exercises might be. Wink is concerned to demonstrate that the spiritual powers spoken of in the New Testament should be viewed.

… not as separate heavenly or ethereal entities but as the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power. I suggest that the “angels of nature” are the patterning of physical things—rocks, trees, plants, the whole God-glorifying, dancing, visible universe; that the “principalities and powers” are the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system; that the “demons” are the psychic or spiritual power emanated by organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others; that “gods” are the very real archetypal or ideological structures that determine or govern reality and its mirror, the human brain; that the mysterious “elements of the universe” (stoicheia tou kosmou) are the invariances (formally called “laws”) which, though often idolized by humans, conserve the self-consistency of each level of reality in its harmonious interrelationship with every other level and the Whole; and that “Satan” is the actual power that congeals around collective idolatry, injustice, or inhumanity, a power that increases or decreases according to the degree of collective refusal to choose higher values.

(Wink 1984)

Thus, beginning with theological reflection, Wink’s analysis provides a needed bridge between the primarily secular social ethical analysis in this article and a normative theological framework for ethical analysis and critique (Wink 1984).

I am also indebted to a peer reviewer of this article for referring me to James F. Keenan’s work on vulnerability as foundations for Christian theological ethics. He describes his discovery of the importance of vulnerability in observing why some of his students responded to the needs of others while others failed to respond. This led him to see vulnerability to the needs of other human beings as a precondition in conscience formation leading to conscientious moral acts. Describing his move from seeing conscience as the beginning point of moral response to the needs of another, he writes:

I think the problem is that we think of the beginning of the moral life is the conscience, but I now believe that the beginning of the moral life is first being vulnerably disposed to the other, and then acting in conscience.

(Keenan 2023)

Vulnerability is rooted in and manifests our connectedness as human beings and, as a quality of God’s relation to human beings through creation, redemption and covenant; it is the essence of the imago dei in human beings. I would add that the quintessential manifestation of divine vulnerability is the crucifixion of Jesus as an act of political and religious expediency. From this act arises one important caveat regarding divine vulnerability in the resurrection of Jesus. The joining of crucifixion and resurrection into a singular cross event reveals a fundamental tension in divine vulnerability. God, who is almighty, chooses to be vulnerable to sinful human beings in order to redeem humanity from slavery to sin and enlist human beings in a mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ and join God and Jesus Christ in the struggle to resist and overcome the human propensity to build structures of social domination that fundamentally undermine God’s call to love God and neighbor.

This theological perspective is not only friendly to the preceding social ethical analysis, but it affirms this article’s claims regarding the relational nature of social power and the significance of nonviolence as a lifestyle and a strategy for achieving social change.

6. Some Strategic Implications: The Power of Nonviolence

I believe the foregoing analysis has important, fruitful, implications for the “struggle” and “ black empowerment” concerns that led me to undertake a study of the Boston school controversy as my dissertation project (Brown 1973) and to give these concerns priority throughout my professional career as a seminary professor and a pastor. Just a few brief observations on some strategic implications of the analysis:

6.1. Implications for “Struggle/Empowerment”

Further reflection on the triad of social forms of power relations in my proposed theory suggests that, from the point of view of actors (active participants) in power relations there are correlate strategic orientations to each of the social forms: “power over” (hierarchy), “power against (conflict), and “power with” (co-operation). “Power against” is of particular interest because it describes, in different conceptual terms, the stance and strategies of resistance to domination. “Power against” strategies offer an interactive, rather than a structural way, of understanding resistance, focusing on the resources and capabilities of actors typically viewed as so disadvantaged in hierarchical power relations structures and processes that they are essentially powerless. For this reason, “power against” is the characteristic strategic orientation of the community organizing movement.

Utilizing a “power against” strategic orientation, community organizing practitioners take conflict seriously as a form of social power relations, employing confrontational tactics and techniques within a strategic calculus designed to evoke negotiated concessions from relevant public and private sector authorities. While the major difficulties for community organizing turn on small gains and whether coerced concessions are, in fact, implemented and the relationship is transformed into genuine co-operation, the effectiveness of this approach demonstrates that “struggle” need not degenerate into defeatism. Those at lower levels of hierarchical power structures can “engage the powers” (Wink 1992) and win real victories.

6.2. Implications for Reconsideration of Nonviolence

In Hannah Arendt’s statement on the opposition of violence to power, she offers the following observation on nonviolence: “This implies that it is not correct to think of the opposite of violence as nonviolence; to speak of nonviolent power is redundant” (Arendt 1969). Having said violence is not power, Arendt now says nonviolence is power. I wish she had said more on this. As far as I can tell, Arendt’s view of the equivalence between nonviolence and power is not widely shared by activists and constituents of subordinated disadvantaged communities. Indeed, many of these equate nonviolence with nonresistance and renunciation of power. Both of these understandings could not be further from the truth. Careful reading of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s classic exposition of nonviolent protest strategy, “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail” makes clear that the strategy of “Project C (for confrontation)”—SCLC’s designation of the Birmingham protest—was power-conscious and intentional in building and exercising power to force change in Birmingham. Critiques of nonviolence as unrealistic and unsophisticated with respect to power stem from uncritical acceptance of the domination model and its implicit equation of violence with maximum power. Ironically, as Gayraud Wilmore observed in his seminal work Black Religion and Black Radicalism, the only black power late 1960s Black Power advocates had observed was that generated in the Civil Rights nonviolent protest movement. Unfortunately, it was too readily assumed that acting in terms of the conventional, domination, understanding of power would yield better results than the disciplined methodology and unitive end game outlined in King’s letter.

Domination strategies from below, being based in a “power over” strategic orientation, eventuate in “power over” results favoring, usually if not always, those already dominant in the power relation. Organized nonviolent resistance, designed to build power/momentum toward effecting a negotiated settlement, and operating in the “power against” seeking “power with” mode, offers better opportunity to achieve the goals of resistance movements. As suggested earlier, “Occupy Wall Street” made a good beginning but failed for lack of an end-game. What is needed today are efforts to implement nonviolent strategies designed to achieve current justice priorities under present social conditions.

6.3. Role of a Justice—Mandating “Third Force”

This final observation is a kind of caveat that I am not yet sure how to assess. It grows out of looking at two effective nonviolent movements that have been critically important. The first is the Civil Rights nonviolent protest movement of the 1960s. It is not often recognized that a major element of the strategy of the Civil Rights movement was to pit United States federal constitutional authority against their opponents in local communities and the states of the South, where effective pressure could be brought to bear on local officials through disruptive and even violence-provoking tactics, that were publicized through national media, combined with actions to force federal authorities and the Supreme Court to compel compliance with constitutional provisions. Protesters often succeeded in achieving accommodation to many of their demands. Where federal law did not apply directly to the claimed violations of rights, such as de facto segregation protests in Boston and other mostly northern cities, and where liberal allies could not overcome conservative resistance to change, outcomes were disappointing. This is underscored in the present situation in which the Supreme Court itself has struck down key enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act and Congressmen and Senators who could get together to sing “We Shall Overcome” on the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Public Accommodations Act are unable and, mostly, unwilling to enact remedial legislation. New strategies will have to take full account of the difference in this situation, finding ways to target and build up the power of justice mandating forces.

The second movement result is the transformation of South African politics through the negotiations that led first, to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and, subsequently, to his election as president of South Africa. Both Mandela’s nonviolent resistance to the injustice and brutality of, not only his imprisonment, but that of his comrades and the company of those imprisoned with them, and the pressure brought to bear by the grass-roots generated economic boycott of South Africa led to this outcome. The international boycott served to provide the justice-mandating third force that the United Nations could not provide through its council, assemblies, agencies, and offices. Clearly, the quality of the outcome of this convergence made a difference in reducing bloodshed and providing for the work of reconciliation that has taken place. While more certainly needs to be done to effect political and economic justice in South Africa, what has been achieved thus far is remarkable.

But what are the prospects for the intervention of such a third force on the international level in the future? The United Nations remains our best hope, despite its institutional weaknesses, if for no other reason than the ethos for justice sustained by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, debates in the General Assembly and, sometimes, in the Security Council, as well as the supra-national missions of critical United Nations agencies. Similarly, the World Council of Churches, global denominations, and other socially conscious supranational church institutions, remain significant despite diminishing commitment and interest in global ecumenism. Be this as it may, the South African case offers further evidence of the potential vital role that can be played by justice-mandating third parties at the international as well as the national level. The importance of this role should not be overlooked in developing strategies for the achievement of social justice. Choosing where and how to begin will depend on the context of emerging power relation conflicts of vital interest to Christian communities.