Word: power
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Unlike The Prince, Berle's is no how-to-do-it book for power wielders. It is an attempt to describe the sources and limits of power in four of its chief manifestations: economic, political, judicial and international. (Pure military power is scanted as mere brute "force.") Berle opens and closes with visits to Zeus, "god of power," who first used it to overthrow his father Cronus and control the Titans, those symbols of chaos -which Berle assumes is the one thing power can't abide. The plot thickens as Zeus gives birth to the world...
Mythology thus provocatively serves as the source of the first of Berle's five rules of power: that order is always challenged by disorder. The second rule is that power is exercised only by individuals, not groups. Third and fourth: power always carries with it a "system of ideas," and always employs institutions to do its work. Lastly, says Berle, power always acts in a "field of responsibility" requiring a constant dialogue between the rulers and the ruled. An early example was Job's chat with God, which forced Omnipotence to acknowledge that reason has certain rights...
Test Against Experience. Berle tests his five laws mainly against American experience. The institutions through which power works, he observes, have a transient life of their own-like the French bureaucracy, which America's administrative system more and more resembles. Yet institutions are less significant, ultimately, than the system of agreed-upon ideas to which the power wielders must appeal. Growing doubt about the philosophical consensus behind American democracy, says Berle, is "the fundamental problem in America today...
According to Berle, the developing science of economics has helped to subordinate economic to political power and has pretty well tamed the gods of the formerly chaotic marketplace. This power shift has left loose ends. Labor's coercive power to strike, for example, is no longer directed against private management but against the public; it is not always used legitimately or even legally, as in the New York transit strike of 1966. An extended dialogue (e.g., about compulsory arbitration) is required to reach a clearer idea system about the limits on economic power...
Still more dialogue is needed, according to Berle, around another center of power, the Supreme Court. Berle calls the modern court "a revolutionary committee" that has reached "a power position senior to both the executive and legislative branches." He considers the Warren court's assumption of legislative responsibility both inevitable and desirable-in his terms, its school-desegregation and reapportionment decisions filled "fragments of chaos." He foresees, however, that the court's increasing use of the 14th Amendment, especially its "equal protection of the laws" doctrine, can be logically extended from schools and voting to such new areas...