AM: What are the “three faces of power”? GD: Power structure theories have offered three faces of power. The first face of power is described by the theory of pluralism, which says that society is an open system composed of various interest groups of more or less equal power who compete to get what they want. The second face of power is described by the elitist theory, which says that in reality, some individuals and groups have more power than others, and that the powerful control society’s agenda. Some issues get addressed, while other issues do not. The powerful have their needs met, while the powerless do not. The powerless are excluded, and their silence or inaction is not necessarily the result of their consensus and conscious choice, as the pluralists imply. The third face of power shows how over time unequal power structures become invisible as people internalize the agenda set by the powerful. Eventually people don’t even notice that some things aren’t on the agenda. People believe the poor are poor and the powerless are powerless because there’s something wrong with them, or because that’s the way God (or karma, or fate) arranges the universe. The powerless themselves internalize their subservient role in order to escape the subjective sense of powerlessness, of being responsible for their own subservience. George Bernard Shaw wrote that monarchs are not born; they are made by artificial hallucinations. It’s no longer a conspiracy when everyone thinks the same, when everyone has the same hallucination.
