Power: Its Ubiquity and Legitimacy

T. V. Smith

American Political Science Review, 1951, vol. 45, issue 3, 693-702

Abstract: To depreciate politics—and of course diplomacy—because it is a thing of power, is to engage in the doubtful sport of “criticism without a fulcrum,” if it be not indeed to impute “guilt by association.” Of course, politics is a powerphenomenon: no power, no politics; much politics, much power. We must take it or leave it at that; for politics is, willy-nilly, a pulling or a pushing around of somebody. To be sure, there are degrees of both pulling and pushing and proprieties of each; but complete avoidance of both, there never is. Other things being equal, to be pulled is better, I suppose, than to be pushed. For one's face to another's back is safer, under power tactics, than one's back to another's face. Better still is it to march abreast, all faces forward, even though that formation, too, involves some lateral shoving for deference in a line that is never entirely even.Nevertheless, democratic politics, of the persuasive, the pulling, sort, is better than Nazi geo-politics, which is the apotheosis of pushing. It is better, too, than Communistic neo-politics, which is a pushing of all who will not be pulled by the ideal of classlessness, involving a lethal kick now and then from Big Brother to all the deviant little brothers up and down the line. In short, power for is less poisonous than power against; and power with makes for more perfection for more persons than does power over.

Date: 1951
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