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3 Tools of Domination

Michel Foucault distinguishes between the power of the sword (sovereignty) and the power of truth (biopolitics).

Graeber and Wengrow add the power of charisma, which feels like a useful missing piece--particularly in explaining why we consent to domination.

Type Control of... Power from...
Sovereignty violence force
Bureaucracy information expertise
Charisma legitimacy popularity

States, against a unified theory

Until very recently, few states exerted all three aspects of control over their people.

Of course, rulers have long claimed to have total control. But a ruler's statements about their monopoly on force, popularity, or expertise, is often as true as their statements about their ability to control the weather.

States, against teleological progression

Historians, following Turgot, have often assumed that states all emerged in similar ways:

Agriculture led to a surplus, which then had to be managed by a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy required centralized leadership. Then those leaders started competing with each other for control.

In other words: Bureaucracy --> Sovereignty --> Charisma.

But there are plenty of counter-examples.

For example, in Mesopotamia, the path looked more like: temple workshops (bureaucracy) --> heroes from the hinterland (charisma, by schismogensis) --> warrior kings (sovereignty)

Or a king might rise to power on their heroism (charisma) and then start a new religion (bureaucracy) and later empower the priests with police power (sovereignty).

In short, there are diverse paths to unfreedom.

And not all states develop all three forms of domination.

1st-Order States

In a 1st-order state, the state uses only 1 of the 3 aspects of domination. To us moderns, these don't seem like states.

Example Culture Only...  
Shilluk Sovereignty The Shilluk reth (South Sudan) had absolute power, but no one else could tell anyone what to do.
Chavín de Huántar Bureaucracy In this pre-Incan city, shamans had exclusive access to divine truth, but couldn't use violence to enforce their cosmology.
Olmec Charisma Olmec ball players competed to control resources, but there was no administrative state to extend that control.

2nd-Order States

In a 2nd-order state, the state controls 2 of the 3 aspects of domination. These are the first states we might recognize, but there's always an avenue of freedom left open.

Examples:

European colonization globalized the 3rd-Order state

Contemporary states control all three aspects of power.

European colonists have spread this 3rd-order state across the globe. They achieved this with a historically unparalleled willingness to kill other humans.

Note: Genghis Khan may have been worse than Cortés and Co., but maybe not if you consider them responsible for the diseases, too.

And while Hitler and Stalin were horrible, Tony Judt persuasively argues that they were simply turning the practices of colonization back on Europeans.

While Europeans were spreading the 3rd-order state, they also spread a particular form of slavery. This European slavery was unique in that it was permanent and based on race.

And they spread a specific conception of property rights. That idea of property was itself based on slavery. And it is unique because it forms the basis of all other rights. Even our right to control our own bodies is based on the theory that our body is our property.