Heinrich Popitz is known for his foundational sociological theories regarding the nature, implementation, and stabilisation of power. The core thesis posits that power is a universal element of the conditio humana, rooted in specific human action capacities and vital vulnerabilities.

Popitz identifies four anthropological basic forms of power:

1. Action Power (Aktionsmacht): The capacity to injure or kill, rooted in physical vulnerability.
2. Instrumental Power (Instrumentelle Macht): The control of behaviour through threats and promises, rooted in human concern for the future.
3. Authoritative Macht (Autoritative Macht): The internal command over others based on their need for orientation and social recognition.
4. Data-Setting Power (Datensetzende Macht): The power to determine the living conditions of others through technical artifacts and modifications of the material world.

These forms transition from individual acts into consolidated systems through institutionalisation, the economy of threats, and the terrifying development of total violence in the modern age.

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I. Historical Premises of the Power Problematic

Modern understanding of power rests on three historical premises that have fundamentally changed how social orders are perceived:

* Makeability (Machbarkeit): Power orders are no longer seen as divinely ordained or natural. Influenced by the Greek Polis and later the bourgeois revolutions, power is understood as man-made and thus subject to redesign and improvement through rational planning.
* Omnipresence (Omnipräsenz): Power has moved beyond the state into all societal spheres. Relationships between genders, generations, and economic classes are now interpreted through the lens of power. This has led to a generalisation of power suspicion.
* The Need for Justification: In modern consciousness, power and freedom are in constant confrontation. Every exercise of power is seen as a limitation of freedom and therefore requires specific justification. No power, be it in the state or family, is inherently legitimate.

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II. The Four Anthropological Basic Forms of Power

Popitz categorises power based on the specific human capacities used to exercise it and the vulnerabilities that make humans susceptible to it.

Power Form Human Capacity (The "Doer") Human Vulnerability (The "Sufferer")
Action Power is the capacity to injure or kill; physical aggression. It involves physical vulnerability; lack of natural armor; and social exclusion.
Instrumental Power is the capacity to grant or withdraw rewards and punishments. It's characterised by a concern for the future; fear of pain; and hope for gain. Authoritative Power is the capacity to set standards and offer recognition; it's characterised by a need for orientation; dependency of self-worth on social validation. Finally, Data-Setting Power is technical intelligence; the ability to manufacture objects. It's dependent on a man-made environment and artifacts.

Action Power (Aktionsmacht) and Violence

Action power is the most direct form, manifesting in the ability to do something to another against their will. Death is the absolute boundary of power. The ability to kill creates a perfect power over the victim's life. However, this contains an Antinomy of Perfection: Because even the weakest can kill the strongest (the assassin), and because an individual can choose to die (the martyr), absolute power is always inherently fragile. Popitz warns of a modern development where violence becomes total through three elements:
1. Glorification: Justifying violence as a heroic or holy act.
2. Indifference: Emotional distancing from the victim's suffering.
3. Technisation: Using long-distance technology (e.g., missiles) to remove the physical and emotional contact from the act of killing.

Instrumental Power: Threats and Promises

Instrumental power steers behaviour by manipulating the subject's fear and hope. The threatener imposes an octroyed alternative (e.g., money or life). This forces the victim to interpret their own actions within the threatener's framework.
Threats are highly rentable. If a threat works and the subject obeys, it costs the power-holder nothing. This allows power to be stretched far beyond the actual means of enforcement. A threatener also risks power; if they fail to execute a threatened sanction, they lose credibility and future power.

Authoritative Power: Inner Command

Unlike instrumental power, which controls behaviour through external incentives, authoritative power controls both behaviour and attitude. Authority rests on two pillars: the subject’s recognition of the other’s superiority (prestige) and the subject’s desperate desire to be recognised by that superior figure to validate their own self-worth. Historically, authority has transitioned from institutional (bound to positions like priests or patriarchs) to personal (bound to individuals) and reciprocal (modern relationships based on mutual recognition of individuality).

Data-Setting Power: Technical Action

Technical action is not just power over nature, but power over the people who must live within the results of that action. When a planner builds a road or a wall, they set a datum (a fact) that dictates how others must move or live. This is object-mediated power. The question of who has use rights (Verwendungsrechte) over artifacts is a fundamental root of social order.

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III. The Stabilisation and Institutionalisation of Power

Power becomes Dominion (Herrschaft) when it is consolidated and secured over time through three levels:

1. Interest Stabilization: Creating systems (like a service class or redistribution) where subordinates have a vested interest in the continuation of the power structure.
2. Institutionalisation: Decoupling power from the individual holder. It becomes a position with procedural rules and an expected framework of behaviour, making the exercise of power quasi-objective.
3. Legitimacy: The highest level of stabilisation, where the power gradient is recognised as a binding order by those subject to it.

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IV. Quotes on the Nature of Power

"Because humans can kill other humans, power can be perfect... Because humans can kill other humans, all power of humans over humans is imperfect."

"Power is a capacity that is superior to great obstacles." (Citing Kant)

"Violence is probably always the Prius [the prior thing]." (Citing Jacob Burckhardt)

"The sense-reference for any behaviour of the threatened is fixed... The threat does not abolish the principled openness of human behaviour; it presupposes that the threatened can comply or resist."

"Technical action is the history of human power... It is unavoidable that man builds power decisions into things."

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V. Conclusion: The Circle of Violence Management

Popitz concludes that social order is a necessary condition to contain violence, yet that same order requires its own own-violence to protect itself. This creates a vicious circle of violence management. In the modern age, the only hope against the syndrome of total violence (particularly nuclear) is a change toward security on reciprocity, where the safety of both sides is recognised as a singular, unified interest.