THE POSTMODERNISTS ARE RIGHT (SORT OF)

A BIOLOGICAL REALIST TAKE ON POWER

So, here is the long-promised (going back to 2021) discussion of the biological foundations of power. This is the first of several posts that I hope will establish a biological foundation to the political theory discussions also occupying this substack. I know many of the subscribers joined because they are more interested in the political theory discussions and aren’t so interested in the idea of exploring biological foundations. To those latter, I promise not only will we continue to explore those topics, even as I explore the biological questions, but I’m in fact working on an ambitious project – a kind of political theory informed investigative journalism, perhaps? – that I hope to post within the month, or so. The exclusively political theory interested subscribers, I think, will find it a stimulating piece of work once I have it up. In the meantime, for those who are interested in the foundational questions, epistemology and ontology type stuff, here’s the beginning of an argument for biological realism: have at it.

Okay, this is going to be a longer one. It picks up from a theme running through early posts to this substack, focusing on the (biologically grounded) lessons about political power taught by the Italian Realist School. I expect, for some readers, it will be a more challenging one. And to be clear, I’m not saying that this is the final, definitive word on the topic. Think of this more as a progress report. This is the direction in which the answers lie. Or so I’m arguing. So, let’s buckle up and begin the rough ride.

It has become standard practice for those who oppose the postmodernist strategies of degrading language, ushering into the expansion of the psychorium, to dismiss the widely expressed precept of such agents that everything is power. Elsewhere, I have recorded a video in which I refuted Jordan Peterson’s dismissal of this precept. There, I was focused on refuting his claim that hierarchies of competence were fundamentally different from hierarchies of power. Here, though, I want to dig a little deeper into the nuts-and-bolts of what is really going on in this dispute. First, it seems clear to me that the logic of both the Italian political realist, as well as the biological realist, positions is that of course all social relations are about power. What is less clear is what this really means, or why/how it is so.¹

To get at the core of these matters we need tidy and consistent definitions of the key applicable concepts. I’m perfectly happy to borrow them from physics. Those concepts are power, energy and work. Here is a useful thumbnail sketch: “Work is the displacement of an object when a force (push or pull) is applied to it. We define the capacity to do the work as energy. Power is the work done per unit of time.”² One way of putting this is that power is the acknowledged payoff from work completed and energy is the cost of doing that work. But this also means that power is a product of the work being done. If, as is common parlance, we think of power as being a way of getting things done – including the power to control others – than the combination of these ideas leaves us with something like the idea that power is revealed retroactively.

In effect, it completes a circle: we need energy to fuel the work that creates power, but power needs work, which needs energy, and energy on its own is presumably fungible and directionless. In the common political nomenclature, energy-work is purposely focused by the power that has already been produced by such a process. There’s obviously a chicken-and-egg problem here: what came first, the power or the energy? Theoretically the first power cannot precede the first energy, though, so somehow energy gave rise to power, which eventually then became capable of directing future energy expenditures. The initial application of energy was “aimed” through the path of least resistance, evolutionary processes. Only later does the capacity emerge for some inheritors of such power to deliberately marshal it toward preferred ends. This strikes me as the best way to see through the problem:

energy -> work -> power -> control over energy use -> preferred work application -> increased power optimization -> repeat

So, via work, energy expenditure is the price of any manifestation of power. These initial “blind” evolutionary forces, eventually give rise to power holders who evolve the capacity to exercise control over the flow of energy, toward preferred forms of work, that optimize power goals. You expend the energy to do the work to produce the power, which better enables you in the future to direct the energy to produce the preferred work that improves your power. For now, though, let’s just focus on the dynamics in one loop:

energy -> work -> power.

The tricky part of course is your energy investment must produce a power outcome that is greater than the investment required to do the work. If your energy investment only produced power outcomes that equaled your energy investment, you’d eventually die. This is because you have nutritional needs that exceed the energy necessary to do the work of producing dinner. Obvious examples of this are metabolism and cell regeneration. If you were not producing a power profit, the loop would be closed, and the organism would be dead. We need energy to produce work, which creates power, but sufficient surplus power is necessary to gain the energy to do more work and keep the system functioning. So, as effective biological systems, living organisms are evolved to optimize energy investment, so that the work engaged produces power outcomes that are greater than the energy invested. In this way, we are a power-optimizing system. If it’s not stated too crudely, we then might think of this as the physics of biology. But how does this manifest as defining human social relations – my more radical claim here?

Let’s start with the most obvious and simplest example and work our way up through the less obvious cases. The obvious case would be if you had a slave. This is a person who must work for you. Whatever they produce accrues to your power reserve: i.e., you own, use, benefit from whatever the slave’s energy-work produces, and indeed you use your power to direct the slave’s energy toward your desired outcomes in both work and power. To be able to do such work, and provide your surplus power, though, the slave requires the prerequisite energy. So, unless you’re looking at a very short-term investment in power increasing work (in which case you may simply work your slave to death), then you are going to have to make investments in your slave’s energy. This will require providing a minimum of nutrition and shelter (to avoid energy squandered on non-work-for-you outcomes, like the slave’s immune system fighting off illness). In this case, you’ll be sacrificing some of your power – control over work-produced resources – to invest in the energy reserve of your slave, so that the slave can execute the work that further expands your power.

Power is produced by work done; work requires the expenditure of energy. Though it may not seem obvious at first, the slave situation resembles the situation of an isolated Robinson Crusoe type individual. In both cases, the person gaining power from the situation must make an honest investment in the energy necessary to do the power-producing work. However, obviously, this is not the only possibility for enhancing power, particularly as related to social relations. The root of this other possibility lies in the remarkably social character of evolved human nature.³

We are one of the very few species on the planet in which conspecifics will cooperate with those that do not share family-level degrees of genetic similarity. As Richard Alexander long ago observed, though (and I expanded upon in an early post), this remarkable level of human cooperation is itself grounded in human competition. We have evolved to cooperate because the coalitions we build allows us to conquer or otherwise take advantage of other conspecifics. That is to say, the most effective coalition is so because it allows its members to exercise power over the work and energy of others. This can be through slavery or mere rape and plunder. (Or, at the very least, it may involve resisting enslavement, rape or plunder by others: so, our work produces power for us.)

However, the power optimizing opportunities within such coalitions does not end at the power gained over lesser coalitions. In addition to benefiting from the fruits of successful inter-coalitional competition, such coalitions also provide the opportunity for individuals to sneakily optimize their power through free-riding on the energy-work of the coalition.⁴ Coalitional activity, like any other kind of power producing action, is a form of work, requiring an energy investment. If an individual member can benefit from the power achieved through coalitional work, while minimizing the investment of their energy into that work, such a person is substantially optimizing their energy-to-power investment. And, as noted above, biological systems are evolved, by necessity, to optimize such investment. The more power we get per unit of energy invested, the more prosperous we are, hence all else being equal the more fit we are biologically. As biological systems, we are evolved to optimize such energy investment.

Scholars of human social evolution have put a great deal of emphasis upon the products of our evolution that operate as cheater-detector and warning mechanisms. We have a greater capacity for recognizing violations of logical propositions when they involve violation of social rules, then when they are expressed as merely abstract rules.⁵ It’s likely also that gossip, and perhaps speech itself, are an evolutionary product of the need to monitor and share information about free riders, mitigating the social risk they pose.⁶ What needs to be emphasized, though, is that these mechanisms are the result of evolutionary arms races. They exist precisely because human nature is evolutionarily primed to take advantage of such energy investment optimization. The existence of such cheater detector and warning mechanisms is not an indication that free riding is blocked, but rather that it is relentless.

Now, obviously, it is important to observe that not all accumulation of power must be rooted in violence, exploitation or cheating. In an ideal world, free markets allow voluntary exchange in which each party is gaining a benefit by trading something they value less for something that they value more. The old labor theory of value notion that people trade things of objectively equal value (say, determined by labor invested) was refuted by the marginal revolution in economics in the mid-19th century.⁷ (It’s quite likely that this discovery is what led Marx to abandon the theory of surplus value and the entire project of completing volumes 2 and 3 of his proposed multivolume opus, Capital.⁸ People exchange things they value less for those that they value more. Anyone who works out a way to produce at a cost-efficient rate a product, which is desired by enough people, can greatly increase the power generated through his energy investment in his work.⁹ The problem of course is that as any individual’s power increases, their ability to influence governance structures in a manner that fortifies their exchange situation against market pressures inevitably increases.¹⁰ And humans being humans, and evolved to optimize energy investment for power outcome, can be depended upon to use their power in just this way. Free market maximalists will claim the solution to this eventuality would be to simply eliminate government and the means to corrupt the free market. I won’t rehearse the arguments here, but I have explained elsewhere why I dismiss this prospective solution. (See both my books, Biological Realism and Managerial Class on Trial.)  

Before wrapping up these remarks, a few more observations are relevant. The point here isn’t to redeem a crude, economistic Marxism. In these matters, Marx was perfectly correct as far as he went. He just didn’t go far enough. Control over resources is essential, but not for its own good. Though no doubt it is experienced that way by many. This is a point I’ll return to momentarily. Rather, control over resources is entwined with social status. An extensive control over resources provides social status, just as social status enhances the ability to expand control over resources. At the end of the day, though, as we say in evolutionary biology, control over resources and social status are just proximate explanations. The ultimate explanation is the benefits to evolutionary fitness.¹¹ As biological systems, we are evolved to be vehicles for our genes to get copies of themselves into future generations. All this of course is elegantly explained in Dawkins classic work, The Selfish Gene.¹² (See also, my Biological Realism.) And the most direct, though not the only, way to successfully facilitate getting our genes into future generations is through successful reproduction: having the best fit, healthiest, available mate, and the means to invest in the surviving and thriving of our offspring. Clearly, the complex of controlling resources and enjoying high social status makes a strong contribution to achieving those ends.

However, at the same time, it isn’t surprising to find the same optimizing of energy investment at work in the relation between the sexes. Male sexual biology permits a far greater number of successful reproductive events. To the degree males can have females invest a higher level of energy-work into child rearing, the more opportunities they have to optimize their fitness through maximizing such reproductive events. If we think of reproduction as a form of work, males are maximizing their power through inducing females to make higher energy investments in the work of offspring care. The increasing availability of birth control and pregnancy-terminating technology has of course shifted the balance of power among the sexes over the last half century or so.

Though, it’s worth noting that females too are evolved to optimize reproductive efficiency. During ovulation females are much more likely to feel dissatisfied with their current mate and to be attracted to higher mating market valued males.¹³ There’s some evidence too that they are more likely to engage in more revealing sexual displays. If a female has a dedicated, committed mate, who can be relied upon to invest his energy and resources (re: power) into raising her children, a reproductive advantage could be obtained by mating with a more desirable – higher mating market valued – mate. (Most such men – especially if conscious of their high mating market value, and exhibiting confidence over it – are less prone to making long term commitments, since their high mating market value allows them to mate without the need to commit long term: i.e., as mentioned above, free-ride on the energy-work investment of the female in the offspring.¹⁴) This way she could have the best genes in her child, especially if a son, ensuring the likely long-term success of her genes, without having to take on the increased energy-investment of raising the child on her own. She could both have her reproductive cake and eat it too. There’s dispute in the literature about how frequently such cuckolding occurs¹⁵, but the fact that females have the evolved mechanism for a wandering eye when they are most fertile, again shows how even in the most fundament field of reproduction, our species is evolved to optimize energy-investment, toward greater power. For, ultimately, from the selfish gene perspective, all power is about optimizing fitness.  

While it’s arguable that the parent-child relationship is the one least impacted by these power dynamics, Robert Trivers’ famously demonstrated that even here power struggle can be observed.¹⁶ For instance, if we think of mating as a form of work, requiring energy investment, which it obviously is in the sense used here, disagreement over the child’s mate choice can arise from differing advantages (or even perceptions of advantages) to parents or child over the specific choice of mate. When parents are concerned that a potential mate isn’t “good enough” for their child, that could be a completely sincere concern about the well-being of their child, while still aiming at a solution that will benefit their own (at least perceived) long term reproductive success. They, for instance, may only be seeing control over resources (re: power) as an ideal mate profile, ensuring the long-term thriving of their grandchildren, while the child puts a higher value on love. And don’t underestimate romantic love. It likely has evolved precisely as an honest, reasonably reliable, signal to protect against the kind of potential exploitive mating practices discussed in the prior few paragraphs. The degree to which parents use their accumulated power to influence their child’s mate choice then would be an obvious case of power dynamics in the parent-offspring relationship.   

Finally, I understand that there are those who will object that I’ve put too much emphasis on material forces, and would appeal to more spiritual aspects of experience, or the value of psychological gratification. To begin with, if it hasn’t been clear up to this point: this substack is premised on naturalism. It assumes the material forces of nature explains everything. Obviously, I can’t prove this is true, and if you believe otherwise, that’s fine. I have no interest in trying to persuade you to my view. I’ve spent most of a lifetime in such pointless debates. I no longer have any interest. I am merely dedicated to exploring down the avenue of naturalism, or what I prefer to call biological realism. If you prefer a different path, that’s fine. Maybe, someday, us, or our ancestors, will realize that the other was correct, and we’ll all be able to benefit from the insight that those following the alternative path discovered. As a species, let’s keep our options open. Rather than fighting over these things, why not respect each other’s work as our consequentialist insurance policy?

I will say though on the matter of neglecting the role of psychological gratification: this criticism might be a misestimation of the explanatory power of the argument I’ve been making here. After all, our psychological gratifications are themselves dimensions of an evolved psychology, molded by selection of fitness enhancing traits. So, if your objection is that “but some people just desire power,” I don’t dispute that at all. There are though two caveats to consider, here. First, why would anyone just desire power? Considering, as I hope I’ve convinced you above, just how central power is to human experience, the desire of power hardly seems like it can be explained away as some random event. On the contrary, we’re evolved to desire power because maximizing power, through optimization of energy investment, is vitally important for our fitness and the ultimate end of biology: enabling our genes’ replication into future generations.

Think of how many people, today, with access to contraception, are not having children. Clearly, there’s no absolute, universal, deep innate human desire to have children. Yet, most of us, particularly when we’re young (i.e., most fertile, and energetic), experience a very powerful desire to have sex. And for most of our species’ history, when there was either no – or very inefficient – contraception, having sex pretty much assured having children. A will to power is probably best understood this way: not as some amorphous, protean, even mysterious, occasional human disposition, but rather as a perfectly functional biological disposition, given the evolutionary foundation of biological processes.

Second, quite obviously, though, the will to power, and any psychological gratification associated to it, is hardly the final or defining aspect of human experience. Certainly, other evolved dimensions of our psychology, such as empathy, care and love – the very foundational glue of our remarkable human sociality – will moderate among most of us our willingness to take the actions necessary for unconstrained optimization of power. However, it is precisely this limitation upon most, clinically normal, people’s will to power which is beyond the experiential capacity of the psychopath. That is why a psychopathic will to power will be so relentless and unyielding, and why allowing psychopaths to gain political power is so dangerous to any society and its members.

1. As I’ve explained in a recent post, the problem with the postmodernists isn’t their insistence upon the ubiquity of power, but their collateral dismissal thereby of the explanatory models that show us why power is ubiquitous: i.e., that it is not some mysterious, metaphysical force, but the logic of the natural world. A logic that, though, as will be seen, is moderated by other equally natural forces of biology.

2. This sort of explanation is widely available. I grabbed this particular wording from: https://byjus.com/physics/work-energy-power/

3. While I offer some of the key scholarly sources in the biological literature, below, a thorough overview of all these ideas is provided in my book, Biological Realism.

4. Barbara Oakly seems to suggest that such freeriding is a produce of successful psychopaths: Barbara Oakley, Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2010). The work of Dan Ariely -- The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves, Reprint edition (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013) -- though has found pretty much everyone is willing to cheat at least to some degree, depending up contextual factors, but most people will draw a limit – perhaps at a limit at behaviour that might disrupt the very social cohesion that makes freeriding a feasible strategy?

5. Leda Cosmides, “The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped How Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task,” Cognition 31, no. 3 (April 1989): 187–276, https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(89)90023-1; Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, “Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange,” in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, ed. Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, Reprint edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

6. Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998).

7. Murray N. Rothbard, Classical Economics: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010); Janek Wasserman, The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).

8. Rothbard, Classical Economics: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought.

9. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).

10. Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: Free Press, 1977); James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 (Boston: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1971); Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder, 1st edition (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2009).

11. Fitness means the capacity for greater success in getting one’s genes into future generations at a greater rate than other conspecifics. What is fit will differ across contexts.

12. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition, 3rd edition (OUP Oxford, 2006).

13. Julia Jünger et al., “Fertile Women Evaluate Male Bodies as More Attractive, Regardless of Masculinity,” Evolution and Human Behavior 39, no. 4 (July 1, 2018): 412–23, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.03.007; Christina M. Larson et al., “Changes in Women’s Feelings about Their Romantic Relationships across the Ovulatory Cycle,” Hormones and Behavior 63, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 128–35, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.10.005.

14. David P. Schmitt, “Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A 48-Nation Study of Sex, Culture, and Strategies of Human Mating,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28, no. 2 (April 2005): 247–75, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X05000051.

15. B. A. Scelza et al., “High Rate of Extrapair Paternity in a Human Population Demonstrates Diversity in Human Reproductive Strategies,” Science Advances 6, no. 8 (February 2020), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay6195; Maarten H. D. Larmuseau, Koen Matthijs, and Tom Wenseleers, “Cuckolded Fathers Rare in Human Populations,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 31, no. 5 (May 1, 2016): 327–29, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2016.03.004.

16. Robert Trivers, “Parent-Offspring Conflict,” American Zoologist 14, no. 1 (December 21, 1974): 249–64, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/14.1.249.