On Power

Jouvenel wrote the book On Power as a French refugee living in Switzerland during WWII. He was troubled by the savagery of the war. How could both the German and the Allied forces shamelessly bomb civilian populations? And this was even before the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.


This, he thought, could only result from a growth of Power (by which he meant political power) and the forced identification of civilians with the warring states.


On Power is a book that combines history and political theory. It makes two central claims. First, Power has a natural tendency to grow nonstop. Second, democracy as we know it promotes the growth of Power, instead of hampering it.


Democratic revolutions replaced the king’s good pleasure by the people’s good pleasure. And they destroyed the sovereignty of law at the same time. The result is our current “totalitarian democracy,” where the state is supposed to represent the whole people and, as such, is always just and right in the end.