The Marxists believe that power develops from social relations of production which characterise the economic system of production found in capitalist societies. A product of the working class position in social structure is the lack of power that they experience. Their only resource is labour power or their ability to work for others. The social relations that characterise the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are unequal as the capitalist class acquires wealth by appropriating the surplus values that are generated by labour power of the workers. Althusser argues that the cultural dominance is achieved through the bourgeoisie using its economic power to define what they believe counts as knowledge, ideas, art, education, news, and so on.
However functionalists have the opposite view of power. Their conception of power sees it as a positive resource and, as such, is characterised by legitimacy and consensus. Talcott Parsons argues that power results from the sharing of collective resources. This is in order to achieve social and cultural goals. Functionalists also believe that power is a functional resource. Parsons’ ideas about power focus on the traditional functionalist ideas of value consensus and normative harmony and stability. This Parsonian functionalist image of power can be compared to modern banking. Therefore politicians are like brokers or bankers, which means that they are allowed to borrow or invest the power that has been given to them by their subjects or citizens. Sociologist Anthony Giddens criticises the functionalist analyses of power. He suggests that power is a part of all social relations and interactions.
However, for many feminists the study of politics starts not with institutions of parliament, parties and pressure groups, or even with society of elites and the ownership of wealth, but with differences of power at the personal level. This is summed up in their slogan ‘the personal is political’. This approach argues that the most obvious source of power which men have over women. Westwood notes that feminists who focused on the concept of patriarchy insisted that the key issue in gender relations was power.
Foucault is a post modernist or a post structuralist. He rejects the link between social structure and power. In particular he believes that power plays a major role in the construction of identity. He also believes that there is a significant relationship between power, knowledge and language. He argues that there exists bodies of knowledge and language which he terms ‘discourses.’ He showed, there was a shift away from coercive forms of power in the eighteenth century. Which he believe was associated with physical punishment to what he calls disciplinary power. His conception of disciplinary power was first developed in state institutions such as prisons and asylums. However it has become part of the organisational fabric of institutions such as schools and factories during the twentieth century. He also identified a second conception of power which he termed ‘bio-power’ which is concerned with controlling the body and how it is perceived by the population.
He claims that discourse on sexual behaviour has rapidly dominated by professional working in psychiatry, medicine and social work from the nineteenth century onwards. He believes that this power will impose definitions of ‘normality’ has become part of institutionalised life and may result in individuals being criticised, treated prejudicially and punished for being different, i.e. for indulging in behaviour or for holding attitudes that challenge the discourse. We avoid behaviour and attitudes that are likely to provoke even more surveillance and discipline from official agencies such as the police. His work has been criticised for not empirical in the conventional research sense. He tended to support his arguments with selective historical examples rather than updated examples and systematically gathering contemporary data. It is not entirely clear why disciplinary power and bio-power evolved or who exercises these types of power. It may be unrealistic to suggest that no group benefits more than others from exercising this type of power.
Overall it can be said that there are many different views of power and Marxists believe that power can have negative consequences for some individuals and an example of this is when a police officer arresting a criminal.
In my opinion I think that the statement is true because someone could take the power they have been given too seriously and that could have negative consequences.