Power is manifested through social relations, including relations with institutions like the State, the military, and the capitalist economy. The positioning can change, but not easily. And the same social relations vary in relative power depending on the context.
Power develops in the relations to the institutions, not in the institutions themselves. It’s created in the space where social relations are held through the compounding effect of those relations. So, institutions are sites where social relations can happen, and it’s within the realm of these relations that we find power. However, because it’s dispersed into more relations than we might assume, power can nest in unsuspecting places.
There isn’t one big, unified structure run by the already powerful. There’s not an all-mighty class that can do whatever it wants. So, in figuring out how to work toward socialism, we have to think about all the different factors of class and structure. What we do on the social and political levels follows from the class structure as it is because that’s our reality.
Still, there’s always other work to be done than just following what the bourgeoisie is doing with its power. Since power isn’t entirely shaped and ordered by the dominant class and is manifested through social relations, it’s also important to consider the autonomy of the different parts of the social level. This means theorizing the relationship between the State, power in general, and social classes, all while conceiving of a path toward socialism.
It’s important to study power and how to get to socialism by not only focusing on the state apparatuses. Since power resides not just in the political institutions of the State, but at many other sites as well, understanding power means understanding the relationship between these different areas (economic, cultural, legal, military, etc.)
