War And Peace

So, when we consider the relationship between commands and events in real time, we find that no command is ever the cause of an event, though a definite dependency exists between the two. To understand the nature of this dependency it is essential to reinstate the second of the two forgotten conditions that accompany any order issued by a man rather than a Deity – that the man issuing the order is himself involved in the event.

This relationship between the person issuing an order and the person receiving it is the essence of what we call power. The relationship is made up as follows.

For the purpose of common action men always come together in certain combinations, in which, even though the goals of the common action may vary, the relationship between the participants always remains the same.

Men who come together in these combinations always form a special relationship whereby the greater number participate more directly, and the smaller number less directly, in the combined action for which they have come together. One of the best and clearest examples of such combinations of men coming together for concerted action is the army.

All armies are made up as follows: the rank and file, who always form the majority; the slightly higher ranks, corporals and non-commissioned officers, fewer in number than the common soldiers; even higher ranks, of whom there are fewer still; and so on, right up to the highest military authority, which is concentrated in a single person.

A military organization can be accurately represented by a cone, with a base of the largest diameter consisting of the rank and file, a higher section with a smaller base for soldiers of higher rank, and so on right up to the apex, the point of which will be the commander-in-chief.

The common soldiers, who are the largest number, form the lower sections of the cone and its base. It is the soldier who does all the stabbing and hacking and burning and pillaging, orders for which he receives from above, and he never gives an order himself. The non-commissioned officer (and there are fewer such people) sees less direct action than the soldier, but he does give orders. The commissioned officer sees even less action, but gives a lot more orders. The general does nothing but issue instructions to the army and hardly ever uses a weapon. The commander-in-chief is never allowed into the action; all he does is make general arrangements for the movements of the masses. This same kind of interrelationship exists in every combination of men who come together for concerted action – in agriculture, business and all administrative departments.

And so, without slicing these cones artificially from the bottom up into various sections, ranks, titles and grades in whatever department or common enterprise, a law emerges, by which men coming together for concerted action always form a relationship which guarantees that the ones most directly involved in the action give the fewest orders and exist in the greatest numbers, while the ones least directly involved in the action give most orders and exist in the smallest numbers, rising thus from the lower strata right up to one last man at the top, with the very least direct involvement in what is going on, and maximum devotion of his effort to the issuing of orders.

This is the relationship that exists between those involved in the giving and receiving of orders, and it constitutes the essence of the concept known as power. With the time condition reinstated, since all events occur within time, we have found that an order gets carried out only when it corresponds to a relevant sequence of events. And by reinstating as an essential condition the link between people giving and receiving orders, we have found that by their very nature the people giving the orders have the least involvement in any action, their energies being directed exclusively to the issuing of orders.

CHAPTER 7

When an event takes place various opinions and desires are expressed about it, and as the event evolves out of the concerted action of many men, one particular version of the opinions or desires expressed is bound to be fulfilled, if only approximately. When one of the opinions expressed is fulfilled, that opinion becomes enshrined, by association, as the order that preceded the event.

Some men are hauling a log. Each of them speaks out and says where and how it should be hauled. The log is hauled away and it ends up just as one of them had said it would. So he gave the order. This is command and power at their most primitive.