The new (invisible) faces of power

If the first face of contemporary domination is the ability to silently prepare the environment for action, the second is perhaps even more insidious: power that evades contestation by presenting itself not as will, but as technique. It does not decide, apparently, but calculates. It does not impose but optimises. It materialises in protocols, metrics, standards, efficiency criteria. Where once domination had the recognisable face of the boss or superior, today it often takes the impersonal form of procedure. On this point, Pettit offers a valuable criterion. In On the People's Terms he writes - 'Interference that conforms to rules, and in this sense is non-arbitrary, may nevertheless remain uncontrolled by you' (p. 58). The passage is decisive. It means that power does not cease to be dominant just because it is exercised according to rules. Even a rule can be opaque, one-sided, unchallengeable. It can be procedurally consistent and republicanly arbitrary if those who suffer it have no real control over the criteria that guide it and the effects it produces.

This observation helps us understand a typical feature of the present. Many powers that govern us no longer legitimise themselves as political or moral authorities, but as superior cognitive systems. They are platforms that 'classify', software that 'evaluate', devices that 'predict', organisations that 'measure'. The lexicon itself suggests neutrality. But behind every ranking there is a hierarchy of ends, behind every metric a decision on what counts, and behind every official standard an implicit judgement on what deserves to be rewarded or discouraged. Technique does not eliminate the will to dominance. It disguises it behind the supposed objectivity of technique. And so it removes it more easily from public scrutiny. Power that structures the conditions of our conduct without being exposed to a corresponding obligation of justification. An opaque power, Pettit tells us. An epistemic opacity because of which we do not know how a decision was made; a normative opacity that denies us knowing what values guided it; and, finally, a political opacity that stems from the fact that we have no effective tools to contest it. Technique thus becomes the contemporary form of depoliticised domination. What has been decided appears as what has simply resulted.

The republican theory of freedom gains its full force when it thinks of domination not from the act but from the condition. It is not necessary for power to intervene continuously for there to be domination. It is enough that it can intervene. It is enough that this possibility is credible and stably inscribed in an asymmetrical power relationship. The master does not need to strike the slave every day to subjugate him. It is sufficient for the slave to know that he could do so at any time. It is this knowledge that shapes his behaviour. Power thus becomes more sober, more internalised. It governs less by exception and more by expectation.

It follows that a large part of the non-freedom is related not so much to the harm suffered, but to the structural precariousness of those who depend on the benevolence of others. And this precariousness produces moral effects even before political ones. Deference, reticence and often self-censorship. The precarious worker who does not dare to contradict an unfair assessment, the journalist who knows perfectly well the topics that 'do not fit' to cover, the researcher who adapts his intellectual horizon to the dominant assessment metrics, the small supplier who conforms in advance to the implicit demands of the large client. In all these cases, there is often no sanction at all. There is no need. It is enough to know that it might arrive to achieve the desired behaviour.

Prudence is thus transformed from a classical virtue of rational action - as Smith and Montesquieu saw it - into a symptom of political disease. It signals the fact that the subject does not act in a field of robust freedom, but in a space in which one's position is exposed to the decisions of others that are often uncontrollable. There is not always explicit fear, nor a dramatic experience of awe. Rather, there is a silent training that teaches us not to expose ourselves too much, to calibrate our words, to read the signals, not to cross boundaries that no one openly defines but that everyone learns to recognise. A society can thus appear largely permissive and yet produce subjects that are systematically accommodating and deferential. It can offer many formal options and at the same time distribute the risks of error and dissent so asymmetrically that those options become much less open than they seem.

Finally, there is a final face of contemporary domination. It is not only about the fact that certain powers can shape the environment in which our choices take place, that they disguise themselves as technology or that they produce preventive self-censorship. It is also about the fact that these same powers impose on individuals an increasing duty of visibility, measurability and justification, without them being willing, at the same time, to undergo a similar duty of accountability and transparency. On the one hand, increasingly intelligible individuals who are assessed, classified, profiled, monitored, compared. On the other, decision-making centres, political and economic, that remain largely opaque. Which adopt proprietary criteria, models that are not accessible, metrics that are not shared and thresholds that are not publicly discussed. Domination here takes the form of an asymmetry of justification. On this point, too, Pettit is illuminating. In On the People's Terms he insists that interference does not limit freedom only when it is subject to the control of those who suffer it. In fact, he writes that - 'The interference that I or others exercise in your choice will not impose an extraneous will, and therefore will not invade your freedom of choice, insofar as my discretion in exercising the interference is subject to your control' (p. 57). The problem, then, is not just the existence of rules, but the fact that they can be challenged, revised, brought back under the control of those affected by them. Now, one of the typical figures of the present is precisely the reversal of this requirement. Subjects are accountable, systems are not. The worker must justify his performance, while the system that measures it does not have to explain why it evaluates certain aspects and not others. The professional or student must adapt to standards of merit, productivity, reputation, while those who set these standards can remain shielded from corresponding public scrutiny. This generates a paradoxical situation in which the 'dominated' become increasingly transparent and visible, while the 'dominant' progressively evade any form of scrutiny. This asymmetry is politically decisive. A power that does not have to justify itself remains, in the republican sense, a potentially arbitrary power even when it is procedurally refined. Opacity is not simply an informational defect; it is a way of guarding discretion. That which does not have to explain itself retains the privilege of redefining criteria without fully exposing itself to dissent. Domination thus ceases to appear as mere disproportion of force and becomes disproportion in the right to demand reasons and the duty to provide them.

The problem, then, is not that modernity asks us for too many explanations. The problem is that it almost always asks them in the wrong direction: downwards, from those who must prove they deserve work, trust, wages, credit, visibility; much less upwards, from those who define the conditions within which these goods are distributed. If this is so, then contemporary freedom can no longer be thought of only as protection from visible intrusion. It must also be thought of as a struggle against those forms of power that demand transparency from subjects while denying transparency to themselves.

Contemporary domination no longer needs to show itself in order to be effective. It disposes, it optimises, it measures - and it does not have to explain itself. As long as power can shape the conditions of our lives without subjecting itself to a corresponding obligation of justification, freedom will remain, for many, an unfulfilled promise.