Ideas, Not Power, Rule The World
© Anup Mukherjee (May, 1990)

John Maynard Keynes rightly said, “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.”

Attribution of instints in an organized manner and the process directed in a constructive way gives rise to the inherent original quality accesible only to humans and his quality of forming (innovating) ideas make humans superior to any other being. Therefore for any kind of human action it is evident that ideas form the basic unit. Due to these characteristics, a very high degree of complexity arises in the system. Formation of society and the social order are results of these facts.

Due to the complex nature of society and its anomalous characters, a high degree of disorder prevails; so to control these we humans had to find indigenous means and they found it in power. Whereas its basic characteristics are brutal, it was harnessed in a complex way by means of ideas, to give it an acceptable and orderly form.

Power has become the basic authority that controls the system, may it be through righteousness or by wrongful means. But power itself has its roots in the power of thinking, which upshoots ideas via which power is created (among the masses). Whereas Power is a means to control, Idea is a means to rule. We can say that ideas are means to create power, it is a simple analogical inference that since power is used to rule, it is infact ideas which actually rule.

In the history of human civilizaiton we find ample example of the above theorisaiton. It was just an idea, “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau) which prompted the French revolution; it was an idea of liberty that formed the largest democracy of the world (USA); it was an idea of freedom which made Abraham Lincoln abolish slavery; it was an idea of equality which made Karl Marx write “Capital” which forms the basis of Communism; it was an idea to raise head against the suppression of autocratic monarchs which paved way for the ‘October Revolution’ under the leadership of Lenin and subsequently formation of USSR; it was an idea to fight for righteous justice and for freedom of India by peaceful means, and this method of Mahatma Gandhi paved the way for freedom, and this method still remains unique in history. All these are today history, but the basis, the roots of all these lay in the creation minds of innovative people who had the courage and vision.

Ideas are always constructive when rightly interpreted lead to welfare State; but wrong interpretation either to anarchy or dictatorship so, it was misinterpretation of ideas and thereby misuse of power which brought downfall and condemnation to dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Idi Amin, Marcos, many others and now Ceausescu. The current wave in East Europe signifies this very fact. In Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania, misuse of power brought about the popular uprising and it cannot be denied that this wave has its foundation only in the ideas of Perestroika and Glasnost propounded by Mr. Gorbachev.

Power cannot be an individual possesion but it is in the hands of common masses, in brains of intellectuals, in minds of visionaries, which they give or pass in hands of the elite for an organised working. Power lies where the means and strings of control and implementation of policies are carried out, but the formulation of all these are born through ideas.

The creation of ideas is a beginning of a new era. Ideas are the torch bearers of power. As Woodrow Wilson has said, “We are not steering by forms of government, we are steering by principles of government.”

Power is basically associated with government and ruling is simple outcome, but it is evident and a fact that, “Ideas, Not Power, Rule This World“.

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