Power grows with freedom and alternatives on both sides

Evidence

The power of the power-holder is greater if he can choose from more and more diverse types of decisions for power-like assertions and it is greater if he can do this in opposition to a partner who himself has more and more diverse alternatives. Power increases with freedom on both sides, and, for example, in any given society, in proportion to the alternatives that society creates. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 598

Categorization

• DEFINE: Luhmann’s counterintuitive definition of power: it increases with freedom on both sides, not with the power-holder’s restriction of the partner.
• XREF: Links directly to Luhmann’s broader project of system trust and complexity reduction — the partner’s alternatives are the ‘complexity’ the medium must reduce. — connects to: Control systems grow faster than the liberating energies they constrain. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 143; Even the most powerful now are objects without autonomy; Countervailing powers unite to block qualitative change — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 234 (+3 more)