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opinionAlso in this section: Power and democratic society by Raúl Leis R. - raulleisr@hotmail.com For Michael Foucault, power is a broad technology that runs through the gamut of social relations. It's a machinery that produces the effects of domination, starting from certain peculiar types of strategies and tactics. These techniques of operation cut across the bodies and minds of individuals --- dominated or dominant --- as nobody escapes this dynamic and omnipresent technology. Power isn't found localized or eternally fixed. It's neither the in the hands of nor the property of certain persons, classes or institutions. It daily emanates by way of infinite mechanisms and social practices, which when put into action produce mobile relationships that are always asymmetrical. Everywhere that power exists, it's exercised in a determined direction, with some people on one end and other people on the other. Between those who command and those who obey, between those who know and those who don't know, there is the most often used road of coercion. But there are macropowers and micropowers. The macropower of politics reflects the dynamics of war, deals with strategies and tactics to struggle for political power, acquire it, maintain it and lose it. But when there's power there's resistance, as the power relationship generates resistance from those opposed and among the dominated subjects. On the other hand, in the microphysics of power or micropowers, it's necessary to understand the manner in which the phenomena, techniques and procedures of power function on the lowest levels, and above all, that when the most global phenomena are investigated and applied, we see how the most general powers can at the same time put these technologies into play within relatively autonomous and infinitesimal aspects of power. In other words, not only are great political and socioeconomic changes urgent for our society, but so are the transformation of existing micropowers like the family, the school, the hospital, the church, the labor union, the communications medium, the workplace, the political party, the jail. An example is the prison that turns into a true factory of criminals, as Justo Arosemena warned a century and a half ago, by transforming prisoners into intimidated, resentful and always defensive individuals, who in many cases are disposed to take revenge against their accusers and against society. These micropowers must avoid falling into mimicry, that is, identification with the centralism and verticality that the rule in the great powers. Macropower generates top-down relations of domination, of government, of vigilance, of punishment, of standard-setting and imposition of discipline, which is the key that explains economic, ideological and political relations, according to Foucault. It's necessary to alter the vertical and authoritarian relations in the micropowers I've mentioned, just the same as in the macropowers. Well, now, if power were only repression it wouldn't be obeyed so easily. But there is also a positive power that produces things, forms knowledge, sparks debates that take form in a productive network that runs through the social fabric. Power can change according to the capacity of persons and groups to impinge upon and transform it, understanding that they're not only dealing with the grasping of macro- and micropower, but also of the discovery of importance of the power within persons to realize their role as social and ethical actor. What's our idea of macropower? Is democracy consumed in the electoral field, or can it be strengthened with an ever-deeper civic participation? Can economic models centered solely on an exclusionary economic growth be transformed into wholesome, equitable and inclusive development models? What is our idea of micropower? A public school that's behind the times, inefficient and ineffective and operating by rote memory, or an inclusive, up to date, education system that gives power to knowledge and values? An authoritarian and opportunistic labor union, or a representative association that gives voice to the good struggles? A penitentiary system that reproduces crime or a space for rehabilitation and resocialization? A political patronage party that responds to the highest bidder or a democratic and educative political organization that expresses the needs and aspirations of its people? In the end, that's the choice --- to serve power, to perpetuate asymmetrical relationships, or to contribute toward the planting and cultivation of a democratic society starting with the humanist transformation of the micro- and macropowers, and from a change in our own consciousness.
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