1. Power, in the most universal sense, is the possibility of action.

2. In the strict sense that it has in politics, it is the possibility of determining the actions of others.

3. In the universal sense, man has only three powers: to generate, to destroy, to choose. The first is the power of wealth, the second the power of violence, the third the power of the spirit.

4. The power of wealth has as its object the material goods, using human bodies and spirit as means and shaping itself to them as conditions.

5. The power of violence has as its object the human body, using matter and spirit as means and adapting itself to them as conditions.

6. The power of the spirit is exercised over the spirit itself, using material goods and the human body as means and adapting to them as conditions.

7. Each power is exercised in a double direction: active and passive. Active steering tends towards unity, concentration, increasing speed.
The passive direction tends towards multiplicity, dispersion, decreasing speed.

8. The active power of wealth lies in the owners of capital. It tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, to monopolism, to look for ways to grow faster and faster.

9. The passive power of wealth lies with workers. It tends to divide wealth, to socialism, to zero growth.

10. The active power of violence lies in the militia. It tends to concentrate, to the vertical hierarchy, to rigid discipline, to establish automatic obedience that produces maximum efficiency and speed.
11. The militia is the foundation of state power, which is ultimately reduced to the legitimacy of the use of violence.

12. The passive power of violence lies in justice. It tends to disperse, to level power, to resolve everything by free agreement, to slow down action.

13. The active power of ideas lies in the creators of cultural goods. It tends to concentrate power, to subject the actions of many to the ideas of a few, to accelerate change, to break established habits.

14. The passive power of ideas lies in men of religion. It tends to disperse power, to level human behavior by the average of traditional values, to nullify the differences between notable men and ordinary men, to stabilize social action in the sacralized routine.

15. This division comprises all castes: the priestly caste is divided into intellectuality and clergy; the noble caste is divided into nobility of sword and nobility of toga; the producer variety is divided into
owners and workers.

16. The castes are functional and do not necessarily have fixed occupants: the components of the nobility, dethroned, can compose a capitalist caste or an intellectuality. The worker, on the rise, can enter the intellectuality or the nobility. Whole masses can be moved from one function to another. The functions remain fixed, the occupants either remain or change.

17. The so-called political class does not exist as an independent unit: it is only an interface between sword nobility and toga nobility. It is aristocracy. It follows that the division of the three powers, in Locke and Montesquieu’s theory, is purely normative and is not founded on the nature of things. Executive power, in all the rawness of its absolute power, is the voice of the Imperator, the head of armies. In all cases and circumstances, it remains distinct from the judiciary, whose existence is co-extensive with that of parties in litigation and which cannot be absorbed in the simple unit of the command voice. This is true even when the functions of chief and judge are united in one person, as they remain distinct as the command issued on motu proprio remains distinct from arbitration between parties. It is not conceivable that the Executive, as such, would absorb the Judiciary in itself, since every initiative of the former comes from itself, and the initiative to judge can only begin after the demands of the parties. The absorption of the Legislative in the Executive, on the contrary, is not only possible but it is a fact, in totalitarian regimes, as well as it is possible and a fact, in parliamentary regimes, to reduce the Executive to an arm of the Legislative, which in this case is only an Executive collective. All of this shows that military and judicial powers are essentially different, while the Executive and Legislative distinction is just an accident determined by human invention.

18. Ideologies are expressions of the wishes of the various castes.

19. The power structure in a given society consists of the distribution of hegemony among the three powers, complicated by the dispute for power not only between the three powers but also within each of the three castes.

20. In the Russian revolution of 1917, the intelligentsia, supported by the workers and the militia, seized power, instantly assuming the functions of nobility and clergy. The new nobility, once constituted, absorbs the functions of the capitalist caste, which it could do easily because they were already partially absorbed by the nobility of the old regime, in an state capitalism. Marxism appears as a work of culture, but when the intellectuality that created it rises to power and becomes a clergy, it acquires the form of religion.

21. In the United States, a powerful capitalist class governs with the support of the Protestant clergy, subdues the nobility, the workers and the intellectuals. The intellectuals and the workers, with the help of the toga nobility, contest the power. Intellectuality, however, gradually gains power thanks to technical inventiveness and the mastery of information, as industrial capitalism gives way to a capitalism of goods and services. With social engineering, power is centralized, the efficiency of command is increased, the state tends towards the social-democratic direction. Capitalists, feeling jettisoned from power, ally themselves with the workers and the militia in a conservative reaction, dividing the nobility of toga.