History as Power
From Consolidation to Global Consciousness
1. Power as the Core of Historical Development
Human history is most coherently understood as the arc of power consolidation layered across population growth—not merely as a class struggle (Marx), dialectical synthesis (Hegel), technological advancement, or a natural progression through stages of civilization. Rather, these are metrics and frameworks that describe its movement, not its essence. History is the story of groups organizing to gain, secure, and project power.
2. Early Consolidation and Redistribution of Power
The first generations of men did not live in abstract economic, or complex ideological, systems, but in tight tribal/familial structures. Small indigenous populations still exist that illustrate the first iterations of human power relations. Often, these peoples do not use capitalism to organize resources, but intimate relations based around need and availability. Slowly, power in these primitive societies was consolidated around physical strength, territory, and spiritual control. As these groups expanded and splintered, the redistribution of power followed, setting in motion a scalable model that has repeated across every stage of societal growth.
3. Scaling Society and the Role of Technology
As society scaled from kinship groups to villages, from villages to city-states, and from states to nations and empires, the machinery of power/control did as well. While many of the existing power structures remain intact, new power structures take precedence as they evolve. For example, the head of the family in a small kinship group could be the sole authority. In joining a village/town, the head of the family now answers to the chief/mayor. As societies grew and technology allowed more people to settle together, the hierarchy continued to expand upwards. Technology and power consolidation enable each other. Technological control became the catalyst for quantum leaps in power restructuring. Those who out-innovated their rivals in military technology, agricultural efficiency, or information management seized the advantage. Empires rise through innovation and centralization, and fall through overreach and internal fracturing, creating a vacuum for surrounding powers.
4. The Feedback Loop of Population and Innovation
Population growth and technological innovation have also worked hand-in-hand. More people required more resources, spurring innovation, which then allowed even greater population growth. With each loop, new elites emerged who could harness both the tools and people. The dominant class or ruling system thus entrenched itself not just through force, but through the control of values and narratives. As Nietzsche would argue, they shaped the "truths" of their time by defining morality to protect their own structure.
5. The Evolving Role of the State
Plato's ideal state in The Republic presupposes this consolidation through philosopher-kings. Fully empowered, these leaders would bring harmony. Absent virtue, the modern state has no such telos. Rather, in the name of security, the family became a city, then a state. All efforts are focused on the protection and propagation of the unit. There has been no true movement toward protecting the global consciousness, environment, or shared human legacy. This could only be realized through movement towards a completely cosmopolitan society, and is in fact the natural result of a global collective.
6. Capitalism as the Chosen Mode of Organization
Capitalism is not the cause, but the preferred mode of a system that has not evolved its consciousness to match its technology. Capitalist systems have produced the best means of organizing labor and resources thus far: developing innovation, and projecting power through markets, brands, and global finance. The same framework that has allowed multinational organizations to increase their power is what hinders the advancement of a system to replace capitalism. No economic, societal-organizing, framework in its infant stages can hope to compete with capitalism. Emerson warned that man becomes a tool of his tools; capitalism has created its own autonomous system of incentives that destroy human cohesion and ecological stability. There is some potential to hijack the technology capitalism has produced to organize another system based on new ethos.
7. The Limits of Globalization and Technology
Globalization and digital technology have begun to near the end of their natural curves. AI generates itself. Algorithms write news, translate languages, even govern markets. In this context, technology cannot be put back in the bag. It has become its own evolutionary actor and its existence will proliferate until the end of humanity. The tools of power can now replicate and evolve without human permission. Jung might see this as the shadow of our collective unconscious now manifest in machine form—we have externalized our will to control, and it has become a self-replicating force. The bourgeois control of the most advanced technology is the basis of their control, but all types of control from media to military are slowly decentralizing.
8. Toward a Cosmopolitan Cycle
The only logical end to this cycle is cosmopolitan: a society no longer bound by state interest but by species-level consciousness. Hive mind or herd mentality is the opposite of the goal, only moving beyond consumption. Ironically, control needs to be completely consolidated to be redistributed. Once redistribution has begun, there will always be the risk of the same sort of vacuum that has always existed, that is why the shift in consciousness is necessary. Marx relied on the proletariats disaffection to realize this revolution, but provided no recognition of the importance of a psychological tool for its continuation. This next phase will be impossible to realize through reform or decentralized technology alone. Hegel understood the importance of a tool like religion to act as the catalyst and the tool for reimagining and organizing society, but this adoption is meaningless if forced and largely relies on existing logos. As Kant also argued, rational autonomy requires structures of universality. We need a global structure capable of enforcing, or at least encouraging, values beyond self-interest.
9. Resistance, Security, and the Leviathan
To combat the existing powers prematurely—those entrenched in state, capital, and information architecture—is to confront Leviathan without a sword. Unless there is a unifying mission, an encompassing value system to rally behind, resistance will be futile. The state's only mission is to preserve itself. There must be a mission beyond that of the state, but further, it must for a time wield the tools of power against the state. The same technology and the hierarchical system that the state uses must be co-opted. It is necessary to fight fire with fire. The tools are available to organize and to utilize against the order. Coupled with the power of the people and the natural desire to move past alienation, a new hegemony is inevitable.
10. Completing the Cycle and Redefining Power
Power must reach its logical extreme: fully consolidated, fully global. At that point, the opportunity emerges to reconceive values—to actually shift human consciousness and redefine purpose. Only then can we step into a new era and exit the existing cycle of developing increasingly more manageable forms of capitalism. The completion of the consolidation is the best chance for this move.
11. Alienation, Capitalism, and the Opening for a New Mode
Shifting human consciousness is the basis for liberation. As automation and artificial intelligence reduce the need for human labor, the historical opportunity arises to reclaim what Marx envisioned: the free time necessary to become fully human—self-actualizing, creative beings. This potential must be intentionally shaped by cultural and institutional transformations that affirm human dignity and avert ecological crisis.
Cryptocurrency and decentralized digital systems offer a glimpse of a post-national monetary order. If guided by cosmopolitan values, such systems could help dissolve the economic borders that maintain state-centric power. A universal economic platform—open, participatory, and values-driven—could form the foundation for a truly global civic consciousness. There is the potential for technological empowerment that allows for efficiency to be maintained and standards of living to grow while human labor focuses on moving from zero to one.
Marx focused on material conditions. He could not have predicted capitalism’s increasingly rapid technological development that allowed for vast improvements in material conditions with continuously greater negative shifts in the wealth distribution. The current system has proven remarkably adaptable to the most basic demands of the populace. People are docile as they do not recognize their collective potential. Each generation demands the greatest of the evils fixed, often, even this is denied. It is time to move past this culture of reform and into the future.
[This essay is an outline. Each section will be expanded into a larger work. Other philosophers’ relevant ideas and real world examples will be included. Other media and concepts may also be incorporated.]