Conquest's Three Laws of Politics and The Inertia of Power

Why you cant change the system from within

I recently got into a conversation where a young guy told me that one should get into the system to change it from within, join the prestigious institutions of the current establishment and push for reforms, etc. You know the drill. And this is such a tired response that I’ve heard from so many mouths over so many years that I couldn’t help myself from sighing in exasperation. I responded with a cliched response of “when you are within the system, its the system which changes you. Not you changing the system” to which he asked “how?” which pushed me to write down this new entry into the series which I had been delaying for so long, sorry subscribers. but better late than never I guess. I’m writing this down to explain to everyone at once why the above-proposed strategy does not work so that I do not have to explain it to a lot of people personally one at a time again and again.

This strategy that he is talking about is called Entryism, and there is a pervasive myth among right-wingers both domestic and foreign that leftist ideologues have captured the premier institutions of this country by a long march through them. Although there is a significant leftist bent among employees of these institutions for some reasons, that does not necessarily mean they exercise control over them. And even though a lot of institutions do have a supposed leftist bent, it’s not because leftists captured those institutions. It’s because leftists established those institutions. Right-wingers engaged in moral grandstanding combined with wishful thinking repeatedly tell themselves comfortable lies that the left is only capable of parasitism, decay, and destruction that they ignore the constructive actions and achievements of the left wing. Lefties who dreamt of institutional capture have largely remained a failure, whereas lefties who are good at organizing, good at institution-building have done much better, ignore them at your own peril. Institutional capture is a right wing cope to frame them as treacherous villains. To show why entryism and the long march through institutions do not work, we need to look at conquest’s laws first.

Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics states:

The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

In almost every institution bigger than a dozen people, insiders are often resigned to how hard it is to get things done. They maintain a coordinated competence barely above a failure level at which they wouldn’t even persist in the world. Perhaps worse, many institutions that persist, despite failing at their formal purposes, last for a surprisingly long time; they’ve fallen, unwittingly or not, into new reasons for being. Unprofitable companies & declining nations often last longer than their critics remain solvent.

When something works the way it should, it appears exceptional. It’s not necessarily that starting off, they have more material wealth, nor is the quality of most of the people involved there much higher than their competitors. It is simply put together properly; its not that their cogs and gears are of better quality but that their cogs and gears fit perfectly together.

People can be neglecting, complacent and careless when they are building something for somebody else, contractors and engineers do it all the time, so do manufacturers, and so do lawmakers making laws for the public good. But the same can not be said when people are building something for themselves. They are very judicious and careful when the latter is the case. This goes for building institutions too.

in the last post, we discussed that power has inertia. To put it more succinctly than last time: Power has inertia, Men who are in power within a system tend to stay in power until external forces act on the system. Despite all the trials and tribulations of opposition within the system.

Why is this so? it’s because power structures that operate a given system were built by men with a conservative mindset ie they built it to conserve their power, and they build to last. They acquired power by seeking it in the first place, and when they got lucky enough to get it, they designed it to retain as much power as they can for as long as they could. This is why bureaucracies both public and private tend to be Selectocratic ie Men at higher levels choose who to admit from outside of the organization or who to promote from lower levels of the organization according to their subjective judgment as opposed to some standardized test or other objective methods (and even the organizations which use standardized methods, like tests, elections, or lottery, they only use it for shortlisting ie a filtration purpose to reduce the burden of too many candidates, the final call is always based on a subjective judgment of interviewer). This brings us to Conquest’s First Law of Politics:

Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

Although there is obviously a major element of selfishness by the powerful in establishing their organizations in such a way, however to some extent conserving power is also essential to the conservation of organizations and their explicitly stated social purpose as well, otherwise, outside competitors do have the incentive to infiltrate and climb the hierarchy of organization to sabotage it from within. an electocratic hierarchy(peers/juniors promoting their peers) will always be far more vulnerable to infiltration than selectocracy(seniors picking their underlings). As Conquest’s second law states:

Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.

This is why almost all organizations’ power hierarchy is like a hill, it gets smaller and smaller at the top. Hence the resilient-to-change nature of organizations is very intentional. This nature can be seen in both explicit and esoteric ways.

Exoteric

The most obvious example of an explicit way the power within an institution is conserved would be it’s legal/constitutional arrangements that prevent some changes from happening, members of parliaments will never pass a law that hurts their own interests. A corporate board will never pass a bylaw that hurts the board members' interest. And both will make sure that the power to create laws/bylaws within their respective organization remains in their own hands. Similarly, a judge would never set a precedent that hurts the interest of the judiciary itself.

Another example would be the control and distribution of capital within the system, which too is an explicit method of conserving control. In high school civics, we are told about “the power of the purse” Formally, it is the parliament that has the power to set the nation’s budget, but the executive branch has this power informally. With the power of the purse, you can decide the fate of NGOs and corporations, who is taxed, who is not, who gets subsidies and for what, what projects are pursued by the government, and so on.

And then there is of course control over the appointment and promotion of personnel already discussed above.

Esoteric

An example of the esoteric way in which an organization’s leaders conserve their power is through ideology as described in the previous entry of this series where we highlighted how an official ideology is important for instilling loyalty, solidarity, cohesion, and purposefulness within an organization. But there is also a selfish motive for the leaders to propagate ideology within their territory/organization and indoctrinate their underlings in particular: When an ideology becomes pervasive enough to become the norm within an organization or a territory. It can act as a thought-terminating cliché that prevents the people within the given territory/organization to think outside the box and come up with even an idea of how to shake up the system. ideology can create strategic blindspots in your subject’s worldview, all of whom are to be seen as potential dissidents and usurpers.

Another esoteric method of exercising control is control over the gathering and dissemination of information, strategically valuable information to be precise. In hill warfare, people at top of the hill have a clear advantage of information over enemies at the bottom because they have a clear visual around the hill in all directions around it, while people at the bottom don’t have a clear visual of ongoings at the top. This is one of the reasons why mountain tribes have been known for winning wars even when the number of bodies has been against their favor (another reason being gravity is against the favor of the climber as opposed to one who is already established at the hill). Ever wondered if big tech and governments around the world are surveilling their users, won’t they do the same for their employees too?

Wrapping it up

So is entryism entirely fruitless? No. there are many ways you can use a position inside the establishment to help those who are outside of it. Although the founders often build their organization for the conservation of power, they build it for the expansion of that power too which comes with an inherent element of risk of course. The expansion is therefore usually second on their rank of priorities to conservation, and this risk can give hostile elements a window of opportunity to exploit.

Here are some ways entryism can help dissidents that I could think of off the top of my head:

• As a saboteur, you can make an already inept system more dysfunctional and bring it closer to collapse. but that comes with a risk of getting noticed pretty early and thrown out of the system and suffering severe personal consequences.

• As an informer, you can help the dissidents struggling against the system from outside by explaining and teaching them how the internal mechanisms of the system actually work, its root causes of corruption, and its vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Your experience can also help them reform and improve their own organization and its capabilities. but then again, this role can only be fulfilled if there are self-organized dissidents outside to collaborate with in the first place.

There is some possible utility in entryism, But reforming it from within is certainly out of the question unless the reforms look favorable to the sitting elites themselves.