Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Anatomy of Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983.

Condign power wins submission by the ability to impose an alternative to the preferences of the individual or group that is sufficiently unpleasant or painful so that that these preferences are abandoned. There is an overtone of punishment in the term, and this conveys the appropriate impression. (p. 4)

Condign power wins submission by inflicting or threatening appropriately adverse consequences. (p. 5)

Compensatory power…wins submission by the offer of affirmative reward – by the giving of something of value to the individual so submitting. (p. 5)

“as personal or public rebuke is a form of condign power, so praise is a form of compensatory power. However, in the modern economy, the most important expression of compensatory power is, of course, pecuniary reward – the payment of meney for services rendered, which is to say for submission to the economic or personal purposes of others. (p. 5)

It is a common feature of both condign and compensatory power that the individual submitting is aware of his or her submission – in the one case compelled and in the other for reward. (p. 5)

Conditioned power…is exercised by changing belief. Persuasion, education, or the social commitment to what seems natural, proper, or right causes the individual to submit to the will of another or of others. The submission reflects the preferred course; the fact of submission is not recognized. Conditioned power, more than condign or compensatory power, is central, as we shall see, to the functioning of the modern economy and polity, and in capitalist and socialist countries alike. (p. 6)

Organization, the most important source of power in modern societies, has its foremost relationship with conditioned power. (p. 7)

An essential, indeed vital, need for the conditioned power of the military is a specific enemy. If the military power is to be more than traditional, ceremonial, or precautionary in character, a hostile threat is indispensable. Such a threat wins the appropriations – the property – from which compensatory power derives. It also leads to consolidation of belief within the military establishment and similar belief outside. (p. 165)

Related to the existence of an enemy are the control of information and the resulting social conditioning. The need to keep military secrets from the enemy justifies preventing complete access to the general public. What is then released can be substantially and even extensively what best serves the needed public belief – the required social conditioning. This includes the military’s view of enemy intentions and particularly of what is needed in the way of weaponry. Critical discussion of ordnance and weapons systems is made subject to the restraints of classification – as well as those generally of organization discipline – and to the condign punishment or its threat that defends against the release of classified material. The military power, in its management and control of information, is, by a wide margin, the most comprehensive and successful exponent of conditioned power. (p. 166)

Not all the control of information by the military power is the result either of the discipline of organization or of formal controls. Much is the result of the sheer size of the organization involved and of the technical character, real or avowed, of the issues. The citizen looking at the mass and complexity of modern military technology surrenders to those who are presumed to have mastery. Or he surrenders to surrogates who are thought to be in command of the requisite detail. And he is strongly encouraged to do so. The consequence is an argument between experts, from which the public is excluded, with the effect that the social conditioning of the military power is effectively unchallenged in the civilian world. (pp. 166-167)