War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [779]
Of all the units that people form for carrying out joint actions, one of the most distinct and definite is an army.
Every army is made up of members of the lowest military rank—privates—of whom there is always the largest number; of members of the next higher military rank—corporals, sergeants—who are fewer in number than the first; of still higher rank, who are still fewer in number; and so on to the highest military power, which is concentrated in one person.
Military organization can be expressed with perfect precision in the figure of the cone, in which the base with the largest diameter would be made up of the privates; the higher, smaller sections of the higher ranks of the army, and so on to the apex of the cone, the point of which would be the commander in chief.
The soldiers, of whom there is the largest number, constitute the lowest points of the cone and its base. The soldier himself directly stabs, cuts, burns, loots, and always receives orders for these actions from higher-placed persons; he himself never gives orders. A sergeant (the number of sergeants is already smaller) performs the action itself more rarely than the soldier, but he does give orders. An officer still more rarely performs the action itself and still more often gives orders. A general only orders the troops to move, pointing to the goal, and almost never uses weapons. The commander can never take a direct part in the action itself and only gives general instructions about the movement of the masses. The same relations of persons among themselves is manifested in any group of people united for common activity—in farming, trade, and any management.
And so, without artificially separating all the converging points of the cone and ranks of the army, or the titles and positions of any management or common business, from lowest to highest, a law is manifested according to which, for the carrying out of a joint action, people always form themselves into such relations that the more immediately people participate in carrying out the action, the less they can give orders and the greater their number; and the smaller the direct part that people take in the action itself, the more they give orders and the smaller their number, rising in this way from the lowest layers to the one last man, who takes the least direct part in the event and more than all aims his activity at giving orders.
This relation of the persons who give orders to those whom they order constitutes the essence of the concept known as power.
Having restored the conditions of time under which all events occur, we found that an order is executed only when it refers to a corresponding series of events. Restoring the necessary condition of the connection between the one who orders and the one who carries out, we have found that it is an inherent property of those who order to take the least part in the event itself and that their activity is aimed exclusively at giving orders.
VII
When some event takes place, people express their opinions and wishes about the event, and since the event results from the joint action of many people, one of the opinions or wishes expressed is bound to be fulfilled, if only approximately. When one of the opinions expressed is fulfilled, that opinion is connected with the event as the order preceding it.
Men are dragging a log. Each of them expresses his opinion about how and where to drag it. The men drag the log out, and it is discovered that it was done the way one of them had said. He gave the order. Here are order and power in their primitive form.
The one who mainly worked with his hands was less able to think over what he was doing, to consider what might come of the common activity, and to give orders. The one who mainly gave orders, as a consequence of his verbal activity, was obviously less able to act with his hands. The greater the assembly of people aiming their activity at a single goal, the more sharply set off is the category of people who take a less direct part in the common activity, the more their