The Daily Drucker: January 31 – A Functioning Society

Unless power is legitimate there can be no social order.
 

A functioning society must always be capable of organizing the tangible reality of the social order.  It must master the material world, make it meaningful and comprehensible for the individual, and must establish legitimate social and political power.

No society can function unless it gives the individual members social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate power.  The former establishes the basic frame of social life: the purpose and meaning of society.  The latter shapes the space within the frame: it makes society concrete and creates its institutions.  If the individual is not given social status and function, there can be no society but only a mass of social atoms flying through space without aim or purpose.  And unless power is legitimate, there can be no social fabric; there is only a social vacuum held together by mere slavery or inertia.

ACTION POINT: What will the emerging government in Iraq have to do to become legitimate?  What must a legitimate government do to create status and function for Iraqis?

                                                                                               

Quoted from The DailyDrucker, January 31, page 33