'Crowds and Power': Modern Politics Through Elias Canetti’s Eyes

Photo by Daniela Denyer Malo

There are books that no matter when you read them, you will feel like they were written for that moment in time. Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti is one of them.

Originally published decades ago, Canetti's enormous work of political and social philosophy has found its way back onto bookshelves through a new English edition, translated by Carol Stewart and introduced by Daniel Trilling. Published on August 27th, this new edition offers another opportunity to encounter a work that feels strangely, and sometimes uncomfortably, relevant to the world we are living through today.

And I say strangely because this is not a book about today's politics nor recent ones even. It is a book about something much more fundamental: why human beings gather, what happens when they do, and how those gatherings become sources of power and are, at the same time, affected by them.

At almost 700 pages, Crowds and Power is not a casual beach read. It is dense, philosophical and, at times, difficult to get through. But it is also one of those books that makes you stop every few pages and think about the kind of world we live in and how it has come to be.

Canetti's starting point is deceptively simple: the crowd. But he does not mean simply a large group of people standing together in the same physical space - although he starts there. A crowd can be an audience at a concert, but it can also be a political movement, a religious community, a social movement, or a group united around an idea.

What matters is the shared force that emerges between individuals.

Canetti is interested in what happens when individual people become part of something larger than themselves and how that transformation changes the way they behave, think and act. This makes the book particularly interesting to read in an age of mass politics and digital communities.

We tend to think of crowds as something physical. Canetti asks us to think much more broadly about the collective.

What makes thousands or even millions of people feel as though they are part of the same thing? And, perhaps more importantly, what can that feeling accomplish?

This is where the book becomes particularly fascinating, especially for those with an interest in sociology. Canetti slowly moves from the formation of crowds to the question of power: how it is created, concentrated, exercised and maintained. He distinguishes between crowds and what he calls "packs", examining how different forms of collective organisation produce different relationships with power.

He also explores the relationship between collective organisation and religion, looking at everything from religious communities to cults and the ways belief can create powerful forms of social cohesion.

The question in, between the lines, is essentially this: how does a group of people become powerful and what happens to the person or people who possess that power?

Canetti's answer is anything but straightforward. He argues that power is not simply something a ruler possesses. It is something that is constantly being created, seized, transferred and defended. It exists in relationships between people.

One of the sections I found most interesting is Canetti's discussion of crowds in history and the symbols around which they organise themselves. He examines different societies and empires, including the English, Dutch, German, French, Swiss, Spanish and even Jewish society, and looks at how collective identities become attached to symbols.

The symbol becomes bigger than the individual and it can represent a nation, a people, a historical memory or an imagined community. And once enough people attach themselves to that symbol, it acquires power of its own. 

Reading this today inevitably makes you think about flags, national myths, political movements, religious symbols, and even the imagery that surrounds contemporary political movements.

We often talk about politics as though it is primarily about policies, yet Canetti reminds us that politics is also about belonging. People do not simply organise around ideas, they organise around identities, symbols and the feeling of being part of something larger.

The book then becomes almost encyclopaedic in its examination of power, as Canetti considers force, speed, questioning and answering, secrecy, judgement, condemnation, pardon and mercy as different elements through which power operates. As much philosophy as he includes, he theorizes too.

He examines the power to command and where that power comes from. He considers transformation, both social and technological, and the ways in which societies change the structures through which power is exercised. He explores fame and legitimacy, which I found particularly interesting because the two can look similar from the outside while functioning very differently.

Someone can be famous without being legitimate. Someone can be legitimate without being particularly famous. And political power tends to depend on the distinction between the two.

Finally, he examines rulers of the world. He moves across societies and historical periods, drawing on examples ranging from rulers in India to African kings and other political leaders, using them to investigate how power is accumulated and preserved. But he is equally interested in what power does to those who hold it.

There is a recurring relationship between power and survival, the fear of losing one's position, one's authority, one's life or even one's historical significance. And that fear becomes its own source of instability, as the person who has power becomes increasingly concerned with protecting it.

The more they have to lose, the more they fear losing it. And that fear can ultimately shape the way they exercise power. It is the explanation for the typical paradox of a dictator’s rule.

There was one part of the book that I found considerably more difficult to engage with critically: Canetti's discussion of Islam. I want to be careful here because this is a dense philosophical text, and I may not have interpreted every aspect of his argument exactly as he intended it.

However, I found his treatment of Islam uncomfortable, particularly where he appears to frame it through the concept of war. My issue was less with Canetti examining religion through the lens of violence, as that is an entirely legitimate subject for political philosophy, and more with the sense that Islam was being singled out for characteristics that can also be found, in different forms, across other religious traditions and historical religious texts.

There is a difference between analysing the relationship between religion, violence and collective power, and presenting one particular religious tradition as uniquely defined by it.

Ultimately, this is one of the passages where I would encourage readers to engage with the text themselves rather than simply accepting my - or anyone’s - interpretation of it. Crowds and Power is complicated enough that disagreement with Canetti, or even uncertainty about what exactly he means, is arguably part of the reading experience.

And that, in the end, is what I liked most about this book. Reading it felt like having a conversation with it, not because I agreed with everything Canetti said, but in fact, quite the opposite. There were passages where I found myself completely convinced by his argument, others where I wanted to challenge him, and still others where I wasn't entirely sure I understood what he was trying to say.

And that is one of the great pleasures of political philosophy. A good political philosophy book should not simply tell you what to think, it should make you notice things you had previously overlooked.

There is something amazing about having the opportunity to read an old philosophical work during a period of intense political and social change. Canetti could not have known about social media, algorithmic political mobilisation, online communities, or the way millions of people can now gather around an idea without ever occupying the same physical space.

And yet, so much of what he is asking remains relevant. What happens when people become a crowd? What makes people follow or leave a cause? Why do symbols become so powerful? How does a leader maintain authority? Why do people surrender individual judgement to collective movements? And what happens when the person at the centre of that system becomes afraid of losing their power?

These are not exclusively questions for historians or political philosophers. They are questions for us because the answers determine the world around us, the society we live in, and how we go about our own constant participation in politics.

I would not recommend Crowds and Power to someone looking for an easy read. It is long, dense, and there were passages I had to reread to comprehend them properly. But that is also why it is rewarding.

It is ultimately less interesting as a book that gives you answers than as a book that gives you a different set of questions. And at a time when so much of political life seems to revolve around crowds, who they are, what they believe, what unites them and who can mobilise them, those questions are worth asking.

If you are interested in political philosophy, sociology, history, power or simply understanding why societies behave the way they do, I would absolutely recommend giving Canetti a chance.

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Edited by Ainhoa Aron, Literature Editor