In reading De Jouvenel’s On Power, the only real conclusion possible regarding the question of whether power or culture is primary is that power is clearly primary.
At each point, the central power is that which is in the position of acting as gatekeeper and controller of the influence and reach of cultural currents within society. The tragedy of modernity is that what has been ensconced as power is a rejection of judgment in favor of automatic systems in the form of constitutions, electoral politics, bureaucracies, and guidance by science. That this arrangement is failing, and has been failing badly since its inception, is a grounded concept within neoreaction, but what is not is the ultimate cause of this failure.
When political structures, philosophical systems, and society slowly stop working, there are only a few general responses which can be offered. The first is that the problem is a result of a failure of the constituent actors to apply the rules and systems truly and accurately. This is the response seen in relation to the current crisis of science. The problem is seen as a failure to apply the scientific method properly, resulting in a perversion of science. This pattern is also observably in the conservative reformation which lead to Protestantism. The problem was the Catholic Church was not sticking to the book close enough. It is a doubling down on literalism.
The second option when systems break down is to rejoice and attack it by elements which have an ingrained hate of the particular system. The enemies of the system in effect. Examples include Marxists, utopians, liberals—the general progressive collection.
At first glance, this would appear to support the thesis of culture above power. The general flux of ideas and new philosophies spread and create unrest which then emerges from the bottom up— but this is false, and fails to see the hand hidden in plain sight, namely the central power, which is what De Jouvenel seeks to bring to view so well.
This is one of the key elements that sets neoreaction apart from conservatism.
The rise of the state that gave birth to modernity is really a story of four groups of actors, and not three groups of actors as put forward by De Jouvenel. The first group is the central power, that is, the king’s court, which then became the parliamentary democracy, and then the bureaucratic democracy. The second group is the feudal regime, which comprised the various forms of order based on human judgment and devolved decision-making. This reaches all the way down to the family itself and represents very simply human judgment connections. The third group is the elements of society, which actively hated the relationships and human judgment connections, and various other disaffected agitators with varying complaints. The fourth group, which it would seem De Jouvenel includes with the middle, but which really need a separate grouping, is external and or/parallel power influences. This includes the Catholic church and its bishops.
The central power in the form of the king’s court in effect sows dragon’s teeth as a means to undermine the middle structures and the external or parallel power structures. It enters into an unholy para-alliance with the agitators and rebels. The adoption of Protestantism as a means to remove church influence is one such example of power allowing (and in the case of Henry VIII) and engaging in aggressive implementation of cultural turnover. The monarchs actively opened the gates, it was not inevitable, and they did it to remove competitor influence.
This process continued in all walks of life, with anti-scholasticism being encouraged as a means to further remove Catholic influence. That a number of scholastics such as William of Ockham were responsible for beginning the process is not that surprising. If the state was not engaging in anti-Church stances, they would have been roundly ignored and forgotten.
The next alliance was that of the protestant “science” aka empiricism, which promised an alternative to human judgment and the philosophy of the scholastics comprised of Aristotle and Aquinas. Anti-Aristotleanism and anti-scholasticism marks the Enlightenment and modern philosophy from Descartes onward. It is an anti-human judgment endeavor. It was in effect, a system adopted by first the state headed by monarchs in the case of England (see the Royal society,) and then by anti-royal and anti-feudal Encyclopeiestas in France. British empiricism is heavily ingrained with the French revolution, as it is in liberal politics in the form of Hobbes, Locked, Hume, Smith, et al.
At this point, I think a further elaboration and emendation to De Jouvenel is needed. The central power with the French revolution went from being one guided by rational human judgment (even if misguided, lacking serious wisdom as to the outcome of its actions) and constituting a cosmic central power, to one which was devoted to rejecting order. It then became a chaos central power. The parliament became the central power and then subsequently bureaucracy. From this point, the idea of constitutionalism, systems, and rejection of human judgment would become key.
No rational actor is present in the Chaos central power, as rejection of human judgment is central to it. All growth by the central power is therefore not subject to correction, direction, or amendment. The only central organizing principle is removing judgment and replacing with laws and rules devised in accordance with scientific, skeptic, and empirical principles. Every action and every development of further thought that pushes towards even greater rejection of judgment is giving a direct pass to power. Any counter prevailing position withers on the vine. Power selects the culture which best suits it.
So we see conservative literalists and fundamentalists, gender ideologues, anti-racists, progressives, science advocates, and the whole collection anti-human judgment groups in fundamental para-alliance either at once, or in differing times, but all working toward the same goal. The religious and conservative literalists, often providing the role of the vanguard destroying order on a the misguided principle that they are bring greater order, has finished its role much as Protestantism did for Europe.
On a deeper level, then, De Jouvenel’s theory points to towards a concept of Cosmos, which is very much based on human judgment, with chaos being used as an enemy against it, and then consuming the actors which use it against other wielders of human judgment.
This would seem to the key to political organisation and the apparent contradictions of modern political theory. The dividing line is between human judgment and systemic adherence. Human judgment is that which progressives have always been aligned against. From the bizarre criticisms of monarchical and dictatorial government on the basis of being unable to trust what the leader would do, to the attack on every form of asymmetric personal relationship from slavery through to feudalism and non-progressive marriage (modern marriage appears to be a form of optional friendship), the line is clear. This is further augmented in other fields, such as scientific theory and epistemology with the spread of empiricism and the aforementioned literalism of religious text. Systemic adherence is therefore chaotic at route, the only question, then, is motivation.
That systemic adherence is ultimately chaotic regardless of the various dreams of hyper right-wing concepts that can be locked in by a system is that the system can never be bounded and will always be a fraud. The deeper philosophical question is present in the conception of “sovereignty is conserved” which maintains there is always and outside of society. There is always someone manning the system, and the only escape would be to create an intelligence which is non-human to man the system and correct for unforeseen circumstances which any given “right-wing” system could never account for. Such a system must at all times be directed against human judgment as a threat to itself and in effect would be de facto chaotic in that regard, as well.
More modern examples, which highlight this ingrained division, can be seen in the current state of Chaos central power (aka the liberal state) dictated modern society. The red-black alliance of ISIS-Western elite is real and clear, as is the elite-immigrant criminal alliance, as is the general criminal-elite alliance, as is every elite-scum alliance. The alliance is always anti-order, where order is defined as human judgment and human relationships not mediated by the state. Bible thumpers and other right-wing literalists, constitutionalists, and democrats of varying colors are a visible useful enemy (for now) but their role of stupid refreshers of chaos central power is inbuilt, as Thomas Jefferson said “the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants” and they will have their time again, and will usher in more chaos as they are in service to chaos, unless reaction occurs and human judgment and cosmos is recovered.