Cover of the paperback edition
(Profile Books, 2000)
I.
Until last night [1], I had never heard of Robert Greene - the American author who has written bestselling books on power and seduction whilst, ironically, understanding nothing of either concept in anything other than a conventional and old-fashioned manner that appeals to the type of reader who is naively looking to take back control.
His most famous work is The 48 Laws of Power (1998), which has sold over 1.2 million copies in the US alone and been translated into 24 languages.
It's very popular, apparently, with Hollywood celebrities, prison inmates, and business leaders who share an equally simplistic view of the world as the author and don't really care about formulating a philosophically sophisticated and radical model of power as it operates today.
It will also appeal to the kind of idiot who asserts that what Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651 was true then, is true now, and will always be forever true as power and human nature are unchanging, essential realities.
Foucault will be spinning in his grave and Baudrillard laughing his head off in a virtual heaven ...
II.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that Greene’s cratology is based on an archaic, 16th-century model that conceives of power as a kind of commodity - some sort of magical force - that sovereign individuals can capture, hoard, and wield over others.
Between them, Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard blow this metaphysical fallacy apart and render it obsolete. Each in their own manner, they show that it's deluded to assume a subject or player who stands outside the matrix of power and somehow manipulates it.
For Foucault, power is fundamentally relational and discursive - not a thing in itself. He demonstrated how it is never possessed; it is exercised. Operating through institutions, modern power is woven into the very fabric of society and produces subjects - shaping their bodies, behaviours, and pleasures.
Greene's master strategist - whether they choose to conceal intentions or court attention - is manipulating nothing; they are just as much a function born of the system of neoliberal capitalism as everyone else. Just as we are spoken by language, so we are played by the game.
Baudrillard, meanwhile, goes even further than this - telling us not only to forget Hobbes, but forget Foucault as well ...
For Baudrillard, power is not merely decentralised, it has been dissolved into hyperreality. The 21st century is not the same as the 17th century or even the 19th and early-mid 20th century. We have entered the era of simulacra and simulation in which signs, symbols, and media representations have replaced physical reality and power in the traditional sense - just like sex - no longer exists.
In sum: the laws of power - much like the hypervisible signs of sex in a pornified culture - exist purely to disguise the fact that both power and sex have disappeared even as anchorage points.
That's doubtless why Greene - who is not a fool - attempts to offer no definition of power in his work; he knows he'd be attempting to describe an absence or void - that the laws possess no signified to refer back to and are essentially themselves empty of meaning. In a very literal sense, Greene's book is nonsense - and a form of nostalgia.
In other words, his 48 laws - which are really just historical observations mixed with anecdote - simulate a lost world where individual actions still have deterministic weight and value. In reality, the systems of global finance, algorithms, and media networks are so vast and chaotic that no individual player can direct or understand them.
The person who boasts of being empowered is really just a roleplaying fantasist in a virtual environment. And, arguably, AI simply serves to sustain them in this fantasy.
III.
Now, some of you will be thinking that if Foucault and/or Baudrillard are right, then why do so many people rave about The 48 Laws of Power and why is Greene hailed as this great guru?
I could simply say it's because the majority of people are unintelligent - and yes, that includes the famous artists and public personalities known to have read, referenced, or been influenced by the book [2] - but I'll resist the urge to do so and suggest, rather, that it's because Greene offers a comforting, regressive fantasy in a world that is increasingly complex.
He informs his readers that the world isn't an anonymous, inhuman network, but a competitive arena - part royal court, part corporate boardroom - in which, if you follow his 48 rules, you too can be a winner ...
Notes
[1] This post was inspired - if that's the right word - by a talk at Christian Michel's 6/20 Club by Dr Jennifer Davis Taylor (6 October 2026) on Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power (1998). Neither a straight reading of the text nor a critical review as such, the talk was a kind of strategic interpretation in relation to Dr Taylor's experiments with AI and her prolonged battles with the IRS.
[2] Such figures include: hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, who has frequently referenced and praised the book's strategic principles; music producer and fashion designer Kanye West, who has cited the book as a major influence on how he views fame, power, and industry dynamics; and the American rapper 50 Cent, who loved The 48 Laws of Power so much that he collaborated directly with Robert Greene to write The 50th Law (2009).
Musical bonus: nothing to do with the book, but whenever I hear the number 48 I always think of this song by The Clash (taken from their eponymous debut album (CBS, 1977): '48 Hours' and was humming it most of the train journey home after the 6/20.
