Unlocking The Authority From Within: Open_Notes 26

we must believe in the possibility of creating a new social model; the only thing is that we now have to begin afresh; the former attempts to achieve common rights, the unions, the labor halls, decentralization, the federative system, all are gone; the perverse use that has been made of them has destroyed them; the matter is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent; our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable - nothing is left; and this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent - our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.

this is the result of techniques; we cannot speak of a technocracy, for technicians are not formally in charge; nevertheless, all the power of government derives from techniques, and behind the scenes technicians provide the inspiration and make things possible - there is no point here in discussing what everybody knows, namely, the growth of the state, of bureaucracy, of propaganda (disguised under the name of publicity or information), of conformity, of an express policy of making us all producers and consumers, etc.; to this development there is strictly no reply; no one even puts questions; the churches have once again betrayed their mission, the political parties play outdated games - it is in these circumstances that anarchy is the only serious challenge, as the only means of achieving awareness, as the first active step; the more the power of the state and bureaucracy grows, the more the affirmation of anarchy is necessary as the sole and last defense of the individual, that is, of humanity - at the beginning of the 21st century, our giving up the illusion of control and paradoxically shouldering the burdens of responsibility and ambiguity, may be the beginning of our moral redemption and creative liberation [our challenge now is to follow the Word's example, who became the Lord God, Jesus the Christ, by giving up power, but not giving up responsibility]. -- [Notes 23-26] [based on Jacques Ellul, author "Anarchy from a Christian Standpoint" - Anarchist Library, with [inserts]]

Unlocking The Authority From Within: Open_Notes 26