by Paul Cudenec
The root cause of our separation lies in the power which has been accumulated by a criminal ruling clique.
The classic form taken by this violent and thieving entity is the state, but it uses other guises.
When states expand they become empires. When an empire has expanded to embrace everything, everywhere, it has become a global tyranny.
Whatever name power gives to its physical structure – nation, union of nations or world order – this will always be a weapon wielded, from above, against the people.
The bigger and more powerful this weapon, the wider the control it can exert and the greater the damage it can inflict.
Our first priority in rediscovering our withness will therefore have to be a rejection of this power and its vehicles of oppression.
If this rejection happened in stages, the first stage would necessarily be a decentralization of power from the global level at which it is currently exercised.
But we can’t stop there. The decentralization has to go right down through the whole of society to the extent that it amounts to a reversal in the direction of power.
Instead of power imposed on those below by those above, we would see power emerging from the grassroots in the shape of an empowerment which resists all attempts to control and exploit.
We have to see through the lie that we are incapable of running our own lives and communities in the way that we see fit, forget any notion that our decision-making role can be safely handed over to “democratically-elected representatives”.
Jacques Ellul points out that members of the political class, divided into parties which seem to be constantly at war with each other, are essentially working together to defend their class status: “And as long as supposedly democratic countries have a political class, they can never have any real politics and real democracy”.
This piece is an extract from my book The Withway: Calling us home. I will be reading from and discussing this work, along with The Great Racket: the ongoing development of the criminal global system, at a one-off event organised by Real Left in London on Sunday June 18 2023, from 5pm. Both tomes are available to buy, as well as being among the free pdfs downloadable from the Winter Oak books page.
