'A civilisation that genuinely reflects all that human beings long for and aspire to can only be created on the basis of each person's freely acknowledged power to decide on each of the many questions that affect his life.'
In the 40 years since he wrote those words in the first issue of his journal Resurgence, John Papworth has not wavered from that belief. Village Democracy passionately restates his argument for radical decentralisation of power as the only answer to the current crises in politics, trade, ecology, and international affairs. What follows here is an extract from Village Democracy:
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It is one of the ironies of contemporary events that in some relatively well-to-do countries some well intentioned idealists have helped to popularise a slogan abjuring 'Make Poverty History'. They appear to be quite unaware that we are on the threshold of one of the most devastating disasters ever to have afflicted humanity in all its history, a disaster in which millions, and probably billions, are going to be victims of famines, wars and diseases. This is not guesswork but a reference to events already in train, the work of forces far too enormous to be controlled by anyone for anything. How? This raises the question 'If localisation is our route, how do we set, about traversing it?' It is indeed the question of the hour.
How? How, for that matter do we proceed to make any changes at all that are likely to prove effective in checking, far less reversing, our current Gadarene rush to a precipice of unmitigated disaster? It will help perhaps if we take note of our current practice in seeking change. Anyone seeking to act today can be counted upon to be invited, indeed urged, to join an organisation. Since it will generally be a national, centrally organised, mass organisation, he will at once be confronted with all the dangers, failures and ineffectualities of any mass organisation as indicated above.
Or he will be invited to subscribe to a publication, one with such a huge readership it will carry all the same considerations of one individual as a member of a mass seeking to influence a centrally run body. Or it will be one of such tiny outreach it only reaches a limited body of those already converted to the cause and who essentially are simply talking to each other.
Or he will be invited to join massive street demonstrations of protest concerned to express disapproval of a particular, and generally transient, governmental policy move, perhaps a war, a new tax, a new weapon, genetic engineering or whatever. Often these protests
are focused on some abstraction such as 'peace', not something likely to gain much attention from the passive millions of our mass membership societies, or to be of more than passing effect.
Such moves spring from an essentially 19th Century mindframe, as do proposals for letter-writing campaigns to members of parliament, or for mass parliamentary lobbying. They are akin to seeking a cure for a diabetic condition with a sugar-based diet. Another recent move involved urging M.P's to set up a special ministry of 'peace'! One having all the gallant insouciance of a request to the Federation of British Butchers to establish a branch of The Indo-Pakistan Vegetarian Society.
All such moves are the product of countless individuals who are aware of the dangers we now confront, individuals often imbued with an uncommon degree of disinterested idealism and of a readiness freely to devote time, resources and even their lives to the great cause, whilst lacking the most rudimentary appreciation of the real nature of the problems confronting them. They seem to share a common assumption that in political and economic affairs the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line, and they proceed on it in defiance of all the lessons of failure and ineffectuality that now stare them in the face.
They fail to grasp that the problem is not in itself war, or capitalism, or global economic brigandage, or this or that president or prime minister. Is a crisis of power, power of such huge aggregates that it is beyond our control. It is running amok and defying all moral principles that may check its course, defying all the accumulated moral wisdom of former ages, defying rationality, common sense or regard for the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants, both present and of all generations to come. And since it is above all a crisis of power it needs to be at the top of the agenda to determine how power may be restored to human control if events are not to provoke a general nemesis over all our endeavours.
Extract from Village Democracy, John Papworth (12 December 1921 - 4 July 2020)
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