What Power Do We Want?

It isn't easy to think about the kind of power we want, especially when we believe in a freedom that is opposed to any kind of authoritarianism. It becomes even more difficult because, over the centuries of human history, the word power itself has been contaminated with notions of authority and domination.

Frequently when power is discussed, it is referred to as the power of those who govern, those who maintain their power through the appropriation of common treasures--such as land and natural resources--for their own interests. This story has been repeated since prehistoric times, when tribal communities became sedentary and began to enter into disputes over land with their neighbors, occupying territories by force, expelling people, and appropriating natural resources and even human beings into slavery. At this stage in human development, wars also began to occur.

The scenario continues into the present day, in which a few multinational and transnational corporations control economic and political power, and place the rest of the world at their feet. The globalized world is their territory and they move through it searching for markets and for cheap labor to exploit. More and more, everything becomes subordinated to their obsessive desire for wealth and profit.

This kind of power is based on control by the few, egotism, individualism, competition, the exercise of violence on all levels, and exploitation.

However, another type of power has also existed throughout the history of humankind. Thanks to this other kind of power unjust situations have been transformed. In the face of death, this other power manifests itself as the power of life. Faced with the destruction of wars and violence, it emerges as a constructive force. In the face of individualism, it exists in collective and solidarity efforts.

Nonviolent leader Mohandas Gandhi said that the power to change resides in the people. Similarly, some Eastern philosophies assert that the power to change comes from within ourselves. These beliefs refer not only to collective power but also to individual power. Change at both levels is needed because the dominant power has sought to put external obstacles in the way of our freedom (in order to dominate us) and it has lodged internal obstacles (as false values) in our way. These internal obstacles--patriarchy, individualism, egotism, competition, materialism, discrimination, the instinct to consume (which has damaged the environment so severely)--sometimes impede us far more than the external ones. We have been trained for submission and passivity, so that we obey and do not rebel against the power exerted over us. On occasion, many of these false values have represented the greatest hurdles in the way of social and political revolutions. We have also been brainwashed to believe that the only way to have power is to impose our will on the next person.

The power to transform

But there is another concept of power, based on the capacity that each one of us--as human beings--has within us the capacity for great creativity and richness. Each person is capable of different types of power, even if that power sometimes lies dormant. Those of us who are nonviolent and anti-authoritarian believe, not in the power of domination, but in the power of freedom. We believe in the power to make decisions autonomously and solidarity with others. We believe in the power to transform situations of injustice through the power of working side-by-side. We believe in becoming conscious and raising consciousness in others, because the power to change resides within us.

We can take away power from the corporations by consuming less or differently--choosing carefully what we consume, buying from small and independent producers and not from large companies. We can refuse to pay taxes that prop up corrupt governments who abuse our rights or attack other nations or sell arms that increase conflicts. We can reclaim or occupy land that has been appropriated by the few and cultivate and use it for the benefit of ordinary rural people who work it. The Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Movement) has done this in Brazil as have other indigenous people in different countries.

One's entire personal and social life can be developed in such a way as to avoid any type of collaboration with this power for domination. This power tries to appropriate our own power, for example, the power of production. In the process, our own powers are diminished. If we could act with total freedom, we could do so much more.

Power corrupts

We do not believe that we solve our problems by taking power characterized by domination, or by turning the dominated into the dominators. This kind of power corrupts. Its values and behaviors become internalized, and show themselves in the actions that follow. We have too many examples of revolutions that took power, but soon reserved it to a small group who came to dominate the rest.

For us, power is synonymous with creative action and transforming situations, making the most of resources and improving human relations for the benefit of all. It is about creating organizational forms that seek different objectives that enable individual and collective goals to be met in a way that is pluralist and horizontal. We work to build organizations in which all play a part and share decision-making, with respect for one another.

Not large corporations, but small. Not economics, politics, and society on the macro scale, but on the local level. Rather than the state, the community; and instead of centralization we look for decentralization and diversification.

Cecilia Moretti lives in Argentina and is Vice-Chair of War Resisters International.

Translation: Lucia Brandi.