Eliminating Power

LORD ACTON was quite right. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is scientific truth, not homespun wisdom. It has been verified by hard scientific research. Power brings out human evil. History proves it, over and over again, including current history. The world is a miserable madhouse because enough people have enough power, and are thus sufficiently corrupt, to make it so, a madhouse full of violence, disease, poverty, and all the rest. One solution, a step in the right direction, would be to remove the excessive power of the excessively powerful, and redistribute it among the masses, thus rendering everyone equally, modestly, harmlessly powerful. When people have power over other people, bad things happen. Humans abuse power automatically, by trying to use it for personal advantage. Conflict results. there are better ways to organized society and human activities than coercion. The answer is actual democracy, everywhere, including and particularly in the workplace. Many social scientists, including the great Noam Chomsky, advocate for the elimination of all forms of authority and coercive power. Chomsky likes his job at M.I.T>, because the faculty, himself included, runs the various departments, largely without close administrative oversight. As he says, the inmates run the asylum. He should know, he's been at M.I.T. sixty two years. Not bad for a socialist anarchist.