ABSTRACT
Ellul's message can be stated simply enough: the essential political illusions are first, that the people control the operations of the State: second, that people at least participate in the operations of the State; and third, that political solutions are available to all social problems. Ellul is counselling resistance to bureaucracy and dehumanization or acceptance of the inevitable, working to break political illusions by political methods or by abandoning politics for the private life. Ellul must have been painfully aware of the dilemmas he sets up, since in a special preface to the English translation, he seeks to clarify his position. Ellul is left with an elite model of the modern state, and more profoundly, with the problem of what ordinary men can do about this Leviathan. His answer is that to "dissipate the political illusion", we must "develop and multiply tensions". This conflict model is to be stimulated by a juxtaposition of "private life" versus "political life".
