Quote of the day: Tyranny of structurelessness

A quote about how an unstructured movement might be tyrannical.

Quoth Socialist Action

Often anarchist movements are much more undemocratic than socialist parties, because they lack the democratic procedures to make majority decisions. Instead you get the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ – where the best speakers (or the loudest!), those with the best informal clique links, are able to manipulate and dominate the movement.

Leadership has a way of always enterring into the equation wether you want it or not. The trick is of course to recognise that it will be there and find ways to make it accountable.


2 thoughts on “Quote of the day: Tyranny of structurelessness”

    1. Interesting article. Thanks.

      Putting aside their baseless digs against Marx and their fawning over Bakunin, the article was more interested in feminism rather than arguing this particular point. The author does make some good arguments and I agree that one big fucking party is not necessary the solution either.

      The thing is that there needs to be some kind of structure even among the small groups. Friendship will not cut it when politics is involved and those "elites" will certainly come into play. The author engages in some wishful thinking in extroling the benefits of friendship based organization that would remove the need for anything else. The failure and dissolution of many Anarchistic communes the world over should give pause for consideration to this idea.

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