The collective has to organize

Short and incidental movements can do with minimal organisation. But a peoples’ movement of any length of life needs permanent networks, that is, more or less permanent groups with dense contacts between the participants.

This organisation is necessary for several reasons.
- It is necessary for articulation. Much organised communication between the members is needed to make them able to jointly articulate the identity and aim of the movement, get an ample and correct information about the situation, and meet the disinformation of the adversary.
- It is necessary for mobilization. Great, assembled resources are needed to reach the potential support, and also a social context that can carry a movement over momentary reverses.
- It is necessary for planning of actions.
- But above all, it is unavoidable because you must continuously able to carry out the collective rites that make the movement collective feeling strong and able to act. Individuals who only meet on facebook settles for whining.

Organising is the resource of the poor. But it isn’t easy to organise.

Organisation is facilitated by earlier organizing. The more and denser networks there are within the conflict category since earlier, the easier it is to build new ones for new purposes. This is also true for networks that are so informal that they may rather be called ”social spaces”, for example workplaces, neighbourhoods and local communities; the denser these are, and the more independent they are of adversaries’ spaces, the easier they are to organise. Labour movements have for example found it easier to organise and be efficient in big industries than in small workshops. Local urban movements fint it easier to organize of they have for example a house of culture as a base. A collective “we” is not easy to imagine. A whole repertoire of meetings, collective rites and a shared collection of sacred things are needed, not least a shared locality. A facebook account is not enough.

But there is a snag to organizations.

Each formal organisation is a step away from the spontaneous expressions of life, and with that also a step away from what the peoples’ movements are there to defend. Particularly, four problems or dilemmas have been observed, dilemmas of the ”ends are corrupted by the means” type.

The conflict between democracy and quick decisions. In a peoples’ movement democracy isn’t just a means – the lay members know best which is their goal – but also a goal in itself, as a model of the ”good society”. But meanwhile, power to decide has to be centralised so that the organisation be able to use its complete strength swiftly in a conflict. This centralisation has often as a consequence that creativity decreases – too few people become key persons, monopolising attention and choking all ideas from others. This is a conflict that has no obvious good solutions.

Power concentration. The aim of organising is to manage communication between the participants, and inevitably the people in key positions can gather illegitimate power in manipulating the communication to their own profit. This has in liberal as well as anarchist tradition become an argument against all organising – but the problem is probably worse in the kind of informal organizing anarchists prefer.

Bureaucratization. This is a special case of power concentration, implying that employed functionaries get more and more influence. Remuneration of certain functions is often unavoidable. But here lies a real and important trouble. Firstly, remuneration quickly causes high fixed costs, forcing constant mobilizations of resources for no particular aims. Secondly, and more important, an employee have other aims than the lay member – good employment and fixed organisational structures become more important than the official aim.

Organisational division. The heterogeneous organisations of peoples’ movements has often been seen as a weakness. Internal bickering and the opportunity it gives to the adversary to divide and rule have often been emphasized, and lately so called niche behaviour has been observed from small, secluded NGOs that pick the best plums without taking responsibility for the whole. But there may also be a source of strength in division (”constructive disagreement”) – mobilizations can be broader if particular interests within the conflict collective have an opportunity to organise separately, the democratic discussions can be more open, and there is even an opportunity to create a useful division of work where radical groups frighten the adversary to meet the demands of the moderates.