#organizing strategy

[dipperdesperado]

notes toward taxonomies of social change tactics

Changing the world is hard. Creating equitable and egalitarian social relations have proven difficult to create. The path forward isn’t necessarily clear, but I have some general inclinations about how we should frame our approach. We should avoid a traditional approach, where we just try to turn things back to “how they used to be”. We instead should wrestle with present and past ideas to create the best possible course for the future.

This is super important for tactics. Depending on where you lie on ideological lines, you might be super into some tactics over others. I’d say, once we have a basic idea of our visions and values (and some ethics), we can try to pick some tactics from what’s available, and decide how to execute from there. from there. This post will mostly be gesturing towards a way to categorize tactics to decide what you will think will be useful based on the context.

So, I think some useful variables for any given tactic are:

Level of visibility or publicity. How aware will people be of this? How “viral” will it be?

Legality. How much trouble will you get in with the law?

Directness. How far are you from the issue? Is this a direct action, or do you have to go through intermediaries?

“Violence” or confrontation. How confrontational is this with oppressive systems?

Organizational structure. What kinds of organizational structures can facilitate this action?

Intended impact/likely result.

Current feasibility. Given your current power level, are you able to pull this action off?

Risks. What are the dangers with this idea?

Benefits. What can be gained if this tactic yields successful?

You can look at any given tactic, rank them based on these categories, and based on your strategy and analysis, decide if it’s something that you want to do. Depending on the situation, you can use as many or as few variables as you want.

I’ll end with an example of using this to categorize certain tactics, with a specific selection of variables.

Above Ground Tactics a. Legalist Tactics

Peaceful protests

Petitions and letter-writing campaigns

Lobbying and advocacy

Public speeches and rallies

b. Illegalist Tactics

Civil disobedience

Sit-ins and occupations

Blockades and disruptions

Nonviolent direct action

Underground Tactics a. Legalist Tactics

Covert research and information gathering

Whistleblowing

Strategic media campaigns

b. Illegalist Tactics

Sabotage and property destruction

Hacking and cyber-attacks

Underground publications and propaganda

This is just a start. I think that something like this can be useful so that we can have a way to gauge our tactics in the context that we plan to apply them. Hopefully, this can be part of an interesting tactical/strategic discussion.

[rotzaprachim]

im shaking every single student organizer and screaming that they need to separate a demand to divest from arms funding from the demand for a university to cut off all contact with Israeli and Israeli-American scholars and students, a demand which no university will agree to because implementing it would in many cases be very illegal

[serpentface]

Interview Question for Etsushir:

What was the vibe like as a foot soldier during the suppression of the North Finn Rebellion? Did it feel doomed from the start or did it only fall apart once the Odomache was assaulted and killed?

[watermelinoe]

"i advocate for political violence" <- person scrolling social media in bed

[botaniqueer]

Even though I always vote blue as a concession (and also because I'm easily guilted while also absolutely despising the democrats), I'm understanding of folks voting third party and I'm chill with people voting for whoever as long as it's not Trump or RFK, but a criticism I do have of third party voters is that a lot of them still have the problem the main two parties have where they come across as thinking we can vote our way out of this without some of of meta-strategy after the voting is done, and they also get attached to their candidates.

Absolutely all presidents are bad for the same reason all cops are, in that the occupation itself is structurally harmful, and the attributes of the job override whatever personal attributes the person occupying it has– the most personally nice cop in the world still is obligated to remove a homeless person from a bench while protecting capital, otherwise they lose that cop position. This applies to Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, etc. An except to this is if the incumbent fully intends to dismantle the position, but it's exceedingly hard to gain the position with this goal, and keeping the job longer enough to successfully execute it without the job changing or compromising the person first.

As mentioned in other posts, the absolute minimum job of the US president is to maintain the suppression of a collection of 500+ ethnic groups, and prevent them from having true agency or full access to the land. If this isn't maintained, the United States literally can't keep existing in a meaningful way and ends up evaporating. This will become Jill Stein or Cornell West's job if they are elected, same as when Bush or Biden have the job.

Actually using electoralism as a strategy requires good organizing for after the candidate is elected, and specifically not getting attached to them and thinking of them purely as a means to an end. Liberation and the position of the presidency are inherently at odds, so there will be times you will need to fight against your own candidate. The Democrats are notorious for getting attached despite using the "you're not marrying them!" refrain, shushing people for saying anything vaguely critical.

The metaphor I think of is dungeon crawling roguelike games, or any other game where you choose branching paths in that you're choosing the challenges you think you're best equipped to deal with, but you do still have to deal with them. You can't do what the democrats do and lay down arms immediately after choosing the more favorable path, just being it's better than Trump, and I expect the same from third party voters as well as to not be like the DNC. In the unlikely case in which a third party candidate gets elected, there still has to be a struggle, otherwise the United States and other settler nations will continue to persist and hurt others, even if things are better for most settlers, and there will always be the likelihood of things ending up back where we are now if we don't follow through.

[dailyanarchistposts]

The question of organisation

How do we coordinate with one another, comrades and beyond, in order to transform society? The history of anarchism – especially its most revolutionary moments – is rich with examples of large, formal organisations that concentrated most or all aspects of the struggle within a single structure. These were organisations of synthesis, some of which still exist: they promote a specific political programme, hold periodic congresses to make unified decisions, and aim to serve as a mediator between power and the masses. However, it would be a big mistake for anarchists to place such an organisation – indeed, the route of formal organisation altogether – at the centre of revolutionary struggle today. At the very least, the option should be considered only in light of some major risks.

Consider, for one, the central tension of any anarchist organisation: the trade-off between size and horizontality. The larger an organisation becomes, the more hierarchy becomes necessary to maintain its basic functions – in other words, the more quantitatively successful the organisation, the less anarchist it can be. This is something no amount of conscious procedures, such as consensus decision-making or a rigid constitution, can successfully alleviate. As a matter of necessity, any organisation incorporating thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of members can maintain direction and coherence only at the cost of extensive specialisation. In particular, those tasks that command the most influence – mediation, accounting, publicity – begin to stagnate in the hands of a few experts, either implicitly or explicitly. And what a sorry outcome that offers: any large anarchist organisation soon becomes incapable of prefiguring the very world it’s supposed to be building, the principle of nonhierarchical association relegated to a mere abstraction. If there’s any doubt on this point, that can only be because the vast majority of anarchist organisations remain woefully small nowadays. An honest look at the towering bureaucracy of the CNT in Spain during the 1930s – the largest anarchist organisation there’s ever been, incorporating a million and a half members – provides an unambiguous picture.

The link between formal organisation and hierarchy runs deeper yet; besides internal hierarchies, a second major problem concerns external ones. Built into the logic of the organisation of synthesis is the hidden assumption that ordinary people are incapable of organising themselves. Society is split between the passive masses on the one hand, and the enlightened revolutionaries on the other; the role of revolutionaries cannot be to engage horizontally with the rest of the population, but instead to approach them from the point of view of recruitment or education, to make them one of us. All potential social realities are distilled into a single way of doing things, as if we alone hold the one true set of revolutionary aims and principles. Such a monolithic approach was never realistic, much less so today: honestly speaking, most people will never see the need to join our organisation, to stomach all the long meetings and tedious subculture. The 21st century has ushered in a human condition that’s unfathomably complex, calling for a much richer diversity of organisational forms than the “one big union” model that worked so well in the past. That means opening ourselves up to a more pluralistic notion of struggle, one that abandons any notions of revolutionary primacy, especially that of the organisation of synthesis.

It isn’t even as if what formal organisations lack in principle they make up for in pragmatism. Merely in terms of their capacity to actually engage in struggle, the organisation of synthesis has proven ineffective. Any structure of significant size must spend the bulk of its time and energy merely on maintaining itself, the task of physically confronting power always coming second. Meetings are now insufferably long, and the only viable collective decisions have become increasingly timid and legalistic, members always going for the lowest common denominator just so everyone can agree. Having succumbed to the quantitative game of putting recruitment before all else, reputation has become a prime virtue, and combative actions are normally condemned in the name of not upsetting public opinion. Compromise and conciliation are instead always favoured by the emerging bureaucracy, the rank and file of the organisation betrayed time and time again. Nor could it be any other way: with obvious leaders, headquarters, and membership lists, the threat of state repression is forever present, severely limiting the scope of militant activity. What you’re left with, therefore, after funnelling so much time and effort into a grand synthesising effort, is a lumbering, introspective mass that can be used for little more than putting the brakes on real struggle.

With this critique in mind, some would respond that the risks posed by the organisation of synthesis are indeed a necessary evil. Perhaps this route offers us something quite indispensable, namely, the prospect of unity itself? The nation state towers over us more ominously than ever, its military, police force, and repressive technology contained within a single, cohesive structure. It might seem like folly not to build our own structure, rigid and undivided, to contend with power on its own terms – an organisation stronger and more unified than the state itself.

However, the problem with taking unity as an end it itself, rather than simply as a tool to be applied depending on the situation, is that it actively invites the concentration of power. Any structure that fancies itself to be building the new world in the shell of the old can only turn out to be a state in waiting. Remember that social hierarchy, besides being localised in certain physical objects, is also a state of mind; it’s always seeking to revive itself, and nobody is immune to the threat, anarchists included. We need not repeat the painful lessons of the past: there’s never been a large organisation of synthesis that hasn’t also been stale and bureaucratic, even subtly authoritarian, functioning like a political party to the extent it grows in size, ultimately favouring to collaborate with power rather than destroy it. This is no attempt to denigrate some of the most inspiring moments of anarchist history, but we also need to learn some hard lessons; let’s not forget the integration of the CNT into the government during the Spanish Civil War, to the extent that even an anarcho-syndicalist trade union ended up running its own forced labour camps.

Fortunately, though, this critique warrants no strategic compromise. In short, the quality of unity is essential only for those movements attempting to seize power rather than dismantle it. Amongst Marxists, liberals, and fascists alike, unity is the vital ingredient of their organising, the intention almost always being to assume the functions of the state in one sense or another. Without unity, the state is inconceivable; such a complex structure can only function properly when operating in a centralised way, forming a robust whole that maintains cohesion by relaying orders to the different parts. Any genuine shows of diversity are a threat to its integrity, because they undermine the singularity of the social body, lessening the capacity for a single will to be imposed upon it. But remember just how little applicability this framework has to our own desires: the point isn’t to emulate the state, as if to treat it as a rival, but instead to destroy it. And for this project a fundamentally different logic is required.

Here’s an idea: as far as effective libertarian struggle is concerned, a high degree of multiformity is the essential ingredient. There’s much to be said for social movements that are messy and fragmented, even to the extent that you’re not looking at a single movement any more, but many different ones with fuzzy lines between them. Building strong links between different fronts of the struggle is essential for encouraging one another to go further, yet the circulation of energies must also remain decentralised, diffuse, or else risk denying vigour to key areas of engagement. The repressive task undertaken by power – by the media, especially – will always be to sculpt us into a cohesive subject, something with discernible leaders and demands, which can thus be easily crushed or assimilated. This is why the struggle must always prize a diversity of tactics and perspectives, empowering all participants to fight on their own basis, and for their own reasons, yet nonetheless against a common enemy.

Multiform struggles are far too disjointed and unpredictable for the state to repress in a straightforward way, and also for the Left to co-opt. They’re more inviting to newcomers as well, offering massive variation of potential involvement, allowing everyone to find their niche without compromising. And multiform struggles, finally, are much more effective at going on the offensive, given that the structures of domination are nowadays far too multifaceted and complex – quite devoid of any centre – for a monolithic approach to successfully unhinge. It would be far better to avoid the fatal error made both by formal organisations and armed struggle groups, namely, to engage with the state symmetrically, in a frontal assault, which is precisely where it will always be militarily superior.

Often we see a split between comrades as a disaster, but that depends entirely on your perspective: diversity is only a curse only when crammed into the stubborn rubric of a movement demanding unity. Remember that it’s rarely the differences between us that cause conflict, but instead one’s refusal to respect them. Such differences are inevitable, and we should be thankful, too, because disagreement is one of the surest signs of vitality, if not of freedom itself. Especially with the struggle for total liberation – defined, in part, by the plurality of its concerns – these unavoidable differences can only be a blessing. The challenge is merely to nurture disagreement respectfully, bearing in mind that, despite the divergent methods we employ, each of these is ultimately grounded in a shared need to dismantle social hierarchy altogether.

* * *

This critique surely begs the question: if not formal organisation, what instead? For some time already, insurrectionary anarchists have been organising the attack mainly through small affinity groups, often incorporating around half a dozen (or fewer) comrades. Affinity here refers to reciprocal knowledge and mutual bonds of trust, as well as a shared project for intervening in society. Affinity groups are temporary and informal, incorporating no official members or branches, refusing to take numerical growth as a basic goal. One doesn’t “join” an affinity group any more than you join a group of friends; the act of signing up to an organisation is done away with, including the largely symbolic notion of involvement it offers. Theoretical agreement is often a good starting point for building affinity, but the vital thing is to find those with whom one can combine long-term trajectories for practical engagement – an ongoing process in which discussion is only the first step.

By remaining small and tightly-knit, affinity groups remain unhindered by the cumbersome procedures that inevitably come with organising as a mass. They can respond to any situation with utmost rapidity, continually revising the plan in light of unexpected developments, melting away whenever faced with unfavourable odds. This fluid, informal terrain of struggle is also immensely difficult for law enforcement to map out and undermine, especially when it comes to infiltration. A decentralised anatomy shouldn’t discourage groups from coordinating with one another horizontally, fostering the broader networks of friendship and complicity necessary to undermine power on a large scale. The point is only that affinity groups remain fully autonomous, in no way bound to sacrifice spontaneity for the sake of cohesion, always waiting for the green light from some higher body prior to taking action. Perhaps this description sounds familiar: anonymous, flexible, and leaderless, such is exactly the informal composition utilised with great success by the ALF/ELF. The main difference is that insurrectional struggle includes a broader range of activity, the question of how best to generalise revolt always taken into consideration.

In any case, large anarchist organisations are apparently a thing of the past, having disintegrated in unison with the workerist glue that once held them together. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. There’s still a very real risk of exactly the mindset underpinning the organisation of synthesis – the emphasis on uniformity and respectability, as well as the subtle mistrust of autonomous struggle – merely reinventing itself in whatever contemporary form, as it will always attempt to do. We saw exactly that manifest in the bureaucratic, centralising tendencies that stifled much of the energy of Occupy and Nuit Debout (most memorably, there were those who refused to condone absolutely anything that hadn’t first received permission from the general assembly). This insistence on sculpting a multiform population into a monolithic subject – in essence, the determination to lay down the law – is always lurking amongst movements with revolutionary potential. Perhaps it’s no exaggeration to say that such an attitude, writ large, is exactly what devoured the initial beauty of the 1789 French Revolution, 1917 Russian Revolution, and 2011 Egyptian Revolution alike. Almost all previous revolutions were defined at first by a spontaneous, ungovernable outpouring of discontent; once that energy lost pace, however, it was gradually remoulded into representational forms – elections, negotiations, bureaucracy – and its original content decisively choked out. Between these two phases, the possibility of a revolution that gets to the root of dismantling power, rather than merely reshuffling it, depends on eliminating this second phase completely. In its place, the first must be extended towards encompassing the whole of everyday life. Informal organisation facilitates this outcome to the highest degree, precisely because it promotes a terrain of struggle that is inconvertible to the functions of state power.

In any case, nothing offered here amounts to a complete blueprint. This is not a programme! Comrades might well decide, according to their local circumstances, that some degree of formal organisation remains indispensable for tasks such as getting new people involved, planning aboveground events, and procuring resources. Which is to say, once again, that the conclusion offered here is only a minimal one: formal organisations cannot be considered the locus of revolutionary struggle altogether, as may have been the case in years gone by. They must instead be ready to adopt a more modest, supportive role, sticking to objectives both specific and temporary, remaining eager to take a step back or even disband entirely if needed. Rather than falling back on outdated formulas, tired and inflexible, total liberation means embracing the fullest multiformity, wild and ungovernable – the only kind of energy capable of bringing social hierarchy to ruin.

[razzek]

Top 5 MOST useful tools for blind people just starting out

Top 5 most fave tools for the blind overall

Top 5 least useful

Top 5 fucking weirdest and/or funniest

This is a big ask and I will do my best to answer, with the caveat that I am just a single blind person with memory issues who doesn't remember everything my blind friends have told me. XD I am counting other people as tools in this list because a person with eyes sometimes is a handy tool for us. XD

Top 5 MOST useful tools for blind people just starting out 1. White cane 2. Blindness skills training through centers, government programs like Vocational Rehabilitation, Orientation & Mobility specialists, and anywhere you can find it 3. Membership with the National Talking Book Library aka NLS in your state (US); I think the UK is RNIB and Canada has one, not sure about other countries 4. Supportive family and friends and other blind people if you can find them 5. Screen reader (NVDA is free for Windows, iPhone has VoiceOver, Android uses TalkBack)

Top 5 most fave tools for the blind overall 1. White cane and/or guide dog 2. Text to speech, screen readers, audio books, audio described movies and tv 3. Accessible smart phones (often iPhone but Android is catching up) 4. Bump dots (stick-on tactile dots you put around your home) 5. Braille and refreshable braille displays/notetakers

Top 5 least useful 1. Sighted people inventing crap without talking to any blind people ("smart" canes, "smart" shoes, dangerous devices you hold in your only free hand that claim to tell you what's in front of you but actually don't, screen reader breaking "accessibility" overlays, etc...) 2. That ring which only shows one braille cell at a time (that's not how anyone reads) 3. Strangers giving/yelling vague directions ("It's right over there!", "Oh my god watch out for the stairs (that you are halfway down)!", giving directions to the guide dog who doesn't speak English or any language because they are a dog...) 4. Hot liquid measuring devices (always broken, the noise they make is so fucking loud it's caused me a lot more injury than just sticking my finger in the hot liquid, will wake up the neighbors) 5. All but one use case of AI claiming to be for the blind, at least as far as I've seen

Top 5 fucking weirdest and/or funniest 1. Ping pong balls (good for measuring hot liquids) 2. Funnels (really helpful for pouring liquids) 3. The lanyard strap that sticks to the back of your phone so you can wear it around your neck (looks silly, is incredibly useful) 4. White cane holster (yes it's a thing, I have at least three XD) 5. Things being organized Very Specifically (close your eyes and YOU try to find the remote after someone put it in a random place! XD)

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[monstrsball]

"1, 2, 3, eyes on me!"

Iwaizumi's not one who believes in love at first sight but he thinks he falls a little in love with Sugawara Koushi when he watches him effortlessly quiet a room full of elementary schoolers and professional volleyball players.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

My local anarkiddie zine distro collective got themselves blocked by the local chapter of BLM for spreading adventurist tactics that would instigate a fight at a protest announcement, and they got super pissy about it saying they were just spreading "basic protest safety" LOL

Many such cases

[dipperdesperado]

notes on class analysis beyond class reductionism

In which your favorite anarchist cherry-picks their favorite pieces of identity politics and syncretizes them with his favorite parts of sociological class analysis (with a focus on Marxian conceptions) and center-periphery theories of the same topic… for the sake of abolishing oppression.

Class and economic reduction are some of the worst theoretical and methodological mistakes that we can make in our analysis. Class reductionism is an understanding that the principal unit of analysis for analyzing social conditions is economic class. Other facets of social being, adorned with the dubious “superstructural”[1] labels are seen as unimportant to deal with. Economic reduction is about (1) seeing the “real”[2] determinants of social life as economic and therefore (2) understanding the “base”[3] of society as mechanically determining the elements that exist “superstructurally”. It’s an orientation that talks about inevitable moments of historical development, based on an analysis of the economic situation. When folks rail against Marxist analyses, this tends to be a recurrent target of critique. 

This approach has two big issues. While economics are important, and in some cases are good to see as “primary” in a vague sense[4], they don’t paint the full picture. Reality isn't just economic distribution, production, and consumption, even if we decide that the only “reality” we care about is human sociality. This thinking relatedly doesn't allow us to understand the full scope of what revolutionary potentialities exist by way of class analysis. Said otherwise, focusing solely on class analysis makes that mode have to do more lifting than it is capable of doing, rendering it ineffectual, like trying to make a fish win a footrace, just because it is really fast in the water. We can’t just focus on one variable or fact of interest in our analysis, if we want our analysis to capture a sense of complexity. We need the right tools for the right jobs. Alongside this, we have to always keep in mind that we exist in a dialectical relationship[5] with those tools. A separate can of worms can be opened up if we look at the ways that complex adaptive systems function—seeing the Cerberus of capitalism, modernity, and coloniality as such would illuminate that no one element of its functions is “primary”[6]. That kind of linear thinking only serves to encourage fruitless intellectual pursuits and failed revolutionary regimes. 

If the working class defined by a specific relationship with the means of production, and we have a class reductionist perspective, it can lead to us assuming ideals and extremes represent the whole[7]. We are trying to apprehend totalities with too limited of a dataset[8]. While class and economics are necessary, they are insufficient in an analysis of social conditions, and of the potential that exists for change along realistic[9] lines. 

One way for us to supersede these failure points is by way of a commitment to relationality. When I say this, I am referring to an understanding based in looking at the relationships between our loci of interest[10], in a way that prioritizes evidence (credible information sourced from the world) over hypotheses (or inductive, deductive, or abductive conclusions), with a hyper-critical and skeptical stance towards grand narratives. If there is such a thing, we, as far as we know, can only make approximations. While these can improve, even to the extent that our working models provide all that we need to engage in reality, they will always be models. This commitment isn’t modernist (building grand narratives) or postmodernist (critiquing all structures that exist and living within that critique, by way of being unable to surpass the object of critique). It is metamodernist: an orientation that is dialectical and syncretic, taking the critiques found from metamodernism seriously while believing in the existence of a reality, accessing it through a sober assessment of our capacities and limitations. 

If we want our theory, method, and practice to be based in what is by way of what we want to be, this is paramount. I see class and economic reduction as prioritizing hypotheses to rationalize with flattering evidence, rather than creating hypotheses that are based on evidence. 

A requisite part of this relationality is through having an analysis of positionality. This can be by way of intersectionality[11], interpenetration[12], and/or imbrication[13]. Positionality is an understanding of where you are located, socially, politically, and economically, by way of your identities, properties[14], and experiences. This is looking at the social hierarchies at play and seeing where you are at, in a given moment/period of focus. The "i-words" come in when we use that analysis to inform our practice, bound to a commitment to centering the marginalized. 

The center-periphery model as discussed by FARJ is a useful way to stretch class analysis, but mixing models, without explaining points of divergence before we converge can cause confusion. When we use the center-periphery model to discuss society, and an analysis that is based in intersectionality or similar frameworks talk about bringing the margins to the center, we are not asking for “representation” or “maintenance” of the structures social hierarchy as currently formatted. There is a tacit understanding embedded in this analysis that, if we are to, for example, desire a structure that empowers Black women to have multifaceted, sustaining experiences of freedom and self-determination, whatever we build would be radically different than what currently exists. This commitment is a practical way that we can “destroy” the centers of power. This is what actually allows us to (con)federalize[15] power. This is why understanding positionality is important. If each individual’s uniqueness is their own totality, having an understanding of the different elements, identities, and properties that make up who they are (in regards to it being relevant to the analysis) will allow us to see how we relate to power structures. This gives us an understanding of where to plant strategic and tactically effective action. In any given moment or situation, we might be able to take stock of if we are reinforcing or undermining concentrations of power rather than (con)federalizing of power. If, based on our social composition[16], the most marginalized folks don’t feel safe or heard, we’re doing something wrong in our practice that needs to be revised. 

To make sure we're clear, this is not to say we focus on identity “alone”. This is why we advocate for using economic and political properties along with identities in our understanding of positionality. We can't ignore any of these elements if we want a complete analysis, and centering the marginalized allows our practice to hold the most liberatory potential. Class analysis, which is what I'll call the focus of traditional/conventional leftism, broadly fixates on two things in my estimation: (1) how class interests align and contradict, leading to class conflict, class warfare, and the potentialities for abolishing class. In this vein, the other part of these potentialities is (2) how to build unity. I think that these are useful starting points, but present some issues. Since class analysis is relatively fixed and general rather than relational, it can easily lead to vulgar conclusions from the analysis, where we hyperfixate on specific, mythologized groups of folks that don't hold up to our expectations in reality. It also has the effect of the things we ask for being limited by a desire to build unity.

Unity, in this case, tends to be based on that overarching conception. “we should do this because of our objective class interests” type shit. Again, while it may be true that as economically dispossessed folks, it would be advantageous for us to have control over the means of production or whatever, that alone isn't connecting with the full breadth of how we experience our lives and has an almost Christianity-faith-based, “searching for salvation” vibe to it. “Follow me and I’ll set you free” type shit. It isn't specific enough, as classes aren't monolithic. We have to struggle through our differences, building solidarity based on a bottom-up understanding of shared needs and desires (and how those interact with and shape personal needs and desires). The unity method by way of the most general elements that unite folks is more top-down, simplifying reality in a way that isn't as useful when we're at the ground level. This makes authoritarianism the only real method of holding it together (as top down means easily lead to top down ends), creating weak movements that are vulnerable to outside actors agitating the differences that exist and are being ignored, widening fissures within the movement. Not to mention the way that people who intuitively or lucidly understand that they don't fit into that mythologized model and thus will not participate. I know that when I look at the labor movement, and see all White dudes (but I see many more kinds of embodiment when actually looking at workplaces), I feel like that’s not a place meant for me. 

If we want to have folks join our movements, we need to be more specific in our analysis, so that our practice is more accurate and aligns with the world as it is while enabling us to make it as we like. We should specify the conflicts and contradictions that exist in society so that we can see, across sectors and spaces, where the spaces for intervention can arise, or how to take advantage of the ones that exist. By having positionality and any of the “i’s” in mind, and by looking at facilitating expansive conceptions of desire[17], we can actually create movement spaces that are more holistic in their approach.

A way that this type of analysis becomes useful in multiple situations is by understanding how it can fractalize. For the sake of this conversation, we can work with the scales of Macro (class/umbrella identity), Meso (section), Micro (bloc), and Nano (individual). 

Macro is at the highest level. When looking at analyzing where someone is in society for the sake of liberatory change, the macro level is the most broad/shallow and common features of groups of people. When people talk about the rich, the proletariat, or any other classes, they are on the macro level. This is useful for us to understand “the meta”[18], and get into all of the stuff that class analysis illuminates: class antagonism, the ways that all of the -isms affect people in a broad sense, and how these things change over a broad timescale.

Meso is us zooming in a bit--instead of looking at just “classes”, used here to mean “types”, we start to understand “sections” of those classes using intersectionality and positionality with more specificity. Rather than just referring to Black people or working people, we may refer to Black young women or German working people. It is understanding that, while we are still at a high level, there is more specificity at play that is useful to have awareness of. Just like there are shared experiences of alienation from the Means of Production for all working class people, we can see how zooming in specifically allows us to see what that actually means for certain sections of whatever unifying element of a given “class”. This is able to let us know that not all workers/genders/racial communities are created monolithically, and within a given community there are sections that have their own interests due to their positionality. 

Micro is about looking at actual groups of actual people, seeing the blocs that exist within our subgroups. For example, if we're looking at Black folks, we can see how sections are composed, and we can look at the actual circumstances in an area of interest to see how different sections relate to one another, to see what contradictions are invisibilized by way of not zooming in enough. Rather than sticking at a higher level and saying that there should be unity solely due to one or two shared variables of intersection, there can be an understanding of how people are seen in society as is, with the capacity to try and shift those resonances and dissonances into more beneficial assemblages for the goals of liberation. If there are contradictions between people connected by variables found in the higher level/more general classes, we can start at a bloc level, building our way up towards people seeing and acting in their “class interests”.

Nano is zooming all the way in. It is understanding specific folks, and seeing their specific experiences intimated and imbricated by the above scales. It is easy, especially when trying to understand how to change society, to not look at individuals. But, ignoring individuals, the building blocks of society, will leave good materials on the cutting room floor. I think we should oscillate between more and less individual understandings, so that we can mutualize the relationships between individuals, collectives, and collectives of collectives.

It's worth noting that all of these are connected, and we move from one to another based on what we're trying to understand. If we're looking at the structure of society, then class analysis, in both meanings of the word, is useful. If we're trying to relate to each other as individuals, we need to think about things at that level, not eschewing an awareness of systemic dynamics. We run into a lot of issues if we don't make sure our method is well-suited to our problems that we're trying to understand.

If we can stretch the idea of class to not just be an economic thing, but to focus on positions in social hierarchies, that allows us to understand oppression on different scales from the interpersonal to the societal, and gives us room to think about what it means to be in one position or another. By framing this in ontologies and epistemologies of  Black feminisms, we come away with a flexible framework for analyzing those positions, and we can, in every situation, center the marginalized, so that we have a more specific, intentional way to expand our understanding of prefiguration and material solidarity. This points us towards uniting in ways that undermine different social hierarchies that reinforce one another. By having these tools at our disposal, we can create unified action through maximal prefiguration in our practice. If we are making something that works for the least privileged of us, we have much less work to do for the more privileged of us. This also ensures that those folks aren't left behind, the way that they can be when we don't do the work to zoom in enough. If they are at the “center”, there is no “center”. If there is a “center”, then there are marginalized people who are being ignored. 

Let’s try to concretize this with an example. Start anywhere in the process (or at any level of zoom). For clarity, we will start at the macro level. We have two classes, the exploiters and the exploited. We can then cut that up, by way of intersectionality and positionality, to see that each of these groups have subgroups that have different relations to their exploitation or exploiting. This allows us to know that broadly speaking, there are contradictions and tensions within these classes that allow us to either foster more mutuality or sow more division, depending on how we approach things. Once we are aware of this, we can zoom in more to see how, within these classes, there are blocs that add more detail to those contradictions. We can see that blocs of communities are not intrinsically unified by way of their identity[19], and this keys us into the intentionality that has to go into organizing unified action, which I recommend to be based on solidarity (bottom-up) rather than unity (top-down). We can then get to the individual level, where we try to unearth desire, in the expanded sense where someone cultivates their individuality, what I call ego, or what Lorde calls the erotic. From here, we can build back up, having a meaningful and actionable awareness of social composition that tells us how the social world exists. By way of our ideology[20] and theories[21] for how the world can change, we can develop practice that materializes into that change. 

[Notes]

[1] In Marxian theories, the superstructure is everything that sits atop the economic mode of production of society. It is everything not economic, from art, to culture, to politics, etc.

[2] As in reality, notating an importance in the physical. This is true in a broad sense, but people tend to leave out things like life belief systems and human action as important unless it relates with a very clear causality to this.

[3] The “economic foundation” of society.

[4] I’m pretty skeptical of focusing on economics unless you’re literally choosing to focus on economics, mainly because of all the ideological, theoretical, methodological, and practical baggage that comes from this. 

[5] We exist in a symbiotic (meant in the neutral sense, not the colloquial, “positive”/“beneficial” sense) process with the tools we create and deploy. As we shape the tools from our ideas, the tools shape us right back, pointing us to particular potentialities. 

[6] How can primacy exist when all of the elements operate together to create emergent outcomes? The closest we get is when, by way of our commitment to relationality, we see that certain axes of oppression rear their head in a pronounced way that is still propped up by the other axes. 

[7] This, when combined with things like Eurocentricity, leads to vulgar dynamics in political struggle, where, for example, “working class” ends up meaning “White working class”, even though POC are much more emblematic of the class.

[8] If we're going to make sweeping statements about society, we should either commit to philosophical inquiry (which doesn’t have the same need for “accuracy” in the scientific sense), or we should do rigorous analysis to understand our context, using phenomenology, sociality, history, science, and culture as our “raw” data.

[9] Changes that can actually happen in the most open sense, where we are not relying on supernatural or physics-defying feats of reality-warping for our goals. It’s a combination of inspiration and analysis, where we are simultaneously thinking about the exciting futures that we want and what we can do now to get there. This is distinct from how some employ “pragmatism”, asking people to “vote harder” or whatever. This is doing things that many people may see as idealistic or impossible, but are possible in actuality, which becomes easier to see as we move away from hegemonic understandings of potentiality.

[10] This is just a funny way of saying the stuff that we’re looking at. This could be anything: “object”, “subject”, “process”, “event”, “phenomena”, and/or “thing”.

[11] The way multiple identities intersect, creating phenomenological “coordinates” that are simultaneously similar to specific variables within that coordinate, but where that specific also creates a unique phenomenological experience that can only be dictated on its own terms.

[12] Seeing how different facets of identity are constantly shifting and bleeding into one another, based on different circumstances.

[13] Identities and social relations overlap and bump up against each other on the edges, and thus are able to be recognized as distinct but interconnected. This shows up in specific practical engagements, where a specific person’s identity, when compared to “normative” modes of being (cishet, white, male), impacts their experiences.

[14] I mean this in both senses of the word: economic property, and features. 

[15] (Con)federalism is a mode of social organization that stands in opposition to centralism. While centralism concentrates power within small groups of people and organizational bodies, (con)federalism distributes power to the grassroots level, and connects laterally and “vertically” with other organizational bodies to administer coordination. 

[16] The way a class is “composed”, through whatever collective experiences or positionalities unite everyone within. It is, based on a dialectical understanding of how the Cerberus is functioning, looking to see how we can (1) see what ways we are bound to the systems at play in a practical sense, and (2) find ways to holistically sever our selves from that binding, to create new relationships with each other, based on more communistic values. 

[17] Desire here is the (spiritual, emotional, physical, rational) needs, wants, and interests of an individual or a collective, in a given moment.

[18] I’m appropriating this term from gaming communities, meant there to talk about the toolset/features that are obviously advantageous to employ, so behavior tends to shift towards using those until the game is rebalanced towards fairness. In our case, we’ll focus on how the meta indicates relationships of power-over, leading to us needing to do the “rebalancing”. 

[19] Positionality tells us the ways that solidarity can develop by keying us into where people share or diverge in experiences based on the society in which they exist...it does not show were people's desires lie

[20] The word ideology has a negative connotation…but I think it is honest and useful. I mean it in the basic sense of our foundational assumptions and commitments, that are ideally evidence tested constantly, and revised if evidence demands it, but also allow us to continue working. 

[21] Our theories are the ideas that allow us to see if our ideology is accurate; it is the way that we build upon our foundation to see if it stands up to reality.

[stormandmoonlight]

two common talking points about non-voting from the left:

1. depriving the Democrats of your vote will show that you will not empower genocide and punish them for doing so

2. the Democrats will not be affected if the Republicans win power because they are the same class

does anyone else see a contradiction in terms here?

[lokisasylum]

LOL

So BangPD's "secret formula" for BTS' success is nothing but pure grooming & gaslighting of the members all these years into believing they were doing poorly in their homeland and weren't even popular in the west to make them WORK HARDER in order to "earn it".

When in reality BTS were already popular in both their country and the US before their "big breakout"?

And therefore Bongo feels PROUD of what he put them through cause now their success is "thanks to him".

Disgusting, but I'm not surprised.

I wanna say that I feel bad for all those armys & company stans who believe in his bastard and think he's been "the best thing to happen to BTS".

But sadly you can't stop a whole herd of cattle from mindlessly running out towards the edge of a cliff to their doom.

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all! Do you think a six year old who likes to draw would like one of those fabric roll-up colored pencil/marker/crayon organizers?

[highladyluck]

None of the book organization polls I have seen are adequate, so I made this one. I look forward to your commentary.

[dailyanarchistposts]

You and your friends already compose an informal organizational structure capable of tremendous achievements. Here’s the theory to go with that practice.

You will need ( tools or supplies ):

A circle of friends

Trust

Consensus

Secrecy

A good idea

Plans for different scenarios

Structures to respond to unexpected scenarios

A little courage (may be optional, but should be at hand just in case)

Action!

Subsequent discussion

Step 1

Chances are, even if you have never been involved in direct action before, even if this is the first radical website you have ever encountered, that you are already part of an affinity group—the structure proven most effective for guerrilla activities of all kinds. An affinity group is a circle of friends who, knowing each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and backgrounds, and having already established a common language and healthy internal dynamics, set out to accomplish a goal or series of goals.

An affinity group is not a permanent arrangement, but a structure of convenience, ever mutable, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project. Once assembled, this group may choose to be “closed,” if security dictates: that is, whatever goes on within the group is never spoken of outside it, even after all its activities are long completed. A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also participate in other affinity groups, break up into smaller affinity groups, and act outside the affinity group structure.

The size of an affinity group can range from two to, say, fifteen individuals, depending on the action in question; but no group should be so numerous that an informal conversation about pressing matters is impossible. You can always split up into two or more groups, if there are enough of you. In actions that require driving, the easiest system is to have one affinity group to each vehicle.

Affinity groups can be practically invincible. They cannot be infiltrated, because all members share history and intimacy with each other, and no one outside the group need be informed of their plans or activities. They are more efficient than the most professional military force: they are free to adapt to any situation; they need not pass their decisions through any complicated process of ratification; all individuals can act and react instantly without waiting for orders, yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. The mutual admiration and inspiration on which they are founded make them very difficult to demoralize. In stark contrast to capitalist, fascist, and communist structures, they function without any need for hierarchy or coercion: participation in an affinity group can be fun as well as effective. Most important of all, they are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction: small wonder whole squads of riot police have been held at bay by small affinity groups armed with only the tear gas canisters shot at them.

Affinity groups operate on the consensus model: decisions are made collectively, based on the needs and desires of every individual involved. Democratic votes, in which the majority get their way and the minority must hold their tongues, are anathema to affinity groups: if a group is to function smoothly and hold together, every individual involved must be satisfied. In advance of any action, the members of a group establish together what their personal and collective goals are, what their readiness for risk is (as individuals and as a group), and what their expectations of each other are. These matters determined, they formulate a plan.

Since action situations are always unpredictable and plans rarely come off as anticipated, an affinity group usually has a dual approach to preparing for these. On the one hand, plans are made for different scenarios: if A happens, we’ll inform each other by X means and switch to plan B; if X means of communication is impossible, we’ll reconvene at site Z at Q o’clock. On the other hand, structures are put in place that will be useful even if what happens resembles none of the imagined scenarios: internal roles are divided up, communication systems (such as two-way radios, or coded phrases for conveying secret information or instructions aloud) are established, general strategies (for maintaining composure, keeping sight of one another in confusing environments, or blocking police charges, to name some examples) are prepared, emergency escape routes are charted, legal support is readied in case anyone gets arrested. After an action, a shrewd affinity group will meet (again, if necessary, in a secure location) to discuss what went well, what could have gone better, and what comes next.

An affinity group answers to itself alone—this is one of its great strengths. Affinity groups are not burdened by the procedural protocol of other organizations, the difficulties of reaching accord among strangers or larger numbers of people, or the limitations of answering to a body not immediately involved in the action. At the same time, just as the members of an affinity group strive for consensus with each other, each affinity group should strive for a similarly considerate relationship with other individuals and groups—or, at the very least, to complement others’ approaches wherever possible, even if these others do not recognize the value of their contribution. People should be thrilled about the participation or intervention of affinity groups, not resent or fear them; they should come to recognize the value of the affinity group model, and so come to apply it themselves, from seeing it succeed and from benefiting from that success.

An affinity group can work together with other affinity groups, in what is sometimes called a cluster. The cluster formation enables a larger number of individuals to act with the same advantages a single affinity group has. If speed or secrecy is called for, representatives of each group can meet ahead of time, rather than the entirety of all groups; if coordination is of the essence, the groups or representatives can arrange methods for communicating through the heat of the action. Over years of collaborating together, different affinity groups can come to know each other as well as they know themselves, and become accordingly more comfortable and capable together.

When several clusters of affinity groups need to coordinate especially massive actions—for a big demonstration, for example—they can hold a spokescouncil meeting. In this author’s humble experience, the most effective, constructive spokescouncils are those that limit themselves to providing a forum in which different affinity groups and clusters can inform one another (to whatever extent is wise) of their intentions, rather than seeking to direct activity or dictate principles for all. Such an unwieldy format is ill-suited to lengthy discussion, let alone debate; and whatever decisions are made, or limitations imposed, by such a spokescouncil will inevitably fail to represent the wishes of all involved. The independence and spontaneity that decentralization provides are our greatest advantages in combat with an enemy that has all the other advantages, anyway—why sacrifice these?

The affinity group is not only a vehicle for changing the world—like any good anarchist practice, it is also a model for alternative worlds, and a seed from which such worlds can grow. In an anarchist economy, decisions are not made by boards of directors, nor tasks carried out by masses of worker drones: affinity groups decide and act together. Indeed, the affinity group/cluster/spokescouncil model is simply another incarnation of the communes and workers’ councils that formed the backbone of earlier successful (however short-lived) anarchist revolutions.

Not only is the affinity group the best format for getting things done, it’s practically essential. You should always attend any event that might prove exciting in an affinity group—not to mention the ones that won’t be otherwise! Without a structure that encourages ideas to flow into action, without friends with whom to brainstorm and barnstorm and build up momentum, you are paralyzed, cut off from much of your own potential; with them, you are multiplied by ten, or ten thousand! “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” as Margaret Mead wrote: “it’s the only thing that ever has.” She was referring, whether she knew the jargon or not, to affinity groups. If every individual in every action against the state and status quo participated as part of a tight-knit, dedicated affinity group, this revolution would be over in a few short years.

You don’t need to find a revolutionary organization to join to get active—you and your friends already comprise one! Together, you can change the world. Stop wondering what’s going to happen, or why nothing’s happening, and start deciding what will happen. Don’t just show up at the next demonstration, protest, punk show, traffic jam, or day at work in passive spectator mode, waiting to be told what to do. Get in the habit of trading crazy ideas about what should happen at these events—and of making those ideas reality!

An affinity group could be a sewing circle, a bicycle maintenance collective, or a traveling clown troupe; it could come together for the purpose of starting a local chapter of Food Not Bombs, discovering how to turn a bicycle into a record player, or forcing a multinational corporation out of business through a carefully orchestrated program of sabotage. Affinity groups have planted and defended community gardens, built and burned down and squatted buildings, organized neighborhood childcare programs and wildcat strikes; individual affinity groups routinely initiate revolutions in the visual arts and popular music. Your favorite band—they were an affinity group. It was an affinity group that invented the airplane. Another, composed of disgruntled Nietzsche enthusiasts, nearly succeeded in assassinating Adolph Hitler during the Second World War. One set up this website.

Step 2

For affinity groups and larger structures similarly based on consensus and cooperation to function, it is essential that everyone involved be able to rely on each other to come through on their commitments. When a plan is agreed upon, each individual in a group and each group in a cluster should choose one or more critical aspects of the preparation and execution of the plan and offer to bottomline them. Bottomlining the supplying of a resource or the completion of a project means guaranteeing that it will be accomplished somehow, no matter what. If you’re operating the legal hotline for your group during a demonstration, you owe it to them to handle it even if you get sick; if your group promises to provide the banners for an action, make sure they’re ready, even if that means staying up all night the night before because the rest of your affinity group never showed up. Over time you’ll learn how to handle crises, and who can be counted on in them—just as others will learn how much they can count on you.

Step 3

Although one of the rules of thumb for affinity groups is that they should not be so large as to need formal structures for discussions, larger meetings—between clusters of affinity groups, for example—may require them. Be warned: using such protocol unnecessarily will bog down discussions and alienate participants, and can even foster needless antagonism and drama. On the other hand, if an assembly shares good faith in a given approach and works out its details together, such structures can make group decision-making quicker, easier, and more responsive to the needs and interests of everyone involved. No system is better than the people who participate in it; make sure in advance that everyone is comfortable with the format you use.

In one common format, the discussion goes around a circle, each person taking a turn to speak. In another, suited better to larger gatherings, the group begins by agreeing on a facilitator, an individual who will help keep the discussion constructive and on topic. Another individual volunteers to “take stack,” keeping track of the order in which people raise their hands to speak; if people feel it is important to make sure different demographics represented in the group get equal time speaking, this person can take a separate stack for each, and alternate between them. Next, individuals propose items for the agenda of the discussion, then come to consensus on an order for these items and, if time is pressing, a time limit for the discussion of each. During the discussion process, individuals can ask to respond directly to questions, so the group doesn’t have to wait until the stack comes around to them to hear their response. Individuals can also make comments on the process of the discussion, urging people to focus when they are getting distracted, or proposing a break so people can stretch their legs or discuss matters in smaller groups. When it’s time to make a decision on an issue, individuals make proposals, propose amendments, and then address concerns until the group reaches consensus or the closest thing to it.