Subscribe[T]o strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an “objective” news story, “value-free” social science, or a “free” economy. A “laissez faire” group is about as realistic as a “laissez faire” society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can so easily be established because the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. . . . Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement it is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not).
Christie's analysis points out one of the failings of the most common criticism made of the Spanish anarchists by English speaking anarchists: that they did not take organisation seriously enough. If only, bemoaned the Platformist (later Leninist) Anarchist Workers Group, if only the Spanish translation of the "Platform" had reached them, they might have been equipped with better ideas to win. The fallacy of this argument is obvious - it was not a correct political line which could win the revolution, but the deeds and actions of the militants involved. Those who advocated greater organisation within the FAI were not those who were the first to rise and defeat the fascists in Barcelona and elsewhere.If anyone's actually interested in an intelligent anarchist's review of the Spanish movement of which he was a part, you can't beat Jose Peirat's Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution.
Now, it seems to us that organization, that is to say, association for a specific purpose and with the structure and means required to attain it, is a necessary aspect of social life...organization, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each one of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in the collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders.My points being that I don't see the Spanish movement as "a miserable failure" and I don't think the problem addressed in this article is necessarily more or less relevant to anarchism than to any number of group situations.
Specialization is an important step on the road to hierarchy, but it's a plenty rare thing in itself. -jefgodeskyPlease go take a class in economics. -frogan
The domestic architecture within settlements conformed to no particular plan ... Metallurgy was the only activity for which some evidence of specialized productionGary Webster, "Labor Control and Emergent Stratification in Prehistoric Europe," Current Anthropology 31, no. 4 (Aug 1990), 337-366: "The first clearly stratified societies of Europe, by most recent estimates, were the "palace-centered" states of 2nd millennium BC Greece (Minoan, Mycenaean)."
exists. Individual ovens ... indicate production on a relatively small scale. Since the character of settlements and graves indicates little social differentiation or uneven accumulation of wealth, metallurgical production was probably undertaken by part-time specialists, for the satisfaction of local needs ... The archaeological picture of the Kura-Araxes in Transcaucasia is one of relatively undifferentiated agricultural communities.
We are told that the Powhatans, Mannahoacs, and Monacans, spoke languages so radically different, that interpreters were necessary when they transacted business. Hence we may conjecture, that this was not the case between all the tribes, and probably that each spoke the language of the nation to which it was attached; which we know to have been the case in many particular instances. Very possibly there may have been antiently three different stocks, each of which multiplying in a long course of time, had separated into so many little societies. This practice results from the circumstance of their having never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government. Their only controuls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling, in every man makes a part of his nature. An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it concerns. Imperfect as this species of coercion may seem, crimes are very rare among them: insomuch that were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last: and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves. It will be said, that great societies cannot exist without government. The Savages therefore break them into small ones.- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
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posted by jason's_planet at 7:57 AM on April 2, 2007