organization
organization (1897) by errico malatesta via anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-organization]
notes/quotes:
For years now this has been a matter of great contention between anarchists.
Those who stake a claim to the title “anarchists,” with or without a range of adjectives, fall into two camps: the advocates and the opponents of organization.
The need for organization in social life—even the synonymy between organization and society, I would be tempted to say—is so self-evident that it is mind-boggling that it could ever have been questioned.
aziz let go law.. ooof
Cooperation and agreement of any sort were rejected, the argument being that association was the very antithesis of anarchy. The case was made that in the absence of accords, of *reciprocal obligations, everything would fall spontaneously into place if each person was to do whatever crossed his mind without troubling to find out what his neighbor was doing; that anarchy means every man should be sufficient unto himself and do for himself in everything without trade-off or pooled effort; that the railways could operate very well without organization, indeed, that this was already happening over yonder in England(!); that the postal service was not necessary and that anyone in Paris wanting to write a letter to Petersburg… could take it there himself(!!), and so on and so on.
*that’s how it could work.. if we org around legit needs
But this is gibberish, you may say, and hardly deserving of mention.
The fundamental error of the anarchists opposed to organization is to believe that organization is impossible without authority—and, once that hypothesis has been accepted, they would rather give up any organization than accept a modicum of authority.
any form of m\a\p as cancerous distraction
Now, that organization, meaning association for a specific purpose and adopting the forms and means required in order to achieve that purpose, is a fundamental pre-requisite of living in society strikes us as self-evident. The isolated man cannot live even the life of a brute: other than in the tropics and when the population is exceedingly sparse, he cannot even feed himself; and remains, without exception, incapable of achieving a standard of living any better than the beasts’. *Obliged, therefore, to combine forces with other people, and actually finding himself united with them as a result of the prior evolution of the species, he must either defer to the will of others (be a slave), or impose his own will on others (be an authority figure), or live in fraternal agreement with others for the sake of the greater good of all (be a partner). None can escape this need: and the most extravagant anti-organizers are not only subject to the overall organization of the society in which they live, but—even in purposeful acts in their own lives, and in their wrangles with organization—they come together and share the tasks and organize together with those of like mind and employ the means that society places at their disposal… **provided, of course, that these are things genuinely wanted and enacted, rather than just vague, platonic aspirations and dreams dreamt.
*perhaps until now.. now have means for a nother way.. a means to actually get to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
**nothing ‘genuine’ to date.. need a means to get to that.. that deep.. a means to undo our hierarchical listening
*Anarchy signifies society organized without authority, authority being understood as the ability to impose one’s own wishes ..
*have not yet seen this.. all the anarchy ness to date has had some form of people telling other people what to do
As we see it, authority is not only not a pre-requisite of social organization, but, far from fostering it, is a parasite upon it, hindering its evolution and siphoning off its advantages for the special benefit of one given class that exploits and oppresses the rest. *As long as a harmony of interests exists within a community, as long as no one is inclined or equipped to exploit others, there is no trace of authority.
*need global detox leap first.. for the dance to dance
If there was no option but for the post-master to be an authority, anyone in his right mind would put up with the post-master’s authority rather than deliver his own letters.
rather.. any whale.. we have no idea what legit free people are like..
II
Accepting the possibility of there being a community organized in the absence of authority, that is, in the absence of coercion—and anarchists have to accept it, for anarchy would otherwise be meaningless—let us move on to deal with the anarchist party’s own organization.
Here too organization strikes us as useful and necessary. *If “party” means the ensemble of individuals who share a common purpose and strive to achieve that purpose, it is only natural that they should reach agreement, pool their resources, divide up the work, and adopt all measures that are thought likely to further that purpose and are the raison d’être of an organization. **Staying isolated, with each individual acting or seeking to act on his own without entering into agreement with others, without making preparations, without marshalling the flabby strength of singletons into a mighty coalition, is tantamount to condemning oneself to impotence, to squandering one’s own energies on trivial, ineffective acts and, very quickly, losing belief in one’s purpose and lapsing into utter inaction.
*yeah.. so party ness.. part of the cancerous distraction
**it’s not either or.. there is a nother way
we shall try to answer the arguments of organization’s adversaries.
That would be perfectly fair if we were talking about academics questing after truth without a care for the practical applications. A mathematician, a chemist, a psychologist or a sociologist can claim not to have a program or to have none beyond the search for truth; they are out to discover, not to do something. But anarchy and socialism are not sciences; they are purposes, projects that anarchists and socialists mean to implement and that therefore have to be formulated as specific programs. The science and art of construction advance day by day; but an engineer wishing to build or indeed merely to demolish something, has to draw up his plans, assemble his equipment and operate as if science and art had ground to a halt at the point at which he found them when he embarked upon his task.
The other objection is that organization creates leaders, authority figures. If that is true, *if anarchists are incapable of coming together and reaching agreement with one another without deferring to some authority, that means that they are still far from being anarchists and that, before giving any thought to establishing anarchy in the world, they should spare a thought for equipping themselves to live anarchically. But the cure hardly lies in non-organization, but **instead in expanding the consciousness of the individual members.
*not about the people.. about the conditions.. hari rat park law et al
**not about expanding ness.. about listening deep enough ness.. to what is already on each heart
For sure, if an organization heaps all of the work and all of the responsibility upon a few shoulders, if it puts up with whatever those few do rather than put effort in and try to do better, those few will, albeit against their wishes, eventually substitute their own will for that of the community. *If the members of an organization, all of them, do not make it their business to think, to try to understand, to seek explanations for that which they do not understand, and to always bring their critical faculties to bear on everything and everyone, and instead leave it up to the few to do the thinking for all, then those few are going to be the leaders, the directing intelligences.
*We feel the need to have a newspaper. If we are organized we can raise the funds for its launch and get it going, put a few comrades in charge of running it and monitor its direction. The paper’s editors will assuredly, to a greater or lesser degree, discernibly stamp their personality upon it, but they will still be folk selected by us, and whom we can change if we are not happy with them. I
*to me.. not only is it that .. rather.. whales feel the need to have a newspaper.. i don’t think legit free people would ‘feel the need to have’ collectively.. as in .. public consensus always oppresses someone(s).. to me.. that’s not how the dance dances..
the thing we’ve not yet tried: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
Another objection, and the last one upon which we shall dwell, is that, being organized, we are more exposed to government persecution.
On the contrary, it seems to us that the more united we are, the more effectively we can defend ourselves.
huge red flag we’re doing it/life wrong.. can’t be about us & them ness
We are like an army at war and, depending on the terrain and the measures adopted by the enemy, we can fight in massive or in scattered formations. The essential thing is that we still think of ourselves as belonging to the same army, that we abide by all of the same guidelines and hold ourselves ready to form up again into compact columns when necessary and feasible.
whoa.. huge cancerous distraction
III
We still have to talk about the organization of the laboring masses for the purposes of standing up to government and the bosses.
again.. so already doing it wrong.. legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
So what matters to us is that every interest and every opinion encounters, in conscious organization, some scope for asserting itself and bringing its influence to bear upon collective life, in keeping with its importance.
then need to actually try/see/hear the the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
But what should this revolution that we long for be and what could it be?
ie: a sabbatical ish transition
Then what? The life of society accepts no interruptions. During the revolution—or insurrection, whatever we want to call it—and in its immediate aftermath, people have to eat and clothe themselves and travel around and publish and treat the sick, etc., and these things do not do themselves. At present the government and the capitalists have them done so as to extract profit from them; once we are rid of the government and the capitalists, the workers are going to have to do them all for everybody’s benefit; otherwise, whether under those designations or something different, new governments and new capitalists will emerge.
again.. a sabbatical ish transition
because not only doing things on own.. not ‘doing’ most of the things we assume a given .. those irrelevant s to legit free people
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be you. 