Thoreau went off to live alone in the woods of Concord, to observe life around him and make deliberate choices based upon those observations and facts. He is perhaps best remembered for his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience". An essay which greatly influenced the development of Tolstoy's ideas on Nonviolence and Ghandi's philosophy of Satyagraha (non- violent resistance). "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" is a closely reasoned essay on the power of the state, and why it becomes necessary for individuals to resist the power of the state.
The message arising from Thoreau's writings, is the need for individuals to take responsibility for their actions, and not to delegate that responsibility elsewhere, such as to a state or its agents. We must learn to live deliberately, if we are to live authentic lives as free people.
This essay is on deliberate organisation, on the internal structure of collectives or small groups. It is also about how individuals working in small groups can take responsibility for their actions by deliberately sharing their power and skills.
Collectives are a method of organisation often talked about but seldom examined in depth. In examining collective organisation, it was important for me to examine why it is such an important form of social organisation. In doing so I have had to delve into discussions on power, hierarchy and domination.
I have also tried to give suggestions and examples from my own experience of structures that can be used in a collective or small group, and some of the pitfalls to try and avoid. I draw upon my experiences in the Jura Books Collective, Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop Collective, Anarres Books Collective, Bread and Roses Community, plus numerous small group experiences of a more temporary nature.
Power describes a relationship between people or things. Collectives are a method of organisation for sharing power more equally between the members.
Power can derive from:
Everybody possesses some power based upon our abilities and relationship to others. And we can change power relationships by learning skills, modifying behaviour, or changing the structures that mediate our relationships.
For example, a very articulate person can exercise more power in a meeting than a person who is shy or inarticulate. By introducing a structure like consensus decision making, we give as much potential power to the shy person as the articulate member. It then becomes in the interest of both members to develop communication practices, including changing behaviours, so that decisions can be made more effectively and quickly.
For power imbalance between individuals there are remedies that can moderate the difference in power, such as developing a persons confidence or skills in talking.
There are huge imbalances of power in society, and this power imbalance is used to dominate, exploit and oppress those with less power. Men oppress women, old oppress young, the wealthy oppress the poor, rich nations oppress poor nations, and so on.
Collectives can work to empower those who are oppressed, and give them an opportunity for developing skills to overcome power imbalance between individuals. As part of a collective, individuals have greater strength in challenging institutional power and oppression.
What we have to overcome in Western thought is the legacy of thousands of years of conditioning that hierarchy and domination are necessary for the functioning of society. Domination and competition is instilled in each of us from birth, through social conditioning by parents, sexual repression, educational indoctrination and conditioning, and our own experiences at work or play. None of us are entirely immune from this conditioning because of its predominance in the social relationships in the hierarchical society we live in.
What we are not told about is the important tendency for mutual aid and cooperation in maintaining society. That it is social cooperation that produces the wealth of society, despite the inefficiencies of a hierarchy imposed on social organisation.
If you have ever been in an industrial dispute in which the workers decide to 'work to rule', you realise the importance of social cooperation in ensuring hierarchical organisations function normally. When that social cooperation is withdrawn, hierarchy cannot function efficiently.
Changing the values of society, from competition and hierarchy to cooperation and personal responsibility, can be effective only if we work on the personal and social levels together.
In our culture we need to re emphasise the tradition of personal power. We need to build a sense of local community control and solidarity, to empower individuals as part of a social community using decentralised and directly democratic forms of organisation.
We can do this through taking direct action in changing our values and lives. On a personal level, this involves questioning our own values, assumptions, conditioning and fears. Changing ourselves can not entirely be effected on an individual level because the values are contained in social relationships, how we relate to one another and see ourselves as part of a wider context.
On the social level, changing the way we relate to each other and to the natural world involves commitment and responsibility. We need to learn to be open and honest with each other, to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions, and to be committed to changing ourselves through confronting and working through fears and conditioning together.
It is in the small group, the affinity group or collective, where this can be done supportively and effectively. Individuals can gain support from each other in their attempts to act differently; to break with social roles assigned to them. The size and structure of small groups provides an alternative model of social organisation for society. An anti-mass model based on cooperation and shared personal power.
Mass organisation is hierarchical organisation in which the organisers tell other people what to do. A mass perspective revolves around a few people manipulating many people based on the lowest common denominator. In a Mass society, we are all numbers to be used, consumers to be sold to, workers to be ripped off, people to be manipulated by politicians and various power elites.
Mass movements, political parties, and corporations have an interest in maintaining mass society, as it provides the leadership of these organisations with power and influence. To challenge mass society with a mass movement only maintains the status quo of domination and hierarchy. Mass movements can not effectively change the nature of power relationships. The size and structures of mass organisation reproduce the power relationships of hierarchy and domination. Mass movements are essentially reactive in nature - and conservative in form.
You do not usually fight a fire with fire, nor should you fight mass society with a mass movement. Anti-mass collectives are an antidote to the problems of hierarchy and domination.
Small group organisation is 'anti-mass'; diametrically opposed to mass organisation. It is also directly democratic. Anti-mass is about people determining their own needs and cooperating together to achieve those needs. It is a proactive style of organisation, as against the reactive style of mass movements.
An anti-mass perspective is about building a diverse decentralist movement, working on a human interaction size scale able to be comprehended and used by all. A movement of small groups engaged in positive social change and direct action. Each group will have its own focus, its own agenda, and will be active in its own right. Self-determination and autonomy are important principles of the anti-mass philosophy.
The purpose of collectives can vary to meet short term goals or more longer term objectives; from consciousness raising groups to groups providing a basic structure for an alternative economy, culture and spirituality.
Where several groups need to work together, coordinating and federative structures can be established which are responsible to, and respect, the autonomy of the individual collectives involved.