• rando895
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    18 days ago

    There was an essay I came across sometime ago which spoke of organizing people for social movements, written from the perspective of someone actively engaged in the womens rights movement. In it were arguments against structureless organizations in favour of elected representatives accountable to the group.

    Does anyone know where I could find that again?

    • HippoCookie897
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      18 days ago

      https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

      Doesn’t advocate for specifically representative organisation; instead I think they argue for groups to formalise their power dynamics consciously and clearly.

      My brief notes:

      We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have a formally structured one.

      For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized.

      "Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities. They would probably maintain their friendship whether or not they were involved in political activities; they would probably be involved in political activities whether or not they maintained their friendships. It is the coincidence of these two phenomena which creates elites in any group and makes them so difficult to break… Because people are friends, because they usually share the same values and orientations, because they talk to each other socially and consult with each other when common decisions have to be made, the people involved in these networks have more power in the group than those who don’t. And it is a rare group that does not establish some informal networks of communication through the friends that are made in it… In any profession or organization these networks have created the “locker room” mentality and the “old school” ties which have effectively prevented women as a group (as well as some men individually) from having equal access to the sources of power or social reward. "