Building collective power reduces pressure on individuals and makes us less dependent on charismatic personalities
~ Nora Ziegler ~
Anarchists of different ages, genders and backgrounds pride themselves on being tough, brave, competent, compassionate, skilled, patient, sharp, committed, creative, radical—and there really are some outstanding individuals out there!
Anarchist groups, however, are not much to write home about, are they?
Organisations are more, and often less, than just the sum of their parts. A group can be full of amazing individuals, but if the group as a whole does not have the structures, the experience or the capacity to act and reflect as a group, our individual brilliance is wasted and used up like a finite resource.
Without healthy functioning groups, there is too much pressure on individuals to cope with the stress and trauma of organising, to handle conflicts, to maintain relationships, and to always ‘be good’. I want to be able to mess up sometimes and know that I will be held to account fairly. I want to be able to address harmful behaviours without it escalating into bingeworthy drama. I want to be able to ask for help. I want to be able to leave a group without worrying that my absence will cause a catastrophic power shift.
Having good policies and systems in place is not enough unless a group has the confidence, experience and capacity to use them. In fact, when we don’t have the confidence to implement structures and occasionally make exceptions, we can end up over-institutionalising everything, trying to come up with a process for every eventuality. A group needs to feel empowered to act decisively and flexibly within complex situations.
This kind of collective power is rooted in relationships of mutual care and accountability built over time between different people, the spaces they live and organise in, and other groups and communities around them. To build and maintain such relationships, a group can continuously ask itself, do we have sufficient knowledge and experience to do this work or make these decisions? Whose voices are missing and how could we incorporate them? If we get it wrong, how will we know? Who can give us feedback?
Part of the issue is that individuals seeking to shore up their own power thrive in dysfunctional groups. There are many tactics people might use to subvert group dynamics. They make sure certain topics are only discussed when they have enough people in the room on their side. Or they might encourage a sense of constant urgency so there is never time to discuss underlying questions or issues in the group. They hoard and withhold information and contacts, they lie, they manipulate, they spread rumours, they bully people who stand up to them.
These behaviours can be understood, in part, as coping and survival strategies. If we don’t have the necessary skills, and our environment is not safe for us to explore and express our needs, we find other ways to make sure they are met. Building collective power involves offering honesty about our needs and our individual resources and power, and learning who takes us seriously, who listens, who reciprocates. A group that is honest with each other will be a lot more confident in identifying and challenging harmful behaviour, which will again make it easier to build relationships.
Every time someone is chewed up and spat out by an anarchist group, if they don’t decide that they’d rather face white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and climate catastrophe alone than spend another minute with these arseholes, they will learn a great deal that they can put into practice in their next organising endeavour. Experienced individuals are great, but we need to learn and become experienced as groups too. Every group has its own specific and complex context, which it can learn to navigate collectively over time. We can’t do this if people keep getting burnt or bullied out, or when we hide our previous rifts and conflicts from new members.
Building collective power means that groups are not only instrumental to individuals but also become spaces within which we are formed, cared for and held accountable. Committing ourselves to a group in this way is risky! We can get seriously hurt, I know this from experience. I think for many of us, it can also trigger deep seated fears of attachment and abandonment, and it can be difficult to give other people that kind of power over us. However, I believe this is absolutely necessary for sustained radical organising.
Photo: Ricky Romero CC BY-NC 2.0
