I'd be interested to hear what non-anarchists have to think about this?
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I'm interested to know, from the description here, what people think of affinity groups? Are they effective or devisive? Should it be an encouraged form of resistance or is it something that can only be used in the future? Should it be hierarchical or not?
http://aia.mahost.org/dec_affinity.html
I'd be interested to hear what non-anarchists have to think about this?
I wonder how you can ask if they should be hierarchical or not. I see affinity groups sort of like how the `mythical' anarchist army would be organised. Decentralised, non-hierarchical, broad decisions made by a consensus method (or if that fails a –1 or –2 consensus).
Before a group goes in to action, they hopefully would have trained together and know how each of them would react in a certain situation. They will be willing to look out for each other.
In the action, depending on the group, if a decision needs to be made, they might have a decision maker who makes split second decisions who everyone respects and is willing to follow.
After the action, the group will discuss what went good and what went bad, then again with other groups.
I see affinity groups, small cells of people who know and trust (and hopefully like) each other as a great action tool. The cops have to worry about orders from on high, the activists can split and run and merge into the crowd.
I see them having a part in any action involving more then 2 people. Even with only two people they sometimes have a part.
Shoplifting, graffiti, bomb making, mass protests, small protests, dumpster diving, are all areas where people need to know and trust their comrades.
I think they're good for minor actions like protests or graf, but for anything more serious you should try to work solo whenever possible. Betting 40 years of your life on somebody else keeping their trap shut is risky, no matter how much you think they're "down."
Eh? Dumpster diving is pretty much the most low risk activity I can think of, I've often gone with total strangers.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
OK so dumpster diving is on the low risk end of the scale. But I honestly think that it is better to go into a protest or situation like that with someone who will try and get you out of trouble.
Say your getting arrested, it would be nice to have someone (some people) who were able to pull you off and get you away from the cops.
Even things at the higher end of the risk scale (assassination), having a look out is better then not.
Crews can get more things done then individuals, imagine an individual trying to hijack a plane.
Having people who you know and trust and who know and trust you and each other, this is very important in so many areas of leftist activating.
Even handing out propaganda it is nice to have someone to talk to.
RAAN, while encompassing collectives and affinity groups is almost like one large affinity group if you look at it.
Affinity groups are, as I see it, the best way for revolutionary organizing. Tactically and ideologically.
Philly RAAN is an affinity group which is meeting a lot of success.
The idea should be that affinity groups will be like autonomous cells of a network. Philly RAAN is an autonomous cell of RAAN, and in the future we would like to see various affinity groups throughout the city. They can respond quickly and easily to local situations and all can come together quickly and easily when massive support is needed. It's a win win situation.
well i like the idea very much, cant really see what anyone can have against it.
Though you would really have to agree on some sort of program/set goals or else the affinity group would just die out due to just being too fucking vague
ο λαός θα πεί την τελευταία λέξη - αυτές οι νύχτες είναι του αλέξη!
Freedom without equality is privilege - Equality without freedom is a barracks
'Engels, my brother from another class,
we haz got to get fucked up on the grog, and then revolt...if the lessons of the Paris Commune has taught as such, the working class cannot lay hold of the ready made bourgeoisie alcohol, they must smash it, and get pissed on cheap methylated spirits.
holler,
marxy.'
- BCBM=AndreasBaader
Affinity groups are fetishized by many as being the "ultimate" form of organization, or even the only one in line with anarchist principles. Usually this line of thinking contrasts informal affinity groups - which often last only for the duration of an action - with "formal" collectives that exist independent of the actions they have planned. This line of reasoning most commonly extends into critiques of platformism, obviously.
The silly thing about fetishizing any organizational form is that it locks you into a particular configuration that may not always be the best for whatever project you're trying to pull off. Particularly at this stage in the game, we need to be involved in natural and fluid alliances that are capable of realigning themselves to meet the challenges they are faced with. This "common sense" or "natural method" approach is essentially what Scrib just described as the driving force of RAAN. However we also have some rather specifically defined principles, which addresses NewKindofSoldier's very valid remark that "vagueness" will lead to the death of any affinity group as a permanent formation in the long-term (which they are not usually designed for).
A lot of the time what people call "affinity groups" are just cliques (social and otherwise) spontaneously collaborating on a project that one person wouldn't have been able to pull off. There's no reason to call this an "affinity group", it's just people coming together to do something. Calling it an "affinity group" or formalizing its presence beyond the actions it can physically manifest will create certain pressures and unnecessary drama if the affinity group ever finds itself to be "disbanding". Of course, this is a problem equally faced by the formalized "collective" method of organization. The trick to making impermanent formations such as affinity groups effective lies in giving them a wider project with which to affiliate their decentralized action, a la RAAN.
i like the idea of affinity groups, but i've found that it doesn't work as well in practice. i've done actions with different affinity groups and for the duration of the action it's been great. and sometimes i'd do another action with the same affinity group because i liked their politics/methods/etc.
when it started to get messy is when they'd badger me to go to their collective meetings and stuff. sometimes i'd go, and sometimes i'd be busy with other forms of activism that were just as important to me. the badgering annoyed me, as the whole reason i liked affinity groups was that they were non-binding, they were fluid, you had control of the amount of input you had and correspondingly what you got out of it. obviously if you didn't go to the collective meetings you had less input so you had less ability to whinge if shit wasn't going your way. and if things weren't how you wanted them to be, then you could just fuck off and do stuff with other affinity groups.
if the non-bindingness and non-hierarchy and stuff is adhered to, i love em.
this post was produced on stolen land.
to your tourist mentality, we're still the natives
you're multicultural - but we're anti-racist!
your heart is a muscle the size of your fist.
keep loving. keep fighting.
Autonomy!
how can you be organized without being centralized or hirachial
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
It just magically happens if you try hard enough
Usually you're going to need some kind of "points of unity" that people can agree to as a starting point, and from there independently decide and act on the depth and nature of their affiliation. Control of a large project should never be centralized because only local organizers can create relevant strategies and organizational formations to deal with their specific local context.
which is exactly what cappies ask when you talk about the reality of communism.
Its about debate, discussion, defining your organisation together. If the organisation becomes larger you discuss local things locally, appoint someone to bring across the opinion of the local group in an assembly of someones who do the same (aka "representatives") to decide regional/national/etc stuff.
nothing really centralized about that.
Problems however would arize if the majority of the local groups would want something which concerns the entirity of the local groups, but some dont.
To say then to that minority "Fuck it, you just do what the majority wants" is a shitload fairer than the minority saying to the majority "Fuck y'all, im doin my own stuff" and thereby condemning the whole org to apathy or to doing something the majority does not want.
Would this be democratic centralism? (the first, in my opinion best, option)
is there a way around this?
@nachie or any other anarchist/autonomist marxist whatever
ο λαός θα πεί την τελευταία λέξη - αυτές οι νύχτες είναι του αλέξη!
Freedom without equality is privilege - Equality without freedom is a barracks
'Engels, my brother from another class,
we haz got to get fucked up on the grog, and then revolt...if the lessons of the Paris Commune has taught as such, the working class cannot lay hold of the ready made bourgeoisie alcohol, they must smash it, and get pissed on cheap methylated spirits.
holler,
marxy.'
- BCBM=AndreasBaader
I don't see why this would be a problem. Assuming we're still talking specifically about affinity groups, voluntary disassociation would probably take place at the individual or regional level. It's worth noting that very few affinity groups are affiliated to larger (like for instance, nation-wide) projects in the first place, though I believe that it multiplies their effectiveness exponentially when they are.h34r:
If you can come up with an example of something like this in real life (just as a hypothetical problem) I could then do my best to hazard a guess at how a group like RAAN would go about dealing with it. Generally speaking though, there just aren't that many issues that would need to infringe on regional autonomy or the alliance comprised of such groups assuming that mutual respect had been the foundation of it from day one. A lot of the "splits" in the movement are over semantics and non-issues that really shouldn't even be paid attention to.
There is also the consensus method for group decision making, which is a formalized approach with specific rules and procedures (maybe a good topic for a separate thread). I'm not a huge fan of it because I think meetings are fucking boring, but it definitely works. The most successful large campaigns tend to use a mix of these techniques depending on the situation.
ah yeh i wasnt really. My mind spun offtopic to my nr 1 objection to anarchism :P
i was actually thinking post rev. My number one concern (actually about the only one i can really think of right now) with autonomism is that an area with important natural resources outranks an area of fuckin wasteland.
For example
Area X has Y resource which is a matter of life and death for an entire region/"country"/continent.
X could just say at some point in time "screw you guys, you aint gettin any Y untill we're getting what we want"(which could be anything from more cars to bigger houses to less work etc) which would lead to X becoming way more powerful than any other autonomous area, thereby fucking the whole thing up. The other areas couldnt do anything about it since infringing on X's autonomous freedom would be like Lenin sending the Red Army to get food from the peasants at gunpoint.
talk about offtopic
in other words the group disintegrates.
ο λαός θα πεί την τελευταία λέξη - αυτές οι νύχτες είναι του αλέξη!
Freedom without equality is privilege - Equality without freedom is a barracks
'Engels, my brother from another class,
we haz got to get fucked up on the grog, and then revolt...if the lessons of the Paris Commune has taught as such, the working class cannot lay hold of the ready made bourgeoisie alcohol, they must smash it, and get pissed on cheap methylated spirits.
holler,
marxy.'
- BCBM=AndreasBaader
No they ask what's the motivation for working.
Appoint?? Who has the authority to do that? It's easier said than done. how does the assembly work? Assemblies that make decisions for us are hiarchial.
Its about debate, discussion, defining your organisation together. If the organisation becomes larger you discuss local things locally, appoint someone to bring across the opinion of the local group in an assembly of someones who do the same (aka "representatives"
The problem is that everyone here is working as a little sect and if they all need to act on something or need to trade as a unit it would be a disaster.
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
the local group has that authority
its not hierarchical up untill the problem is described in that post since the representative is merely the spokesperson of that local group, he has no option to do what he wants, just to do what the local group appointed him to do.
Zapatistas do this.
ο λαός θα πεί την τελευταία λέξη - αυτές οι νύχτες είναι του αλέξη!
Freedom without equality is privilege - Equality without freedom is a barracks
'Engels, my brother from another class,
we haz got to get fucked up on the grog, and then revolt...if the lessons of the Paris Commune has taught as such, the working class cannot lay hold of the ready made bourgeoisie alcohol, they must smash it, and get pissed on cheap methylated spirits.
holler,
marxy.'
- BCBM=AndreasBaader
Well the only thing I can think of that would really match that description is water, which of course is a serious issue right now especially in the Middle East, so let's use that as the example. If this doesn't sit well with you or you want to run through some other possibilities for "Y", let me know.
But X would be denying Y's right to life, and it's inconceivable that they would be able to so tightly regulate and restrict the flow of an essential commodity without themselves istituting some form of hierarchal governing body that would be counterrevolutionary in and of itself. That is the most important part to keep in mind.
Assuming Y remains non-hierarchal and socially cooperativist, of course they would then seek to force X to give them access to water. But I doubt that they would replicate the design of the Bolshevik regime in doing so, and therefore any violence against X would not be institutionalized and cannot be compared to Lenin's dictates, even if in the short term they manage to force the same type of redistribution.
Hehe word. The short answer is of course that if Marx refused to make a blueprint for post-capitalist society, why the hell are you expecting one out of me now? :Ptalk about offtopic
Well in the case of an affinity group, it was more than likely designed only as a temporary formation in the first place.
In the case of post-revolutionary society, we would hopefully be doing things based entirely off of mutual aid and voluntary association, so there would be no "group" to "disintegrate" just because you didn't share you legos, or whatever.
And in the case of a group like RAAN, I also don't see why we would disintegrate. Let's for example say that a chapter on one coast wants to make green and black RAAN flags, and a chapter on the other wants them to be red and black. This is a non-issue because there is no need for an "official" network flag or even a body with which to institute such a thing, and so each autonomous chapter would be encouraged to create its own symbols of resistance as apply to their own specific context. The end result is we would have both green anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist flags flying in representation of the same united principles, so this diversity is immensely positive. If that example is too simplistic for you, please make up another one, or as many other ones, as you want.
As I mentioned above, what groups need to survive is not just mutual respect, but some sort of underlying principles to make sure that the ultimate ideological compatibility between active parts is recognized as a given.
Wait...what?? I don't understand you? Are you saying that they elect the spokespeople to meet in a national/regional/community assemblly. Sounds cool.
Wait though, how would it be assured that the spokesperson does what the public wants? In America the 'Senators' and 'congressmen' are supposed to be doing the exact same thing yet they don't. Explain.
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
Zapatista "government" is localized to a degree where representatives can be held personally acountable in many cases. Also the positions rotate regularly.
If you'd like to learn more about the Zapatistas, I suggest A Commune in Chiapas? by Aufheben.
The full text is available online somewhere but I'm too lazy to find it for you right now :P
