Ya, so?
The Tyranny of Structurelessness
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"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a 'structureless' group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities and intentions of the people involved."
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
ancient. 1970.
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ancient. 1970.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
JD, what is your opinion of Open Space Technology?
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"But the same people who would be sure there was no way anything useful could get done all of a sudden find themselves operating with absolutely no problems in a situation where leadership is constantly changing and structure is made and remade to fit the task at hand. Suddenly the barriers go down."
"I was looking for a mechanism that was so simple that you could do it in a board room or in a Third-World village with the same results. When all is said and done, people really have the experience of open power. They are in charge - which is the reason the level of spirit and creativity are so high."
"Open Space seems to create an incredible sense of community. The key is, it's a safe space within which people can take authority and responsibility for themselves."
Structureless and leaderless would be something difficult to overcome for sure.
I doubt humans have the ability to be structureless. Each may differ in structured thought but for sure rational thought has structure at it's core. Assuming humans are rational of course, I think this is what separates humans from all other life.
All one has to do to understand leaderless is watch a group of 2 yr olds in a sandbox . These short people always get the job done and no-one loses, unless there is a leaderful adult around to guide them. 
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JD, what is your opinion of Open Space Technology?
Obviously it's a pernicious form of social control. But as long as the people responsible for it can pass it off as a "new paradigm", chumps like the good folks at MFD will fall for it.
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Long-term effects from Open Space may be limited by defensive personality types, normal behavior for blocking change (because of an individual's fears or desires), the dynamism/operating style/analytical ability of the senior staff persons, and continuing support for the senior staff person in maintaining the energy necessary to be the enabler or holder of time/space for the organization.
You see, if you don't agree with their ideology, it's because you're against change, due to your "personality". This is the same argument used by employers against people who object to the downsizing and restructuring of their jobs. It's essentially a cult-like demand for conformance.
Crap like this has a lot of potential!
Of course there will be structure. A web is a structure. To belabor the "Battle in Seattle" theme again, that day's activities had structure, but there was no single leader.
Smaller nodes of the web, which was responsible for Seattle and other like protests, might have had leaders, and some may have been purely consensus driven.
Is an idea a leader when people follow it?
What I'm saying is that just 'cause there's structure doesn't mean there has to be a leader.
There might be node leaders but no web leader.
Leadership isn't dead by any stretch. However, there will be some very, very powerful webs develop, which have no discernable leaders.
The smaller the node, the greater the ability for participants to reach consensus. Thousands of such nodes can very easily form a web with no leader whatsoever.
Leaders are more likely to emerge to run permanent structures. The more temporary the structure the less attractive it is to lead--from a power perspective. Webs can be very temporary, and nodes can be too. One individual may migrate from node to node as her or his interest attracts him or her.
I don't like looking too far in the past for reference to web structures because those who spoke only a few years ago didn't have the same reference points that we do today. I know what I say today will have little worth by the next decade because its worth will have come and gone.
The five-year plan is dead.
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I don't like looking too far in the past for reference to web structures because those who spoke only a few years ago didn't have the same reference points that we do today. I know what I say today will have little worth by the next decade because its worth will have come and gone.
It's just stupid to write-off the past merely because it's the past. It's the ultimate in conformist thinking, in fact.
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Dorothy Sayers claimed that Aristoteles' Poetics effectively is the theory of the detective novels "avant la lettre" - since the poor Aristotle didn't yet know of the detective novel, he had to refer to the only examples at his disposal, the tragedies... Along the same lines, Lenin was effectively developing the theory of a role of World Wide Web, but, since WWW was unknown to him, he had to refer to the unfortunate central banks. Consequently, can one also say that "without the World Wide Web socialism would be impossible. /.../
http://lacan.com/replenin.htm
viva le old paradigms!
old/old, old/new, new/new
I'm not sure anyone advocated an absence of structure. There is always structure of some kind.
I'm not sure that it's conformist to refrain from dwelling on the past and take a forward-looking orientation. I think it would qualify as conformist only if this kind of orientation was the dominant one within our society and people were expected to adopt it as their own view or face some kind of direct or indirect censure. I'm not sure that saying, "I'm so f**king bored of the past" is conformist. The structures of the past haven't done much for working people as far as I can see. It seems to me that the greatest steps forward were made by small local organizations that did not have much in the way of structure. They had some, but it was minimal. The past is good to think about only to the extent that it helps us to understand how we've gotten to where we are and which mistakes not to repeat.
What do you think the appropriate structure would be for a worker organization anyway?
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It's just stupid to write-off the past merely because it's the past. It's the ultimate in conformist thinking, in fact.
Please, please don't think that I'd ever write off the past. I'm a strong believer in "He who forgets the past...."
I merely said that I don't go too far into the past for specfics of our tomorrow.
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I merely said that I don't go too far into the past for specfics of our tomorrow
according to an almanac published in 1755, the sun will rise tommorrow at...
Hah! It's obvious that you don't live in Vancouver BC. 
We ain't seen the sun in a month.
Seriously, the sun rising logic is based on solid philosophy. However that Almanac didn't say that people would communicate with others around the world using the Internet.
You can go back to the beginning of time for some truths, but yesterday may shed little, if any, light on tomorrow for other truths.
sure. rationalize your prejudice. whatever it takes, man, to see yourself as arbiter of truth.
you people really need to stop marketing yourselves as harbingers of the new. It's essentially a contentless message. There's nothing new under the sun, including social networks, no matter how technologically hyped they are. Plus it tactically isolates you from potential allies. Apart from being pretentious.
No, no, no. It's not so much "new" as the old comin' a'cha with a different driver.
In effect, it's the very old in a very new form. Consensus-based societies were stangled by growth. Brute force took over where consensus was no longer practicable. So-called democracy reduced the overt brutality. Technology now has the potential to give rebirth to consensus-based tribes or bands of intellectual nomads.
I guess your point is what makes me wonder why the "new" way is so hard for so many to swallow when, in effect, it's simply the "old" way made possible by technology--with a few new twists developed between here and there.
It is simple to understand fear of acting outside the established rut (for the time being), but reluctance, no actually resistance, to thinking outside the established rut ... ?
you people just don't get it. one minute you're hyping "new paradigms" and the next you're advocating some kind of atavistic group-think.
as if there's any difference!
Not so JD. You can have a paradigm "shift" with shades of atavism.
When societal groups were small enough for consensus to be the norm, such groups didn't necessarily have the ways or means to network on a large scale.
Shifts in who holds power don't take place all that often. If you want to talk about the same old, then rest assured, after this new shift, some group will still hold power. It if we (and many others) are right, it won't be the industrialist/capitalists.
As business unions are so aligned with industrialist/capitalists, they too will be knocked down a notch in the world power hierarchy.
In a nutshell, JD, what do you see happening to business unions in the next decade? Are you an evolutionist? If plants and animals evolve, would not power structures and societies?
screw the business unions. what i'm saying is that your plan is the establishment plan. there's no freakin' difference. you think you got hold of a new paradigm, when it's just alot of new age, new management bullshit. every "outside-the-box" idea advocated on this site is just another pop-management cliche.
there is nothing radical or new or subversive or positive about the leaderless organization drivel that is constantly spewed on this site. As you can see from the essay that gave this thread its title, it's old hat.
leave it in the hat box.
What has happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s is only the early stages of a shift and it continues today through three different levels (1) "educational" (sharing of ideas, experiences), (2) economic/political, and (3) personal/political. Like any shift in our history, it isn't an awakening which takes place overnight but rather it is a continuous, deliberate movement into the next age which draws power from past experiences and realigns to fit the future.
The www has allowed an easier and quicker way of sharing thoughts and addressing past experiences (failure and success). This helps to focus on specific tactics which are constantly developed and changed and the people must gather the strength and ability to see beyond the present to a better, more just, r-evolutionary future. It requires or rather demands of each person; a daily, long range commitment to possibility and direct action. I know you will call this, "Same bullshit, different technology!" But can we discount technology and the www from being used in the service of age-old visions?
I sure don't claim to know how these changes will play out but I'm definitely sick of hearing about UTOPIA and a NEW PARADIGM! 
I think the members at MfD are merely advocates and supporters of THOUGHT. We should explore and discuss any and all aspects of bettering the lives of the working people within our societies. Thought provocation, activism, and support seem to be what the people here are advocating rather than an ideal, a new "ism", or plan!
I just know change is as inevitable as it always has been, and we should be participating in and perhaps attempting to guide the changes rather than merely watching the changes take place and accepting these changes no matter what they may be and who they may serve!
Hey, JD, you said:
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what i'm saying is that your plan is the establishment plan.
Not so. first and foremost, it ain't my plan or our plan. Secondly, business unionism is "the establishment plan." You could be on to something. Screw business unionism and you screw the establishment.
JD, are you saying that the status quo is where we're at and where we'll stay, or are you saying that evolution is much alive only the evolution ain't going to happen in the direction that some of us are talking about?
If the latter, where do you see evolution taking us in relation to unionism?
business unionism is the *union* establishment, but in the wider realm of things, they are just ailing dinosaurs heading to the graveyard. irrelevant. what I'm saying is all this leaderless crap is the modality of the new establishment, and far from being visionary or utopian, it is business as usual.
part of the problem is, you're all so dead set on seeing yourselves as new, you just don't recognize what you've inherited from the *recent* past, not from the medieval fiefdoms passing as unions.
Are you going to qualify your position with anything other than your opinion JD?
You've stated over and over again that "Structurelessness" is old hat, "conformist, and of the "establishment" but you haven't offered any examples or evidence to support your opinion.
I think you're just stirring up some shit for the sake of stirring up some shit.
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You've stated over and over again that "Structurelessness" is old hat, "conformist, and of the "establishment" but you haven't offered any examples or evidence to support your opinion.
Visit the Business Book section of your local megastore.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to steal some from the rich and give some to the poor?
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Visit the Business Book section of your local megastore.
So, the only qualification you have for denouncing the possible worth of such a system is its' prior existence?
What kind of argument is that?
Or are you just rallying against the idea of "new" as it's been used here? If this is the case I urge you to provide an example of a leaderless/structureless organization within organized labour.
As I'm unaware of any, it appears that the application of such a structure within organized labour would most surely be "new" and likely even "novel".
edit: added "structureless"
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Or are you just rallying against the idea of "new" as it's been used here? If this is the case I urge you to provide an example of a leaderless/structureless organization within organized labour.
obviously every attempt has ended in failure. cf., the feministic movement, wobblies, spanish revolution, every sixties commune, etc.
If you want to repeat those failures, well that's your obsessive-compulsive disorder.
You can keep pretending that you're arguing with me, but sensible people are gonna head to the cyber-hills.
Only one of the four examples you provided is even remotely applicable and, as the wobblies are still around, citing their movement as a failure is a bit premature.
Anyhoo, as what you appear to be missing the most is an imagination, let me spell something out for you and, when I'm done, you tell me if it would benefit everyday average working people and still fall into the "structureless" category.
Here we go:
» Information «
Did ya catch that?
Free information is like water - always taking the path of least resistance - thus having no discernible structure because no one person can:
a) determine the paths that the information is going to take.
b) predetermine any additional attributes the information may gather along its' route.
Given an appropriate infrastructure free information has the ability to infect and the potential to become a meme.
Every organization that has ever existed has had at least one identifiable trait, characteristic, or ideal that binds the members into a organizational unit. As such, a common meme, born from structureless information, is capable of giving rise to an informal organization.
Subsequently, as the meme has no readily apparent ancestor, the memetic organization has no leader at the helm - just the ideal.
OK I just have a question about all of this.
JD, you seem to be saying that "structurelessness" is a failed hold-over idea from anarchistic radical groups past. You are also saying that it's the latest fad in psychobabble management theory.
If "structurelessness" is so discredited from the past, why do you think the management gurus are so abuzz about it today?
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If "structurelessness" is so discredited from the past, why do you think the management gurus are so abuzz about it today?
Structurelessness is power's latest alibi.
It's a handy way to disavow power while weilding it.
Obviously, the changes in the social fundaments of work and workplace (c.f. deleuze/foucault's societies of control vs. disciplinary societies, feminist advances, "racial" advances) demand a new strategy of manipulation. Make everyone both a leader and a follower, master and slave - transfer the split from without (worker vs boss) to within (boss-worker/worker-boss). Free Agent Nation, an oxymoron.
Top off the cake with a nice tasty icing of various philisophical/religious/technological borrowings (western-style buddhism, a few dollops of anarchism, liberal borrowings from cyber-theory, cursory mention of the neuro-sciences, remnants of Druckerian management theory - whatever pastiche makes you happy).
Whenever the MFD'ers are propounding the leaderless stuff, they are describing the real enemy, the new enemy. Business unions are dead meat, but it's as if the shadow of their former power still darkens and clouds the minds of those they failed.
That sleK would characterize the refusal to acknowledge the absolute value of self-organization as due to a lack of imagination is simply laughable; rather, he is promoting the conformist view: this is what we have been given, under the shadow of the former powers. It ain't no goddess leaping from our aching skulls.
The worst thing that could happen is traditional unions adopting their own versions of the leaderless organization. Not because it won't work, but because it will.
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That sleK would characterize the refusal to acknowledge the absolute value of self-organization as due to a lack of imagination is simply laughable; rather, he is promoting the conformist view: this is what we have been given, under the shadow of the former powers. It ain't no goddess leaping from our aching skulls.
"refusal to acknowledge" is the key phrase here, and, if it's not a lack of imagination that fuels your refusal it must be garden variety ignorance.
Despite the statement quoted above, you have yet to "acknowledge" and respond to my point.
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Free information is like water - always taking the path of least resistance - thus having no discernible structure...
I'm sitting 100 feet from a small stream which flows through an approximately 25 foot deep ravine that must be 1,000 plus years old. I'd call that a structure. But this is the stuff of comedy, I agree! Ala Henri Bergson's mechanical explanation!
I didn't respond to your post because I didn't read past the first second paragraph.
And what do you think created that ravine there smart guy?
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The worst thing that could happen is traditional unions adopting their own versions of the leaderless organization. Not because it won't work, but because it will.
I'm having trouble figuring out what you are advocating. It's easy to see how you feel about leaderless/structureless orgs but what do you see as a possible alternative/s for the existing conditions within traditional unions and society as a whole? Do you advocate rebuilding existing structures, and if so, how should they be rebuilt/restructured? If rebuilding is not what you advocate, what do you think would/could be a solution to the deterioration in the lives of the working people? Or are you the indifferent, disinterested comedic observer of who Bergson refers?
Leaderless and structureless are two different concepts. Structureless is nore along the lines of Anarchy. Anarchy isn't about consensus.
With a web of nodes, the nodes have the ability to reach consensus while the webs they create have a definite structure. The nodes can be totally at odds with each other on the majority of their beliefs, but they come together for a single purpose or a short- or long-term project, which benefits them all.
Membership in nodes is everchanging. People join or are invited to join because of their beliefs and desires articulated at that given time. They leave when their beliefs and desires no longer mesh with the others in the node. They they migrate to new nodes. Nodes come and go--expand and collapse.
JD is correct with his notion that what goes around comes around and that there ain't nothin' new that isn't old. However, what is new is the way the processes live their lives, or to what extent the impact of the new process will be.
The wheel was a pretty useful thing, but no where near as useful as when it was bolted to the landing gear of a jet plane.
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And what do you think created that ravine there smart guy?
the gutter press.