Recently I was talking with journalist and author Chris Hedges. He was kind enough to visit me in prison and talk to me about the Occupy movement in New York just before he was evicted.
A group of activists had gathered at his house to decide their next move. Decisions had to be made quickly, so several people took on leadership roles, made some calls, came back with a plan.
The concept of “horizontalism” that there are no leaders is based on a false idea. Leadership is inevitable because there are too many decisions for everyone to consider, especially when time is of the essence.
machine
In fact, leadershipless experiments create “tyranny without structure,” where unaccountable leaders emerge without clear designation.
For example, who decided that certain people would gather at Chris’ house? Everyone. Horizontalism imposes yet another mechanical grid on the complex ecology of social space, reflecting the rigid hierarchical structure it seeks to replace.
Both systems can lead to good relationships, but often they develop in spite of, rather than because of, these structures.
Modern ideologies, rooted in the Enlightenment, often reduce everything to a single concept of power as domination. We have lost the language to describe what actually happens when we work together, and the imagination to envision new possibilities.
Thinkers like Edmund Burke and Pierre Proudhon grappled with how social ecology could thrive outside the mechanistic language of the left and right and move beyond a view of society as a machine.
Kindness
This is no longer an abstract problem. If we cannot create large-scale humane and effective organizations capable of mass civil resistance, fascism, with its command-and-control structures and vast resources, will overwhelm us.
The unimaginable could happen again on a global scale. The left’s inability to establish a movement that can compete with Labor shows how hard we struggle to let go of the old and create the new.
We need to start with basic truths. Power as control is not only harmful, but also unnecessary. It violates the core of our being: the need for mutual recognition, the giving and receiving of love.
Power as domination corrupts both the wielder and the oppressed. Instead, you should focus on: quality of relationshipscenters on love as action to enhance the well-being of others.
Respect, service, and trust are values ​​that enrich these connections, but today’s culture of suspicion corrodes these values, even within radical organizations. Difficulties are inevitable, but they must come from a place of kindness and humility. After all, we are all human.
