ASR represents a more well formed group that is similar, just better organized. They have existences constituted by their mother organization, but have some degree of externality and, this is the important point, their work membership and foundations are distinct from the mother organization.

in this sense i’d say the affinity groups that existed in the CNT could also be called political organizations. If they federated even more so. Otherwise I think we couldn’t call the FAI a political organization which it clearly was, and departs from the logic and function of the CNT in isolation.

i was arguing my own position not the fdca or platform’s.

true mass organizations aren’t undifferentiated. what they are tends to eb pluralistic, diffuse, etc., but with essentially poorly organized political tendencies, networks, and cliques. that’s what i mean by the things you are calling inside actually being political organizations. they are just undefined and not as useful as they could be. i suggest making them more organize, and expanding their scope. does that make sense? i’m struggling with language.

The FdCA stuff though seems pretty clearly to NOT mean just a group inside one mass organization, they mean a group which spans more than one mass organization. I’m for that, but I don’t find some of their argument for it convincing. They sound to me like they’re saying that without a link to this type of organization, the political organization with ties to more than one mass organization, then mass organizations have insuperable limits. I find the idea plausible that one mass organization with a group (whatever it’s called I’m talking about here) operating inside it - subordinated to it, with their first loyalty being the mass organization - could be totally sufficient, as opposed to the FdCA stuff which sounds to me like that kind of situation would always be deficient.

later,
Nate

Basically I’m making an argument for a form of organizing which is distinct from undifferentiated mass organizing, which has politics that transcends the present state of the mass organ, and which proceeds with tasks distinct from that of the mass organ. That to me is a political organization, though maybe unconventionally so? I know it gets fuzzy because the mass organ then might move with the political organization and the question of how distinct they are is reasonable, but i think i distinguished them enough?

oh man. that was some analytic philosophy. conceptual analysis is definitely in the house.

You wrote that

“A mass organization is inherently pluralistic, dynamic, and multifarious. For this reason, mass organizations are not adequate for (i) coordinating activity amongst those of a libertarian creed, (ii) defending against authoritarianism within mass organizations, (iii) and [a certain kind of] conscious political development.”

I’m not sure about this. I mean, in the one sense, yes definitely. On the other hand… a mass organization to be effective must have differentiated structures or functions or organs. The organization will need things like strategizing, formulation of tactics, execution of tactics, administrative planning, administrative execution, etc. Just banal examples - someone might write leaflet text cuz they’re good at and/or excited about that, someone else might do the leaflet layout, and both of them plus others (or just others) would distribute the leaflet. These all count as things done by ‘the mass organization’ just like how the digestion performed in my gastro-intestinal tract and the respiration of my lungs etc etc all count as things done by my body. But the functions are distributed to different sites or actors. I’m not suggesting specialization, just noting that concrete tasks of an organization are almost never done by the organization so much as by subsets of the membership.

I don’t see why the functions you mention couldn’t be carried out by people internal to the mass organization as well. These people could work together informally, analogous to ad hoc leaflet production committees, or more formally like standing newsletter production committees, or somewhere in between like regular ongoing meetings within informal work groups in organizing which do not have a formal (organizationally codified) existence but which are the heart of much workplace activity. All of those functions are internal to a mass organization, I think the defense and development functions - your (ii) and (iii) - could be done the same way. Of course there may be conflicts in this process, not ‘may be’, rather ‘will be.’ But there are conflicts in the workings of other functions too - people fight over leafleft text and layout on up to bigger questions and a specific organization isn’t needed for all of those (though one might still be useful - having the leaflet layout people be part of graphic designer networks or the text writers be part of writing groups could all be very useful, whether these groups are internal to the mass organization or separate). I don’t see why the conflict of the type involved in (ii) and (iii) is of a different order such that another group is _necessary_. (I don’t deny that it could be useful.)

On (iii), I agree with you when you write “that consciousness develops in struggle. But not only in struggle, but also from conscious deliberations with like-minded comrades who you trust, have history with, and share a common framework and work with. I think that this dynamic between consciousness through group reflection and mass struggle is one that is jointly necessary. That being said in the end the struggles must be prioritized and the political organization and work is subordinate to that work.”

This too I think could be done inside a mass organization and are good for the organization. This activity shouldn’t be the main focus of the mass organization, of course. But the same could be said of socials and so on - they can be coordinated internally and are useful for the organization and shouldn’t be it’s main focus. I think political education and reflection is the same way.

Your (i) could be done that way as well if it means ‘coordination within the organization’. Cross organizational coordination may be more complicated but I’m not totally convinced even of that - mass organizations can carry out collaborative campaigns on occasions, like tenant organizations working with workplace organizations, or when two different unions collaborate to organize workers at a large job site or company which involves workers that are in one union’s jurisdiction and workers in another union’s jurisdiction. I do think this point (i) is probably the strongest argument for the utility of an organization which isn’t wholly internal to a mass organization. I don’t know what level of formality is needed for this, though, I think informal networks of relationships might be able to at least some of the same work despite my being partial to formalization.

I agree completely that “specifically anarchist organization” should “be subordinate to the mass organization that it is oriented towards.” That’s all I really mean by ‘internal to’.

As you know, I like this idea: “the anarchist organization ought to be independent from any particular movement, but a federation of collectives that work within movements.” That would be like an organization of individuals or groups that are internal or subordinate to other groups. Like the graphic designers group or writers group. The organization’s first priority would to be to support the work of its members in their different locations, like a workshop for formulating ideas and improving practices and making decisions within different locations. And perhaps a common line or propaganda or other activities could emerge out of that, especially if there were common problems coming up.

take care,
Nate