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dipperdesperado · 6 months

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notes on class analysis beyond class reductionism

In which your favorite anarchist cherry-picks their favorite pieces of identity politics and syncretizes them with his favorite parts of sociological class analysis (with a focus on Marxian conceptions) and center-periphery theories of the same topic… for the sake of abolishing oppression.

Class and economic reduction are some of the worst theoretical and methodological mistakes that we can make in our analysis. Class reductionism is an understanding that the principal unit of analysis for analyzing social conditions is economic class. Other facets of social being, adorned with the dubious “superstructural”[1] labels are seen as unimportant to deal with. Economic reduction is about (1) seeing the “real”[2] determinants of social life as economic and therefore (2) understanding the “base”[3] of society as mechanically determining the elements that exist “superstructurally”. It’s an orientation that talks about inevitable moments of historical development, based on an analysis of the economic situation. When folks rail against Marxist analyses, this tends to be a recurrent target of critique.

This approach has two big issues. While economics are important, and in some cases are good to see as “primary” in a vague sense[4], they don’t paint the full picture. Reality isn't just economic distribution, production, and consumption, even if we decide that the only “reality” we care about is human sociality. This thinking relatedly doesn't allow us to understand the full scope of what revolutionary potentialities exist by way of class analysis. Said otherwise, focusing solely on class analysis makes that mode have to do more lifting than it is capable of doing, rendering it ineffectual, like trying to make a fish win a footrace, just because it is really fast in the water. We can’t just focus on one variable or fact of interest in our analysis, if we want our analysis to capture a sense of complexity. We need the right tools for the right jobs. Alongside this, we have to always keep in mind that we exist in a dialectical relationship[5] with those tools. A separate can of worms can be opened up if we look at the ways that complex adaptive systems function—seeing the Cerberus of capitalism, modernity, and coloniality as such would illuminate that no one element of its functions is “primary”[6]. That kind of linear thinking only serves to encourage fruitless intellectual pursuits and failed revolutionary regimes.

If the working class defined by a specific relationship with the means of production, and we have a class reductionist perspective, it can lead to us assuming ideals and extremes represent the whole[7]. We are trying to apprehend totalities with too limited of a dataset[8]. While class and economics are necessary, they are insufficient in an analysis of social conditions, and of the potential that exists for change along realistic[9] lines.

One way for us to supersede these failure points is by way of a commitment to relationality. When I say this, I am referring to an understanding based in looking at the relationships between our loci of interest[10], in a way that prioritizes evidence (credible information sourced from the world) over hypotheses (or inductive, deductive, or abductive conclusions), with a hyper-critical and skeptical stance towards grand narratives. If there is such a thing, we, as far as we know, can only make approximations. While these can improve, even to the extent that our working models provide all that we need to engage in reality, they will always be models. This commitment isn’t modernist (building grand narratives) or postmodernist (critiquing all structures that exist and living within that critique, by way of being unable to surpass the object of critique). It is metamodernist: an orientation that is dialectical and syncretic, taking the critiques found from metamodernism seriously while believing in the existence of a reality, accessing it through a sober assessment of our capacities and limitations.

If we want our theory, method, and practice to be based in what is by way of what we want to be, this is paramount. I see class and economic reduction as prioritizing hypotheses to rationalize with flattering evidence, rather than creating hypotheses that are based on evidence.

A requisite part of this relationality is through having an analysis of positionality. This can be by way of intersectionality[11], interpenetration[12], and/or imbrication[13]. Positionality is an understanding of where you are located, socially, politically, and economically, by way of your identities, properties[14], and experiences. This is looking at the social hierarchies at play and seeing where you are at, in a given moment/period of focus. The "i-words" come in when we use that analysis to inform our practice, bound to a commitment to centering the marginalized.

The center-periphery model as discussed by FARJ is a useful way to stretch class analysis, but mixing models, without explaining points of divergence before we converge can cause confusion. When we use the center-periphery model to discuss society, and an analysis that is based in intersectionality or similar frameworks talk about bringing the margins to the center, we are not asking for “representation” or “maintenance” of the structures social hierarchy as currently formatted. There is a tacit understanding embedded in this analysis that, if we are to, for example, desire a structure that empowers Black women to have multifaceted, sustaining experiences of freedom and self-determination, whatever we build would be radically different than what currently exists. This commitment is a practical way that we can “destroy” the centers of power. This is what actually allows us to (con)federalize[15] power. This is why understanding positionality is important. If each individual’s uniqueness is their own totality, having an understanding of the different elements, identities, and properties that make up who they are (in regards to it being relevant to the analysis) will allow us to see how we relate to power structures. This gives us an understanding of where to plant strategic and tactically effective action. In any given moment or situation, we might be able to take stock of if we are reinforcing or undermining concentrations of power rather than (con)federalizing of power. If, based on our social composition[16], the most marginalized folks don’t feel safe or heard, we’re doing something wrong in our practice that needs to be revised.

To make sure we're clear, this is not to say we focus on identity “alone”. This is why we advocate for using economic and political properties along with identities in our understanding of positionality. We can't ignore any of these elements if we want a complete analysis, and centering the marginalized allows our practice to hold the most liberatory potential. Class analysis, which is what I'll call the focus of traditional/conventional leftism, broadly fixates on two things in my estimation: (1) how class interests align and contradict, leading to class conflict, class warfare, and the potentialities for abolishing class. In this vein, the other part of these potentialities is (2) how to build unity. I think that these are useful starting points, but present some issues. Since class analysis is relatively fixed and general rather than relational, it can easily lead to vulgar conclusions from the analysis, where we hyperfixate on specific, mythologized groups of folks that don't hold up to our expectations in reality. It also has the effect of the things we ask for being limited by a desire to build unity.

Unity, in this case, tends to be based on that overarching conception. “we should do this because of our objective class interests” type shit. Again, while it may be true that as economically dispossessed folks, it would be advantageous for us to have control over the means of production or whatever, that alone isn't connecting with the full breadth of how we experience our lives and has an almost Christianity-faith-based, “searching for salvation” vibe to it. “Follow me and I’ll set you free” type shit. It isn't specific enough, as classes aren't monolithic. We have to struggle through our differences, building solidarity based on a bottom-up understanding of shared needs and desires (and how those interact with and shape personal needs and desires). The unity method by way of the most general elements that unite folks is more top-down, simplifying reality in a way that isn't as useful when we're at the ground level. This makes authoritarianism the only real method of holding it together (as top down means easily lead to top down ends), creating weak movements that are vulnerable to outside actors agitating the differences that exist and are being ignored, widening fissures within the movement. Not to mention the way that people who intuitively or lucidly understand that they don't fit into that mythologized model and thus will not participate. I know that when I look at the labor movement, and see all White dudes (but I see many more kinds of embodiment when actually looking at workplaces), I feel like that’s not a place meant for me.

If we want to have folks join our movements, we need to be more specific in our analysis, so that our practice is more accurate and aligns with the world as it is while enabling us to make it as we like. We should specify the conflicts and contradictions that exist in society so that we can see, across sectors and spaces, where the spaces for intervention can arise, or how to take advantage of the ones that exist. By having positionality and any of the “i’s” in mind, and by looking at facilitating expansive conceptions of desire[17], we can actually create movement spaces that are more holistic in their approach.

A way that this type of analysis becomes useful in multiple situations is by understanding how it can fractalize. For the sake of this conversation, we can work with the scales of Macro (class/umbrella identity), Meso (section), Micro (bloc), and Nano (individual).

Macro is at the highest level. When looking at analyzing where someone is in society for the sake of liberatory change, the macro level is the most broad/shallow and common features of groups of people. When people talk about the rich, the proletariat, or any other classes, they are on the macro level. This is useful for us to understand “the meta”[18], and get into all of the stuff that class analysis illuminates: class antagonism, the ways that all of the -isms affect people in a broad sense, and how these things change over a broad timescale.

Meso is us zooming in a bit--instead of looking at just “classes”, used here to mean “types”, we start to understand “sections” of those classes using intersectionality and positionality with more specificity. Rather than just referring to Black people or working people, we may refer to Black young women or German working people. It is understanding that, while we are still at a high level, there is more specificity at play that is useful to have awareness of. Just like there are shared experiences of alienation from the Means of Production for all working class people, we can see how zooming in specifically allows us to see what that actually means for certain sections of whatever unifying element of a given “class”. This is able to let us know that not all workers/genders/racial communities are created monolithically, and within a given community there are sections that have their own interests due to their positionality.

Micro is about looking at actual groups of actual people, seeing the blocs that exist within our subgroups. For example, if we're looking at Black folks, we can see how sections are composed, and we can look at the actual circumstances in an area of interest to see how different sections relate to one another, to see what contradictions are invisibilized by way of not zooming in enough. Rather than sticking at a higher level and saying that there should be unity solely due to one or two shared variables of intersection, there can be an understanding of how people are seen in society as is, with the capacity to try and shift those resonances and dissonances into more beneficial assemblages for the goals of liberation. If there are contradictions between people connected by variables found in the higher level/more general classes, we can start at a bloc level, building our way up towards people seeing and acting in their “class interests”.

Nano is zooming all the way in. It is understanding specific folks, and seeing their specific experiences intimated and imbricated by the above scales. It is easy, especially when trying to understand how to change society, to not look at individuals. But, ignoring individuals, the building blocks of society, will leave good materials on the cutting room floor. I think we should oscillate between more and less individual understandings, so that we can mutualize the relationships between individuals, collectives, and collectives of collectives.

It's worth noting that all of these are connected, and we move from one to another based on what we're trying to understand. If we're looking at the structure of society, then class analysis, in both meanings of the word, is useful. If we're trying to relate to each other as individuals, we need to think about things at that level, not eschewing an awareness of systemic dynamics. We run into a lot of issues if we don't make sure our method is well-suited to our problems that we're trying to understand.

If we can stretch the idea of class to not just be an economic thing, but to focus on positions in social hierarchies, that allows us to understand oppression on different scales from the interpersonal to the societal, and gives us room to think about what it means to be in one position or another. By framing this in ontologies and epistemologies of Black feminisms, we come away with a flexible framework for analyzing those positions, and we can, in every situation, center the marginalized, so that we have a more specific, intentional way to expand our understanding of prefiguration and material solidarity. This points us towards uniting in ways that undermine different social hierarchies that reinforce one another. By having these tools at our disposal, we can create unified action through maximal prefiguration in our practice. If we are making something that works for the least privileged of us, we have much less work to do for the more privileged of us. This also ensures that those folks aren't left behind, the way that they can be when we don't do the work to zoom in enough. If they are at the “center”, there is no “center”. If there is a “center”, then there are marginalized people who are being ignored.

Let’s try to concretize this with an example. Start anywhere in the process (or at any level of zoom). For clarity, we will start at the macro level. We have two classes, the exploiters and the exploited. We can then cut that up, by way of intersectionality and positionality, to see that each of these groups have subgroups that have different relations to their exploitation or exploiting. This allows us to know that broadly speaking, there are contradictions and tensions within these classes that allow us to either foster more mutuality or sow more division, depending on how we approach things. Once we are aware of this, we can zoom in more to see how, within these classes, there are blocs that add more detail to those contradictions. We can see that blocs of communities are not intrinsically unified by way of their identity[19], and this keys us into the intentionality that has to go into organizing unified action, which I recommend to be based on solidarity (bottom-up) rather than unity (top-down). We can then get to the individual level, where we try to unearth desire, in the expanded sense where someone cultivates their individuality, what I call ego, or what Lorde calls the erotic. From here, we can build back up, having a meaningful and actionable awareness of social composition that tells us how the social world exists. By way of our ideology[20] and theories[21] for how the world can change, we can develop practice that materializes into that change.

[Notes]

[1] In Marxian theories, the superstructure is everything that sits atop the economic mode of production of society. It is everything not economic, from art, to culture, to politics, etc.

[2] As in reality, notating an importance in the physical. This is true in a broad sense, but people tend to leave out things like life belief systems and human action as important unless it relates with a very clear causality to this.

[3] The “economic foundation” of society.

[4] I’m pretty skeptical of focusing on economics unless you’re literally choosing to focus on economics, mainly because of all the ideological, theoretical, methodological, and practical baggage that comes from this.

[5] We exist in a symbiotic (meant in the neutral sense, not the colloquial, “positive”/“beneficial” sense) process with the tools we create and deploy. As we shape the tools from our ideas, the tools shape us right back, pointing us to particular potentialities.

[6] How can primacy exist when all of the elements operate together to create emergent outcomes? The closest we get is when, by way of our commitment to relationality, we see that certain axes of oppression rear their head in a pronounced way that is still propped up by the other axes.

[7] This, when combined with things like Eurocentricity, leads to vulgar dynamics in political struggle, where, for example, “working class” ends up meaning “White working class”, even though POC are much more emblematic of the class.

[8] If we're going to make sweeping statements about society, we should either commit to philosophical inquiry (which doesn’t have the same need for “accuracy” in the scientific sense), or we should do rigorous analysis to understand our context, using phenomenology, sociality, history, science, and culture as our “raw” data.

[9] Changes that can actually happen in the most open sense, where we are not relying on supernatural or physics-defying feats of reality-warping for our goals. It’s a combination of inspiration and analysis, where we are simultaneously thinking about the exciting futures that we want and what we can do now to get there. This is distinct from how some employ “pragmatism”, asking people to “vote harder” or whatever. This is doing things that many people may see as idealistic or impossible, but are possible in actuality, which becomes easier to see as we move away from hegemonic understandings of potentiality.

[10] This is just a funny way of saying the stuff that we’re looking at. This could be anything: “object”, “subject”, “process”, “event”, “phenomena”, and/or “thing”.

[11] The way multiple identities intersect, creating phenomenological “coordinates” that are simultaneously similar to specific variables within that coordinate, but where that specific also creates a unique phenomenological experience that can only be dictated on its own terms.

[12] Seeing how different facets of identity are constantly shifting and bleeding into one another, based on different circumstances.

[13] Identities and social relations overlap and bump up against each other on the edges, and thus are able to be recognized as distinct but interconnected. This shows up in specific practical engagements, where a specific person’s identity, when compared to “normative” modes of being (cishet, white, male), impacts their experiences.

[14] I mean this in both senses of the word: economic property, and features.

[15] (Con)federalism is a mode of social organization that stands in opposition to centralism. While centralism concentrates power within small groups of people and organizational bodies, (con)federalism distributes power to the grassroots level, and connects laterally and “vertically” with other organizational bodies to administer coordination.

[16] The way a class is “composed”, through whatever collective experiences or positionalities unite everyone within. It is, based on a dialectical understanding of how the Cerberus is functioning, looking to see how we can (1) see what ways we are bound to the systems at play in a practical sense, and (2) find ways to holistically sever our selves from that binding, to create new relationships with each other, based on more communistic values.

[17] Desire here is the (spiritual, emotional, physical, rational) needs, wants, and interests of an individual or a collective, in a given moment.

[18] I’m appropriating this term from gaming communities, meant there to talk about the toolset/features that are obviously advantageous to employ, so behavior tends to shift towards using those until the game is rebalanced towards fairness. In our case, we’ll focus on how the meta indicates relationships of power-over, leading to us needing to do the “rebalancing”.

[19] Positionality tells us the ways that solidarity can develop by keying us into where people share or diverge in experiences based on the society in which they exist...it does not show were people's desires lie

[20] The word ideology has a negative connotation…but I think it is honest and useful. I mean it in the basic sense of our foundational assumptions and commitments, that are ideally evidence tested constantly, and revised if evidence demands it, but also allow us to continue working.

[21] Our theories are the ideas that allow us to see if our ideology is accurate; it is the way that we build upon our foundation to see if it stands up to reality.

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dipperdesperado · 9 months

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the importance of social technology in social change

TLDR: By retooling, devouring, and innovating our social technologies, we can create participatory organizations that enable egalitarian social change. These organizations should be animated by an understanding of hierarchy, its relation to oppression writ-large, and how to create and employ social technologies that distribute power, rather than concentrating it.

Introduction

We take technology for granted in general (most people I know don’t think much about how water gets to their sink unless it doesn’t work, for example), but this seems especially true for our social technologies. We take things like democracy, laws, and even the nuclear family form at face value and as fundamental parts of reality.

So, what is technology, and how does it relate to our pending conversation? What is the throughline between obvious technologies like a stone axe and my iPhone, and more nebulous ones, like speech and the nuclear family? Any technology you can imagine takes concepts and knowledge and creates a method of applying them to specific goals, objectives, or functions. This doesn’t preclude emergent uses for tools, as you can probably think of using tools in unintended ways. This definition is useful to keep in mind as we realize that the technologies at present, animating the status quo are inadequate. We need something different to make radical, roots-grasping change.

And, for the sake of change, we need a specific way to achieve it. Part of this is technological; we need to figure out models of relating and working with one another that prefigure the changes that we want to see. To create and modify those technologies, we need to figure out which concepts and knowledge we will use.

Prefiguration can be described as “creating the new world in the shell of the old”. It’s doing things in the present that we think will get us to our imagined future. This implies the need to have a coherent conception of what is currently happening, and change will look like.

Currently, we live in a hierarchical, bureaucratic hell. This might best be epitomized by trying to obtain official identification recognized by our respective state. From all of the forms that you fill out, to the additional paperwork needed, to the horrible experience of getting that information approved, there are a lot of issues that this creates, from an experiential standpoint. One of the more under-realized aspects of issues such as this is how these experiences alienate us from the ability to do things for ourselves. Bureaucracy is a way to manage hierarchy’s inherent simplification of reality. A king couldn’t actually run their kingdom themselves, so they create layers of functionaries, under their control, to (try and) manage that complexity.

Along with my opposition, I’d like to propose something. A theory of change, that allows us to do that prefiguration work, leaving behind some of the negative methods of relating as currently mediated and handled. Since we live in a very hierarchical and bureaucratic world-system, constituting a colonial-imperialist, cisheteropatriarchical, ableist hegemony, if we create non-hierarchical/heterarchical organizational forms that allow us to relate in alignment with our values, then we will achieve a more egalitarian world, because of these organizational forms addressing fundamental contradictions in the way that society, from the personal to the global scale, is administered and ordered at present.

Having non-hierarchical organizational forms will allow us to become self-managed and autonomous, gaining collective control over collective issues, and individual control over individual issues. What is hierarchy, though? For our purposes, hierarchy can be seen as the glue that brings oppression together. It binds structures of domination, coercion, and power (specifically power-over) into oppression writ-large. This is what makes the act of arranging organizational forms a pyramid, where value, authority, and decision-making ability are concentrated toward the top. It is not a problem if some friendly games and competitions employ hierarchy in the broadest sense. The issue comes where, in that game, the folks who won got to eat and the folks who lost went hungry. The power imbalance and value judgments are what make hierarchy dangerous.

Alternatively, non-hierarchical structures that prioritize non-coercive, non-domineering principles, that enable positive versions of power-to (the ability to act) and power-with (the ability to act collectively, towards collective interest) have much more liberatory potential at their foundation. That’s what we’re aiming for, social technologies that allow for horizontal relating.

The pieces of horizontal organizations

The foundation of these horizontal, heterarchical forms should be in values and principles that enable relating in that way. Some of these values might be joy, autonomy, radically informed consent, cultivating ownness-uniqueness, and solidarity. These are defined as:

Joy: This should be a group that is constantly looking critically at how we engage with productivity, work, and formality from the perspective of prefiguring spaces of fun, play, and levity -- infusing it into as much of the work as we can. If it feels like a drag, that should at the very least give us pause. While we will not be able to avoid negativity wholesale, we can be intentional about minimizing the moments where it is unnecessary.

Autonomy: Each unit of interest (teammate, team, section/wing, whole) can operate independently from other elements as it desires, without imposition.

Radically Informed Consent: All decisions that include or impact someone should be made with that person (1) in that discussion/process and (2) having as much context and information as they need to be aware of the implications of the decision being made.

Cultivating Ownness-Uniqueness: The group should allow for a cooperative orientation that is based on finding what is best for all involved as individuals, concerning the collective goals. The group should be a tool that cultivates this orientation, rather than existing for its own sake and becoming something that holds power over the people in the space.

Solidarity: People in the group should work together around common interests and affinities, made clear in the joining process, grounded in (1) centering the most marginalized in society and/or our specific context within our spaces, and (2) sharing in the responsibilities of achieving what the group sets out to do.

Having these values as described gives us a shared language from which to judge how we relate to each other using the organizational forms we will set out to describe, to make sure that it gives opportunities to widen the spaces where our organizational aims can be achieved.

The components of these forms, the building blocks that sit atop the foundation, creating the organization when assembled, are the teammate, roles & tasks, aims & domains, the team, assemblies and summits, and the areas, functions, and committees. These are defined as:

Teammate: This is the individual in the structure. A specific person, who interfaces with the other parts of the structure.

Roles and Tasks: This is how the work is distributed within an organization, in line with the foundational principles and the aims of the specific team and organization as a whole.

aims: Objectives of the unit of interest. The thing that the unit of interest is trying to accomplish.

Domains: The range of focus a specific unit of interest has within an organization. What the unit of interest is responsible for doing.

Team: A collective unit within the structure. Multiple teammates coming together.

Assemblies and Summits: Multiple teams (or delegations of teams) coming together to deliberate on mutual aims, across mutual domains.

Areas, Functions, and Committees: Ways to group teams together (or create new teams) to cover specific aims.

These allow for us to have specific modes of relating with each other around specific things that we want to accomplish, from the individual to the organization-wide scale, with the potential to connect with outside organizations.

These values and components are important to create are heterarchical organization, but it doesn’t tell us what the organization will be doing. We know that it’s meant to be aimed towards social change, but what does that actually look like? I think that there are three interrelated things that the organization should achieve for it to be successful at its overall aims. There should be robust analysis, care work, and effective, radical action. These are described as:

Care Work: Embedding the ideas of restoration, rest, healthy engagement, sustainability, and healing into the core of the organizational structure. This can be done through things like healing circles, accountability circles, meeting "non-organizational" needs that deal with the making and remaking of folks (a la childcare, food, emotional care, etc), and other methods.

Robust analysis: Creating mental models that can approach an accurate understanding of the world, along with how to be experimental and learn from those experiments (while not seeing participants as disposable, or coercing folks into things). This horizontal orientation encourages us to be able to catalyze autonomous & self-directed action, rather than make ourselves indispensable to a movement. We should use these forms to organize ourselves out of a role, in a sense, through things such as making sure other people understand how to do what we do, and not hyper-specializing.

Effective, Radical Action: The organization, through the above two functions, should be able to achieve the goals that it sets. It should be successful at the current conjuncture, and these successes should build up to the general goals of the organization. There should be a conception of strategy, campaigns, logistics/operations, and tactics.

For any of these initiatives to be successful, there needs to be a basic security culture. Pretty much any social change org that is directly effective or building towards effectiveness necessitates modes of protection for the people in the organization. We need to protect from state, corporate, and non-state reactionaries. This is worth an in-depth conversation, but basic things like not talking to those forces, being mindful of where and when certain information is shared, if at all, and screening for new members, the intensity of which is proportional to the openness of the organization, and not fedjacketing (claim that someone is the cops) people. This would be paired with collective discussion to establish those agreements, and training/collective study to inoculate folks against bad security practices.

Arranging the pieces

Now that we’ve built up the different parts of our organizations, we can describe some ways to bring them together. I propose three different organizational shapes: phantom cells, networked guerrillas, and fractal teams and working groups. These are differentiated by the ways that the teams within the org are connected and relate to one another.

Phantom cells are the most ephemeral formation that I’ll describe. These are temporary teams created with wide variations towards some goal. They don’t even have any meaningful awareness of the composition of other cells. Actions are motivated by catalyzing forces that follow a general flow of event → action → report-back → action. Something happens that motivates a cell to form and act, that cell publishes information about their action, along with instructions on how to replicate and the ideological motivation behind it, and others follow suit. This repeats and spreads out, through stigmergy. It’s like how social media trends work. All follow a similar format, evolving as they spread until they saturate a space and wane. The goal here is to combine distributed intelligence through information posting, replicability, and inspiration.

A diagram representing phantom cells. Pill shapes with the word team in the middle are spread around on a white canvas.

This form is inspired by Tiktok and the SHAC campaign. If we could have groups of folks who: (1) find concrete goals & replicable methods for finding connected goals in specific contexts, (2) create compelling narratives around acting in line with those goals, and (3) encourage easily replicable actions, consistent pressure, and sharing the results so that it spreads. This allows for action to become highly distributed, where unity isn’t based on allegiance to specific organizations, movements, or formations. This type of operation is most useful for trying to achieve protracted, quick, decisive, small actions against a target.

Networked guerrillas are cells (or teams) of folks that have a well-rounded skill set, and who work consistently together. I imagine it being like a team for an RPG (role-playing game) campaign where each character is in a different class. This group should have a relatively high amount of self-sufficiency, to be able to achieve aims within their domain without much outside assistance. Each cell is animated by a general alignment of principles, vision, and values. Cells are also designed to link up with other cells, of this type, to accomplish bigger goals and complete bigger actions. There might also be a bundle of cells “in the middle” to help coordinate resources between cells and provide additional, more specialized, and contextual resources. Ideally, there is a rotation and continual morphing of the core to not become a failure point. This is why it’s important to have the cells be as self-sufficient as possible. Every connection is an enhancement of capability, rather than a necessity. The relationships between the cells can be organized like a mesh network (many-to-many relationships between the cells), star (one-to-many-to-one relationships), and a chain/ring (one-to-one-to-one relationships), or some combination, based on the needs of the organization.

A diagram representing networked guerrillas. showing a form that combines mesh, start, and chain/ring.

Fractal teams and working groups work through a kind of fractal, heterarchical confederalism. Essentially, it flips the hierarchical nature of authoritarian federalism by having power flow from the lowest level upwards, rather than the other way around. It starts at the lowest level, the team, and we confederate upwards from there to encompass more general aims and domains, using assemblies, assemblies of assemblies, and summits. This structure also operates on the principle of autonomous collaboration, where people who are impacted by and/or are doing a specific set of tasks are the ones to decide how that task is implemented. This is meant to minimize the amount of power-over within the structure, while still fostering modes of engagement between different scales of decision making. At each level, there would be assemblies that provide the space to share information and discuss plans, and for potential working groups to meet and freely associate and dissociate as necessary. Decisions shouldn’t be made here at these higher levels of the hierarchy, as that leads to a form of power that isn’t always deliberative. Folks would execute whatever plans they see fit on the ground, based on self-organization, informed by the information that is shared within these more open, popular gatherings. The trust is put on folks to be self-directed around their needs, getting help and providing assistance in a mutualistic way, rather than a top-down way.

a diagram of the fractal teams & working groups. teams send delegates to assemblies, and assemblies send delegates to assemblies of assemblies or summits. delegates gather information and context at the above levels and come back to their team to provide context and give information to the team. They also will share the decisions made by the teams, to the assemblies and summits.

All of these forms would need some kind of intelligence apparatus. Intelligence for us will be information that allows us to achieve objectives better. We gain this information through research, investigative journalism-style methods, and espionage. It is pertinent, practical, and informative. These apparatuses will gather information (what we might usually think of as intelligence), and prevent/impede opposition from doing the same (counterintelligence). This is not something it seems like social change folks are intentional about very often, but is an important part of building, refining, and achieving the aims laid out at every scale, from strategies for wider social change to specific actions.

The basic structure of this intelligence apparatus is a specific unit of interest would (s)elect/delegate an intelligence handler to work within that unit’s domain. This handler is one part of an intelligence cell. The cell would be a compartmentalized team for the sake of mutual protection, containing a handler, analyst(s), and agent(s). Handlers are the cell coordinators, recruiting the other roles as they see fit. They act as the direct link/contact to the agent on the ground/in the field, supporting them on their missions with whatever they need. Handlers also support analysts with collaborating on research work or anything that they need. Handlers are the glue of a cell, supporting everyone towards their objectives. Analysts are the folks who make the information gathered by the agents usable. They sort and organize the information, making things like reports and presentations so that action can come from or be informed by the information. Handlers may support the analysts with those tasks. Agents are the crux of this cell—they gather the intelligence. They should be a generalizing specialist, where they understand the breadth of the context in which they act, even with a specific specialty in the type of intelligence they gather.

For these purposes, there will probably be a combination of focus on open-source intelligence, signals intelligence, and human intelligence. Finally, we have the auditor. They are also elected by the unit of interest (the one that placed the handler). This is a way to make sure there isn’t any tomfoolery happening within the cell—the auditor can look over any of the information within the cell, and compile an independent report for the sake of the unit of interest.

A diagram of the basic intelligence apparatus.

The basic intelligence process would go as follows: Information would be split or categorized into four main areas: strategic, campaign, logistic/operational, and tactical. For each of these levels, there would be a repeating loop process of setting goals in relation to those areas, gathering the information, analyzing it, figuring out how to use it, and a method to evaluate the process. Information can be gathered by agents or anyone else in the organization, anonymously. This helps bolster the capacity of information gathering.

So, we start by asking, what do we need to know to achieve our aims? Then, we ask about where we can find that information. As we’ll probably receive more information than what is usable, we want to ask about what information found is important, timely, and accurate/verifiable? After that, we want to ask how we can package and disseminate the information, along with an understanding of the audience(s). That leads us to review what we’ve done, integrate any changes, and start the process over. This is not to say that teams can’t do intelligence-gathering work themselves, such as scouting or information synthesis. It is just useful to have capacity specifically built for that work.

How these forms relate

Finally, we want to look at the relationship between the organizational forms, and how these forms change, depending on what the specific organization does. We can do this by understanding how things look through the classifications of overt, covert, and clandestine.

Overt organizations act out in the open. They operate in a mode where what you see is what you get. Phantom cells might operate as front-facing aboveground collectives of folks who have a very specific focus, with the intent to popularize and virally spread action around that focus, through building (para)social relationships. Networked guerrillas might make more intentional, long-term connections between cells, leading to a more tightly bound network. This could look like the mesh model. Fractal teams might have highly accessible and legible teams and assemblies with centralized information pipelines, creating an easy way to get involved with the movement. This point is important when we’re thinking about how to make the movement accessible.

Covert organizations act in secret, operating on the mode of plausible deniability. Phantom cells might use mainstream channels to share their ideas but operate in a way that obscures their identities. Networked guerrillas might have the cells be related using a star model, with many connections compartmentalized by those shared nodes. Fractal teams might hide membership and focus on the intake process because this formation is the most vulnerable to infiltration. Maybe this formation isn’t useful outside of the overt context.

Clandestine organizations are fully underground. Phantom cells might only spread action through hyper-encrypted or low-tech methods. Networked guerrillas might have no awareness of who or what the composition is of other teams in the network, and any connections between cells might be mediated in ways that maintain anonymity and prevent infiltration. Fractal teams likely would be a great weakness in this context.

Looking at all of these forms, across different modes of operating, we should not “pick” one form or the other in a dogmatic way. Each form should see the others as providing something of value towards anti-authoritarian ends. In other words, fractals should not decry networks or phantoms for their seemingly chaotic structures or methods. Phantoms shouldn’t shit on the other two for not being effective enough. Aligning people and actions across these horizontal forms will allow an ecosystem of forms that reinforces the ability of each to succeed. Overt groups can act as an auxiliary force for the covert and clandestine groups, and the covert and clandestine groups can create spaces for the overt groups to construct the world they are all working for.

By having principles and ethics that are sound, exploring what organizations need to do, and creating structures that enable those ethics and principles to be realized, we can have social technologies that allow us to more easily accomplish the social change that we’re seeking.

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