Le texte ne s’affiche pas intégralement dans la langue que vous avez sélectionnée ? La Boîte à outils ne cesse d’évoluer, et il semblerait que nous n’ayons pas encore totalement traduit cet article. Contactez-nous si vous avez envie de traduire de nouveaux textes!

En bref

We want society to be democratic. But to be effective, your small group may need to operate more like the crew of a small ship, with a strict division of roles. That’s OK, because your little group isn’t society.

Sure, we should all try to be the change you want to see in the world. We should also think hard about who we are, what we’re fighting for, and why we’re fighting for it. We should mull over the future society we want and how we can best model it in the here and now. We should even read books about it. But no matter how much we get absorbed in thinking about society, we should never mistake our activist groups for society.

For example, we want society to be democratic, but our small working groups cannot always be models of the sort of democracy we’re fighting for. Like families and rebel units, affinity groups aren’t always models for how society should be. Even a well-functioning, happy group may have unelected leaders. Decisions may be taken without fully consulting all members — or even any members. These would be odious practices if extended to society as a whole, but can be perfectly acceptable in a small group, where formal mechanisms are unnecessary because all members share a basic level of trust.

If you’re in a group that works, at some point you may figure out the hidden interpersonal rules that enable the whole thing to crank along. Don’t be appalled when you do.

We obviously don’t want society to be a place where everyone must follow orders punctually and without complaint; we want real freedom, which is why turbo-capitalism is anathema to many of us. Yet to operate effectively, a small group may need to operate like an army battalion, or, more poetically, like the crew of a small ship, with clear divisions of roles and responsibilities. And there may be dictators: While one or two people can’t usually do all the work, it may be that one or two people must make all the decisions, especially in the heat of action, so that things happen quickly.

If you’re in a group that works, at some point you may figure out the hidden interpersonal rules that enable the whole thing to crank along. Don’t be appalled when you do. Those rules probably have nothing to do with democratic principles or consensus, but are based on intuitive navigation of face-to-face relationships. Often, whoever has the most energy simply makes things happen, and ends up making most of the decisions. Even when the starting model is consensus, the formal consensus process often gets jettisoned and the active members simply coordinate informally to get it all done. Why not take a shortcut and skip the formal consensus step, period?

If your group has been working well and then ceases to, could it be that you’ve complicated the decision-making process through “openness,” and, to put it brutally, the wrong people have taken control?

Originally published in Beautiful Trouble.