I want to speak to the manager of anarchism
What does a manager do in a workplace in comparison to a ground level worker for the company? As much as this isn't always the case, mostly managers are charged with the responsibility of "keeping things on track" and making sure that when workers miss something it gets picked up and sorted, their idealised role is also to be the person who realises when something needs to happen and has the structural power to take more initiative than their workers.
This is the position that unfortunately many people end up feeling like they're in when organising in left spaces.
Seemingly it is nearly impossible to find a group that doesn't have either one or a handful of organisers who most people see as "the main people". We know that this is at odds in many ways with a truly horizontal mode of organising, the most common way to describe this is saying "there's a real informal hierarchy that has developed in XYZ Group" to which everyone nods and often loosely feels a bit of mild disgust at these informal leaders for clearly having trampled over other's initiative and taken power within this group. Often a simultaneous conversation will be happening in which the previously mentioned leaders are frustrated at others not stepping up and leaving them to call the shots.
An excerpt from Chris Crass' article: "But We Don’t Have Leaders: Leadership Development and Anti-Authoritarian Organizing" sums this up well (so well that it made me question whether I need to write anything, you should read the article).
When we talked about why the same people did all the work there was rarely concrete steps put forward about how to change the situation. But there was often anger from all sides about the situation. Those doing lots of the work would say they needed help and asked why people weren’t participating. Those making lots of decisions would often say they wanted more people to be involved that they didn’t want to have all this power. They often felt guilty and defensive about the situation. Those who were marginalized in the group talked about how others were monopolizing power and that things needed to change. Inequalities and their negative consequences continued to hurt individuals and undermine the group’s efforts.
There's often lots of nodding and agreement that things aren't good and often the most extensive plans made end up being skillshares and workshops, people correctly (in part) identify that the issue is based in confidence and skills. The issue is boiled down to "certain people feel confident taking initiative and taking on more work because they have real or perceived skills that others do not have. Others should be given training to build their confidence and skills and enable them to take on more which will build greater confidence."
In Crass' article they sum up very well the steps that organisations can take to do this, being supportive of new voices, celebrating individuals when people do tasks well and directly asking individuals 1 on 1 to do things instead of leaving it to individuals to volunteer themselves in a big meeting or group chat. To me though this doesn't quite get to the core of the issue. While I agree this is the right thing to do, it still feels like a bunch of anarchists are sitting around talking in the exact same terms that middle management at any company talk. "How can we best motivate our employees/organisers to turn up" "How can we find each employees/organisers personal motivation for the company/movement" "We should organise 1 on 1 meetings to chat about how we can best involve XYZ in future projects"
The most useful answer I've seen is the Especifismo method of deliberately and clearly separating out organisers into bands of commitment, enabling each person to self determine their level of involvement and instead of leaving the most committed organisers to spend much of their time trying to motivate others to do things, those organisers can spend time organising in a smaller circle of equally committed people while being in constant contact with organisers who don't have the same time, energy or commitment to the movement. More on this can be found here.
When I started organising in anarchist circles, the people I was with were mainly quite new to things too, the spaces we came around in was in the process of kicking out many of the older organisers who had either sexually assaulted or harassed people or defended their mates who had. We had a gulf of very experienced local organisers with the few who remained often being quite transient. I may be wrong and engaging in Boomer style "back in my day" behaviour but personally I realised no one else was gonna do the work for us and despite not really knowing how I committed to doing it. Organising within antifascism, I'd barely been in a real fight before but realising the need for physicality in the movement I started training to handle myself well in a fight. I'm terrified of social interaction outside of close friends but forced myself to muster up courage to end up acting as a point of contact for many new people and other groups we organised with. I have always been disorganised, late and terrible at admin, but I managed to take on organising meetings, events and often ended up being the earliest arrival at actions. I did this because I knew no one else would and I viewed these things as necessary to our movement doing well.
All these things lead to me feeling unreasonably bitter and frustrated, I feel that if I was able to put the needs of the movement above my own and force myself to take initiative, then others can too. Why is it that I was able to do a lot of what I think at least was good organising without people giving me trainings, messaging me 1 on 1 to turn up to everything and constantly praising it when I sent off some emails? The most self-flattering option is to just say that I'm a freak, I did once not turn up to a medical trial that would've paid me £1,500 to instead drive a car of people to an antifascist demonstration so there is some evidence. Friends have commented their concerns that the only thing I think about is antifascism and anarchism at the cost of things like planning a life for myself. (what life if we don't win?)
Ultimately though this would be a miserable truth to accept, we believe in widespread, grassroots, autonomous self organisation, if we accept that the reason some people organise so much and often end up doing a lot of nuts and bolts is just that they're freaks that come along every now and then we stray dangerously closely into great man theory style bullshit.
The other elements that many people may have been rolling their eyes at my lack of mention is just an intersectional analysis of who ends up in these spots. If you didn't know already I'm a white cis guy with a very comfy middle class upbringing, but this doesn't really go far enough for me. If we accept this is the reasoning and the solution lies in these informal leaders putting in the work to train, support and help others from more marginalised backgrounds build the confidence to take their place, we end up with a strange sort of paternalism within groups which feels disgusting to me.
So do we just accept it all as it is? Aragorn! once said: "mostly, most anarchist projects over time boil down to one person. It sucks, it’s terrible, it’s horrible" do we accept that at the base of things there will always be one, two or a handful of people with ownership over a group who will have to do the work of training up anyone else to take their place? People who didn't receive the trainings they now see as necessary in order for others to do the things that they do?
I don't have a clear answer and likely won't anytime soon, right now I'm a bit too angry and bitter to give good solutions except encouraging people to read the interesting takes of Especifismo Anarchism. This is my blog not in an org newspaper, I just don't need to provide a solution I can just have a rant.
I don't know what it means for me though, is it basically just something I need to accept that for the time I organise in the left scene I'll always fall into a role of taking a bit more initiative and having to train, encourage and support others to do the same work I'm already doing? Does this feeling that most people just won't live up to the maybe completely unfair standards I hold myself and others to make me a good or bad anarchist?
Returning to Aragorn!, they wrote a short piece called "Be Relentless" in which they say:
"When I turn my attention to a problem or an interest I feel like I am relentless in attacking, building, or nurturing it. I have taken my failures (especially inter-personal) seriously and continue to search for other relentless people to surround myself with. I think you should do the same."
I remember coming back from drinks after a meeting in which I'd brought a stack of flyers for our org that I'd got printed. Coming home with my then partner of only about 2 or 3 months we went on the top deck of the bus which was empty, we were near the start of the bus route, because of this I started laying our flyers on each seat for most of the top deck before we sat down, I remember my partner looking at me and saying "this is really it for you isn't it?" clearly referencing how most people likely "switch off" on the way back from a meeting but I just wanted to spread antifascism even further!
Maybe like Aragorn! advises there's a set of people out there that have the same drive and desire to take initiative that I do, I've definitely met some in my time organising, but being so few and far between is what makes me upset. I want anarchism to be a movement of leaders, where others wouldn't do anything, Anarchists take action! Instead so many take leaderlessness as an excuse to think less not more. Anarchism is a responsibility and you should have to earnt the title, as David Graeber would say, it's a verb not an adjective, you have to be doing anarchism to be an anarchist not just be in an org or wear a badge.
As Malatesta said "The subject is not whether we accomplish Anarchy today, tomorrow or within ten centuries, but that we walk toward Anarchy today, tomorrow and always." Not on weekends, not when someone asks us to, not when it's convenient to our plans - Always.