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The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

jofreeman.com

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Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#51

Post by AnimalMuppet »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #37

I think its fair to say that trying to just rip up "structures" with no respect for the unconscious structural organization of people in society will naturally lead to a re-enforcement of previous hierarchies. But I'm slightly more radical than the author here, in claiming that there is a way to do it, but one that requires constant critique and constant shifting positions of power in the structures generated. It's q…

So organizations need structure, but structure can never be the "right" structure? If so, then what you need is to have structure, but to deliberately make it a non-rigid structure. Make your structure jello, not concrete.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#53

Post by n4r9 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #29
michaelchisari wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| flat organizations Flat and structureless are not necessarily synonymous. It's certainly possible to have a highly structured yet flat organization with clear roles and non-hierarchical decision-making.

Really? Because Adam Curtis spent something like 3 films and 10 hours to argue otherwise and not without a lot of examples. When there is no authority, predators become the authority.

It's well konwn that megalomaniac's thrive on vacuums of power or meaning, but that's not the most important aspect of Curtis' message imo. For me, Curtis explores how power applies highly abstracted narratives in order to disguise its mechanisms - Soviet or capitalist realism, for example. His frequent trope is how things suddenly "don't make sense" to the general public, and this is when change occurs.

But this doesn't feel too relevent to the discussion of whether an organisation can operate effectively with a flat structure.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#54

Post by dwallin »

metacritic12 wrote: post #20
cortesoft wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that really changed how I think about the world was "A Muscular Empathy" by Ta-Nehisi Coates https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/a-muscu...

I appreciate the thought experiment of considering whether we would truly act differently in difficult circumstances, as most never engage in that level of self-reflection. However, this article seems to beg the question. Specifically, it starts by assuming that in the face of challenges like being born in poverty, the average person would not overcome them through will or effort alone. As a result, it cultivates emp…

That article is decidedly not about considering whether you would act differently.

What the authors is doing is pointing out is that assuming you would act different is unhelpful. It is far more helpful and interesting to look at a situation, and examine what are all the things that would cause you to to end up in those circumstances despite your best effort. What this does is forces you to overcome the human minds tendencies towards lazy evaluation, to really break down all the forces acting upon the situation these individuals encounter.

This is actually very similar to a technique useful for startups. Assume you have failed some number of years from now. What are some of the reasons you might have failed?

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#55

Post by g_sch »

tsunamifury wrote: post #18

After reading this essay I became convinced several different government institutions realized they could tank any grassroots movement by inserting a crazy and letting it go from there. This was of course proven to be the case with the Black Panthers where most of the violent agitators turned out to be FBI agents. This fundamentally changed my view on flat organizations, realizing they were vulnerable to predators wi…

The key here is distributed coordination. In the last few decades, the most effective social movements are those that did not rely on a single organization (hierarchical or not) but instead allowed multiple organizations and actors to work together separately and embraced a diversity of tactics.

In the 50s, John Boyd did a lot of really interesting work on the idea of "mission command" and the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. Although he did his work for the US military, I think his ideas are broadly applicable to social movements as well, as they describe how "swarms" of autonomous actors can easily overwhelm hierarchical organizations due to their ability to make decisions faster.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#56

Post by shanusmagnus »

a_bonobo wrote: post #30
shanusmagnus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for this list! I'm always on the prowl for things to read that changed how people see the world, but explicit attempts to solicit examples have proved surprisingly unsuccessful. And here you just volunteered it :)

If you're looking for more, i have some recommendations for longer stuff around personal growth and insights: - Erich Fromm, The Art Of Loving. It's about how love (romantic, interpersonal) is not rosy but hard, hard work. All of Fromm's writing is amazing, but this one (for me) had the most personal impact. Another great one is Fromm's The Sane Society. - Kishimi/Koga's The Courage To Be Disliked. It's classified as…

This kind of thing is exactly my jam. I read Becker about a year ago and it set off a landslide that has still not settled. Much appreciate the others, I have made note of them.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#57

Post by stared »

simulo wrote: post #32

David Graeber on "Tyranny of Structurelessness": "[Many] completely misread Freeman’s essay, and interpret it not as a plea for formal mechanisms to ensure equality, but as a plea for more transparent hierarchy."

It is his interpretation presented as if it were an objective truth.

As far as I read the essay, Jo Freeman advocates both equality and transparency. In particular, she makes strong points that equality is impossible without transparency.

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#58

Post by shanusmagnus »

tsunamifury wrote: post #18

After reading this essay I became convinced several different government institutions realized they could tank any grassroots movement by inserting a crazy and letting it go from there. This was of course proven to be the case with the Black Panthers where most of the violent agitators turned out to be FBI agents. This fundamentally changed my view on flat organizations, realizing they were vulnerable to predators wi…

I read an article on exactly that premise -- how to destroy a group by making sure that it accomplished nothing -- and your strategy was implicit in there. I tried to link it but I can't -- oh wait, it's part of a CIA field manual [1]. Simple but containing deep wisdom.

[1] https://www.openculture.com/2022/01/read-the-cias-simple-sab...

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#59

Post by shanusmagnus »

leoc wrote: post #50

This is really a good essay and surely deserves a high profile, but it's disappointing that it, and some bits of angst about Valve's internal situation, seem to be the only discussions of organisational structure that get widely shared these days. Back from about the '70s to the early '90s it seems that there was quite a lot of management-theory/theory-of-the-firm research into different organisational structures and…

On a similar journey, just came across sociocracy as one such trying to keep the flame alive [1]. What was interesting for me was to recognize the pieces of such a structure informally existing, in a giant mega-company I worked for. In a vast bureaucratic ecosystem, way down at the forest floor interesting things can happen that the canopy dwellers have no idea about. Of course, being informal, it can only go so far, as the OA describes.

[1] https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/

Re: The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

#60

Post by a_bonobo »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #56
a_bonobo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for more, i have some recommendations for longer stuff around personal growth and insights: - Erich Fromm, The Art Of Loving. It's about how love (romantic, interpersonal) is not rosy but hard, hard work. All of Fromm's writing is amazing, but this one (for me) had the most personal impact. Another great one is Fromm's The Sane Society. - Kishimi/Koga's The Courage To Be Disliked. It's classified as…

This kind of thing is exactly my jam. I read Becker about a year ago and it set off a landslide that has still not settled. Much appreciate the others, I have made note of them.

Great to hear!! I'm also always on the hunt for books similar to this - a weird mix of psychoanalysis, sociology, deep thought - so happy to hear your recommendations as well!!
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