Because I was talking about it elsewhere, thought I would share here a useful and influential essay from the early 1970s: "The Tyranny of Structurelssness", by Jo Freeman, also known as Joreen.

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Some quotes:

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. … the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones.

"… structurelessness becomes a way of masking power…

"We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have a formally structured one. …

"Because people are friends, because they usually share the same values and orientations, because they talk to each other socially and consult with each other when common decisions have to be made, the people involved in these networks have more power in the group than those who don't. And it is a rare group that does not establish some informal networks of communication through the friends that are made in it. … When only one such network exists, it is the elite of an otherwise Unstructured group, whether the participants in it want to be elitists or not. …

"Because elites are informal does not mean they are invisible. At any small group meeting anyone with a sharp eye and an acute ear can tell who is influencing whom. … Once one knows with whom it is important to check before a decision is made, and whose approval is the stamp of acceptance, one knows who is running things."

#groups #teams #communities #communication #influence #power #structure #TyrannyOfStructurelessness

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Key hypothesis more or less stated at today's #Decidim Association #bbb meeting [1]:

Hypothesis: Much of the power of the #TrumpMuskRegime + recently elected neo-fascist parties comes from #ImplicitFeudalism in online governance [2], related to the #TyrannyOfStructurelessness [3][4]. Exceptions in #FOSS are #Debian + #Wikipedia [2].