Thoughts on "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman

Referenced work: http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Thoughts - October 2017

This paper is not an attack on the informal elite, but an attack on how structurelessness overempowers the INEVITABLE informal elite

The author says: if the informal elite is both well structured and exercises fair amounts of power, then it should become formalized. let us hope no informal elite at noisebridge ever does these things.

(anyways, that assumes the author's premise is correct in blanket terms, which is a safe assumption as long as we don't fill her preconditions for formalization)

In other words, as long as any informal elite at noisebridge doesn't fill her conditions for formalization, it is not necessary to make judgments about the author's correctness and reject or implement her recommendation (which would be formalizing a power structure).

I agree that formalization is often used to hide the elites and prevent other elites from forming. In corporations, the internal elites (corporate officers) often create snaking structures for middle management, but recruit new elites from outside the organization except in exceptional cases, which usually bypass the 'snaking structures' I agree that formalization is usually a means of consolidating power I agree that sometimes formalization exists by the grace of elites and that elites leave or crush formal structures that stop benefiting them I think that some organizations might outgrow their original elites, accumulating a high amount of a certain type of capital, e.g. media attention, can legitimize the formal power structure and cause the elites to be sloughed off, who then go make something else. Especially if the elites were there for a different reason than that accumulated capital. I think formal structure is necessary, but that spending the energy developing a custom-fit is too challenging for most organizations, and the "standard structures" we adopt don't fit very well at all.

I think it's totally spooky how well this paper predicts things

It definitely says explicitly that groups like this are natural and important, and outlines how they can become awful.

I think her last section, "Principles of Democratic Structuring" is tailor-fit to some particular organizations in the women's liberation movement that already had lots of established capital at stake

They were probably good candidates for a higher quantity of structure to wield that capital as an interface to the rest of the humans

I don't think it fits the general tone of the paper.