Organizing in Assemblages

The old ways we think of organizing have to change. We need power from the bottom, not more rulers or representatives.The system of representatives in the USA submits to economic totalitarianism. This does not just mean at a national level, but at every institution and collective we currently are a part of. Manuel DeLanda looks at the writing of the French philosophers Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. In their writing they take a fresh look at how society is organized, rejecting old ideas of superstructures and totalities. DeLanda talks specifically about Assemblages and Rhizomal structures.

The traditional way we present the capitalist pyramid shows the hierarchy of power; Capitalists money at the top, the politicians and violent apparatuses of the monopoly of violence below that keep the workers and subjects in check. It is a tree configuration as opposed to a rhizomal structure. Both structures are ones observed from nature, but the tree structure looks at the one individual plant in the forest. This common way of classifying we often see a chart or way of looking at social structure in the form of the one tree that grows from top to bottom. DeLanda looks more deeply at the way society is actually formed in a rhizomal manner. Grass is rhizomal. Forests are rhizomal. The rhizome grows roots and shoots from nodes. They spread wide and are not centralized.

The way of looking at social formations from this view takes into account the actual institutions we interact with, the Assemblages or collectives. We often interact in more than one and form up a part of more than one assemblage. That can be a school, church, workplace, community council, a fire department, a family and so on. Every social collective we participate in tends to have material resources and a social aspect. They are connected by various means, but most importantly for the purposes of this article, they are connected by us, people, human beings.

Within these structures we have traditions, standard operating procedures, rules and laws that maintain the functioning of the assemblage in society.For any of these to maintain a social reality we must necessarily act in a manner in accordance to them, either submitting to their dictates, or enforcing them through various social sanctions on others. If we wish to make changes in the institutions, the changes must begin with the assemblages and collectives we are currently a part of. To build a new society within the shell of the old it has to be done by us at the bottom. Looking to the godhead, the power elite or the top echelons of power and protesting or begging for a few bread crumbs has not worked. So we must take it into our own hands and begin to organize for change at levels we can actually impact.

We replicate the authoritarian top down dictatorship of capitalism at every level of society. Most institutions structure themselves in this capitalist manner, they serve the dictates and constraints of capital first often. The competitive “claw yourself to the top” ideology of capitalist liberal individualism is not just seen at the top where the richest go at each other cutthroat, but it is in the ranks of nonprofits, community organizations, your workplace and social circles. You likely see the competitive social behaviors in your workplace, examine them in yourself, and work to change this where you are. Capitalism and individualism has us going at each other for a bigger slice of the pie, more power, more prestige. We should be diverting our efforts and labor to provide for humanity instead of chasing profit and power.

Looking at the issue of organization of society in the manner of assemblages we see in changing the world we might want to rethink some of the institutions we exist within, but at the same time we should rethink the very way they are structured. Since most of us work, and I am a wobbly, I will use the IWW as an illustration for what we are talking about. The IWW is a union for all workers in all industries. Since we go to work almost every day and the workplace is an assemblage that most of us find most influential in day to day life, organizing in the workplace can be a central part of this transformation. We must look beyond just asking for vacation and better pay. We must start to demand systemic change in our workplaces. Bring democracy to the workplace. The very structure of authoritarian rule keeps those at the top of the workplaces with more financial and political capital than the rest of us at the bottom. To shift the ballance of power we must start from the bottom claiming power.

We must also start looking past our workplaces when organizing. Many today have been pushed to labor positions more like contract work and gig work, but we live in communities and are part of the society around us, especially our immediate environment. We are the shoots and roots that bridge between the nodes. Begin to form local community organizations with intention to reach between assemblages. Build communities that have real solidarity. By this I mean make actual communities with each other in real spaces intentionally to counter alienation of modern society. We can begin to build in new ways but it can not be done on your own, we can only build what we can enact in reality together here in the real social and material world.

Systems of dual power where we create bodies to challenge the legislative and official bodies of power can give us a way to begin to push up against the existing authoritarian capitalist rule where we are left largely voiceless. This could be done through various community councils, mutual aid networks, or other various bodies that you can begin to form locally in your area.

Mutual Aid is an idea that Peter Kropotkin proposed looking at Darwins theory of evolution. He observed that in nature species thrived when working with other for mutual benefit as opposed to the individualist capitalist ideology of survival of the fittest. The term has been gaining popular use in recent years, but often conflated with forms of charity or financial aid. This does not realize the power of mutual aid. Mutual Aid should be a crux ideology replacing the greed and profit incentives currently driving our labor. It is a way to reclaim our labor for ourselves in our communities and it should be seen as being mutually beneficial. So many activists find themselves in burnout constantly giving or contributing with little in return. Ideally if it were mutual aid we should be getting something out of it ourselves as well. Working 40 plus hours a week giving most of our time to capital just to survive we ask, how can we rescue that? Look where we put our money, what of those resources can we divert our labor towards in mutual aid and reduce the need to rely on the capitalist system? How can we begin to take our communities and lives back from the corporate mass consumerism of the global colonialist monopoly capitalism? How can we begin to build and restructure the assemblages we partake in and are subject to? Focus on the ones in your life, work at making changes in them. We must begin to make these changes at a grassroots level if we ever want those changes at a state, national or global lever.

Power from the top is growing in the USA, the Patriot Act took us towards a new level of orwellian police state that we have never before seen. The political parties are playing tug of war marching further into fascism and resistance can only come from the bottom up. They will continue to consolidate power and wealth, we must push back, and that starts where you are currently. It starts in the places you are, and by building your communities and looking to create new assemblages connected through shoots and roots to nodes that spread wide. Organize, organization is key but organize where you are do not look to the seat of power. Petition to authority will accomplish nothing as long as we have no power in the situation.

This is being written in the beginning of 2024, the UAW has called unions to begin to line up their contract negotiations for 2028 in anticipation for a general strike. We should be preparing for this. Working in all areas organizing in all areas and planning and radicalizing. Agitate, we need to be talking to others about their grievances and working with them to address those, in addressing our own needs we can begin to take charge of those areas in our lives, but also work at refining our ability, process and procedures to organize and take power back. Small baby steps are okay at first.

We have been educated to follow the authoritarian capitalist social structure of submission. Controlling our own lives is not taught to us. Working cooperatively is discouraged as it gives us too much power. We are to work according to dictates from above. Therefore we must begin to re-socialize ourselves to effectively function in cooperative manners in mutual aid, in solidarity. I strongly believe we should all be improving our cooperative skills and communication skills to begin to form the assemblages and collectives we are part of. I find that Marshall Rosenberg’s concept of Non Violent Communication is a strong tool in interacting with other for organizing and being able to communicate effectively. We need to begin to educate ourselves in new tactics and skills. Many of those tactics and skills will be focused on us making changes to our socialization, behavior and challenging what we have always done. To change the world we must first change ourselves, we can then begin to change the assemblages and collectives we are a part of and begin to build from there. Change will take time, patience and dedication.

Putting this out there I hope to get some external input and views addressing these things. This pertains to larger writing I have been working on for both print and the zines and my bigger writing project. It is good to have community involvement, so please if you have constructive things to say, I would appreciate that.

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