Collaborative Writing project – the next steps (+face-to-face on March 24)

Posted: February 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the project over the last couple of months. The comments were extremely thoughtful and a range of views emerged, especially on the question of  ”leadership”. We plan to launch other collaborative projects soon that are more accessible and interactive.

The importance of what we are trying to do was underlined by Ann in one of the last comments when she wrote: “There will be social unrest, people will start to look for answers and what will influence them will be the ideas that are on the table, so-as-to-speak. In other words if we want our ideas to be taken up by the vast majority of the people we have to get our ideas out there into the mainstream of public opinion.”

One comment contrasted the concept of a network-driven heterarchical approach to creating an effective organisation with more conventional hierarchies and suggested that this is a way to “clearly set us apart from the current state of affairs”.

Frank noted: “Because the networking model of organisation reflects how material reality functions, I think it may well be the necessary developmental form of collective leadership necessary to overcome the limitations of previous attempts to express collective democratic consciousness through united action.”

Earl Gilman in San Francisco wrote that leadership is “looking ahead, warning and preparing our brothers and sisters”.

There were also many different points of view about the state and power and other questions put up for discussion.

The next step is a face-to-face, network-inspired event in London on March 24.  More details about this here.

We will draw together the results from the online discussion and present them at the event (as well as to those who took part in the project).  We will circulate the outcome  of the project and the March 24 event as widely as possible in a way that encourages more discussions, comment and development.

This will form part of our collective contribution to working out practical solutions to the multi-layered challenges facing humanity in 2012.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor
A World to Win

Two key issues

Posted: November 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Project | 48 Comments »

CLOSING DATE FOR COMMENTS –  TUESDAY, JANUARY 31

A World to Win’s autumn teach-in agreed to launch a collaborative writing project to address two crucial issues:

  • Power – what is it, who holds it. Should we be aiming to ‘take the power’, or simply focus on building the size of the movement?
  • Leaders and leadership – what do we mean by leaders and leadership? Why are they rejected by some? How do they fit with democracy? Can a leaderless movement succeed?

The idea is to reach some conclusions in these areas and to publish them to encourage debate within the worldwide occupation movement and in the struggles and strikes against austerity cuts.

To help start this process, here are some questions that you could respond to.  If you want to suggest better questions, please do so.

POWER, DEMOCRACY AND THE STATE

  1. What is state power and why is it important?
  2. Is the state more than the government? If so, what is it?
  3. What’s the difference (if any) between political power and economic power?
  4. How, if it all, has this relationship changed in recent years?
  5. Can capitalism function without democracy?
  6. Can we make the present political-state system more democratic from within? 
  7. How could we build on/extend democracy?
  8. What role is there for People’s Assemblies in a future democracy?
  9. How could ordinary people be involved in decision making?
  10. What could a democratic constitution look like?

LEADERS , LEADERSHIP & ORGANISATION

  1. Do we need “leaders”? If yes, what kind? If not, what do we have instead?
  2. What do we think of these different definitions of leaders and leadership?
    - Situational leaders (the times create the leaders)
    - Collective leadership (a group of people committed to working together to achieve a specific goal)
    - Co-leadership – where each person in a network or group can be a leader for a specific task, or area of work, or for a specific period of time when a particular focus is needed.
    - Managerial leaders (a person/person who is focused on getting certain tasks done)
  3. How do the questions relate to how many occupations are being run – ideas of  horizontal or bottom-up organisation, anti-hierarchical issues, consensus model, etc?
  4. How do People’s Assemblies relate to leadership questions?
  5. What is the relationship between leaders and organisation?
  6. What are effective ways of promoting democratic leadership?
  7. AWTW has promoted the idea of  ‘networked’  structure. Is this a way forward?
  8. Occupy Wall Street has adopted the ‘spokescouncil’ model. Is this worth pursuing?

Use the ‘comments” tab at the top of this article to post your views (say what question(s) you are taking up).

People might want to refer to notes from the teach-in which are posted here.

Face-to-face meetings of the project groups will be convened at the end of January to assess early results.

A World to Win editors

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