Can We All Get Along?—An Interview with the Authors of Come Hell or High Water
This month AK Press released a nifty new book for those with an interest in collectives. Come Hell or High Water is an insightful little tool for those new to egalitarian groups, die-hard vets, and even those who left collectives long ago in disgust.
But hey, who the hell cares about collectives anyway? Don’t people just get burned out, frustrated, feel alienated, and end up burning their bridges? Yeah, actually, that happens a lot. Whether or not you think there’s any place for collectives in the struggle for fundamental social and economic change, it ought to give one pause to wonder why we act so poorly in groups meant to be egalitarian. And if a group of like-minded people pursuing a similar goal can’t function responsibly, how do we get to that great day with no gods, no masters? After eight years in the AK Press collective, I can tell you folks, it ain’t gonna happen overnight.
While you ponder these weighty dilemmas, see what Delfina Vannucci and Richard Singer have to say about working collectively. And for an excerpt from the book, go here.
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Q: How did Come Hell or High Water originate (what, in your collective experiences, led you to write a book about “collective process gone awry”) and how did you come to coauthor the book?
Delfina Vannucci (DV): Richard and I had friends in common, but we had not been in any of the same collectives nor groups with any of the same people. When we started talking about the problems that we had each experienced, we saw that there was a broader issue there. We’re both bookish sort of types who are interested in writing, so writing a small book to try to shed light on these issues made sense for us. We wanted to create the resource that we wished we ourselves had had.
As you can imagine, the book is based on personal experience. I haven’t mentioned any particulars that might personalize what is meant to be a broad resource, broad enough for anyone to find something in it that rings true, so I won’t go into any details. Even though it’s been several years, I’m still pretty shell-shocked.
Richard Singer (RS): Speaking for myself, the first thing in my collective experiences that comes to mind is the fact that I had witnessed a number of situations in activist or political groups (usually collectives) in which people were accused of something or ostracized for something without being given a fair hearing. This was one of the first things I witnessed when I joined the anarchist movement in 1997, when a guy I was doing some organizing with got accused of some weird behaviors, and I was told that I should dissociate myself from him based on some rumors relayed to me by a couple of people. When I said I would like to see some proof via a fair hearing, I got shunned for “defending” him, without any recognition of the problem I had with the process.
I witnessed this sort of thing happening a few times, with people being ostracized without a fair hearing, meetings being held about people behind their backs, etc. (Once I went to a dinner being held by some people in a bookstore collective that I was briefly involved in, the purpose of which meeting was to discuss their complaints about a member whom they deliberately had avoided inviting. It wasn’t until after I experienced the whole event and digested it a little that I realized how wrong that was, and swore never to go to a meeting like that again.) Then, not surprisingly, somewhere down the road, in 2002 or so, the same sort of thing happened to me.
I don’t really want to get into this one (I can’t stress how much I don’t want to get into it!); I don’t even want to get into defending myself against nasty claims that I felt were just gross mischaracterizations or discussing who was crappier, etc. (I was a bit crappy too, I admit that freely.) But I do want to mention this one sort of thing that went on which very much connected to the other things I mentioned above: Things were said behind my back (on lists I was excluded from and meetings that I wasn’t attending) and there were major, obvious violations of what we would commonly refer to in conventional society as due process. And, at one point, there was a real lack of transparency. There was some open discussion, but then there was this other level of discussion that was not open at all—which I did not even find out about until much later—and that phenomenon was all too familiar to me…
Of course, there have been some other tendencies that you might say “inspired” me… For instance, the phenomenon of people who claimed they had no interest in hierarchy actually taking hierarchical roles for themselves (sometimes in rather subtle ways, but it was clear to me and some other people what was really happening).
But I could go on about this stuff for a long time…enough to write a book about it! So I’ll stop myself now and get to the part about how this project actually came into being…
In 2002-03, shortly after the worst of my own experiences, I got involved in forming a Staten Island-based collective with Delfina, her boyfriend Mike (who also, incidentally, had been on my side in “defending” that guy back in ’97) and a couple of other people. Because of the experiences that both Delfina and I had immediately prior to forming this group, and also because of some experiences that I had with a group that we actually tried to be connected to at first, we were already discussing a lot of these issues before we ever got into the project. Then, while we were all busy doing a bunch of other stuff (political tabling, a blog and Web site, helping with an eco fest…), Delfina mentioned to me that she had started working on a Web site related to her recent experiences, collective process, and ideas about consensus. Naturally, the idea very much clicked with me, and I wanted to work on that Web site too. Knowing that we all had things to say about these matters, we conceived of the project originally as something that would be written and put together by a collective (either our present one or maybe another one that would come out of this), and we even broadcast invitations for other people to join the project. But as things turned out, Delfina and I were the only ones who really did writing and editing for this project, and that’s how we became the co-authors of the future book.
I should add, though, that some people did some very helpful writing about our project… In particular, we got a lot of support from people in Indymedia, some of which surprised me.
I guess I wasn’t too surprised—though I was grateful—about the support we had gotten from one old organizing partner, Priya Reddy. I had already talked to Priya about these sorts of issues because she also had felt very hurt by her own recent experiences along these lines, dealing with her own banning, etc. But I was a little more surprised when other people, from IMCs out west, etc., took to our project too and spread the word even more. By the way, I’m aware that Indymedia is the only group I’m mentioning by name as a source of some people’s troubles, and I’m sorry, but I don’t see a way to get around that while telling this tale. On the other hand, fortunately, I can also name Indymedia as a group that did a lot of good for us, especially in the beginning.
DV: I now see my experience, in some respects, as that of a patsy. I was blindsided by the maneuverings and cruelty I encountered, and also by my own anger and exasperation. The silver lining is that as a relative outsider, who was never entirely accepted, I had a clearer vantage point from which to describe what I saw.
Q: Do you personally seek to create or belong to collectives? Did the experiences that led to this book not burn you out completely on the whole interpersonal world of collectives, or do you see them as essential nuclei of social organization?
RS: OK, I think I partially answered this in my long response to question #1. Yes, I sought to create collectives, and I belonged to them—quite a few of them, from our own little Staten Island collective to bookstore collectives, writing collectives and, of course, collectives that were part of larger political groups.
Like many people, I had become interested in collectives through reading about them in political world history. I had been very interested in the collectives of the Spanish Revolution. In terms of more recent history, in the late ’90s, I started reading a bunch about the collectives (and workers’ coops) in one “quiet revolution” that advanced an egalitarian social-democratic movement in Kerala, India. And, of course, there were lots of other examples I had read about… So, the idea of the collective was always important to me politically…
But I’ve grown a bit more pessimistic about political collectives or radical political groups in general who form based on a big political idea without the context of a major movement and without any practical application in mind either. For one thing, my experiences have caused me to lower my expectations about whether groups will actually practice what they preach (to use an old cliche). I think a lot of this has to do with the overall social environment. It is just very difficult, in the present environment, to form a small group based on truly egalitarian principles and keep it functioning according to those principles. In general, I think we’re not all going to have the opportunity to do most things in a radically different way until we somehow manage to start a real, sweeping social revolution.
DV: I’m not an expert on collectives. What I wrote (I won’t speak for Richard, though I’m guessing he would say the same) was based on first-hand observations. Whatever value it may have for others is as a description of what can go wrong, hopefully analyzed with some insight and laid out with some clarity so it can be reflected on out in the open.
My opinion on collectives is that they may not be perfect, but they are probably the best structure out there for inclusion and fairness, and I think they are worth trying to strengthen, of course, or I wouldn’t have taken up this project. Personally, I haven’t been in any collectives recently, but that has more to do with my own orneriness and shyness (as well as with my health, which doesn’t allow me to get out much) than a lack of faith in the usefulness of collectives.
Q: I know people that think they just couldn’t function in collectives. It’s partly a fear of the interpersonal demons being unleashed (read the book for more on that!), a worry that their own vision would be lost if they aren’t firmly in control, and a sense that as an individual the institution would be stifling. How would you respond to someone who feels that collectives are great in theory but for someone else?
DV: I’ve heard people say that competitiveness is a natural human characteristic and that it’s naive or utopian to think that people can set aside their egos in order to work collaboratively. But I think that what human traits are “natural” (or somehow innate, or whatever) can be debated ad nauseum with no resolution, and it’s really not relevant. People have choices, and they can choose to be open and receptive even if it isn’t what they are used to. It’s only a matter of giving the process a chance, and one might be surprised at how well it can work. Our book focuses on the seamy underside of collectives, but the bright side shines though when strangers come together with good will and put forth genuine effort. And it happens all the time.
RS: I’m not sure what you mean here by “firmly in control.” Do you mean of the group or of themselves?
[AK Press: Of themselves, their own personal agency.]
RS: If they think that they need to be personally in control of the group or its agenda… Well, then, I have to ask what kind of vision they are pursuing. If they have any vision for a nonhierarchical society, or at least a more fair and democratic one, then it makes no sense to want to be in control of other people.
If the question is whether they can be in control of themselves as individuals, I would say that a genuinely egalitarian collective creates more space for every person to have a say and be in control of her or his individuality than any more traditional, hierarchical group. The complaints that I’ve been making about collectives have been mainly about their not being advanced enough as collectives.
Admittedly, sometimes there is a sort of balancing act in terms of how much to listen to an individual vs. the word of the collective. This is dealt with somewhat in a chapter in the book, and it’s an issue that I’ve a put lot of thought into personally. However, if it’s a matter of the traditional, hierarchical group vs. the collective, I would say that if people are really following the principles they say they’re following, then there is much more individuality possible within a collective.
Q: This month marks my eighth year with AK Press. In that time I’ve seen acts of incredible cruelty—as well as unbelievable solidarity and mutual aid—within our collective, but when I read your manuscript I was taken aback at how much smoother our rocky spots could have been, had we a resource like Come Hell or High Water. I think everyone who has worked in egalitarian organizations has experienced these rocky spots. Can you shed some light on how well-meaning individuals screw things up so often?
DV: Well, again, I can only talk about my personal experiences and observations. What I’ve seen is a tendency for people to become quite proprietary, sometimes to the point of exercising white-knuckled control, about projects and organizations that they have toiled and struggled to bring about. When combined with another common tendency, that of the over-enthusiastic dreamers who love the whole idea of collectives but didn’t think they would have to actually roll up their sleeves to clean the floor or help take out the garbage, tension can result. One side feels underappreciated and overworked, the other feels patronized and excluded, and the resulting resentments can devolve into a tempest of name-calling or outright Machiavellian sandbagging.
RS: We get so much socialization from early in our lives that works contrary to the principles of a collective… Most people from very early on have it drummed into their heads that in order to achieve something, they need to be competitive and you can prove your self worth only by showing how much better you are than other people.
And then there is the attitude that if you have a goal or agenda, you should do everything possible to achieve it and not concern yourself much with how you are getting to that goal and what’s happening along the way. Many people are encouraged to be very utilitarian in their quest for personal advancement, which they are taught is the most important goal in life. (Or, if they are in a situation in which they just can’t see much chance for advancement, then they are encouraged to have a similarly narrow focus in the quest to survive, stay afloat, etc.)
We come into collectives with a lifetime of that capitalist-individualist conditioning (whether that lifetime so far has been 20, 40, or 60 years, etc.), and probably relatively little in encouragement or teaching about how to function collectively, about solidarity, about how to let go of this constant pressure to prove one’s individual superiority, or about how to appreciate and look at the process of how things happen instead of putting blinders on while pursuing a narrow goal.
People might come into collectives with certain great ideas about creating a different system, but because they also come in with so much of this other kind of conditioning… Well, it’s hard to let go of a lot of old mental baggage and always be conscious about doing things in a different way.
I think also that some people are very skilled at manipulation—that’s a skill that is also highly encouraged in our present society—while others don’t have enough safeguards against being manipulated…
Those, at least, are some of the reasons I could cite for why the process gets screwed up, even when most people mean very well. I don’t have a definitive answer to the question, but these are possible reasons that stick out in my mind.
Q: If one has experience with collectives it’s impossible to read this book without cataloging misdeeds by your fellows (and, um, yourself) from the litany of examples provided. A first read of the book will be entirely devoted to pulling the ghosts out of the closet. The second read, for me, was much more sobering. Seemingly at every turn there’s opportunity for malfeasance in collective structures (whether intentional or not). What’s your advice on remaining vigilant concerning collective health and process while leaving space to be yourself and not a collective robot?
RS: I would say, stay focused on the principles and the logic behind collective process. I’m not sure what a “collective robot” is, but I’m thinking most about the kind of people who get stuck on the minutia of specific rules and procedures without contemplating the reasons that those rules formed in the first place. I understand how concentrating too much on tiny details all the time—especially if they are superficial details —can reduce someone to robotism. I know we talk a lot about the importance of rules and we also go into some minute things, but I hope we’re not encouraging anyone to focus exclusively on minutia.
DV: One of the things we tried to emphasize in the book is that people need to be allowed to be themselves in a collective, even if they are awkward, tiresome, or even obnoxious (or are judged to be that way, depending on who you ask). Ideally, a collective takes all comers as they are, so there’s no need for someone to become a robot while looking out for the health of the group’s process. Most of the time, it should be enough to take an interest, listen, and refrain from jumping to conclusions.
But there’s a difference between what a collective as a whole can do and what one person individually can do. A person who is the only one concerned about what he sees may not have a lot of options. My only advice to him is to be cautious.
Q: So, let’s say this book is a huge hit and dramatically changes the negative dynamics often found in collectives. What then? What role would healthy collective process play in the social struggle? Does it guarantee anything?
RS: No, healthy collective process alone doesn’t guarantee anything. But it could play a role in something. Conversely, I think other advancements in the social struggle would make it easier and more possible for people to participate in healthy collective process. Different things could be happening at once, and the more that one thing happens, the more momentum it adds to the other things that are happening, and vice versa.
DV: To be honest, I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that question. What I know about are the patterns of behavior and group dynamics that I observed first hand. The broader issue of the role of collectives in creating a more just society is beyond my scope. But I certainly hope that this book can help bring issues out into the open that will strengthen how collectives function.