No, it's not a joke. It does contain ad hominems, starting with "As the bizarre title ... incomprehensibly unreal and illogical stab at sociology by a paranoid schizophrenic." and including "primarily appeals to bookish, socially-incompetent — or anti-social — people", and "Kafkaesque critique". Those made me dislike reading the critique.
Nor do I like the critiqued points. Consider #1: "Freeman’s claim that the reason why some people allow themselves to be dominated by others is that only those doing the dominating know the informal group structures is ridiculous on its face. Informal group structure isn’t occult. It’s a function of intersubjective negotiation and mutual expectations. People who allow themselves to be dominated in informal groups will also allow themselves to be dominated in formal groups — and probably more easily and often in the latter simply because a structure for domination is going to be much more often present from the outset!"
While Freemen actually points out: "All of these procedures take time. So if one works full time or has a similar major commitment, it is usually impossible to join simply because there are not enough hours left to go to all the meetings and cultivate the personal relationship necessary to have a voice in the decision-making. That is why formal structures of decision making are a boon to the overworked person. Having an established process for decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some extent."
That is, Freemen doesn't claim that informal group structure is occult (in fact, Freeman says informal structure always happens), only that it take time, and as such limits some people from being involved in the decision making process. Freemen also claims that when the informal group structure is aligned on friendship lines, it may be less politically effective.
(FWIW, I can't figure out which definition of "occult" was meant in the critique: "hidden" or "esoteric"? An informal structure is hidden if there are any communications which are hidden from all of the members. Since nearly all organizations have some hidden communications, I don't think this is the intended meaning. But "esoteric" isn't correct either, since Freemen says that informal group structure always happens.)
As for #2: "An individual, as an individual, can never be an elitist". I have a hard time understanding that part of the Freemen essay. I think it requires knowing more about how "elite" was used in 1960s feminism, since the term in the Freemen essay is itself a critique of the wider usage. I don't have that knowledge. But I can read "individual, as an individual" as meaning "an individual who is not part of a group" or "an individual who doesn't have any special influence over the group." This might be, for example, a famous author who is not associated with a specific group but whose ideas are still influential. It appears that Freemen does not want to consider that person part of the "elite."
So instead, Freemen gives a definition of elite ("a small group of people who have power over a larger group of which they are part, usually without direct responsibility to that larger group, and often without their knowledge or consent") but goes from that broad definition directly to how it applies in a political group ("Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities.")
The author of the critique is correct in saying that the second definition doesn't apply to "capitalist elites, political elites or international elites." But I think a charitable qualification of Freemen would rewrite the second sentence as "Elites in a given political organization are ..")
The author of the critique isn't so charitable as to try to understand the "quite dated" 1960s context of the term, nor allow that the term might be used in a much more limited context.
This holds too for the start of #3 "her strange quotes around ‘Star’". The Freemen text explains the "ire that is often felt toward the women who are labeled "stars." This occurs "when the press presumes that [certain people] speak for the movement" even though the "movement [did] not select its own spokeswomen." The quotes around "star" emphasize that this is an external decision of who the stars are, and not something that people in the movement wanted. While the critique doesn't try to understand what the "strange" quotes might mean. This is a mark of a poor critique.
The critique goes on to say "For Freeman, only stars created in the context of informal groups are really bad.", but Freemen doesn't say that. Freemen doesn't say that stars in the context of formal groups are not also bad. Only that there are negatives when it occurs in the context of an informal group: 1) there is no mechanism to replace a 'star' who is not really aligned with the group's goals, and 2) because the 'star' stands out, "women put in this position often find themselves viciously attacked by their sisters." I'll bet these women were even called "elite", even when the stars weren't part of the power structure.
Finally, #4, "Freeman thinks that informal groups are politically impotent." Except Freeman doesn't say that. The relevant quote is "Some groups have formed themselves into local action projects if they do not involve many people and work on a small scale. But this form restricts movement activity to the local level; it cannot be done on the regional or national." (Italics mine.)
The better line for the critique would have been "Freeman thinks that informal groups are politically impotent on the regional and national scale." The critique goes on to say "libertarian organizations can and have accomplished everything necessary for individuals and communities to live in free, egalitarian, convivial societies". You'll note though that this doesn't contradict Freemen, as Freemen says that informal groups can work on an individual and community level.
Thus, I do not believe the critique is well argued.
I don't understand your response. I pointed out that the critique of Freemen's 1970 essay is poorly reasoned. It sounds like you want to make a different point, but you use very different terms and have a different viewpoint while not making the connection between the two.
For example, Freemen doesn't attribute anything to "bad actors" (saying instead "Very seldom does a small group of people get together and deliberately try to take over a larger group for its own ends." and "This is not done so much out of a malicious desire to manipulate others (though sometimes it is) as out of a lack of anything better to do with their talents."), so I don't see how your last sentence all that relevant.
I will hazard a guess: it sounds like you like anarchy, it sounds like the "Tyranny of Anarchy" is often brought up as why there should be some formal rules, it sounds like you found a critique against that essay, and therefore you want to point to that critique as a justification for why that essay should not be trusted. If so, this is an argument by proxy, using cherry-picked documents to justify previously decided beliefs.
Even if my guess is completely wrong, I notice that you made a logical fallacy in your comment just now. There are rarely ever only two sides. There isn't "informal" and "formal" groups, but a spectrum of rules and a spectrum of adherence to those rules.
Freemen's lists 7 principles which should guide the development of the rules. These include "Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible.", "Rotation of tasks among individuals", "Equal access to resources needed by the group", and "Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible".
These make it harder for your 'bad actor' to hide. You seem to think they make it easier. Please explain.
Yes, I wasn't really taking any positions on either piece. My comments on this page were more to quickly summarize (in a reasonable way) some of the theme's involved in the posted article. As I do think they are legitimate (and interesting) questions.
Some of the limitations (I think in line with your own notes, above) involve the language and linquistics of how these ideas are presneted. One purpose of such elementary paraphrasing is to simply cut through that, to the core elements (at least ones I found interesting).
Stepping back a bit, I appraoch these questions from a form of functionial structuralism. That is, from the ideas that problems knowable in advance can be (at least in part) solved through technology. In politics, this is much like a SW problem: you have "political technology"--which is a fancy way of principles and ideas--which helps people organize complexity and prioritize decisionmaking and routines. At its most abstract basis, this has nothing to do with "formal organization" or "corporations" or "governemnts", but can be things so simple as tit-for-tat, memetics, and similar versions of abstract reciprocity. For example, if we know that trustworthiness is a problem (and intitively, we have detectors psychopaththy -- and manipulative, unprincipled opportinism -- its cousing), game theory tells us that tit-for-tat can make progress on even some difficult game-theorectic problems (prisioners dilemma).
And I think here in these two essays we see people struggling to conceptualize and evaluate what re real problems. And real/observed anthropological responses to them.
Elementary phrasing does not cut through language and linguistics - it makes it worse. As the Freemen essay emphasizes, terms like "elite" are used like "pinko", in my understanding, to delegitimize certain people even when the terms themselves are so ill-defined as to be meaningless.
That's why Freemen proposed a specific definition of "elite", before continuing with the essay.
I don't know what you're talking about when you say "problems knowable in advance ... can be solved through technology." There are many classes of problem which are impossible - travel to Andromeda within my lifetime, for one.
Otherwise, since humans have used technology since our species first started, it seems pretty self-evidence that all solutions will at least in part use technology.
All essays concerning the real world struggle to conceptualize and evaluate real problems. No essay can ever be a perfect reflection. So I believe you expressed a tautology.
I think it's fair to say that "Tyranny of Structureless" is a much better attempt at trying to describe reality than critique. You can approach your analysis using any method you like, but if you can't judge the reasonableness or correctness of the underlying data then your model will suffer from "Garbage In, Garbage Out." The critique you pointed out is, in my opinion, mostly garbage.
(1) My post was only to invite people to read the topic !
(2) People are invited to post their own thoughts
(3) I'm happy for people to have their own ideas
(4) There's no debate with me--I take no position here
(5) My only position is--some may find this of interest
(6) A summary: indicative of content, not an evaluation
Everyone has their own style of summary -- mine was merely to eliminate what might be loaded terms ('elite', 'pinko' etc) and focus more on subject-verb elements of the plot. And while there are many non-solvable problems in genral, the class of solvable problems normaly re-quires some form of either pre-conceptualization or accidental empirical discovery. The latter even then becomes the former once it is tested. But again, this is just my own experience.
Perhaps this is a good reason not to annotate HN posts! Something I try to avoid. But every now and then its good to signal some information lest people think a submission is trolling based on the title alone or unfamiliarity.
So it's good other people take interst in the subject.
[ps] I probably shouldn't have posted in direct response to your comment, as it was more a crystalized thought of my own that reading your notes had suggested. It was not posted to be a critique of your comment, although I could see how you might perceive it that way. (It would be unfair at that--as I didn't really respond to you on your terms).
1) At first I thought this was a joke
2) It's actually not completely insane
3) Reference title as summarized here:
“Why organisations need some structure to ensure they are democratic.”
4) Or more fully: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessnes...
5) YMMV on all of the above.
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The counter argument to (3) is summarised as:
"In actuality, the potential problems...[of] informal groups, are much more prevalent, virulent and destructive in large, formal organizations."