Original Introduction by CS
(Originally published in print by Dark Star Press and Rebel Press, 1984.)
Jo Freeman’s perceptive essay (“The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 1970, reprinted by ORA and the Anarchist Workers Association in 1972) on the dynamics of small, unstructured groups, and Cathy Levine’s reply (“The Tyranny of Tyranny,” Black Rose no 1 / Rising Free Collective), were to have a profound influence not only on the women’s movement, to which they were originally directed, but also on the anarchist movement in a new period of growth.
The question how do we organise, rather than simply why, had become of great importance. Women were aware that they had been playing an almost invisible role in the male-dominated Left. The women’s movement put women in focus for the first time, and offered the chance to consider methods not just purpose, individuals not just theories.
The personal was to be political from now on.
Ironically, despite the fact that these were long-term concerns of the anarchist movement, it took feminists to show how libertarian organisation could look. “Feminism is what anarchism preaches,” wrote Lynne Farrow in 1974. A little simplistic, perhaps, but it was certainly true that the feminist practice of small, leaderless groups was an anarchist ideal.
Clearly the unstructured group had an important role to play. But at times it could be dominated by informal structures and elites, and it was often prone to internal arguments and insularity. How far, then, should the leaderless principle be taken? This was where Jo Freeman was to challenge both the women’s and anarchist movements. For her answer—a return to “democratic structuring” for all except consciousness-raising groups—seemed to some to spell the beginning of a new and positive era, and to others, like Cathy Levine, to spell a return to the stifling bureaucratic movement-building of the past. These articles, and the issues they confront, are as fresh today as they were when they were written in the early 1970s.