Decentralised coordination need not mean Stalinist centralisation

Evidence

The most important problem the left now faces seems to me to be coordination. There are any number of groups hostile to capitalism, but the task is to bring them together to form a sustainable antagonism. We need to forge greater links between those already engaged in struggle — the unions, Occupy, the student movement, the various anti-cuts groups — and also to reach out to those who aren’t yet politicised. The way that the opposition between centralisation and decentralisation has dominated discourse on the left recently has distracted us from the fact that coordination does not entail Stalinist centralisation. Systems can be coordinated and decentralised at the same time. After all, that’s how capitalism operates! — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2231

We need to forge greater links between those already engaged in struggle — the unions, Occupy, the student movement, the various anti-cuts groups — and also to reach out to those who aren’t yet politicised. The way that the opposition between centralisation and decentralisation has dominated discourse on the left recently has distracted us from the fact that coordination does not entail Stalinist centralisation. Systems can be coordinated and decentralised at the same time. After all, that’s how capitalism operates! — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2231

Categorization

• SEED: The provocation that decentralized coordination is precisely how capitalism already operates suggests the left study corporate logistics and open-source networks for organizational models.
• QUESTION: Fisher gestures at decentralized coordination without specifying concrete models — worth investigating what actually achieved this in the 2011-12 movements.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2231
• XREF: connects to: Organizational rupture with old socialism did not require ideological rupture too — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 95; Decentralized pursuit of non-domination breeds accumulating petty despotisms, not freedom — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 456; Democratic centralism seeks unity inductively through practice, not by abstract deduction (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Decentralized pursuit of non-domination breeds accumulating petty despotisms, not freedom #contradicts (0.85) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 456
• Organizational rupture with old socialism did not require ideological rupture too #corroborates (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 95
• Democratic centralism means adapting constantly to movement rather than hardening into bureaucracy #corroborates (0.75)
• Democratic centralism seeks unity inductively through practice, not by abstract deduction #corroborates (0.72)