Anti-Mass

Editor Per Herngren ©

The Anti-Mass: Methods of Organizing for Collectives

By The Red Sunshine Gang, Berkeley, 1970

Credits: From pamphlet published under the original title used by its authors. Original 1970, reprinted 1999, ICC, P.O. Box 712191, Los Angeles, CA 90071, USA, ANTI-COPYRIGHT-This edition is produced and distributed by the Insurgency Culture Collective. All rights reversed: Feel free to reprint anything you like (Please credit the author). “Knowledge should be free.” Insurgency Culture Collective, Practical Anarchism Series

Introduction

The Difference Between Mass and Class

Primacy of the Collective

Size of the Collective

Contact Between Collectives

Priority of Local Action

The Dream of Unity

The Function of Analysis

The Need For New Formats

Self Activity

Struggle on Many Levels

Introduction

The writers of this pamphlet were a part of the counterculture in Berkeley,

California which began with troops returning from World War II and evolved

in the late 1960s and early 1970s after the Free Speech Movement and as

a reaction to the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s

Movement and a general rebellion against “The Establishment”. They

quote counter-culture writers and Mao Zedong, but are specifically critical

of both Leninism and Liberalism. They criticize mass society, TV ideology

and following leaders and urge people to organize themselves.

The Anti-Mass is reflective of Michael Bakunin’s “Secret Brotherhood” and

the Affinity Groups formed to organize Anarchist resistance in Spain prior

to the 1936 Spanish Civil War. It has become the organizing model of

choice for Do-It-Yourself organizers in the Anarchist and anti-racist

movements in Mexico and the United States. Included in this edition are

editorial notes (this notes from 1999 burdened the text and contradicted

the Anti-Mass message so they are excluded in this digital version-PH)

to clarify and expand upon points of the original authors based upon our

experiences using this model in Southern California. -Ed.

The Difference Between Mass and Class

Why is it important to know the difference between mass and class? The

chances are that there can be no conscious revolutionary practice without

making this distinction. We are not playing around with words. Look. We

are living in a mass society. We didn’t get that way by accident. The mass

is a specific form of organization. The reason is clear. Consumption is

organized by the corporations. Their products define the mass. The mass

is not a cliché – ‘the masses’ – but a routine which dominates your daily life.

Understanding the structure of the mass market is the first step toward

understanding what happened to the class struggle.

What is the mass? Most people think of the mass in terms of numbers –

like a crowded street or stadium. But it is actually structure which

determines its character. The mass is an aggregate of couples who

separate, detached and anonymous. They live in cities physically close yet

socially apart. Their lives are privatized and depraved. Coca-Cola and

loneliness. The social existence of the mass – its rules and regulations,

the structuring if its status, roles and leadership – are organized through 

consumption (the mass market). They are all products of a specific

organization. Ours.

Of course, no one sees themselves as part of the mass. It’s always others

who are the masses. The trouble is that it is not only the corporations

which organize us into the mass. The ‘movement’ itself behaves as a mass

and its organizers reproduce the hierarchy of the mass.

Really, how do you fight fire? With water, of course. The same goes for

revolution. We don’t fight the mass (market) with a mass (movement). We

fight mass with class. Our aim should be not to create a mass movement

but a class force.

What is class? A class is a consciously organized social force. For

example, the ruling class is conscious and acts collectively to organize not

only itself, but also the people (mass) that it rules. The corporation is the

self-conscious collective power of the ruling class. We are not saying that

class relations do not exist in the rest of society. But they remain passive

so long as they are shaped solely by objective conditions (i.e. work

situations). What is necessary is the active (subjective) participation of the

class itself. Class prejudice is not class consciousness. The class is

conscious of its social existence because it seeks to organize itself. The

mass is unconscious of its social existence because it is organized by

Coca-Cola and IBM.

The moral of the story is: the mass is a mass because it is organized as a

mass. Don’t be fooled by the brand name. Mass is thinking with your ass.

Primacy of the Collective

The small group is the coming together of people who feel the need for

collectivity. Its function is often to break out of the mass – specifically from

the isolation of daily life and the mass structure of the movement. The

problem is that frequently the group cannot create an independent

existence and an identity of its own because it continues to define itself

negatively, i.e. in opposition. So long as its point of reference lies outside

of it, the group’s politics tend to be superimposed on it by events and

crises.

The small group can be a stage in the development of the collective, if it

develops a critique of the frustrations stemming from its external

orientation. The formation of a collective begins when people not only have

the same politics, but agree on the method of struggle.

Why should the collective be the primary focus of organization? The

collective is an alternative to the existing structure of society. Changing

social relations is a process rather than a product of revolution. In other

words, you make the revolution by actually changing social relations. You

must consciously create the contradictions in history.

Concretely, this means: organize yourselves, not somebody else. The

collective is the organizational nucleus of a classless society. As a formal

organization, it negates all form of hierarchy. The answer to alienation is

to make yourself the subject, not the object, of history.

One of the critical obstacles to the formation of collectives is the transitional

period – when the collective must survive side-by-side with a disintegrating

movement and a mass society. The disintegration of the movement is not

an isolated phenomenon but reflects the weakening of the major institutions

in society responsible for our alienation. Many people are demoralized by

this process and find it bewildering because they actually depend

subconsciously on the continued existence of these institutions. We are

witnessing the break-up and transformation of an institution integral to

society – the mass market. The mass market is corporate structure which

few people are sufficiently aware of to realize how it affects our political life.

We really depend on our ‘leaders’ whether they be the Chicago 7 or 7up.

Our understanding of the collective form of organization is based on a

critique of the mass and the dictatorship of the product.

These contradictions make it imperative that any people who decide to

create a collective know exactly who they are and what they are doing.

That is why you must consider your collective as primary. Because, if you

don’t believe in the legitimacy of this form of organization, you can’t have

a practical analysis of what is happening. Don’t kid yourself. The struggle

for the creation and survival of collectives at this moment in history is going

to be very difficult.

The dominant issue will be how collectives can become part of history –

how they can become a real social force. There is no guarantee and we

should promise no easy victories. The uniqueness of developing collectives

is their definitive break with all hierarchic forms of organization and the

reconstructing of a classless society.

The thinking of radical organizers is frozen in the concept of the mass

movement. This form of struggle, no matter how radical its demands, never

threatens the basic structure – the mass itself.

Under these circumstances it takes great effort to imagine new forms of

existence. Space must be created before we can think of these things and

be able to establish the legitimacy of acting upon them.

The form of the collective is its practice. The collective is opposed to the

mass. It contradicts the structure of the mass. The collective is anti-mass.

Size of the Collective

The aim of any organization is to make it as simple as possible, or as

Marshall McLuhan puts it, “high in participation, low in definition.” The

tendency is just the opposite. Our reflex is to create administrative

structures to deal with political problems.

Most people cannot discuss intelligently the subject of size. There is an

unspoken feeling either that the problem should not exist or that it is

beneath us to talk about it. Let’s get it out in the open. Size is a question

of politics and social relations, not administration. Do you wonder why the

subject is shunted aside at large meetings? Because it fundamentally

challenges the repressive nature of large organizations. Small groups that

function as appendages to larger bodies will never feel like small groups.

The collective should not be larger than a band – no orchestras or chamber

music please. The basic idea is to reproduce the collective, not expand it.

The strength of a collective lies in its social organization, not its numbers.

Once you think in terms of recruiting, you might as well join the Army. The

difference between expansion and reproduction is the difference between

adding and multiplying. The first bases its strength on numbers and the

second on relationships between people.

Why should there be a limit to size? Because we are neither supermen nor

slaves. Beyond a certain point, the group becomes a meeting and before

you know it you have to raise your hand to speak. The collective is a

recognition of the practical limits of conversation. This simple fact is the

basis for a new social experience.

Relations of inequality can be seen more clearly within a collective and

dealt with more effectively. “Whatever the nature of authority in the large

organization, it is inherent in the simple organization unit” (Chester

Bernard, The Function of Executives, 1938). A small group with a

‘leader’ is the nucleus of a class society. Small size restricts the area which

any single individual can dominate. This is true both internally and in

relation to other groups.

Today, the mode of struggle requires a durable and resilient form of

organization which will enable us to cope both with the attrition of daily life

and the likelihood of repression. Unless we can begin to solve problems at

this level collectively, we are certainly not fit to create a new society.

Contrary to what people are led to think, i.e. united we stand, united we fall,

it will be harder to destroy a multitude of collectives than the largest

organizations with centralized control.

Size is the key to security. But its real importance lies in the fact that the

collective reproduces new social relations – the advantage being that the

process can begin now.

The limitation on size raises a difficult problem. What do you say to

someone who asks “Can I join your collective?” The question is ultimately

at the root of much hostility (often unconscious) toward the collective form

of organization. You can’t separate size from the collective because it must

be small in order to exist. The collective has a right to exclude individuals

because it offers them an alternative of starting anew collective, i.e. sharing

the responsibility for organization. This is the basic answer to the question

above.

Of course, people will put down the collective as being exclusive. That is

not the point. The size of a collective is essentially a limitation on its

authority. By contrast, large organizations, while having open membership,

are exclusive in terms of who shapes the politics and actively participates

in the structuring of activities. The choice is between joining the mass or

creating the class. The revolutionary project is to do-it-yourself.

Remember, Alexandria Kollontal warned in 1920, “The essence of

bureaucracy is when some third person decides your fate.”

Contact Between Collectives

The collective does not communicate with the mass. It makes contact with

other collectives. What if other collectives do not exist? Well, it should take

to itself until the day they do. By all means, the collective also

communicates with other people, but it never views them as a mass – as

a constituency or audience. The collective communicates with individuals

in order to encourage self-organization. It assumes that people are capable

of self-organization, and given the alternative, they will choose it over mass

participation. The collective knows that it takes time to create new forms

of organization. It simply seeks to hasten the crumbling of the mass.

Much of the problem of ‘communication’ these days is that people think

they have got to communicate all the time. You find people setting up

administrative functions to deal with information flows before they have any

idea that they want to say. The collective is not obsessed with

‘communicating’ or ‘relating’ to the movement. What concerns it is the

amount of noise – incessant phone calls, form letters, announcements of

meetings, etc. – that passes for communication. It is time we gave more

thought to what we say and how we say it.

What exactly do we mean by contact? We want to begin by taking the

bureaucracy out of communication. The idea is to begin modestly. Contact

is a touching on all sides. The essential thing is about its directness and

reliability. Eyeball to eyeball.

Other forms of communication – telephone, letters, documents, etc. –

should never be used as substitutes for direct contact. In fact, they should

serve primarily to prepare contacts.

Why is it so important to have direct contact? Because it is the simplest

form of communication. Moreover, it is physical and involves all the senses

– most of all the sense of smell. For this reason, it is reliable. It also takes

account of the real need for security. Those who talk about repression

continue to pass around sheets of paper asking for names, addresses, and

telephone numbers.

There are already a number of gatherings which appear to involve contact

but in reality are grotesque facsimiles. The worst of these and the one

most people flock to is the conference. This is a hotel of the mind which

turns all into tourists and spectators. A lower form of existence is the

endless meeting – the one held every night. Not to mention the committees

formed expressly to arrange meetings.

The basic principle of contact between collectives is: you only meet when

you have something to say to each other. This means two things. First,

that you have a concrete idea what it is you want to say. Secondly, that

you must prepare it in advance. These principles help to insure that

communication does not become an administrative problem.

The new forms of contact have yet to be created. We can think of single

examples. A member of one collective can attend the meeting of another

collective or there may be a joint meeting of the groups as a whole. The

first of these appears to be the more practical, however, the drawback is

that not everyone is involved. There are undoubtedly other forms of contact

which are likely to develop. The main thing is to invent them.

Priority of Local Action

The collective gives priority to local action. It rejects the mass politics of the

white nationalists with their national committees, organizers, and the

superstars. Definitely, the collective is out of the mainstream and what is

more it feels no regrets. The aim of the collective is to feel. New thoughts

and act new ideas – in a word to create its own spaces. And that, more

than any program, is what is intolerable to all the Xerox radicals trying to

reproduce their own images.

The collective is the hindquarters of the revolution. It makes not pretense

whatsoever in regard to the role of the vanguard. Expect nothing from

them. They are not your leaders. Leave them alone. The collective knows

it will be the last to enter the new world.

The doubts people have about local action reveal how dependent they are

on the glamour of mass politics. Everyone wants to project themselves on

the screen of revolution – as Yippies or White Panthers. Having

internalized the mass, they ask themselves questions whose answers seem

logical in its context. How can we accomplish anything without mass

action? If we don’t go to meetings and demonstrations, will we be

forgotten? Who will take us seriously if we don’t join the rank and file?

Slowly you realize that you have become a spectator, an object. Your

politics take place on a stage and your social relations consist of sitting in

an audience or marching in a crowd. The fragmentation of your everyday

experience contrasts with the spectacular unity of the mass.

By contrast, the priority of local action is an attempt to unify everyday life

and fragment the mass. This level of consciousness is a result of rejecting

the laws of mass behavior based on Leninism and TV ideology. It makes

possible an enema of the brain which everyone so desperately needs. You

will be relieved to discover that you can create a situation by localizing your

struggle.

How can we prevent local actions from becoming provincial? Whether or

not it does so depends on our overall strategy. Provincialism is simply the

consequences of not knowing what is happening. A commune, for

example, is provincial because its strategy is based on petty farming and

glorification of the extended family. What they have is astrology, not a

strategy.

Local action should be based on the global structure of modern society.

There can be no collective action without collectives. But the creation of a

collective should not be mistaken for victory not should it become an end

in itself. The great danger the collective faces historically is that of being

cut off (or cutting itself off) from the outside world. The issue ultimately will

be what action to take and when. Whether collectives become a social

force depends on their analysis of history and their course of action.

In fact, the ‘provinces’ today are moving ahead of the centers in political

consciousness and motivation. From Minnesota to the Mekong Delta, the

revolt is gaining coherence. The centers are trying to decipher what is

happening, to catch up and contain it. For this purpose they must create

centralized forms of organization – or ‘co-ordination’ – as modernists call it.

The first principle of local action is to denationalize your thinking. Take the

country out of Salem. Get out of Marlboro country. Become conscious of

how your life is managed from the national centers. Lifestyles are roles

designed to give you the illusion of movement while keeping you in your

place. “Style is mass chasing class, and class escaping mass.” (W.

Rauschenbush, “The Idiot God of Fashion”, Women’s Coming of Age,

eds. Schmalhausen and Calverton, 1931).

Local action gives you the initiative by enabling you to define the situation.

That is the practice of knowing you are the subject. Marat says:

“The most important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair,

to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh

eyes.”

The collective turns itself inside out and sees reality.

The Dream of Unity

The principle of unity is based on the proposition that everyone is a unit (a

fragment). Unity means one multiplied by itself. We are not going to say

it straight – in so far as unity has suppressed real political differences –

class, racial, sexual – it is a form of tyranny. The dream of unity is in reality

a nightmare of compromise and suppressed desires. We are not equal and

unity perpetuates inequality.

The collective will be subject constantly to pressure from outside groups

demanding support in one form or another. Everyone is always in a crisis.

Given these circumstances, a group can have the illusion of being

permanently mobilized and active without having politics of its own. Calls

for unity channel the political energies of collectives into support politics.

So, as a precaution, the collective must take time to work out its own

politics and plan of action. Above ll, it should try to foresee crisis situations

and their ‘rent-a-crowd’ militancy.

You will be accused of factionalism. Don’t waste time thinking about this

age old problem. A collective is not a faction. Responding to Pavlov’s bell

puts you in the position of a salivating dog. There will be no end to your

hunger when who you are is determined by someone else.

You will also be accused of elitism. This is risky business and should not

be dismissed lightly. A collective must first know what is meant by elitism.

Instead of wondering whether it refers to leadership or personalities, you

should first anchor the issue in a class context. Know where your ideas

come from and what their relation is to the dominant ideology. You should

ask the same questions about those who make the accusations. What is

their class background and class interest? So far many people have

reacted defensively to the charge of elitism and thus, have avoided dealing

with the issue head on. That in itself is a class reaction.

The internal is the mirror of the external. The best way to avoid behaving

like an elite is to prevent the formation of elitism within the collective itself.

Often when charges of elitism are true, they reflect the same class relations

internally.

The ways of undermining the autonomy of a collective are many and

insidious. The call for unity can no longer be responded to automatically.

The time has come to question the motives and effectiveness of such

actions – and to feel good (i.e. correct) in doing so. Jargon is pigeon talk

and is meant to make us feel stupid and powerless. Because collective

action is not organized as a mass, it does not have to rely on the call of

unity in order to act.

“Does ‘one divide into two’ or ‘two fuse into one’? This question

is a subject of debate in China and now here. This debate is a

struggle between two conceptions of the world. One believes in

struggle, the other in unity. The two sides have drawn a clear line

between them and their arguments are diametrically opposed.

Thus, you can see why one divides into two.” [Free translation

from the Red Flag, Peking [Beijing], September 21, 1964).

The Function of Analysis

Not only can there be no revolution without revolutionary theory, there can

be no strategy without analysis. Strategy is knowing ahead of time what

you are going to do. This is what analysis makes possible. When you

begin, you may not know anything. The purpose of analysis is not to know

everything, but to know what you do know and know it good – that is

collectivity. The heart of thinking analytically is to learn over and over again

that the process is as important as the product. Developing an analysis

requires new ways of thinking. Without new ways of thinking we are

doomed to old ways of acting.

The question of what we are going to do is the hardest to answer and the

one that ultimately will determine whether a collective will continue to exist.

The difficulty of the question makes analysis all the more necessary. We

can no longer afford to be propelled by the crudest forms of advertisement

– slogans and rhetoric. The function of analysis is to reveal a plan of

action.

Why is there relatively little practical analysis of what is happening today?

Some people refuse to analyze anything which they cannot immediately

comprehend. Basically they have a feeling of inadequacy. This is partly

because they have never had the opportunity to do it before and, therefore,

don’t know they are capable of it. On the other hand, many activists put

down analysis as being ‘intellectual’ – which is more a commentary on their

own kind of thinking than anything else. Finally, there are those who feel

no need to think and become very uncomfortable when somebody does

want to. This often reflects their class disposition. The general constipation

of the movement is a product of all these forces.

One reason for this sad state of affairs is that analysis gives so little

satisfaction. This is another way of saying that it is not practical. What has

happened to all thinking can best be seen in the degeneration of class

analysis into stereotyped, obese definition. There is little difference

between the theory-mongers of high abstraction and the sloganeers of

crude abstraction. Theory is becoming the dialectic of robots, and slogans

the mass production of the mind. But just because ideas have become so

mechanical does not mean we should abandon them.

Most people are willing to face the fact that they are living in a society that

has yet to be explained. Any attempt to probe those areas which are

unfamiliar is met with a general hostility of fear. People seem afraid to look

at themselves analytically. Part of the problem of not knowing what to do

reveals itself in our not knowing who we are. The motivation to look at

yourself critically and to explain society comes from the desire to change

both. The heart of the problem is that we do not completely imagine

winning, except perhaps, by accident.

Analysis is the arming of the brain. We’re being stifled by those who tell us

analysis is intellectual when in reality it is a tool of the imagination. Just as

you can’t tolerate intellectualism, so you cannot act from raw anger – not

if you want to win. You must teach your stomach how to think and your

brain how to feel. Analysis should help us to express anger intellectually.

Learning how to think, i.e. analysis, is the first step toward conscious

activity.

No doubt you feel yourself tightening up because you think it sounds heavy.

Really, the problem is that you think much bigger

than you act. Be modest. Start with what you already know and want to

know more about. Analysis begins with what interests you. Political

thinking should be part of everyday life, not a class privilege. To be

practical, analysis must give you an understanding of what to do and how

to do it.

Thinking should help to distinguish between what is important and what is

not. It should break down complex forces so that we can understand them.

Break everything down. In the process of analyzing something you will

discover that there are different ways of acting which were not apparent

when you began. This is the pleasure of analysis. To investigate a

problem is to begin to solve it.

The Need For New Formats

The need for new formats grows out of the oppressiveness of print. We

must learn the techniques of advertisement. They consist of short, clear,

non-rhetorical statements. The ad words. The ad represents a break with

the college education and the diarrhea of words. The ad is a concentrated

formula for communication. Its information power has already outmoded

the school system. The secret is to gain as much pleasure in creating the

form as in expressing the idea.

How do we defend adopting the style of advertising when its function is so

oppressive? As a medium we think it represents a revolutionary mode of

production. Rejecting it has resulted in the stagnation of our minds and a

crude romanticism in political culture. Those who turn up their noses at ads

think in a language that is decrepit. Using the ad technique transforms the

person who does it. It makes writing a pleasure for anyone because it

strives in orality in print.

What we mean by the use of the ad technique is to physically use it. Most

of the time we are unconscious of ads and, if we do become conscious, we

don’t act upon them – don’t subvert them. Ads are based on repetition. If

you affect one of them, you affect all of them. Know the environment of the

ad. The most effective way to subvert an ad is to make the contradiction

in it visible. Advertise it. The vulnerability of ads lies in the possibility of

turning them against the exploiters.

Jerry Rubin says you should use the media all the time. At least he goes

all the way. This is better than the toe-dipping approach that seems so

common these days. Of course, there are groups who say don’t use it at

all and they don’t. They will probably outlast Jerry since the basic

technique of mass media is over-exposure. That is why Jerry has already

written his memoirs. The Situationists say: “The revolt is contained by

over-exposure. We are given it to contemplate so that we shall forget to

participate.”

We are not talking about the packaging of politics. Ramparts is the

Playboy of the Left. On the other hand, the underground press is

pornographic and redundant. Newsreel’s projector is running backwards.

And why in the era of Cosmopolitan magazine must we suffer the

stodginess of Leviathan? We must prefer reading Fortune – the

magazine for ‘the men in charge of change’ – for our analysis of capitalism.

There is no getting around it – we need new formats, entirely new formats.

Otherwise we will never sharpen our wits. To break out of the spell of print

requires a conscious effort to think a new language. We should no longer

be immobilized by other people’s words. Don’t wait for the news to tell you

what is happening. Make your headlines with presstype. Cut up your

favorite magazine and put it together again. Cut big words in half and make

little words out of them – like ENVIRON MENTAL CRISIS. All you need is

a good pair of scissors and rubber cement. Abuse the enemy’s images.

Turn the Man from glad into a Frankenstein. Making comic strips out of

great art. Don’t let anything interfere with your pleasure.

Don’t read any more books – at least not straight through. As G.B. Kay

from Blackpool once said (quoting somebody else), “Reading rots the

mind.” Pamphlets are much more fun. Read randomly, write in the

margins and go back to comics. You might try the Silver Surfer for a start.

Self Activity

Bad work habits and sloppy behavior undermine any attempt to construct

collectively. Casual, sloppy behavior means that we don’t care deeply

about what we are doing or who we are doing it with. This may come as a

surprise to a lot of people. The fact remains: we talk revolution at

elementary levels.

There are two basic things underlying these unfortunate circumstances: 1)

people’s idea of how something (like revolution) will happen shapes our

work habits; 2) their class background gives them a casual view of politics.

There is no doubt that the Pepsi generation is more

politically alive. But this new energy is being channeled by organizers into

boring meetings which reproduce the hierarchy of class society. After a

while, critical thinking is eroded and people lose their curiosity. Meetings

become a routine like everything else in life.

A lot of problems which collectives will have can be traced to the work

habits acquired in the (mass) movement. People perpetuate the passive

roles they have become accustomed to in large meetings. The emphasis

on mass participation means that all you have to do is show up. Rarely,

do people prepare themselves for a meeting, nor do they feel the need to.

Often this situation does not become evident precisely because the few

people who do work (those who run the meeting) create the illusion of group

achievement. Because people see themselves essentially as objects and not as subjects,

political activity is defined as an event outside them and in the future. No

one sees themselves making the revolution and, therefore, they don’t

understand how it will be accomplished.

The short span of attention is one tell tale symptom of instant politics. The

emphasis on responding to crisis seems to contract the span of attention

– in fact there is often no time dimension at all. This timelessness is

experienced as the syncopation of over-commitment. Many people say

they will do things without really thinking out carefully whether they have the

time to do them. Having time ultimately means defining what you really

want to do. Over-commitment is when you want to do everything but end