Term limits in anarchist organisations

what was the name of this group again?

In a broad and relatively loosish working class or social movement organisation where I do not always trust the people elected to office, or the people who elect them, like a trade union, or resident's group I support strictly enforced term limits wherever possible and would always argue for them.

In a tight knit anarchist political organisation, I'm not particularly bothered, because any any decent group would not give real powers to holders of office - they should generally be mere admin roles, L&S has (I think) one year terms and people can hold them for a maximum of 3 years without a break, although they have to go up for relelection each year of course, and are recallable, I think that's more than enough to allow for rotation, sharing, and spreading the work.

Propaganda work should only be given to people with the skills, sure new people can and should have a chance to learn, but some people will never be able to draw, design, write or play a musical instrument.

I'm not sure why you're being so obtuse about this Jack. It already been explained to you, and it should be quite clear that no one has talked about an obligatory rotation of graphic designers. It was about rotating *editors*.

Editors decide what content goes in a publication, what political line to take, how to push a political line in a publication, etc. It's one of the most powerful political roles anywhere, and even more so in libertarian organisations which don't generally have many other influential roles (secretary being one).

To illustrate the difference, as for some reason you don't seem to be seeing it, who has more influence, the editor of the Sun, or the person who drew up the template?

should we have a voting system on here? like we see on bbc sports polls ?

I've said this before, Haringey Solidarity Group has had the same treasurer for over 10 years, and it's not a problem, reports are regularly presented at meetings, plus to any member who requests them, he could be removed at any monthly general meeting. He is happy to carry on, no one else wants to do it, it is a purely admin role with no power. The signatures on the bank account have changed several times during this period as well, with no hiccups.

Again - I'm not really bothered, and would be happy if L&S did not have term limits - but there would be a problem here if someone was being relected maybe unopposed for 5 years or more - people who care about an organisation should to some extent be obliged to step up to the plate and learn how to be a secretary, editor, chair, whatever... There's also the problem that people in posts can use passive agressive tactics to remain in office - "oh so I'm not doing a good job then?" >sulk< I seriously think that would happen, especially in looser more liberal groups...

I'd lean towards preffering a term limit, but of course allowing for the constitution to be amended if someone was brilliant and there was a really good reason I can't think of at the moment for keeping them in office.

But I'm not fussed.

Yep, that's my experience as well.

Rotation is something we do for two reasons - one to prevent a build-up of power in an individual; and secondly so that everyone gets to take responsibility.

I agree we're often too small to do it properly (I can't see us rotating DA any time soon, for example) but the principle is important.

In one of the reports of the conference someone was saying that German comrade had been arguing that the movement here seems scared of mandates and accountability. It's also telling that the same few people end up running lots of positions in groups (and I know from experience this isn't confined to the UK).

It's not just about size, it's about people seeing a need to take responsibilty for making things happen.

Regards,

Martin

Also something that you have to think about is the people. Most of the comrades in Turkey, for example, are very young and in very transient employment.

Now I am not suggesting that anybody is dishonest, but when you are struggling to pay the rent and you have the control of a relatively large amount of money, you can understand that there may be a temptation to 'borrow' some. It isn't a bad thing that the treasurers are the comrades who have jobs who aren't scraping an existence from day to day.

Devrim

I have to agree with Django on that one.

There are many arguments in favour of rotation, most of which have been mentioned here and which I agree with. About the idea Jack repeats about having "your best" doing things, the idea of anarchist meritocracy can be quite problematic.

Things like running webpages from the technical side is an example of where a limited amount of people might have a real skill and where somebody might be allowed to do a job for a long period of time. But on the other hand, it is in everybody's best interests to get other people trained to do this. It's especially also in the individual interest of the poor sucker who gets phone calls at all times of day and night from people whose page isn't working correctly or something else that this work can be shared and that s/he can be replaced when not available. There's nothing worse than being at work and getting panicked phone calls from people that the server has crashed or something (from what a friend of mine says).

In general, we would want a larger group of people to learn skills, which also means that at some point, chances have got to be given to people who are not "the best". This idea of people learning through trial and error is quite clear but it is against the logic of keeping on "the best" forever. But a few things to consider:

- Who "the best" is can be subjective in some areas.
- Organizations which become dependant on a tiny group of experts to do things get really fucked is one of the key people burns out, is not available or dies.
- In terms of writers, always having the same ones automatically associate a publication with them and an organization with the ideas of that writer. This is of course OK if there is discussion and an overwhelming feeling that this person is representative for the organization.

It is also OK if there is plenty of opportunity for others to write and opportunities for people who are not "the best" to also speak out.

Sometimes as anarchists it is important for us to engage with and illicit the work and ideas of new-comers, of people with less education or cultural capital than the typical bourgeois anarchist, to let them have a voice, even if some person thinks it's not in this "best" category. I've observed how a colleague of mine, who's quite smart, fails to generate discussion with many of his articles on our web pages whereas some simpler ones, ones that many would consider much "worse" are on a more accessible level for most people and generate lively discussions. Who's "best" can be questionable in such a situation.

Of course I appreciate things that are well done, as most people do, so I can understand Jack's concerns. Yet we can see how specialization leads to real power in many areas of society and we do not want to reproduce this type of power in our movement. Anybody who has been around long enough and seen enough organizations at work has surely encountered groups that have a problem with this.

Much depends of course on the size of an organization, its concrete capabilities and the good will of its members.

I think akai is making one of the most pertinent points. Rotating jobs like editing helps to prevent burnout. Being responsible for a monthly paper (and holding down a full time job), is far harder than being the treasurer of an organisation. I would support the kind of scenario Devrim is putting forward. In the AF we do rotate the job, but don't fixate on it being done every time the post comes up for re-election.
We are trying to create a situation where the jobs are spread around and we don't end up being reliant on the same small group all the time. I don't really see that there is any issue with this, unless a group is so small they have no choice.
Groups do need to address the issue of the production team though. We should never be in a situation where that job is solely only in the hands of one person.

Don't agree with that at all. If the comrade is in need of money that bad, im sure he could ask rather than dip into the fund and commit corruption. It could be interpreted that the unemployed and poor can not be trusted with a groups money which is blatantly wrong.

This is very important. The person who is the editor of our paper suffers from overburdening. Unfortunately he is by far the best man for the job. Preventing burnout is very important.

I am not saying that the employed can not be trusted with money, However, it can't do any harm to have people who are not desperate for money looking after large amounts of money.

Devrim

We currently have a national editorial group. It's got members from two groups (that's just chance it's only two). However there's another important reason to not rely on one group of people. Political organisations have a tendency to split. It happened to us a while back. We ended up with the situation where the group who held responsibility for the issue of the paper due out were the ones who split. The current situation should stop that happening again. It will also mean that if a group do leave, we've still got comrades who can edit a paper.

heh, sounds familiar.

This is more about the bus factor than the original point of the thread though.

You're slipping catch, your link is messed up

The bus factor also applies to the job of treasurer which is why we have a team of two people doing it.

Devrim

Actually I don't think it's as cut and dried as you make out. With a bit of work you can improve the not well written one and encourage the newbie. The more experienced writer will also not get upset if their material isn't used (well I don't anyway).

And in recent experience, I have to say that there's always plenty that could be left out.

Regards,

Martin

Well the obvious answer to that is that people who aren't up to or don't want to do a task shouldn't be mandated to do it.

Obviously specialised jobs like graphic design are best done by people who are skilled in those areas, but it's best to have at least a few reasonalby good amateurs on hand, not least because depending solely on one person is a surefire way to fuck yourself over down the line when something happens and they're not available.

This is in fact what we are aiming for in the AF. We've got three members who are competent in design work and a similar number on the B list. What we need to do is to improve the quality of the A Team and to improve the number of others.