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 organisation? 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: organise yourselves, not somebody else. The collective is the organisational nucleus of a classless society. As a formal organisation, it negates all forms of hierarchy. The answer to alienation is to make yourself the subject, not the object, of history.
One of the crucial 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 American society responsible for our alienation. Many people are demoralised 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 realise 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 organisation 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 organisation, 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 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 organisation and the reconstructing of a classless society.
The thinking of radical organisers 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.