We would like to see the anarchist movement, and eventually an anarchist society, made up of large numbers of autonomous small groups, each engaged in its own project. The precise composition and nature of each group would vary considerably. The one essential feature would be that control over all aspects of the group, and its affairs, should rest within that group itself. No outside individuals, groups or 'networking structures' should have any authority over them.
The number of people in a group or collective would depend upon the nature of the project, the available energies of the people involved and how it organises itself. The optimum number of members usually quoted in small group manuals is between 6 and 12, though we feel that it may be feasible to have up to 20 people on especially large and demanding projects.
Each group would set its own priorities and decide what activities it will undertake. However, we have found from our own experience and observations of other groups that maintaining a precise focus for action is critical if a group is to get anything worthwhile done. So, for example, a group may opt to run a coffee shop, or a women's refuge, produce a newspaper on local affairs, or perform rock 'n roll, print posters, produce a radio program, or campaign around a specific issue. The project chosen should reflect the interests and abilities of the members and what they see as the one most pressing need of the movement and people in struggle at the time.
The internal structure and practices of each group should reflect a commitment to challenging hierarchy and developing an authentic anarchist practice. Views as to how this should be done will inevitably vary from one group to another as reflects the difficulty of the task and the differences in peoples' experiences, conditioning and problems as well as the theoretical differences about how social change is best achieved.
In recent years our movement has heard a lot of talk about federations, networking, delegate conferences and the like. In our view, this is premature and under existing conditions can actually create serious problems. If they are to be genuinely anarchistic, federations and networks must at all times serve the interests of the member groups. This can only be guarantied if the groups are able to tailor the networking structure to suit their own particular needs. Of course, this can only be done if the constituent groups already exist and have worked out what they want from a network, federation , or conference. If we try to create the federation or network before the constituent groups exist then it seems inevitable that the umbrella structure will achieve a primary position - that it will mould the groups to suit its own purpose and will thus exert power over the small groups. Seen in this light, talk of federations and networking structures in the absence of a strong groundswell of existing small groups is both mistaken and dangerous to the process of creating an authentically anarchist movement and society.
That anarchists insist on premature attempts to create umbrella organisations presumably reflects our conditioning in main stream society. The success of a movement is judged by its ability to create centralised power structures and to mobilise large "masses" of people. The primary focus is on the macro level of social activity. At this level the personal dimension is lost and the individual inevitably becomes alienated and irrelevant to the project at hand. We contend that as anarchists we must learn to turn away from this way of looking at things. We should reject "the masses" as a valid vehicle for political change, and should instead seek an approach which always respects the autonomy of the individual and the small groups which individuals voluntarily form to better articulate their interests, desires and ideals.
Concepts like "the masses" reflect the consumerist and alienated patterns of mainstream capitalist society. In the same way that "networks" or "federations" which are not firmly rooted in well established small groups, they avoid coming to grips with issues of immediate relevance to ourselves and they also avoid confronting and making difficult choices.