A need to rethink "The Question of Scale" in this period.

A reflection based on Peter Murray's "The Secret to Scale"

*Power U Issue Townhall, 2023

“How our obsession with scale in while inheriting conditions of a left that was decimated has created a hyper individualist orientation towards scale, a lack of imagination in community organizing.”

I was prompted to write this after a trusted comrade was sharing with me some of their hopes in their community organizing base-building efforts in the coming year. Throughout our discussion, they asked if I read a piece titled “The Secret of Scale”, which I had not heard of at the time. So before you read my offering here, I highly recommend you read this piece first, as it serves as a jumping off point on the larger question, and I seek to frame the discussion from there.

How Scale is often discussed

In a US context where there isn’t a left party that can relate to and channel grassroots popular movements in a significant way to contest for Power, many of our formations (Especially in FL) serve as small enclaves for people who understand the barbarity of the empire that we live in, and are putting forward political work that ultimately seeks to improve the conditions of everyday people.

While some leaders and organizations are more skillful than others in these efforts, there is generally a universal understanding on the broader left that we will not be able to change anything until we have movements AND Real organizations with millions of working class people who are attempting to help determine the future trajectory of the country and it’s economy (and we aren’t talking about paper members, or email listservs that are proxy for real people, but people who are active and see such an organization as part of the fabric of their life). And yet from here, the conventional orientation for the majority of the leaders and organizations from this point on go to ask “how do WE do whatever is possible to get to scale?”. The WE in this case is their own individual specific project. How does Power U (the organization I have the privilege to be a part of at the moment) become an organization that has thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of members needed to create popular movements, win certain electoral seats, create moral and economic crisis. Because of how underdeveloped the left ecosystem is, this orientation is welcomed and accepted across many organizations. There are exceptions of course, with more seasoned political workers understanding the need for different organizational forms, the role of cadre, etc, but from my purview, this isn’t something that is clear in people’s practice. Instead, we have a hyper individualist culture that functions as a competitive race to the bottom, rather than one that encourages a culture of shared experimentation and division of labor.

How does this look in practice? Leader’s practice that communicates the message of “I will prove to you that my ideas are more correct than your ideas because I will have a larger organization than you in 5 years”. Power U seeking to be an organization with thousands is accepted without strong interrogation. What is more important (and not asked enough) is one’s assessment of the terrain that leads to the conclusion that they must seek to be this type of organization. Although not a complete list, here are some examples of often ignored but basic questions that lead to this:

-Who is the base your organization seeks to bring in (and what strategic role do they play in the economy or civic life of the geography?)

-What type of capacities/skills does one practice through participation of this project?

-How does this project explicitly relate to other organizational forms (including unions) in the desired region, and how large and influential are they?

-How does your organization orient to campaigns (how they are decided, determining what’s “winnable” or not, who get developed in the process, etc.

-Ideologically where do fall on the spectrum to other organizations in your region, and what are your grounds (have you actually investigation this question).

What I lay out in rest of this piece operates from the assumption that after answering questions like these in a rigorous way, most political workers will fall into a two broad categories:

1. Our organization is best positioned to be an org with thousands, but in order to do so, we need to be able to relate to these organizations and projects in these ways….

2. Our organization is not best positioned to be in the thousands, but we can make a significant contribution in these ways, which means we have to relate to other organizations in the following….

Due of how weak and out of position the left is, we need to think of scale in the context of building a robust ecosystem, not as a rat race to show who is THE organization*.

*(If you are building a party at the moment, feel free to tell me about how none of this applies to you in the comments)

Okay - Now that that’s out the way, my thoughts on the article

Listen, I want to start out by saying I don’t know Peter Murray from a can of paint, nor am I familiar with their work, so I am only responding based on what is put forward in this article. What i seek to do is use their work to continue to attempt advance how we talk about movement work, and to be challenged and have my thinking refined. I offer you the same invitation.

I also originally wrote this as a email response to a comrade, so keep in mind if some of the tone is different.
And if you gotten this far down and still haven’t read the linked piece - Wyd?

What I agree with Peter on:

I think Peter makes a clear case on how we should be thinking about organizations in ways that we often lose sight of when we focus more on hectic grind of issues-based campaigns work. Especially when it comes to membership engagement, and training organizers to be invested in member’s overall development more than just getting a “yes” to a specific set of tasks at the moment. Also, I do agree that “most Americans don’t view themselves primarily as activists”, and that the goal of scale for us should not be rooted in everyone becoming activists. His ability to name a difference in such a orientation in the following quote is also helpful: “Issue organizations constantly ask, “How can we get this member more engaged in our issues?” whereas functional organizations constantly ask, “How can we get more engaged in this member’s daily life?”

I think what he is trying to put forward ultimately as “functional organizing” is useful in how a certain type of organization grows to scale. I think there needs to be organizations on our side that are thinking about scale in this way. The importance of benefits and perks, being tied to the fabric of one’s everyday life are clearly important and need to be done. However I think these reflections need to be had within a broader context of the current state of our movement ecosystem. What I mean by this is more fleshed out in the ways I see what Peter gets wrong about the questions of scale below.

What I believe Peter does Incorrectly:

1.Flattening of Base Building Projects

Peter is not alone in this, but in this period, there has been an oversimplification of what constitutes a Basebuilding organization. Just like everyone is an organizer, we often throw around basebuilding even though organizations have different logics (even if not always coherent). I will try to lay out what I think are different types of basebuilding projects I see in this moment below, because I believe that if we do not try to make some distinctions, then the reader would conclude that all BB organizations should begin to engage with this and make certain pivots that I think may not make sense for all organizations, nor be useful for the ecosystem that they are in. Which brings me to the next point.

2. His logic flows from the question of Scale being centered in 1 (assumed NGO) project, as opposed to an ecosystem that brings scale

For me, this is a glaring and common issue in how people think about scale. Even if they try not to, political workers often think about scale from the perspective of one organization holding all of the members or active agents, and not within the context of an ecosystem where different groupings are in motion. This easily falls apart if we were to ask him “of the most politically active sections of the NRA, what other organizations or leadership/civic programs are these members affiliated with?”. Are we to believe that every single “member” of AARP is conducting their political life solely through the membership of that organization? He analyzes these organizations in a vacuum that leads to conclusions that gives the perception that they are sole organizations in motion of leveraging power, and not part of a broader set of organizational forms and relationships. Did this or that group win this policy fight because of the size of its members or because an elected official was in the same sorority chapter as a key leader of a group? I think Peter’s conclusions could be more meaningful if he didn’t start with the flawed premise that so many of us in the Collective/NGO word hold is that all questions of scale have to be held within the particular organization I am running. I think there are more useful conclusions if we start from the local ecosystem level, and then think about what types of organizations need to be created to help grow the scale of other types of organizations.

3. Ignores laws of Development - Applying the growth of AARP & NRA trajectory to what is required of us.

Viewing the growth of the NRA and AARP without a more concrete assessment of their phases of growth obscures how some of its logic was developed. In the present tense, there are large groups of private actors who see the benefit of large groups like the NRA. Did the NRA start with hundreds of gun clubs across the country willing to give discounts to members on the onset? Logically, we can assume no, because we know things like discounts require businesses to see that they are more likely to increase their overall business with access to this new untapped market of people so much that the discount is negligible. I would be extremely surprised if the NRA was able to offer the perks of insurance when they had its first 100 dues paying members. He leads us toward a conclusion that these groups grew because of their perks, which I think goes against standard organizational development logic. What's more likely, is that these organizations were able to offer these perks after a period of sustained growth, which allows rapid growth to occur even quicker. We see this often in business, known as the “flywheel Effect” .

Just to add another fact that demonstrates this, he ignores that the NRA did not start out as a lobbying arm in the way we know it. In fact, their lobbying and advocacy arm doesn’t get established until ALMOST 100 YEARS AFTER THE ORGANIZATION WAS FOUNDED. Anyone who reads this and tries to shoe-horn a movement organization in the same context is making a gross false equivalency.

In fairness, when it comes to perks, I do think what this lesson does offer is that smaller organizations could in the long term be able to offer these long term perks if they think in terms of an ecosystem. Specifically winning over individuals, business owners, and leaders of civil society, to become members of the organization where they believe in the mission enough that they can offer discounts, services, etc. Some would say, an organization should “root themselves” within the class.

What I believe can be applied from these lessons in a context of an organization like statewide IPOs (Independent Political Organizations).

Building on what is useful…

In order to put forward what may be useful about the article, I want to tease out what I think are different types of BB projects in this period that each come with its own considerations. Because Peter flattens this, the lessons one can get from here are incoherent and not particularly useful for where I think movement is at the moment. So I will attempt to lay out what I see are differences in basebuilding, albeit it’s very “drafty”.

Ultimately, The reason why I believe Peter’s "functional organizing" term isn't useful is because I think he is trying to describe just 1 type of BB organization. One that is positioned to be able to grow in ways like the AARP and NRA. For the sake of this piece, I am going to call that type of organization "Politicized Recreation" organizations. In total, I see 5 types of organization forms in base building. Some organizations, due to size and resources , try to encompass many of these things in one, but I make distinctions because I believe that each requires slightly different capacities, labor required, and expertise developed through practice. They are:

1) Politicized Recreational Spaces

2) Cyclical Organizing (Cohort Models)

3) Traditional BB -Campaigning as Primary Tasks (CD)

4) Traditional BB -Leadership Development as Primary Tasks (LD)

5) Electoral Parties/ IPOs

I try to give a rough overview in this Substack Post Here. But keep in mind, I am not talking about mutual aid collectives, capacity builders, political education types of projects. A robust ecosystem requires these as well as others, but this post is really about getting a more nuanced discussion of what is base building in this period.

Taking a stab at a larger orientation…

Reaching scale requires a division of labor as well as potentially different skill sets. In short, a robust division of labor in an ecosystem. If base building organizations began to think of themselves in this way as opposed to division based on simply the different identity demographics within a larger constituency, we could have a more refined standard of BB, which could increase our ability to actually get to scale. If you take this into consideration, here are some of the ways in which Peter’s article can be useful for us to think about scale (but it relies on us to see what he is putting forward as simply 1 type of BB organization within a broader ecosystem). The shorthand comes from the document linked (For a future Substack Post).

1.Cohort models need to more explicitly feed their people to campaign centered projects & leadership development base building projects based on position, interest, and skills.

2. All staff and members of LD & CD base building groups should be members of the politicized recreation space.

3.LD & CD programs work to align shared targets, and utilize the growth of the Politicized recreation space as a clearing house of cross pollination, organic relationships and linkages.

4. Statewide IPO’s need to be invested in the health of other organizations in its locale, with the hope that cross pollination leads to building a deep and coherent bench, as opposed to a bunch of C3s having a bunch of their own C4’s.

Conclusion - Where do go from here?

Like many of my contemporaries, I believe that as conditions worsen for us here domestically, the left will need to be able to making meaning with our people, and articulate a vision of an alternative to this hellscape we are in. Yet, I believe that there are no fast tracks, no work arounds, or shortcuts to building political organizations that could help us implement such an alternative vision. Until we are rooted amongst everyday working class people here, we are lost. All of this goes back to questions of organization, and the robust ecosystem that needs to be cultivated long term. And until we have more of a shared language and a shared orientation of organization building, our ability to get beyond the narrow thinking of our individual projects will continue to limit our creativity.

The hope is you engage with me to continue to work towards a more refined shared way of talking about these aspects.