Self-management

Opening

Organisation and non-domination have to be held together.

Self-management assumes neither that every structure is oppressive nor that the absence of a leader automatically creates freedom.

Its concrete task is to make functions, information, mandates and coordination visible and contestable enough that the people concerned retain real power over what structures their activity.

Central question: who can actually decide, understand, contest and take back a function?

In short

Self-management is neither structurelessness nor permanent assembly.

It organises common functions while trying to keep mandates, information, skills and coordination under the control of the people concerned. It must be verified in acts rather than inferred from a legal status or vocabulary.

01 · Real participation

Self-management is not everyone deciding everything alone.

It describes an organisation in which the people concerned retain real power over decisions structuring their shared activity.

The question is not only who legally owns an organisation, but who can understand its rules, participate in forming them, contest a decision and actually change how work or a commons is organised.

Participation is not being consulted after the essential choices have already been made.

02 · Invisible hierarchy

The absence of bosses does not guarantee self-management.

A collective can remove hierarchical titles while a few people retain information, expertise, external relationships or control of the floor. Power then becomes informal rather than absent.

Self-management therefore requires making actual functions and asymmetries visible so that they can be limited, shared, transmitted and contested.

03 · Delegation

Mandating someone is not abandoning sovereignty.

Complex organisations need delegation: representation, accounting, coordination, negotiation or technical functions. Refusing all delegation can make common action impossible.

A self-managed mandate should remain precise, understandable, limited and revocable. Delegation organises a function; it does not turn the delegate into the owner of collective decision-making.

04 · Competence

Expertise must not become a permanent right to command.

Some people know more, have more experience or hold indispensable skills. This asymmetry can be useful and sometimes necessary.

It becomes problematic when it turns into a durable monopoly over decision-making. Self-management therefore tries to combine recognition of competence, transmission of knowledge and enough understanding among those concerned to question the choices being made.

A function may be necessary. Domination is not.

05 · Rotation

Rotation does not replace competence.

Rotating responsibilities can prevent durable appropriation. But mechanical rotation may damage continuity, safety or quality when a function requires specific skill.

The useful distinction is between what can be shared, what requires training and continuity, and how necessary expertise can remain controllable rather than turning into an unchallengeable power position.

06 · Information

Information is an infrastructure of power.

A formally collective decision remains fictional if only a few people hold the data, codes, accounts, contacts or history needed to understand it.

Self-management therefore requires sufficient circulation of information, accessible records and procedures people can actually understand. Transparency is not total exposure of everything; it is access to what is necessary to control delegated functions.

07 · Scale

Decision-making should remain close to its consequences.

Not every decision needs everyone. Local issues can be decided locally; effects crossing units require wider coordination.

The principle is to match the scale of decision as closely as possible to the scale of consequences without allowing a coordinating centre to absorb the decision-making capacity of the units concerned.

08 · Coordination

Coordinate without rebuilding a pyramid.

Several autonomous groups may need to share resources, harmonise rules, organise a network or address a problem larger than any one unit. Coordination is therefore not the enemy of self-management.

The risk appears when the coordinating structure becomes a sovereign centre deciding in place of the units. Federation, delimited mandates, identifiable responsibility and possibilities of withdrawal or revision can keep coordination as a function rather than a separated power.

09 · Legal form

A cooperative status is not sufficient proof.

A formally cooperative organisation may still contain major inequalities of information, competence, pay, available time or control of economic relationships.

Conversely, self-managing practices can partially exist in structures that are not fully cooperative. Legal form matters, but the proof lies in the real capacity of the people concerned to influence the decisions structuring their activity.

10 · Participation costs

Time to participate is itself a resource.

Collective decision-making consumes time, attention and administrative skill. If this cost is not distributed, the most available people end up deciding more than others.

Real self-management must therefore treat participation as a material condition: recognised time, access to information, training, the ability to delegate some tasks and protection against organisational exhaustion.

11 · Conflict and responsibility

Self-management does not abolish harm or accountability.

A self-managed collective can still produce abuse, conflict, unjust decisions or predatory behaviour. The absence of central authority does not remove the need for procedures of protection, inquiry, repair or, where necessary, separation.

Anti-authoritarian language must not become community impunity. A free organisation is also judged by its ability to address harm without protecting central figures or sacrificing exposed people in the name of group unity.

Proof-act

Look for a concrete redistribution of power.

A collective does not prove self-management by using the word. It shows it when an important function can be contested, decisive information is no longer monopolised, a mandate can genuinely be revised or a central skill is actually transmitted.

The proof-act must be observable: which decision changed hands, which dependency decreased, which function became controllable, or which previously excluded person can now really influence the process?

Condensation question: which structuring decision in your organisation is still beyond the reach of the people who directly bear its consequences?

Related topics

Power · Authority · Democracy · Institutions · Work · Economy · Responsibility · Freedom

Further reading

Manifesto for an Integrative Anarchy

The source develops federative organisation, precise and revocable mandates, circulation of information, transmission of skills and decision-making close to consequences.

Source traceability

This page translates the current French thematic page “Autogestion”.