On transparency, leadership, and participation

One of the most common objections to horizontal organization is that some sort of informal leadership will inevitably emerge. Some people have more time, energy, experience, resources, charisma, or, just care more about a project and will thus end up becoming more central to the group; they will inevitably begin coordinating with other more active members and a de facto leadership role. As Jo Freeman pointed out in her famous essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”, this is precisely what happened with the consciousness raising circles of early feminism as soon as they grew to more than a dozen people: they became dominated by small cliques, de facto leadership structures.