The Tea Party, to mix metaphors, is a starfish. This is a simple way of describing the form and function of the movement. The metaphor also goes a long way to explaining the Tea Party’s effectiveness. In other words, the Tea Party is not really a hierarchy. It’s a network. If it formalizes, it is more likely to fail at what it’s now doing well.
Notwithstanding the left’s determination to characterize the Tea Party as a movement purchased with Charles and David Koch’s money, the Kochtopus cannot be the head of a starfish–at least according this interesting NPR piece, which references a book by Rod Beckstrom:
The Starfish and the Spider “is really a guidebook for people, to help organize decentralized movements and organizations of any type,” Beckstrom tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep.
The book’s premise is drawn from biology, Beckstrom says. He points to the fact that a spider can survive without an arm, but it would die without its head.
“That’s how we’ve looked at organizations in the West for the last several hundred years,” Beckstrom says, “top-down, spider-like — there’s a CEO, or there’s someone in control.
“But the world is seeing a profusion of new organizations that are a lot more like a starfish.”
The starfish model, he says, is decentralized. And if one of a starfish’s arms is cut off, it can be regenerated.
So much for the theory of Koch-funded cabals and astroturfing. (Sorry, Rachel Maddow. Perhaps when you understand the power of distributed systems, you’ll also understand the analogous power of voluntary association and free markets.)
Another good book along these lines is Clay Shirkey’s “Here Comes Everybody”. Shirky believes that because the costs of organization are going down, the traditional firm (a la Ronald Coase) is increasingly less necessary. Hierarchies exist due to “transactions costs”. Network organizations (i.e. starfish, slime-molds and other decentralized forms) can emerge when those interaction/transaction costs go down. Thanks to technology, they are.
The functional reasons are compelling: You don’t want your organization to dissolve because your leadership gets sandbagged, or because your information system is way too top down. But function and form is just one reason the Tea Party should never formalize…
A formal (hierarchical) organization – like a political party – is not only too centralized, but it becomes less effective as a check on government power. Currently, the Tea Party is coalescing around anti-incumbent, anti-elite and anti-state-power themes. It moves from without and, due to it’s form, is not as corruptible. Don’t believe me? Try lobbying the Tea Party.
There are trade offs, of course. What you lose when you’re decentralized is decision-making power, carried out at some instance, based on some plan. You can’t just turn, go straight, or back up on a dime. Tim Kaine or Michael Steele can’t either, but they can turn the ship with commands and controls to a far greater degree. Their organizations are more like spiders.
But the pluralism and broad theme-orientation of the Tea Party makes it effective in ways that really count: like keeping politicians accountable, raising a stink, and getting people to the polls–which is currently the only game in town when it comes to checking Leviathan.
Politics – for better or worse – is evolving. The Netroots, the Rightroots and the Tea Party are catalyzing this evolution. Where it’s all headed, I cannot say. But if we could give up the desire for our tribes to have power over all other tribes in a territory, we might find that politics can look a little more like Facebook and a lot less like tug-of-war.
My sincere hope is that we can eventually marry the power of the starfish organizations and positive social change. We could fulfill the promise of Tocqueville’s America if we were willing to give up the desire to dominate others with our views. Indeed, I find it sad and ironic that we’re forming massive social movements like this just to fight political tug-of-war–the spoils of which go opportunists controlled by special interests.
In short, the Tea Party won’t likely kill partisan politics. But it could slow the statist juggernaut.
That is, if it stays a starfish.
