Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization

(Paperback)

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A decade ago, a wave of mass mobilisations described as horizontal and leaderless swept the planet, holding the promise of real democracy and justice for the 99%. Many saw its subsequent ebb as proof of the need to go back to what was once called the question of organisation. For something so often described as essential, however, political organisation remains a surprisingly under-theorised field. In this book, Rodrigo Nunes proposes to remedy that lack by starting again from scratch. Redefining the terms of the problem, he rejects the confusion between organisation and any of the forms it can take, such as the party, and argues that organisation must be understood as always supposing a diverse ecology of different initiatives and organisational forms. Drawing from a wide array of sources and traditions that include cybernetics, poststructuralism, network theory and Marxism, Nunes develops a grammar that eschews easy oppositions between verticalism and horizontalism, centralisation and dispersion, and offers a fresh approach to enduring issues like spontaneity, leadership, democracy, strategy, populism, revolution, and the relationship between movements and parties.

Reviews

Praise for Organisation of the Organisationless. Collective Action After Networks:

"A short yet rich essay. Neither an uncritical celebration of networks, nor its opposite -- and we have certainly seen enough of both of these -- Nunes's substantive claim begins with the affirmation that absolute 'horizontality' is a myth: 'networks are not and cannot be flat'. -- Ben Trott * Radical Philosophy *
Praise for Organisation of the Organisationless. Collective Action After Networks:

With a deft knowledge of contemporary movements and the acumen to describe developments in organization with neither normative hand-wringing nor overtheorization, Nunes delivers a grammar adequate to contemporary movements, and vital for the continuing importance of careful reflection for the flourishing of contemporary radical politics. -- Dave Mesing * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Praise for What Would it Mean to Win :

Powerful vision of the possible and the seldom-seen present. -- Rebecca Solnit, author, Hope in the Dark and A Paradise Built in Hell
Praise for What Would it Mean to Win :

This kind of innovative thinking, which emerges from the context of the movements, opens new paths for rebellion and the creation of real social alternatives. -- Michael Hardt, co-author, Commonwealth, Multitude and Empire
This is an exciting, innovative book. Rodrigo Nunes has utterly revitalised the stale theory of political organisation with new evidence, new thinking and new strategic concepts. All of the suffocating clichs of both horizontalists and vanguardists are briskly overturned here. Everyone can learn something from this book. -- Richard Seymour
This is the book we've been waiting for: Rodrigo Nunes systematically assesses the problems the left has faced since the Occupy movement and its failure. A must-read for the activists of our time. -- Franco 'Bifo' Berardi
How is to be done With whom With what Soberly reckoning with the limits of a decade of mass movements against austerity and authoritarianism, and writing in the harsh glare of our warming condition, Nunes enjoins us to revisit the theory of organisation beyond the party as fetish or bogeyman. Drawing on a rich trove of sources - from Spinoza to Bogdanov, cybernetic theory to contemporary activism - Neither Vertical nor Horizontal is an indispensable critical and clinical intervention into the principal political problem of our time. -- Alberto Toscano
A timely contribution not only to theoretical debates around organisation, but also to a global collective memory of political struggles. -- Birgan Gokmenoglu * LSE Review of Books *

Author Bio

Rodrigo Nunes is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is the author of Organisation of the Organisationless and of numerous articles in publications such as Les Temps Modernes, Radical Philosophy, South Atlantic Quarterly, Jacobin, Al Jazeera and The Guardian. As an organiser and popular educator, he has been involved in several initiatives in Brazil and in Europe, including the first editions of the World Social Forum.