In order to reliably and efficiently get what we want out of action we form groups, we organise, we agree on the scope of cooperation and on the rules of limiting individual freedom in the interest of maximising collective agency. “Every group, however casual, meets to do something; in this activity, according to the capacities of the individuals, they co-operate. This co-operation is voluntary and depends on some degree of sophisticated skill in the individual.” (Bion 1961, 143) The advantage of being part of a well structured group is nonetheless opposed by secondary characteristics inherent to group formation: dependency on the group-structure and the associated anxiety about the group’s integrity. Here I argue, following Wilfred Bion, that group formation is the logical foundation of authority, but dependency on the group structure may progressively erode its political legitimacy.

A group is commonly understood as a more or less integrated multiplicity of reciprocally relating individuals, but individual agency already presupposes membership in a group: a communication community that grounds individual language, identity and meaning. “Humanity is in essence linguistic, and therefore depends always already for its thinking on consensual communication.”(Apel 1996, 211) The coming together of a group must, above all else, involve a sustained exchange of meaning between its members, a common narrative; it cannot be a purely nominal declaration that we are all One because there can be no meaningful demarcation of the terms <we> and <all> unless the group is, first, ontologically and, then, narratively aggregated. The group and the individual are ontologically co-dependent, in the sense that the individual is a product and a continuation of group relations, and the group is a product and a continuation of individual agents. Only in that sense groups have no beginning but evolve from one set of associations to another: “I am viewing group phenomena that do not ‘begin’; the matters with which I am concerned continue, and evolve, but they do not ‘begin’.” (Bion 1961, 88)

A group may aggregate spontaneously, but it may be also aggregated by an established authority within a pre-existing, relatively stable organisational structure. The organisational structure according to which members of a group are aggregated is generally not determined by those members but by some pre-established group. The purpose of an organisation thus formed may therefore be at odds with the purpose of the group which is constituted and managed within the organisation. In order to contextualise the relationship between individuality, group-structure, hierarchy and, in particular, how individual agents are able to influence other individuals via social organisation, I will rely on the formative tensions of intersubjective aggregation identified by Wilfred Bion: “There is only one kind of group (…) and that is the basic group – the group dominated by one of these three basic assumptions, dependency, pairing, and fight-flight.” (Bion 1961, 89)

Bion had observed that groups that are institutionally aggregated tend to behave in a manner that does not support effective disposal, let alone efficient disposal, of the assigned institutional function. The divide between group behaviour and the institutional function is, according to Bion, the result of a more fundamental conflict between the overt purpose of the group (its primary task) and the intuitive, tacit (perhaps instinctive) assumption that the ultimate purpose of the group is self-preservation. “The basic assumption of the group conflicts very sharply with the idea of a group met together to do a creative job (…) The basic assumption is that people come together as a group for purposes of preserving the group.” (Bion 1961, 63-64)

If a group is aggregated within an institution vested with coercive powers focussed on security, order or defense, its social necessity can be maintained only if the underlying threat is continuously maintained or cyclically reproduced, giving rise thereby to institutional narratives based on essentially unwinnable conflict. Drastic political measures, overreaches of authority and disruptive operational excesses are routinely justified as necessary to prevent nothing short of apocalyptic consequences, of total systemic collapse. Human nature and individual agency are often perceived as a threat that must be permanently contained, pre-emptively controlled and mitigated, but the ultimate purpose is always to mitigate the anxiety of the authorities (the ‘protectors’) with respect to its subjects (the ‘protected’). “The need to be in control through prohibiting behaviour is based in a need to defend against anxiety in oneself, and to control anxiety. In the way in which we design organisations, and the ideas we bring to their functioning, it is the authority based in anxiety model that is most evident.” (Bain 2006) We can characterise groups in the authority category (not necessarily limited to the institutional focus on security, policing or defense) as dominated by the basic-assumption fight-flight (baF). All authority groups, being basic-assumption groups, care primarily for their own survival and will therefore not hesitate to break the rules or exceed their authority whenever their existence is threatened. Any attempt to reform or replace the basic-assumption culture must therefore provide a transitory platform, a substitute group-identity for those who are dependent on the structure to manage their own anxiety. No purely antagonistic approach can ever succeed in instituting a viable political reform or as a way of reinstating eroding political legitimacy because it would only reinforce the basic-assumption associated with the group’s nihilation-anxiety.

Service oriented organisations, on the other hand, tend to express the conflict between the group’s behaviour and the institutional function in a non-adversarial fashion. The institutional objective to solve problems or satisfy human needs conflicts with the group’s own need to ensure their ample supply in order to survive as a group, and so the possibility of a final solution is an existential threat against which the group unwittingly defends itself. The theatre of ostentatious formality, of dependency on policy and procedure, multiple layers of delegation of authority, safety protocols and the atomisation of tasks are the means of concealing the divide between the group’s hidden objective to perpetuate its existence and the overt institutional purpose. Dogmatism and formalism may dominate while the primary task is relegated to the status of an essentially unachievable ideal that can only be approximated. We can characterise institutional groups in the non-authoritarian category as dominated by the basic-assumption dependency (baD), whereby nihilation-anxiety within the group is managed. A group in baD will never voluntarily do anything (including solving the problem it was instituted to solve) that would eliminate the need for the group’s existence.

All group hierarchies, especially those in baF and baD, involve application of authority by the elect few over the many, but it would be an oversimplification to assume that authority is simply imposed on the group whose subordinate members are thereby oppressed. A leaderless group must organise itself anew in response to every challenge, must negotiate potential solutions and accept complex and often unpredictable liabilities. This is stressful, requiring constant alertness and participation by all members in the decision-making process, and so every group tends to structure itself in a way that concentrates authority in the hands of the elect few, thereby reducing the adaptive stress for all other members. In the short-term, this tendency may result in improved efficiency and better crisis responsiveness, and therefore in greater collective agency, but in the long-term, once the group settles into any of the basic-assumption dynamics, all the advantages of hierarchical organisation may be undone, even beyond what could be expected from the state of pure anarchy.

In order to understand what drives the basic-assumption dynamics, Bion has introduced an empty space for authority, a gap that would remain unoccupied when not contextually claimed by one of the members, unlike the structure of formal authority which saturates that space continuously. The most radical element in Bion’s approach to Social Analysis was his tacit refusal to assume the position of authority, allowing for unmittigated expression of natural tendencies and unrealised deviant potentialities within the group. This would in turn create opportunities for participants to learn experientially, by acting in full personal authority and being faced with direct consequences of their choices and actions. According to Bion, when a group realises that the position of authority is unoccupied it experiences temporary distress but, simultaneously, aggressively opposes any member who would attempt to take over and monopolise the leadership position. After a period of mutual interrogation, the group chooses as its new leader, without exception, the most psychiatrically disordered member. “In its search for a leader the group finds a paranoid schizophrenic or malignant hysteric if possible; failing either of these, a psychopathic personality with delinquent trends will do; failing a psychopathic personality it will pick on the verbally facile high-grade defective. I have at no time experienced a group of more than five people that could not provide a good specimen of one of those.” (Bion 1961, 121/123) The choice of a pathological leader confirms that the group in now dominated by a basic-assumption.

The most ubiquitous and important example of a basic-assumption group is the nation-state. Ostensibly, every nation-state relies on national unity and voluntary participation for its economic and cultural prosperity, but simultaneously requires hierarchical exclusion of the ruled majority for effective concentration of coercive power within the apparatus of control. This alone gives rise to the basic-assumption pairing (baP), which signifies propensity for collusion between various factions and sub-groups in the interest of managing their own nihilation-anxiety. Another way, basic-assumption groups either collude or fight in order to preserve themselves, and only secondarily and often reluctantly cooperate towards fulfilment of their primary tasks. Most importantly, the top and the bottom of the hierarchy collude towards preservation of their respective group identities. In all democratic nation-states such political alienation and factional stratification appears to be voluntary and common, typically requiring no additional coercive measures to prevent the re-presented majority from becoming politically mobilised against the apparatus of control. The operational significance of authority in a democratic nation-state must therefore reside in collusion (baP), expressed as ritualised reconciliation of state-coercion with the voluntary submission of its citizens: popular elections.

The purpose of compulsory voting, for example, is clearly unrelated to meaningful participation in state-management since no one can be compelled to vote rationally. It is the implicit contradiction of such voting – the act of voting irrationally – that makes the framework of systemic coercion and collusive disenfranchisement psychologically assimilable by ritualistically discharging the tension between consensual-submission and compulsory-consent. The voting system allows the dominated public to save face by feigning acquiescence to the ‘democratic process’, and thus submit to the ruling power with ostensible dignity. It is precisely this ritual of re-presentation, which forms the very platform of voluntarily choosing to disassociate oneself from the already comprehensively neutralised possibilities of political mobilisation. Public acquiescence to this purely symbolic re-presentation simultaneously unifies the nation-state as a group-identity and consensually separates the governing-faction from the governed population. Like all hierarchies, the democratic nation-state is a basic-assumption group dominated by nihilation-anxiety which expresses itself through fight-flight, dependency and collusion.

Nominally, representative democracy involves the Government acting as a re-presentative for the governed citizens. The authority of Government, insofar as the Government is deemed legitimate, is grounded solely in the collective authority of the group; not in the authority of individual citizens as is often erroneously assumed, probably on account of Rosseau (1923, 81): “In the presence of the person represented, representatives no longer exist.” Individuals cannot delegate the authority they do not themselves possess, and they do not, in their own right, possess the authority to govern any other individual because individual authority cannot be consistently generalised over multiple individuals. The notion of individual authority is constitutive of anarchy; the notion of group-authority is constitutive of democracy. The common libertarian accusation that the Government is undemocratic just because its actions are opposed to preferences of some political faction is not a ‘failure of re-presentation’, not an ‘abuse of authority’, but a misunderstanding of what is the source of authority that can be re-presented. While this clarification neutralises some objections to the authority of the State, it does not mean that the State has unbounded authority. When the Government prioritises self-preservation instead of protecting the group from which it draws the authority to govern, this clearly exceeds the re-presentative authority of the State and becomes a form of oppression. If the State is afflicted by the basic-assumption dynamics, what is typically the case, this inevitably undermines the group agency of the entire nation-state. The process of authority-formation may be roughly cyclical, proceeding from anarchy to increasingly complex collaborative organisation (free-enterprise democracy), descending into socialism and fascism via incremental dependency, collusion and anxiety (growing inefficiency, insecurity and scarcity), collapsing back to anarchy through (fight-flight) factional disintegration, and back again to collaborative organisation. If this is true then there is no such thing as the end of history (contra Marx, Fukuyama) and our best long-term option may be to maintain a ‘multi-polar world’ where nation-states in different stages of the organisational cycle would be able to assist one another at the time of inevitable political collapse.

Apel, Karl-Otto. Selected Essays: Ethics and the Theory of Rationality . Humanities Press International, 1996.

. Humanities Press International, 1996. Bain, Alastair. “Sources of Authority: The Double Threads of Wonder and Anxiety.” In Dare to Think the Unthought Known, by Ajeet N. Mathur. Finland: Aivoairut Oy, 2006.

Bion, W. R. Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock Publications, 1961.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. The Social Contract & Discourses. London: J.M.Dent & Sons, 1923.

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