Horizontalism

Horizontality or horizontalism is a social relationship that advocates the creation, development and maintenance of social structures for the equitable distribution of management power. These structures and relationships function as a result of dynamic self-management, involving continuous participation and exchange between individuals to achieve the larger desired outcomes of the collective whole.

Ideology
Horizontality is an attempt to decentralize power by allowing everyone to become active and direct participants in the decisions and actions that affect the individual most. This is accomplished without top-down directives or obligations to the individual. Autonomy is constructed through mutual agreements and voluntary commitments that respect the diversity of individual capabilities and personal desires.

“Horizontalidad” is a word that encapsulates most directly the ideas upon which the new social relationships in the autonomous social movements in Argentina are founded. It is a word that previously did not have political meaning. Its new meaning emerged from a practice, from a new way of interacting that has become a hallmark of the autonomous movements. Horizontalidad is a social relationship that implies, as it sounds, a flat plane upon which to communicate. Horizontalidad requires the use of direct democracy and implies non-hierarchy and anti-authoritarian creation rather than reaction. It is a break with vertical ways of organizing and relating, but a break that is also an opening. When explaining how an asamblea or unemployed workers movement functions, in the months and even years after the rebellion it was common to have people set the palms of their hands to face down and then to move them back and forth to indicate a flat plane, as well, in order to indicate how it does not function, joining the tips of their fingers together to form a kind of triangle or pyramid. Horizontalidad in many ways is these hand gestures with the knowledge that they genuinely represent a new and powerful set of social relations.

Horizontalidad is a living word, reflecting an experience that is ever changing. Months after the popular rebellion in Argentina, many began to speak of their relationships as horizontal, as a way of describing the use of direct democracy and consensus in striving for dignity and freedom. Now, almost 9 years after the rebellion, those continuing to build a new and revolutionary movement speak of horizontalidad as both a goal and a tool. It is a goal in the sense that there is a clearer understanding now that all of our relationships are still deeply affected by capitalism, and thus by the sorts of power dynamics it promotes in all of our collectives and creative spaces, in how we relate to one another in term of gender and race, information and experience, and so on. Horizontalism is a tool, on the other hand, in the sense that a danger is now more clearly recognized that language may become the politics and relationship, rather than a reflection of a living process. This is an active conversation.

Practice
Neka, a participant in the unemployed workers movement of Solano, outside Buenos Aires, Argentina, described horizontalidad as:

In anti-globalization politics
As a specific term, horizontalidad is attributed to the radical movements that sprouted in Argentina after the economic crisis of 2001. The related term horizontals arose during the anti-globalisation European Social Forum in London in 2004 to describe people organising in a style where they "aspire to an open relationship between participants, whose deliberative encounters (rather than representative status) form the basis of any decisions," in contrast to "verticals" who "assume the existence and legitimacy of representative structures, in which bargaining power is accrued on the basis of an electoral mandate (or any other means of selection to which the members of an organisation assent)".

This concept is related to the theory of communist anarchism, social ecology and libertarian municipalism, autonomist marxism and participatory economics. To these radical left-wing ideologies, horizontality is a necessary factor for real freedom because it allows personal autonomy within a framework of social equality. These ideologies advocate a kind of socialist direct democracy and workers' councils (autogestion) or community/neighborhood councils.