Revolutionary Cell Structure

Revolutionary cell structures are classically associated with a tradition of antistate radicalism that has its origin in the 18th century. The idea of the cell developed from the confluence of two strands of thought: the first informed by a practical concern with secrecy and the second from a concern with efficiency, discipline, and the need to overcome fragmentation in revolutionary movements. Traditionally, the organizational model of the cell [Page 578]was strictly hierarchical, but cells are now also associated with fluid, vertical forms of organization. The central issues raised by cell structures for the analysis of power are function and relational.

In the modern period, the idea of revolutionary conspiracy is usually identified with the French revolutionary Noël “Gracchus” Babeuf and that of the hierarchical, secret revolutionary cell with the 19th-century Russian revolutionaries Sergei Nechaev and Peter Tkachev. Because both conspiracy and hierarchy are also associated with Jacobinism, these elements are sometimes confused, but power is conceptualized differently by the conspiratorial revolutionary and the advocate of cell structures. In the conspiracy, power might be exercised equally, as it was in Babeuf's case. In the second, power is not only concentrated in a central body but exercised in accordance with strict codes of practice, backed by equally strict sanctions.

The suspicion of critics is that conspiracies and cells are designed to secure the conquest of political power and that in different ways both forms of organization replicate the existing decision-making structures. A second concern is that even if this is not their primary function, the likely divorce of the conspiratorial elite—formalized in the cell—from broader social movements results in an inequality of power that is likely to be institutionalized in any process of change: Babeuf's Secret Directory attempted to rouse popular support for insurrection but was nevertheless insulated from this audience. Tkachev's plans were based on an assumption of mass conservatism and passivity.

In the 1960s, the idea of the cell influenced a number of terrorist groups: the Black Panthers reissued part of Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionary. But in light of the Soviet experience, vanguardism and revolutionary elitism fell into disfavor. The cell structure metamorphosed into the network of affinity groups—vertical organizations with no clear centers of power. In the alter-globalization movement, radical animal rights and antiroad activism, the idea has been to create leaderless and, in some cases, memberless organizations. Central cell regulation is replaced by “hallmarks” of association, and programs of action are largely abandoned. In these groups, power flows horizontally. In other groups, notably Al Qaeda, the central power source and organizational structure are maintained but as a feature rather than a requirement of the organization, and power flows horizontally as well as vertically. In both cases, the openness of the cell is the secret of its success, because the shifting nature of the organization enables activists to operate openly but invisibly.