Horizontalidad

Horizontalidad (Spanish: [oɾisonˈtaliðað], 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 the continuity of participation and exchange between individuals to achieve the larger desired outcomes of the collective whole.

As a specific term, horizontalidad is attributed to the radical movements that sprouted in December 2001, in Argentina, after the economic crisis. According to Marina Sitrin, it is a new social creation. Different from many social movements of the past, it rejected political programs, opting instead to create directly democratic spaces and new social relationship.

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)".

Horizontalidad is related to the theories of communist anarchism, social ecology and libertarian municipalism, autonomist marxism and participatory economics. According to these schools of thought, horizontality seems to be a necessary factor for real freedom because it allows personal autonomy within a framework of social equality. These approaches advocate a kind of socialist direct democracy and workers' councils (autogestion) or community/neighborhood councils.

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