[ExI] Consensus (was Capitalism, etc.)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 14 November 2011 01:22, Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com> wrote:

> This governing method is called "consensus decision making" or sometimes,
> more vaguely, "direct democracy" or "leaderless government." Consensus is
> required to advance any decision. Ideally, this is to ensure that everyone
> in the group is heard and equally respected, and that majorities must
> compromise with minorities.
>

I think it may have more to do with fostering people's motivation to
struggle for shared goals, and sometimes goes hand-in-hand with a
theoretically absolute authority to implement the shared decisions by those
appointed to this effect.

In fact, such methods, which abhor actual votes, majority rule and
dissenters,  have been employed with varying degrees of success in contexts
as different as the Japanese-style management of large companies and the
Cultural Revolution in China.

Besides the possible reference to symbolic (and distant) leaders, most
decisions are taken through the relentless building of unanimous or
pseudo-unanimous consensus, negotiated throughout all the hierarchical
levels of the organisation concerned.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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