[ExI] Consensus (was Capitalism, etc.)

Tara Maya tara at taramayastales.com
Mon Nov 14 00:22:54 UTC 2011


On Nov 12, 2011, at 2:22 PM, Giovanni Santostasi wrote:

> But I don't think not letting Lewis talk had anything to do with racism.
> It was about some silly idealistic principle that nobody is better than anybody else so he should not given special time to make a speech. That is silly and it shows how exaggerated idealism can be used to manipulate people bevavior in "mind mobbing".
> The manipulation was not even based on bad intentions but the final result was still absurd.
> I take it though as social experimentation.
> Interesting video though.
> Giovanni

I don't think it was racism either. It was an attempt to create a different form of government that would be superior to democracy. I know, because I've been part of that community, and it was also my hope to find an improvement to replace representative democracy.

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. It was developed by the Quakers, where it works quite well.

I was part of a radical peace team for a year, and we used consensus decision making. It has its good points and bad points. I enjoyed the non-hierarchical aspect of CDM; this is the biggest strength of the system. Our team was usually composed of 6-12 people, which was optimum; there was enough diversity of opinion to ensure a rousing argument, but few enough  people to allow for genuine compromise. However, even with such a small group, it only works under hothouse conditions. During our training period for the team, individuals who could not handle this system, either because they were too combative or because they needed more direction, were dropped from the team. 

Even with hand-picked pacifists for team-mates, the system was impossible to scale up. I attended an international meeting of pacifists with over 200 people. Like the Occupites, we were supposed to be leaderless, and make all our decisions by consensus. Leaders were called "facilitators." In the small group, the facilitator was merely a moderator of group debate, but with over 200 people to moderate, this was unrealistic. They were, therefore, leaders, and pretending they weren't was deceptive. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the hypocrisy. There was no way to reach a genuine consensus of 200 people, but desperate to maintain that illusion, the (un)leaders bullied the group along. Voting -- or "temperature taking" or "testing for consensus" -- was not secret. Everyone held up cards. If someone held up a "defect" card, then the whole group had to keep debating until there was "consensus."

Again, the theory was to allow minority opinions the right to be heard, but the actual outcome was the exact opposite. Those with dissenting opinions were bullied into silence so that the rest of the group could move on. Otherwise, no decisions would be made at all! In fact, so twisted did it become, that outcomes like the Lewis-incident were not uncommon. What is so outrageous about the Lewis incident is not that a renowned Civil Rights leader was not allowed to speak, but that he was not allowed to speak DESPITE THE FACT THE MAJORITY WANTED HIM TOO. And this was done in the name of "consensus."

Sadly, this is not at all unusual for so-called "consensus decision."

I actually LOVED working on a consensus team, but after a year of experience with it, I concluded sadly that as it is now practiced in the radical community, it would be a poor replacement for democracy.

I did have an idea for a system which possibly could take good aspects of classic democracy and good aspects of CDM. Political leaders would not be career-politicians, but would be chosen randomly from the citizens... the way juries are today. Individuals could be called up to governing duty exactly the way we are today called up for jury duty, and perhaps there would also be a provision for eliminating some individuals from governing duty if they were deemed unfit. (I am a bit unsure on this point, since it begs the question, who would do the weeding out? The previous governing team? Lawyers and judges? Appointed staff?) These teams would debate and pass laws, exactly like Congress does today, and would also be divided into executive and legislative branches of the government.

Now, would this be an improvement over our present system? I have no idea. There would still the temptation for interest groups to bribe and bully the governing teams. It might be worse than democracy. But even if it were better, it certainly would not usher in a utopia, since humans would be involved. 









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