alanjjohnstone wrote:
We can also possibly comradely debate Graeber on democratic practice and the rights of minorities when he explains that in Occupy Wall St. “From the very beginning, too, organisers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus.The first decision ensured that there would be no formal leadership structure that could be co-opted or coerced; the second, that no majority could bend a minority to its will, but that all crucial decisions had to be made by general consent”
Nothing wrong with no leaders of course but this talk about a majority bending a minority to its will is the old individualist anarchist nonsense about “the tyranny of the majority”. It’s what made William Morris say that he wasn’t an anarchist and that an (individualist) anarchist society was impossible.This is what he wrote about decision-making in the chapter “How Matters Are Managed” of News from Nowhere:
Quote:
Said I: “And you settle these differences, great and small, by the will of the majority, I suppose?””Certainly,” said he; “how else could we settle them? You see in matters which are merely personal which do not affect the welfare of the community – how a man shall dress, what he shall eat and drink, what he shall write and read, and so forth – there can be no difference of opinion, and everybody does as he pleases. But when the matter is of common interest to the whole community, and the doing or not doing something affects everybody, the majority must have their way; unless the minority were to take up arms and show by force that they were the effective or real majority; which, however, in a society of men who are free and equal is little likely to happen; because in such a community the apparent majority is the real majority, and the others, as I have hinted before, know that too well to obstruct from mere pigheadedness; especially as they have had plenty of opportunity of putting forward their side of the question.”
No doubt consensus decision-making can be useful in small groups and in committees but it is not practicable everywhere or at all times (sometimes consensus just cannot be reached) and the decisions reached will tend to be the lowest common denominator.As it happens, the working class movement in England developed procedures for democratic decision-making, as incorporated in Citrine’s ABC of Chairmanship. Perhaps not as quaint as the hand signals involved in consensus decision-making but much more practicable and safer (avoiding the “tyranny of structurelessness”).
