Consensus

I have been critical of the consensus-based, horizontal practices associated with contemporary anarchism. My criticism has been based on what I've viewed as an underlying individualism--no one has the right to speak for any other, each person must speak for themselves, etc. Graeber sometimes describes the virtues of anarchism in terms of an underlying individualism (no one can change another person's mind). When I was at a GA in Washington Square Park last month, I was taken by the fact that people echoed the speaker regarding each person's autonomous choice on whether or not to occupy the park that night (a deliberation of a few thousand people).

But lately I've experienced another side of consensus that is making me start to think differently about it. The fact that it takes so long to come to a decision is the benefit. It's what let's people get to know one another in a way that is neither commercial nor familial. The inefficiency is crucial--it's not capitalism; it's not subject to capitalism's dynamics, values, and imperatives. Maybe there is something here that is appealing to a residual Habermasianism that I have yet to shake--discursive will-formation. But I don't think so insofar as that argument relies more on reason than the affective ties, the truth, the solidarity that builds after hours and hours of deliberating with a common purpose in mind. 

Seeing the unions come together in struggle as they've done in Ohio and Oakland has also made me think again about solidarity (the subject of my first book). It's what is missing in our neoliberalized society, the society that makes each treat the other as a competitor or a tool, that remakes all relations into efficiencies, means, something to capitalize. There is nothing efficient about hours and hours of conversation. But it is the way, perhaps the only way, to build solidarity. You need to know if someone will stand by you on the front line, that people are behind you when you tear down the barricades or break down the doors. You can't know this from a donor list or list of friends or followers. Who will be there? Who will show up? Likely the people who have spent hours and hours already because of a shared commitment.

This isn't a communist thing (or if it is, it is because there is an underlying communism in many kinds of politics and sociality). Tonight there are local elections in Geneva. The people who are active in the parties are trying to get the vote out; they've been going door to door, meeting about what to say in ads, discussing editorials in the papers. Now they are calling, making sure the people on their lists get out and vote. In a small town, elections can be one or lost in under 10 votes. They demonstrate and experience solidarity--the people with the big ideas who are in and out like a flash, they aren't reliable. They think of politics as "someone else" carrying out their ideas, but they aren't in there for the interminable, frequent, meetings, the discussions and conversations crucial for building solidarity.

The difference may be voting--voting lets you stop discussion and build resentment. It also lets you get much more accomplished. Since the time of politics is always pressing, necessary, too early, and uncertain, it generally seems like the best way to deal with disagreement. But maybe the cost is too high. It probably makes sense in settings where there are no common ends, where conflict is the presupposition.

But for a party, cause, or movement (rather than a state), it may be that consensus is a better process. 

Which would also mean that consensus requires prior exclusion.

Comments

[Jodi]

(I've had some screw ups with the blog because I double posted something--this comment from Sean Larson was somehow deleted):

"The inefficiency is crucial--it's not capitalism; it's not subject to capitalism's dynamics, values, and imperatives." Yes, isn't this the problem? In this sense it is Idealist, rather than an immanent, dialectical approach. "[Voting] probably makes sense in settings where there are no common ends, where conflict is the presupposition." It seems like you are setting up an absolute opposition between consensus and bourgeois democracy, as if nothing else existed. E.g. why not consider voting within a committed group, which would de facto require prior exclusion? Common presuppositions ("dogmas") are the ground on which (forgive the term) democracy thrives. Democracy say, in the sense of class power, not in "giving all [i.e. reactionary] sides a voice". "Which would also mean that consensus requires prior exclusion." Again, why not voting with prior exclusion, if we are already talking about within the movement? It seems like consensus with prior exclusion would necessitate the development of a cult, because all must agree on everything - something which voting avoids (cf. democratic centralism). Consensus leads to tyranny by more than one path. It can lead, for example, to the same situation OWS is protesting now: where a tiny minority directs (or prevents) the activity of the vast majority. Yes, building solidarity is necessary, but consensus is not "perhaps the only way", in fact I think it is counterproductive. Solidarity is learned primarily through struggle, where even the most reactionary consciousness can be forced to change. A phenomenon unheard of through intersubjective "rational conversation".

[Jodi]

I don't really understand the comment, Sean.

What are you saying is idealist rather than immanent and dialetical?

Why say an absolute distinction? And one between consensus and bourgeois democracy? That wasn't what I was doing. In fact, the position I end up with is one of prior exclusion. I guess I don't see why you keep saying 'why not voting'-- my reflections here consider why, namely, because of the long, slow, process of deliberation needed to reach a consensus when folks are not voting.

I don't know what a cult is -- I think of it as a term used to discount or demonize a group.

I never said consensus was the only way -- in fact, as I mentioned, I've been very critical of that view. This post was some reflection and self-criticism undertaken to note a benefit that I had not previously acknowledged.

There are different kinds of struggle--sitting through a long meeting trying to get to an agreement is definitely a struggle. I think solidarity arises our of a variety of practices through which people learn to count on each other and to trust that one another can be counted on. An example where action/struggle doesn't produce solidarity on its own: a street fight that breaks out in the course of a march. Some folks will join the fight, some will protect the fighters, some will flee, some will side with the police. One doesn't know whether 'next time' will be the same or whether people will switch sides, this non-knowledge makes it difficult to take risks or plan to escalate.

[Jaspergregory]

Jodi, I have been struggling with the General Assembly consensus process here in Occupy Oakland. What I have seen here is that a committed minority of insiders can come to dominate the process. My occupation is forming into a kind of revolutionary vanguard which is committed to property destruction tactics under the Newspeak term 'diversity of tactics.' It has gotten to the point that speakers against property destruction are booed, hissed and jeered, while the facilitators look on approvingly.
What we see is the 'General Will' of the revolutionary vanguard that has self-selected to continue coming to the meetings while the reformist middle class has become alienated. The best description of this process comes from this 1970 critique that jo freeman wrote, after experiencing similar dynamics in Radical Feminist consensus groups. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

[Jodi]

Jasper--yes, I know exactly what you mean by the committed minority. And the Freeman piece is really interesting on this. I think everybody who is involved in the movement at this point is grappling with the organization questions. Here's what I think at this point (although I can be convinced that this is wrong).

At this point, I'm on the side of the General Will (as you describe it).

Why? Because it is a rupture with business as usual.

Because commitment counts--our current systems have become corrupted by capitalism, whether in the form of money, privilege, or access to power, etc. In mainstream political organizations, although dedication counts for something (people can gain influence with lots of work on campaigns), that can be trumped by money--a couple of big donors move to the head of line; those are the people who are heard, no how much time everyone else puts in. So I think that, particularly in this phase, it makes sense that the direction of the movement is set by the people who show up.

Of course, the counter to this argument will be that lots of people are excluded from this--jobs, kids, responsibilities. That's true. But that's not unique to this situation--it's always like that.

You describe hissing, booing, jeering. I think that is a bad sign. It's a sign that the facilitators aren't committed to building a consensus. And, like you said, that will turn people off. And that's the case in lots of voluntary, particularly political, associations--folks exit when they are not heard. So it's a bad organizational call, I think, on the facilitators part.

But, and here I think is the real issue, what to do about the tactics you describe? On the one hand, it seems that a strong part of the movement so far is really interested in peaceful means, eschews violence, and wants to avoid those kinds of confrontations at this point.

There are real advantages to this strategy: if the police aren't agitated early on, they may be more likely to stand with the occupation when the real shit hits the fan. Additionally, one could say that the point of violent confrontation is when everything is already lost (for those who are clearly out-manned, out-armed etc--I mean, seriously, unarmed protesters will be road kill in a real confrontation with the police)--so, what matters, especially now, is gaining territory (mind share, the moral upper hand, dominance in the news cycle, physical space) and not engaging in pointless acts of violence that are really false fronts.

On the other hand, lots of people in the country are sick to death of passivity and appeasement, they are sick of waiting, they are sick of the maneuvering and positioning, which once it becomes the modus operandi of the movement seems just another version of the same old, same old. It's clear on the right--they seem attracted to macho illiterates who draw lines on the sand. And maybe there is something to this. The system is so corrupt, so damaged, that there seems no way simply to reform it. And, it might be that an emerging General Will is sensing this and moving in that direction.

Here's the thing: the reformist middle class will become alienated if the process is too slow, if it takes too long; yet that process will dis-alienate them if they stick with it. The rush of violent destruction may also be momentarily dis-alienating, but if it leads to set-backs (which is most likely right now) then it re-alienates.

Whenever a vet is severely injured, the system looks worse. Whenever the police over-react, the system looks worse.

There has to be a way to have a reasonable discussion about tactics.

[Sean Larson]

What is Idealist is the fact that consensus is “not subject to capitalism’s dynamics, values, and imperatives”. Now, I definitely agree there is value in extended deliberation and that the dominant values of capitalism are abhorrent and should be rejected. However, capitalism has built the tools of its own destruction – e.g. the division of labor, although a product of capitalism, should be used within the movement to reach a minimum level of efficiency in combating capitalism. Here I say “efficiency” consciously, not to oppose it to solidarity-building-deliberation, but in the sense that, the more we can accomplish now, the bigger we can become through our actions, and thus the more we can grow. Consensus is Idealist in the sense that it proposes a positive project standing against capitalism from the outside, rather than working through the dynamics and imperatives of capitalism to ultimately explode them. This is not to say that there will not be a time when inefficiency is useful, but I think that will depend on our strength, and at what point we can seriously confront capitalism and liberal democracy with a powerful class alternative.

I say an absolute distinction because each time you refer to “voting” it is as if the tool of voting or majority rule were defined by quick, unthinking action based upon a fetishized need for efficiency. In an ideal society, we should not worry about efficiency, but right now we do not play by our own rules. As Jasper pointed out, this isn’t the first time a movement has turned to consensus tactics. The problem with relying on the “committed minority” and “the people who show up” is that we are already talking from within the movement. Consensus becomes a good way to reduce the size of movements by excluding anyone unable to spend 24/7 at an occupation. Why is this a problem? Because in society at large, all of us, even those who just show up to the working-group or GA meetings, are the “committed minority”. Now, that’s not to say that anyone who appears at a meeting once in a while should have the same influence as someone who tirelessly devotes everything to the cause. To counter this (and basically as an alternative to the bourgeois democracy style voting “where conflict is the presupposition” and consensus) I think an explicit, basic level of commitment to the general aims of the movement and to a certain amount of actual work for it from all who would have a voice/vote could be useful. This commitment level is the necessary basis for, say, a division of labor within a movement in which you can rely on others to take care of certain things so you don’t have to think about them. In consensus, there is a drive toward everyone doing everything, which is impossible, so then the committed minority ends up taking on larger and larger amounts of work and responsibility until they burn out and the movement fails.

If the position you ended up with is one of prior exclusion, there has to be some general acceptance of some of the same goals. Combined with a fundamental commitment level, why not have this serve as a basis for voting in which the commitment is maintained after a vote? You make quite valid points about the solidarity built by long deliberation and reasoned discussion. But to extract from that that consensus as the way to do that (as you say you do not necessarily do) disqualifies the potential of the affective ties already bringing people to occupations, and more importantly leads to ever-more exclusive and overburdened minorities within the movement. Consensus, by definition, means that everyone agrees on the next step. This necessarily means organizing based on the lowest common denominator, or that most people just passively accept what the “committed minority” propose—which cyclically produces a lack of commitment to that which one doesn’t really control and subsequent defection from the movement.

I never said that all collective action (like a street fight) produces solidarity. What I meant was that when people realize that they need each other to realize their own interests, their backward ideas necessarily have to be shed. This is not the case that results from winning an argument. I do not know that the person that disagreed with me yesterday, but then ended up whole-heartedly agreeing after hours and hours of debate, is not going to abandon me when the cops come at us with pepper spray. This seems to be relying on the strength of ideas, rather than material interests and the bonds they produce.

[Jodi]

Sean--I don't think consensus and division of labor are opposed. Folks can agree to divide up tasks. I also think you are wrong in the way that you describe the inside and outside of capital, a description which leads you to reject consensus as idealist and turn capitalist dynamics into political ones. It's as if you have no way of thinking or talking about politics that you haven't already reduced to capitalism. Consensus does not propose a positive project standing outside capitalism. Rather, consensus is the outcome of a process of deliberation, an outcome that may not be reached, that can be questioned and rejected. My thought was that the process of reaching consensus is useful for us now because it is so demanding (tons of time and patience) that it prevents us from acting in ways that conform to capitalist norms.

On commitment: I think that commitment arises through practices. The characteristics of the practices that produce commitment include giving contributors the sense that they are important, that what they are doing is important, that their views are valuable; basically, people will be committed when they are recognized and when the task is significant. With that understanding of commitment, it doesn't make sense to expect a basic level of commitment in advance--it emerges over time. And, my proposition is that the consensus approach helps generate it, not because people are exchanging reasons (it's not about ideas) but because people are demonstrating commitment by being there and engaging.

[Sean Larson]

Perhaps I am operating on too many assumptions. How do you understand, and do you agree with, materialist dialectics? I think that capitalist dynamics swallowed politics a long time ago, and they are something we have to reckon with. I am not interested in “reducing” politics to capitalism, but I try to avoid the trap of hypostatizing a pristine ‘political sphere’ that remains uncontaminated by capitalist dynamics. I also don’t see how the process of reaching consensus means we necessarily avoid conforming to capitalist norms (do you mean in the sense of co-optation? I would agree that is a danger of rash decisions).

I agree with something that Marx said: it’s our social being that determines their consciousness, not vice-versa. You speak of the deliberative consensus process as if the consciousness of the people involved were not already determined (whether negatively or positively) by capitalism. Determined and determining, yes, but it seems you are neglecting the former.

“The characteristics of the practices that produce commitment include giving contributors the sense that they are important, that what they are doing is important, that their views are valuable; basically, people will be committed when they are recognized and when the task is significant.”

It is exactly for this reason that the consensus model destroys commitment and the sense of agency of participants. When a group operates using the consensus model, as Freeman notes, certain people take on the responsibility and power to decide. Because the majority of people (and not “the reformist middle class”, but working class radicals as well) cannot spend 24/7 in the park, they are reduced to passively accepting what was proposed by the facilitators. This in turn leads them to either defect or display a lack of commitment to something they never had a voice in. Substituting the Will of a small, tightly knit group for the whole movement is simply unsustainable, assuming we want this movement to grow. Once this is the situation though, they are trapped in the deadlock of having to benevolently give other contributors a sense that their voice is being heard, that they are being recognized. It is precisely this that I think we should reject—it emulates the ideal of liberal democracy in which, theoretically, representatives are supposed to “give us” the things we want. This relies on trusting someone else to make decisions (and carry out the work) instead of us and the “politics of recognition” – which is a little too close to Rawlsian liberalism.

I admit: my description of the inside and outside of capital leads me to reject consensus as idealist. People don’t just have to ‘feel’ like they are empowered (a project doomed to failure from the beginning anyway), they have to actually be empowered, which is undermined by ‘really existing consensus’.

I don’t understand your last sentence, it seems to say that “Consensus generates commitment because in it, people are demonstrating commitment,” which would then imply a basic level of commitment in advance. But say that advanced commitment level were not given, my point is that consensus destroys commitment, for the above reasons. The merits of a patient, deliberative process are another thing entirely though, and I would support it, but I think consensus is the wrong way to go about it.

[Jodi]

I don't think it makes sense to begin from an assumption of commitment or from an assumption of commitment and dedication. I think that has to be generated and that the process of generating it is never-ending. Commitment, then, is a relationship and not a vow or a decision. It is an outgrowth of actual practices, practices that can change those who participate in them (I understand this to be Lenin's point about revolution in State and Revolution; struggle remakes the proletariat).

If you agree that commitment is a relationship and now a vow or a presupposition, then we can talk about what helps and what hinders that relationship.

By consensus, I mean the process associated with the initial decision-making structure of OWS and described by David Graeber and others. I think this is the same thing Freeman means by consensus. So, the word is a shorthand term for a process that requires that everyone involved in it agree. It is an alternative to voting, representation, and officially set roles.

The question, then, is whether the process I've described helps create the kind of relationship I described.

I accept that what Freeman describes can and does happen.

But, I don't think that what she describes is always, everywhere, and necessarily the case. It can be the case, but alternatives are also possible.

The specific problems of some people making decisions and defection are characteristics of any groups. This means that they are not exclusively or definitively characteristics of groups that try to work by consensus. It does mean that they are problems that groups that try to work by consensus need to be conscious of and need to try to avoid. The "substitution" problem you mention is not specific to consensus based groups either--it can just as easily be a problem in groups with other kinds of decision making structures.

The false sense of benevolence and recognition you describe can inhabit any group--not specific to consensus. Your argument here, and on the point of 'representatives giving us things" presumes a core leadership, not a group of equals. I don't accept that 'core leadership' is inevitable, although I accept that it is a risk.

So the questions that matter are how people take and exercise power.

[Sean Larson]

Whether one begins from an assumption of advanced commitment or not is irrelevant. To reiterate, my point is that in both scenarios the process of consensus is disempowering to the participants of the process, and therefore hinders the (renewal of the) relationship of commitment. While defections and some people making decisions, as well as the ‘false sense of benevolence and recognition’ might be considered characteristic of any group, in consensus the source of these problems is the process itself – consensus causes them, they are not just accidents. This means groups working by consensus are a priori prevented from “trying to avoid them”. Yes my argument about ‘representatives giving us things’ presumes a core leadership; that is how consensus is designed, both on the ground and in theory. I don’t see how you can endorse the tiny committed minority and then defend consensus as a ‘group of equals’.

I don’t see any significant differences between relying on the leaders of a consensus procedure in which “the questions that matter are how people take and exercise power,” and relying on Democrats to do what they said. We can do better than hinging the success of the movement to people’s benevolence.

To speculate on an empowering and thus commitment-building process that gives agency to the participants, I would think recallable and frequently renewed elected positions, as needed, filled in turn by different members of the movement, could avoid this as well as the substitution problem, for example.

[Clive Prout]

Jodi,

I share your evolving perspective on the power of consensus. I used to think of it as idealistic and impractical. Now, after 2 years living in a community where 11 households share ownership of our houses in a co-op operating on consensus, I have come to a greater appreciation for the power of consensus.

You say that consensus relies on prior exclusion. I tend to agree with you, but frame is slightly differently. Consensus requires a framework of committed relationships, a community. It makes no sense outside that context. For consensus to make sense, it requires that we genuinely care about each other and that we are unwilling to force the will of even a majority onto a minority. It requires that we value the people involved over the decisions being made.

This interlinked relationship between community and consensus (each is strengthened by the other, and each requires to other) is (in my view) the main strength of consensus as a decision making process. It is also the main weakness (especially in the eyes of those who value the ends over the means).

[Rosswolfe.wordpress.com]

While the democratic ideology it represents has certainly helped popularize the #Occupy movement, in my experience process ultimately becomes fetishized within the consensus decision-making model. Those who know the process and its intricacies best use its finer points to bludgeon those with whom they disagree. It results in a sort of proceduralism über alles, almost bureaucratic in its formalities, slapstick, and idiocies.

These issues have been well documented. Decisions are often exhausting, sometimes dragging on for more than four to five hours. Usually in such cases a third to two-thirds of the people there at the beginning of the General Assembly would have wandered away by the end. And that doesn’t even count the members of the encampment who didn’t bother going in the first place. All in all, participation in the General Assemblies I attended included well under 33% of the park’s population at any given moment. Even more embarrassingly low than the percentage of the population that votes in federal elections. The entire affair becomes massively alienating, and most give up on trying to influence the decision-making process one way or the other.

Perhaps this is just me, but after weeks of participating in this process, I've come to view the act of reaching consensus as being less about agreement than it is about a surrender to inevitable fact that something has to be done. At least, that's why I usually end up caving to whatever path promises to end the process the fastest.

Most people tend to forget this now, but this is part of the reason why Zuccotti park schismed in the week before the November 15th eviction. The disgruntled drummers in the Pulse working group joined forces with the majority of the homeless in the western half of the park, which also gained the allegiance of the anarcho-Marxist collective Class Warfare Camp.” The so-called GU (General Union) really had no formal authority, since the GA controlled all the money, but it was still interesting as a symbolic gesture of dissent. Part of this phenomenon was captured satirically on The Daily Show, but the actual reality on the ground was so fraught with absurdity that it almost did not admit of parody at all.

Another problem I see with consensus decision-making is that only the most timid, tentative, or lukewarm proposals end up getting passed. Either that or only extremely vague pronouncements against “greed” or “injustice” get passed, precisely because the meaning of these terms remains underdefined. At least this is my experience. The structure of consensus, passing proposals that most people agree upon already, tends to favor only the most unambitious ideas, and seems to me an inherently conservative approach.

[Rosswolfe.wordpress.com]

And to Clive, I feel that there has been a unfortunate romantic tendency among leftists (both Marxists and anarchists alike) ever since Ferdinand Tönnies' famous book to fetishize the "organic community" [Gemeinschaft] of old at the expense of the alienating totality of "modern society" [Gesselschaft]. This is one of the problematic binaries posited by this sort of discourse, which seems to privilege (I can't believe I'm even using this hackneyed term) the one over the other.

In terms of Leninism, democratic centralism, and the idea of a disciplined and professionalized revolutionary vanguard (though to be fair, the Bolsheviks had over 50,000 members by October 1917) was a specific reaction to the realities of a tsarist police state in which radical parties were illegal, and then in the brutal and desperate Civil War that ensued. Lenin and others said repeatedly that these were measures adopted in order to maintain the party under such extreme conditions, and that this was obviously not ideal. Also, the idea of democratic centralism as it existed under Stalinism is a complete distortion of Lenin's notion in What is to be Done? Of course, since this structure allowed Stalin to eventually take power, it is undeniable that democratic centralism contained this possibility.

Lenin never recommended that the Bolshevik model be adopted in countries where Social-Democratic parties were legal. For example, the SDP, which was (before Kautsky's capitulation to Prussian imperialism in 1914) the leading light of the international workers' movement, was by no means supposed to take on the measures Lenin advocated for its own form of organization. In the Twenty-One Conditions, issued in June 1920, Lenin did require that parties belonging to the Third International adopt the structure of democratic centralism, but qualified that this was a temporary measure taken out of the desperation of international civil war:

"In almost every country in Europe and America the class struggle is entering the phase of civil war. Under such conditions the communists can place no trust in bourgeois legality. They have the obligation of setting up a parallel organizational apparatus which, at the decisive moment, can assist the party to do its duty to the revolution. In every country where a state of siege or emergency laws deprive the communists of the opportunity of carrying on all their work legally, it is absolutely necessary to combine legal and illegal activity."

And honestly, when it comes to anarchism and the issue of authoritarianism, people forget that while Bakunin accused Marx of authoritarianism, Marx accused Bakunin of the same thing (but for different reasons). For Bakunin advocated the idea of maintaining a secret revolutionary society of 100-200 members that would carry out spectacular provocations through the propaganda of the deed, and his thinking was largely informed by the extraordinarily repressive Imperial Russian state. This is by far closer to the idea of the "vanguard" that is most often called to mind when they think of a bunch of shady elites making decisions in the backroom.

Either way, I'm not a vanguardist or even a democratic centralist. I'm all for open debate and dialogue. If we ever recreate a global, explicitly anti-capitalist movement capable of disrupting the reproduction of capital and overthrow its concomitant relations, then — depending on the concrete, objective conditions that obtain — we could discuss what form(s) of organization would be best suited to carry out this task.

As heartening as the #Occupy protests have been in revitalizing leftist political sentiment, I'd still say that we're a far cry from such a moment. Until the quasi-objective character of social consciousness shifts in such a direction that the real overcoming of capital becomes an imminent (and immanent) possibility, recommending forms of organization remains extremely speculative, even if it's an interesting and valid topic of conversation.

[Rosswolfe.wordpress.com]

Though it's probably a rather elementary exercise, I noticed that in his explication of the party apparatus in What is to be Done?, speaking in terms of "class consciousness," Lenin imported a number of very specific technical concepts from German philosophy (which were replicated in the standard Russian translations of the time). Of course, Lenin was ridiculously fluent in German, so he probably didn't rely on translated sources. Rather, he probably used the common Russian translations of these terms that existed at the time.

Here's a link to what I discovered:

http://rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/147/

Also, for those who have any questions about the debates over party organization between Lenin and Luxemburg, you can check out a couple of posts I devoted to the subject:

http://rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/a-response-to-reid-cane%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cleninism-or-luxemburgism%E2%80%9D/
http://rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/measuring-the-depths/