The Tyranny of Consensus --Mark Read

The occupiers have inherited and adopted a decision-making process that has come down from earlier left movements and is lauded as the most democratic form of decision making. Of courser those who wish to see a more democratic society naturally gravitate to what has been billed as the most democratic way to make decisions.  Consensus is what the radical left has responded with, for generations.  Those of us that have worked within a consensus process model should know better by now, and we do a disservice to younger activists by allowing the myth of consensus-as-always-most-democratic to persist.  We were told that the trade off was less efficiency for more democracy, and this simply is not borne out by experience, and most of my long-term comrades have come to recognize this.  The only place where I believe that consensus process is genuinely more democratic than a majoritarian (aka voting) process is within a close (and closed) community of collaborators/co-habitants that have practiced the process for years.  In virtually every other instance it yields less democratic decisions and processes, not more. 

 

The consensus process, when applied to large heterogenous groups such as the one at #occupywallst, yields hierarchies at least as persistent and pernicious as other forms of decision making, probably more. I, and many others, would argue that voting yields more truly democratic outcomes, if practiced responsibly and ethically (ie requiring 75% majorities and allowing ample time for discussion).  In the current context the consensus process favors those that feel comfortable addressing crowds, and feel entitled enough to argue endlessly for their point of view. This does not describe most people, and these traits are most prevalent in people that come from privilege, particularly educational privilege.  I hate to coin a Nixonian term, but the “silent majority” are those that don’t feel such confidence.  For most people voting on something is the best way to ensure that they have a say in the outcome.  The very idea that a marginalized, or even just shy person should be expected to feel confident enough to participate in an alien and confusing process, much less powerful enough to block a consensus decision is just plain ridiculous.  So, in practice, the very people that are intended to be emboldened and empowered by a consensus process, are in fact marginalized and silenced.  They cede the floor to the loud and the confident and the certain.  That is not what democracy looks like.

 

The other problem that many of us know all too well is the creation of "invisible heirarchies."  These come about in large measure due to the cumbersome nature of the decision making process.  Consensus process simply does not scale well, and it becomes so inefficient that groups of people begin to take decisions on their own, because they are essentially forced into that position. This leads to problems of accountability, accusations of betrayal, etc...

 

And for what?  A decision making model that falsely claims to be more democratic than voting? Many of us from earlier movements are very familiar with these problems, and yet too many of us uncritically jump on the bandwagon of consensus.  Without some hard headed honesty about this, the fetishization of consensus will damage any efforts to build a more powerful, broad and diverse movement.

via www.facebook.com

Comments

[Jaspergregory]

Thanks, for posting this. I have read so many self-congratulatory accounts of the General Assembly process, but I find it about as alienating at being forced to vote for a two party system.
In Occupy Oakland we have an invisible hierarchy where the Black Bloc essentially decides the direction of the entire protest, because of gridlock in the General Assembly.

[Robert Allen]

The GA's in Des Moines are too awful to watch; the anarchist types have been hippie punched out of the picture and liberal dogooders control the agenda (plus a few plain control freaks with no discernable politics), no, it's all about me and this geography, it doesn't matter how awful their stated politics, it is about the space thats' been carved AWAY from banal neoliberalism, and simply occupying it- I wrote this poem about it:

Occupation Forces

sometimes it's a good thing there's no there there
so you can get on with the good things in life

my co workers
jumbled together then torn apart in the anarchy of the wake of our
disciplined time together
we barely touch because I don't reveal much of myself
and they, trapped in ideology's netherworld, preoccupied,
are so fucked in the head they talk and think the other
person is listening but they are lost in their own private

there was no there with my fat jeebus whore sisters
there is no there with my in laws
and no there with my privileged white job
no there with my deer hunting racist friend
or my rightwing henpecked buddy who said rightly I was
a socialist who'd never survive in a kibbutz

all no there

there is the occupation
there is the fight for socialism
there is my body in the fight
life is good

right wing thugs beat up the guy in the wheelchair
on security detail one late night

he had to go to the hospital

I helped put up tents and makeshift insulated flooring
gonna be a bad winter
it felt good to work against capitalism
instead of for it