Decision by majority vote, incidentally, is a simple mechanism. And mechanisms are *always* needed for decisions. A cast of the dice to choose among the three proposals with the most votes would probably be an equally good mechanism. So would giving such powers of decision to a "dicatator" as anciently conceived and practiced: i.e. dictator for a limited time and within limited conditions. Probably several dozen other mechanisms would work as well.
But none of these mechanisms has much to do with the actual struggle for democracy either within a movement or in some future society.
All the models have had their (limited) successes. Those who condemn democratic centralism as never having been democratic are simply ignorant. They should read *Fanshen* for example. Nevertheless, it has certainly ultimately always failed and in any of its available conceptions will continue to fail. Those who assume that liberal democracy has been successful in any major way should examine their position: whatever their intentions, they are objectively giving aid and comfort to racism and sexism, neither of which will ever be signifificantly affected within
I'm seriously arguing that we really don't know how to achieve democracy, and that we won't find out through argument and theory *at* this time. As to the A16 "method," I don't believe it is worth arguing against under present conditions. Variations of it always self-destruct in practice at
some point, but this fact can't be established in arguments before the fact. The important thing is to know *what* we are dismissing when we dismiss it, and this involves, among other things, recognizing that considerable time spent in meetings is a price of freedom -- and that considerable thought does need to be given to how (*under present conditions* and not in some distant utopia) meetings can become a positive rather than a negative. Hannah Arendt's dicsussion of this is useful, I think. Politics, and political conflict, *can* be a joy for everyone, not just a burden -- but there is nothing automatic about achieving this and at present we do not know how. The weakness, even the viciousness, of participatory democracy in all its known variations is that beneath the rhetoric of its partisans is the assumption that the potential joy of meetings is a present and spontaneous actuality.
The first demand to be put on any political activity in the United States is "How does it confront white racism, subjective and institutional?" MOvements that cannot make that central are in the medium and long run useless.
Carrol