> Even in the House, there is an amending process, which minority party
> politicians can shrewdly use to weaken or even scuttle a noxious bill by
> amending it to death, so to speak, especially if politicians in the
> majority party are divided and are unable to maintain party discipline.
There are politics in all small groups, regardless of the process that is being used.
> As for the fetishization of consensus, the problem seems to be confined
> to a minority of political meetings. Even among anarchists, there is no
> consensus about consensus, as you can see in the disagreement between
> Chuck0 and Brian. Consensus was indeed all the rage among youth
> activists excited by Seattle and the like, but I think it's a passing fad.
Yoshie, I know that you Trotskyists would like consensus to go away, but wishing that it would go away is not going to make it go away.
Have you guys figured out by now that consensus is the best anti-authoritarian antidote to entryism, "interventions," and all that other crap that Trots use when they try to take over groups and coalitions? You guys haven't been having much success since Seattle have you? I always get a big laugh when some young activists contact me about
incidents when the ISO tries to take over their student groups. The first thing that that the Trots do is to badmouth consensus and try to get the process changed. One of our local Trots, Nihar, plays this game all the time with the students and I heard recently that he was trying to play ignorant about it.
It's also very amusing that you dismiss consensus as a fad of young activists. Yes, I've heard this condescending attitude before from the left sectarians. After Seattle more than a few sectarian newspapers covered the movement with rhetoric that basically said that the youth would "grow out" of their anarchist phase.
They haven't grown out of that phase and you conveniently neglect the fact that many older activists are implementing consensus in their groups.
> Discussion about direct democracy versus representative democracy,
> consensus versus the majority rule, etc. in the recent thread has been
> remarkably formalist. Formalist innovations don't solve a political
> problem of how to raise the quality and quantity of political
> participation and keep them high, in my opinion.
Formalist innovations? Yoshie, you need to get off campus more often. There is nothing innovative or new about consensus.
Chuck0