[lbo-talk] Blocks,Filibusters, consensus, etc.

ed eddiem17ca at yahoo.com
Sun Jun 1 19:02:52 PDT 2003


hi everyone,

I've been a lurker on this list for a while but thought I'd wade into this discussion. First off I'll say that i'm an anarchist but lean towards voting because i favour accountable recallable leaderships(where leaders exist in all activist settings) and would rather avoid the tyranny of structurelessness. Plus, i don't equate consensus with anarchism.


> > If nobody wanted to join any union, there would be
> no firing of union
> > organizers.
>
> The main obstacle to people forming unions are
> unions who want to make
> everything official. Workers would be better off
> organizing unofficial
> unions that are illegible to the company, which
> would make it more
> difficult for the company to fire THE organizer.
By 'official' what do you mean? i consider a structure to facilitate organizing,or paid staff to handle grievances necessary to winning a majority of people over, at least the ones that are looking for stability in their workplace. I consider casualization a larger obstacle to union organizing than a union being 'official', from my experience trying to organize a call centre with a few fellow workers. But to look at what you're saying in another angle,Chuck0, traditional unions have a hard time with this and the fact that, at least in my previous workplace, people(the ones we approached) liked the flexibility in their schedules and didn't want to be tied down by an agreement with the company.


> > Not just business unionists but union democracy
> activists today don't,
> > revolutionary syndicalists of yore didn't, run
> meetings by the sort of
> > consensus method that you advocate here for all
> purposes.
>
> That's one of the reasons why they suck. Unions are
> hierachical
> organizations that exist to protect their exclusive
> relationship with
> the capitalists. Unions are threatened by grassroots
> power.
Unions are
> like Leninist organizations, in that the
> "democratic" process is
> controlled by the union pimps, not by the rank and
> file workers.
Well is this just a give-in, something that will never change? Seems like you're ignoring the benefits and importance of democratic movements like in the Teamsters or UFCW, which should be supported. I think that militant unions would be ill served using consensus, as the process would water down class politics to accomodate more conservative types, where i think you're advocating the opposite. Plus, you still don't see how consensus seems to ignore the presence and influence of leaderships, rather than providing a structure to keep officials and big organizers in line alongside the rank and file.


> > And they have probably learned to work with a
> variety of decision-making
> > processes, rather than try to offer consensus as
> the "one size fits all"
> > solution to all occasions.
>
> Which is what I would argue, but you don't seem to
> understand the
> nuances of my arguments.
>
> > When consensus was all the rage, the fashion
> wasn't confined to
> > anarchist youths and impacted a lot of young
> activists who got
> > radicalized by anti-WB/IMF protests and the like.
> Back then, some young
> > activists who got excited about what was (to them)
> "new" came back to
> > the local political scene and wanted us all
> (including those of us who
> > "had been there and done that") to discuss
> "process" first of all and
> > attend "facilitator workshops" that they
> organized. :-0 That's history
> > now, though.


> Yeah, like we know that your Leninist groups are
> rapidly becomes mere
> shadows of the shadows they used to be.
I'm not really familiar with Yoshie's politics, but it seems that in your tirade against 'sectarian' trots you yourself have been quite sectarian. But then most people who wheel out that term accusingly seem to without realizing it. (plus i know quite a few 'trots' who, besides statism, actually hold good politics compared to a lot of 'anarchists', who commonly make the error of confusing mass action with direct action, for example)


> When consensus was all the rage. Like when it has
> been the rage
> throughout human history.
You've said this a few times but to me it's highly suspect, it's kind of looking at human history through modern lenses, and capitalist ideologues saying that since we have capitalist social relations now that capitalism is the 'natural' system for humanity. I consider consensus a 60's hippy invention-- which cultures have used consensus to organize their societies, when, where? and how can we be sure that past societies used 'consensus' the same way people do now?


> > I suppose that simplifies political life for you.
>
> It means that I have to waste less of my time on
> Leninists, except when
> I'm bored and have fun kicking them around.

hmmm if there's more people on the list who favour consensus maybe you should speak up, so at least the discussion becomes a little more fruitful. Eddie Edmonton, Canada

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