> The devotion to consensus is also common, in my experience, among the direct action crowd. Who are the PE people who don't require the consensus process or face-to-face participation? Anything of their's available online?
I hate to bring up the forbidden name on this list. But Michael Albert is very anti-consensu and by no means wedded to face to face democracy.
>
> I take your points, but with one digression. How do you compromise
> between face-to-face, consensus-based position and electing
> representatives (whether one-party, two-party, multi-party, etc.)?
> Endless meetings and one-party states are not two poles between which
> we'll find the answer, but two pitfalls to be rejected. That is, I don't
> see any merits to draw from the consensus process, as opposed to voting
> in some fashion. Granted, that's hardly an answer to what should be
> done, but it is an elimination of what, in my opinion, should be shunned.
We don't disagree. Neither consensus nor one party states have much to teach us. (There are limited excpetions where consensus can be a useful - but they are so narrow as not to be worth spending time on.) The compromise I spoke of was between represenative and direct democracy.
>
> Many consensus-based groups strive for consensus, then vote. But
> consensus is preferred, and there is an inherent prejudice against
> resorting to votes. The minority obstruction that I've encountered is
> when one or two people have a "principled objection" and do not agree to
> stand aside. Because of how this usually plays out, I think consensus is
> self-destructive, especial if it's more than a dozen people without clear
> unanimity of belief. It enshrines a single-mindedness of purpose as the
> highest virtue.
There are other problems with consensus too. In my opinion consensus is fudnamentally anti-demcocratic.
>
> It often involves a bait & switch. Consensus is billed as the greatest
> realization of democracy, but when deliberation dispels an assumed
> consensus, deliberation is quickly vilified. Through this, consensus
> engenders a unity as false as One Nation Under God or United We Stand.
>
> That is the internal contradiction of the consensus process:
> hyper-individualism and false unity.
Agreed - excpet that when not it is not made a fetish, I can think of some special cases where consensus can be useful - basically cases where your really do want unanimous conenst before moving forward on things.
>
> -- Shane
>
>
> ____________