[lbo-talk] The New Anarchist

[c b]

An important aspect of the occupations is how so many other geographic
locations responded and militantly to the initial #Occupy Wall Street
protest. It seems to me that the substantive issues of protest,
unfairness of the 99%/1% unequal distribution of wealth and the
bailout of the institutions where wealth is already unfairly
concentrated somehow resonated with a large number of people all over
America.   A bigger chunk than I thought of the 99% "get it" already;
get the anti-capitalism as a system message already. And a bigger
chunk of the 99% are militantly angry about what capitalism is doing
to them.

The Facilitated Concensus form of meeting may be popular because
American radical tradition is significantly anarchist. The novelty of
the form is some of its appeal. Actually, contrast with "democratic
centralism" is too narrow. "Democratic centralism" is the same thing
as "majority rule" or sort of "vulgar" democracy. Lenin used the term
, but he was in a country that had a history of autocracy, not
majority rule. So, he was spelling it out and using a fancy term to
explain to people who were not used to being in meetings where Roberts
rules were followed , which means votes with majority rule. That the
minority abides by the decisions of the majority - democratic
centralism- is the same thing, identical to, majority rule, no ?

Roberts Rules of Order is more fully what Facilited Consensus
replaces, because the GA meetings are still on the scale of meetings
customarily run by Roberts'.

Charle