[lbo-talk] Fightig a War by Consensus

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Dec 6 08:40:09 PST 2011


If there are any ancient historians on the list I would appreciate correction and/or expansion on this. "Consensus" is probably not the right word, but I suspect it is rather close to the right word.

Xenophon, Anabasis.

I regret that I've never found out more about this work, my knowledge being of reading a stray comment on it here or there.

10,000 Greeks caught hundreds of miles from home, in enemy territory. They had been hired to fight for one side in a civil war, & by the time they got there, the war was over and their 'side' had lost. They had nothing to do but try to march those hundreds of miles through enemy territory in an attempt to get home.

Quite a fix. What did they do? The abolished command (the equivalent of Jodi Dean's Party) and adopted essentially #OWS structure. All decisions all the way democratically made -- and this was the Greek sense of democracy, not its modern pferfversion as "representative democracy." And they made it home, planning their strategy and tactics at each point by something very like Consensus.

Carrool



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